RE: Urdu IDNs: Characters in domain names

 

 

From: Debbie Garside [mailto:md@ictenterprise.co.uk] 
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 3:53 PM
To: 'Mark Davis'
Cc: 'Richard Ishida'; 'Martin Duerst'; 'Sarmad Hussain'; 'Jonathan Rosenne';
www-international@w3.org; public-iri@w3.org; psayo@idrc.org.in; 'Maria Ng
Lee Hoon'; 'nayyara.karamat -'; cc@panl10n.net
Subject: RE: Urdu IDNs: Characters in domain names

 

Mark wrote:

 

>>What would work is if the TLDs are always treated as equivalents (aliases)
in DNS lookup; that way Joe Smith looking at a tourist site could always
type "abc.au" and get the same results as if he had typed " abc.rö".

On reflection, and with particular regard to Internationalized ccTLDs and
second level domain names, I am not sure whether this is a good idea or not.
Could this cross over into the area of trade marks etc. with cocacola.co uk
represented in Arabic script (for instance) being automatically owned by
cocacola.  Would this mean that if you have the domain name or control of
the ccTLD in Latin script you have rights to it in all other scripts.
Hmmmm... tricky.

 

This is a legal matter. I am not a lawyer but I understand that in general
this isn't the case. The company has to register its trade name in each
country according to the local law, and the transliterated name may be
already in use by someone else or it may be a "bad" word.

 

I suggest that the international bodies should concern themselves only with
ccTLDs, and leave the lower levels to country authorities. 

 

I hope the synonym approach is valid, as it can be made to work rather
easily. I do see a problem with the international allocation of localized
ccTLDs in certain scripts. 

 

Jony

 

Nevertheless, the proposed ISO standard will only provide the base data.  It
is for others to define usage and rules of use.

 

Best regards

 

Debbie

 

 

 

  _____  

From: www-international-request@w3.org
[mailto:www-international-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Mark Davis
Sent: 23 August 2007 22:51
To: md@ictenterprise.co.uk
Cc: Richard Ishida; Martin Duerst; Sarmad Hussain; Jonathan Rosenne;
www-international@w3.org; public-iri@w3.org; psayo@idrc.org.in; Maria Ng Lee
Hoon; nayyara.karamat -; cc@panl10n.net
Subject: Re: Urdu IDNs: Characters in domain names

I disagree; that strikes me as impractical.

Fundamentally organizations are going to want TLDs based on their view of
the utility of those TLDs to the majority of users. I can well imagine that
a TLD for Iran might use a character that is not in Arabic; by analogy a TLD
for Austria might reasonably use RÖ (Republik Österreich). 

What would work is if the TLDs are always treated as equivalents (aliases)
in DNS lookup; that way Joe Smith looking at a tourist site could always
type "abc.au" and get the same results as if he had typed " abc.rö".

Mark

On 8/23/07, Debbie Garside <md@ictenterprise.co.uk> wrote: 


Richard wrote:

I think that, if we are to use non-latin
> characters for script-based TLDs, they must only be
> characters that are readily accessible from keyboards of
> people writing any language that uses that script. 

I agree - insofar as is possible.

Best regards

Debbie Garside



> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-international-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:www-international-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Richard Ishida
> Sent: 23 August 2007 19:19
> To: 'Martin Duerst'; 'Sarmad Hussain' 
> Cc: 'Jonathan Rosenne'; www-international@w3.org;
> public-iri@w3.org; psayo@idrc.org.in  <mailto:psayo@idrc.org.in> ; 'Maria
Ng Lee Hoon';
> 'nayyara.karamat -'; cc@panl10n.net
> Subject: RE: Urdu IDNs: Characters in domain names
>
>
> > -----Original Message----- 
> > From: Martin Duerst [mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp]
> > Sent: 20 August 2007 07:37
>
> > As an example, consider the TLD for Switzerland, "ch". 
> > Switzerland is a multilingual country with four official languages
> > (see top left of http://www.admin.ch/).
> > It would only be confusing both inside Switzerland as well 
> as outside
> > if different languages used differnt TLDs for Switzerland. For many
> > people, the "ch" is just conventional, best known because
> it appears
> > on the back of many cars. 
> > The "ch" is actually taken from the Latin (language, not
> > script) name of the country, "Confoederatio Helvetica", but many
> > people don't realize that, and for TLDs, it doesn't really matter. 
> > What matters is that people who want to know the TLD of Switzerland
> > can look it up, can remember it, can type it, and so on. It's a
> > benefit if a TLD is easily derivable from the country name 
> (e.g. "fr"
> > for France), but it's not always so, because otherwise,
> there would be
> > clashes. It would be very confusing if a TLD changed depending on
> > language ( e.g. "ge" for Germany in English rather than the current
> > "de" (Deutschland, Germany in German), or "al" for
> Allemagne (Germany
> > in French), or the many other names that Germany has in various 
> > languages. It might help some people a tiny bit, but it
> would make it
> > impossible to send URIs using these TLDs across language
> boundaries,
> > and would lead to conflicts because there are only so many 
> two-letter
> > combinations.
>
> I think it's important to note that this only works well
> because people writing any of the Swiss languages or English
> can easily type the letters 'ch' from their keyboard.  If the 
> TLD had been ch I think there would have been a lot of
> problems.  I think that, if we are to use non-latin
> characters for script-based TLDs, they must only be
> characters that are readily accessible from keyboards of 
> people writing any language that uses that script.
>
>
> RI
>
>
>
>
>









-- 
Mark