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ICANN Debates Internationalization Issues
by William New
Many world leaders, including from Europe and Japan, sent word to the United States on Tuesday of their shock and horror at the news of terrorist attack upon the nation's financial and military centers. These wishes were accompanied by communications to the U.S. from people overseas, flooding telecommunications lines. The Bush administration contacted U.S. government officials around the world, notifying them of what happened.
European Commission President Romano Prodi said: "Our cooperation with the USA in the fight against terrorism is more necessary than ever and must be pursued with renewed vigor."
It is not yet known what effect Tuesday's events will have on the international information technology policy landscape.
ICANN's Internationalization Debate
A board member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in charge of making the Internet fully multilingual, said this week that failure to accomplish the task could endanger the Internet.
"ICANN needs to address these complex issues appropriately, or a large segment of the Internet community may choose to leave the domain name system -- which would be a significant danger for all of us," Masanobu Katoh, a senior executive at Fujitsu, said Sunday at a public forum.
Vinton Cerf, board chairman and an originator of the Internet, said, "I think the Internet will never realize its full potential as a global communications tool until we have managed to [recognize] all of the character scripts and languages people introduce into it."
Katoh headed a committee that made recommendations to the ICANN board at its quarterly meeting on Monday in Montevideo, Uruguay. The board readily adopted those recommendations.
The committee addressed concerns that the current ASCII language standard for the Internet, based on American English, does not recognize other languages, such as Chinese or Korean, which is leading to the rise of systems of translation not authorized by ICANN.
Katoh said ICANN cannot make a decision on how to proceed on internationalized domain names (IDN) until the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) comes to agreement on which standard to support. The IETF failed to reach consensus at an August meeting, but is leaning toward a standard known as ACE, which is ASCII compatible.
Katoh said that there are concerns that even when the IETF comes out with a standard there may not be compliance with it, but that "we have to have that standard."
The committee recommendations called for the creation of a steering committee on international domain names, which will coordinate the work of various ICANN groups on the issue and will work on a bottom-up basis to develop policy recommendations. Issues for consideration include maintaining interoperability, dispute resolution procedures and prevention of cyber squatting, competition and consumer and intellectual property rights protection.
The committee also recommended non-technical steps ICANN could take in the meantime, such as putting the Uniform Dispute Resolution Procedure into other languages.
The new steering committee, also to be headed by Katoh, will present its initial work plan, schedule and proposed budget to the board's third annual meeting in Marina del Rey, Calif., on Nov. 12-15.
Various companies made pitches in Montevideo for their systems for translating language. A RealNames representative said at Sunday's forum that the company is preparing to comply with the ICANN standard. A company called Internet Driver on Sunday announced its new technology for converting languages on the Internet.
A VeriSign official said in Montevideo that the registry is prepared to adapt to whatever standard the IETF decides upon, but it is anticipating the ACE system and will begin conversions to that standard this fall.
Country-Code Domain Names A Hot Topic
The majority of two-letter country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs), such as .us, have struggled to bring all 250-odd countries and territories to present a unified front, but are seeking to form a supporting organization to ICANN, joining three existing such advisory bodies. ICANN posted model agreements with ccTLDs, negotiated in the effort to formalize the relationship.
During the public forum, the existing policy of releasing ccTLDs from ICANN dispute settlement procedures and contractual obligations was questioned. Some sponsored TLDs, such as .museum or .aero, might never see the volume of large ccTLDs, yet are subject to the same standards as the gTLDs, such as .com, a participant noted.
Peter LeBlanc, ccTLD manager for .vi, which has been leased to a private company, said it would take an international agreement or peer pressure to force a country not to use its ccTLD resource as a source of revenue. The ccTLDs are seeking guaranteed seats on the board.
New .Biz Name 'Truly Global'
At the ICANN meeting, a status report was given by Jeffrey Neuman, a director at NeuLevel, which is overseeing the new .biz TLD. Neuman said that some 46 percent of claims filed were from outside the United States, 35 percent from Europe. "We truly are the first global top-level domain dedicated solely to business," Neuman said. Under the .biz rollout, potential registrants are being notified if there is already a common law trademark of the name and they must decide whether to proceed. The registry goes live on Oct. 1. "Everything is going according to schedule," he said.
USTR Lagging In Use Of Internet, Book Says
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the government's lead on trade negotiations, could better include new groups in its decision-making through better use of its Web site, argues a new book, Redefining the Terms of Trade Policymaking, by Susan Ariel Aaronson of the National Policy Association (NPA). New groups to be included in trade policy-making include consumer, environmental and public health constituencies, it said.
In particular, USTR should make its Web site interactive and use the Internet to get input on trade policy from the public inexpensively, the book said. In doing so, it would catch up with its peer countries, such as Canada, Australia and the European Union.
What We Need Is A Congressional Trade Office
In one chapter of the book, Ira Wolf, senior trade counsel for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., makes the case for Baucus' proposal to establish a Congressional Trade Office. The office, which Baucus proposed in a bill, S.1347, would bring on a team of at least 10 non-partisan experts in all areas including the high-tech industry, e-commerce and intellectual property rights to advise Congress on trade over the long term.
The office would monitor compliance with trade agreements, serve as observers in key trade negotiations, and analyze administration trade initiatives. The office also would assist congressional committees that do not have traditional involvement or understanding in trade matters.
Wolf argued at a recent NPA event that no executive or legislative branch office currently covers all of these areas. He also asserted that Congress has been losing touch with trade issues, which have grown beyond what can be managed by the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees.
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