[EURO-Discuss] [At-Large] UA Days - the recording

[Evan Leibovitch]

Thanks for the link, Roberto.

I did not watch the whole seven hours but I did extract a number of
highlights. Clearly embedded within the session are the reasons for the
failures to date of UA.

   - Sally said in her session: "We need all the Internet users in the
   world, ideally, able to access all the Internet content in the world".
   That is *absolutely true*. But her comments expose the conceit that
   ICANN and its community have had since the day it was created.... that
   memorable domains are the primary means through which people access
   Internet content and services. That may have been true 25 years ago at
   ICANN's birth, but it isn't now. Certainly not this decade, and it's been
   on a steady decline since the Chrome browser introduced the Omnibox in
   2008. And yet the conceit remains unaltered.

   - In his opening remarks, ICANN Board Vice-Chair Danko Jevtović said the
   quiet part out loud: "UA success is critical for the next round of gTLDs".
   Meaning ICANN, which profits from both registry application fees and domain
   rentals, has a deep stake in maximizing the proliferation of IDNs. So it,
   and the registries and registrars that act as its sales channel, have a
   direct and explicit financial interest ... which renders their message of
   public benefit highly suspect and clearly self-serving. So when the ICANN
   community talks to itself as it did so splendidly on UA Day, few on the
   outside pay attention. No awareness is being spread; just because you're
   speaking does not mean anyone is listening.

   - Less than a day's drive from Belgrade there's a very active war going
   on, and both belligerent parties speak languages that use the same Cyrillic
   script as Serbia. There is no shortage of content being created and
   accessed in these languages through an assortment of media. An information
   seeker needs not a single domain name, Latin or Cyrillic, to get to any of
   it. I wouldn't even know where to start, so (before) search engines and
   (now) ChatGPT help me locate what I need (and now Copilot is coming to
   every Windows desktop). That process can also be done in any mobile device
   in any of the many languages supported by the relevant apps. The domains
   containing the content could all be [hexadecimal number].com and it
   wouldn't matter. One needs no more-timely evidence that domain names are
   not a *requirement* of multilingual Internet access in critical
   situations.

   - Plenary 2, at which Roberto spoke,  was about challenges in local
   communities. It was overloaded with registries. Why wasn't there a single
   actual local group on that panel? There was NOBODY there that wasn't
   involved with ICANN somehow, not even an ISOC chapter. This presents a view
   (seen from the outside) that ICANN and its community is *telling* local
   communities what they need rather than *asking* them. Again, a
   demonstration of conceit ... and not a good way to influence.

   - The technical session came close to recognition that end-user demand
   is not sufficient to drive UA implementation as a priority among app
   developers.

   - How much did that logo cost to design? It's a perfect -- and
   illustrative -- example of something that has meaning to domain insiders
   but not the public.


Further thought on the issue suggests that a number of conditions need to
be met for ICANN to even try to realize its UA goals:

   1. Acceptance by the ICANN community that IDNs are not, as Jevtović
   asserted, a "technical requirement" of the Internet. This is proven by the
   widespread everyday Internet communications of people in every language
   while UA is still not ... universal. A new strategy must factor that IDNs
   can be a very useful option in many circumstances, but are not critical
   infrastructure without which the Internet as we know it would fall apart.

   2. Find a politically-strong co-advocate that does not financially
   benefit from the greater use of IDNs. The ITU would be a perfect fit for
   this but that bridge may be burnt. Maybe ISOC? W3C? IGF? Even IETF? It is
   here that ICANN will find out if it has any friends in the greater IG world.

   3. Focus on bottom-up and public consultation, research, and lose the
   conceit.

   4. If UA is about human rights and increasing equitable access (as
   Roberto said in his session), civil society should be jumping to the
   front of its advocacy. Better multilingual communications supports multiple
   UN SDGs. Is all of NCSG even onboard? If the awareness campaign doesn't
   work on ICANN's own civil society constituency, what hope does it have with
   the public?


Cheers,

- Evan



On Thu, Apr 4, 2024 at 5:38 PM Roberto Gaetano via At-Large <
at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> Please find the complete recording of the event at
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnkqOvgte5Y.
>
> Best regards,
> Roberto
>
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-- 
Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch / @el56
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