Observations and Comments on the Discussion of IDN TLDs in ICANN

Abstract

While the legitimacy and accountability of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has been questioned from its inception, ICANN has also produced some policy outputs as byproducts. These include UDRP, generation of a few new TLDs, the framework of accountability between ICANN and ccTLDs, and other minor policies on domain name registration. For the last decade, ICANN has held tough discussions on some policy issues but has not reached consensus. New TLD policies are one of the most important such issues. IDN TLD is an interesting and also frustrating issue, particularly for non-English-speaking people. I was not concerned about IDN TLD issues until I started to participate in ICANN discussions. My knowledge of the technical aspects of domain name operations is extremely limited. Nevertheless, as a non-English-s-g user, I have felt that I have something to say on these issues, and sometimes I have made comments on them through ICANN public comment sessions or TF discussions and domestic discussion meetings on IDN policies. IDN issues are a practical concern for internet users who hope for the convenience of using their local language scripts. This has been a concern of most non-English-speaking users, providers, and even governments. In spite of this, IDN TLD has not yet been launched. Many explanations for this have been given. Technical standardization was the first barrier we should have overcome, but in 2003, IDNA's punycode-based scheme became a standard far IDN strings. TechnicaI reviews are still going on within IETF. A second problem was who determines IDN TL,Ds and how IDN generation policies are developed and implemented. Later these questions were resolved in a way that IDN TLDs are simply considered new TLDs and integrated into new TLD generation policies.