ccTLD IDN Task Force Meeting

Monday Jan 13, 2003 1500h UTC

 

 

1. Call to Meeting

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   Interim Chair, Professor Lee Young-Eum called the meeting to order at 1515h UTC

   The proposed agenda is as listed in Annex 1.

 

2. Roll call at 1520h UTC

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Lee Young-Eum, Chairperson of the Meeting.

 

Ian Chiang, TWNIC ian@twnic.net.tw (Secretary of Meeting)

Nai-Wen Hsu, Director, Technology Support Dept, TWNIC snw@twnic.net

Ching Chiao, International Affairs and Public Relations Service Dept, TWNIC chiao@twnic.net.tw

Joanna Tso, Director, International Affairs and Public Relations Service Dept, TWNIC joanna@twnic.net

Chi Liping International Affairs and Public Relations Service Dept, TWNIC liping@twnic.net.tw

 

Abhisak Chulya, Exec Director, ccTLD Secretariat

Eric Akumiah, Deputy Exec Director, ccTLD Secretariat eric.akumiah@strath.ac.uk

 

Sultan Al Shamsi, UAEnic, Dubai. sultan@uaenic.ae

Sara Al Nooryani, UAEnic, Dubai sara@uaenic.ae

Ladislav Vobr, Emirates Telecommunication, ETISALAT UAE

Amani bin Sewaif, ETISALAT UAE ocean@emirates.net.ae

Saleem Al-Balooshi, UAE. Saleemnb@emirates.net.ae

Hiro Hotta, JPRS, Japan hotta@jprs.co.jp

 

Khaled Fattal, MINC Board Chairman

S Subbiah, MINC Board, INFITT member, i-DNS.net Chairman, Stanford University

Tan Tin Wee, MINC Board and Acting CEO (Scribe of Meeting)

 

Elisabeth.Porteneuve@cetp.ipsl.fr

 

3. Chairperson of ccTLD IDN Task Force

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The meeting started with discussion on the Chairperson of the ccTLD IDN Taskforce.

 

The criteria for the Chairperson was discussed as follows:

 

a. Must be able to turn up for APRICOT in Taipei and for ICANN meeting in Rio de Janeiro (Abhisak)

b. Must be able to commit to push the IDN agenda for ccTLDs (TTW)

c. Should have experience in IDN agenda (TTW)

  and very clear understanding of technical IDN matters (Elisabeth P)

d. Preferable to be acceptable to as many ccTLDs as possible

e. Should be able to report and drive the initiative according to the agenda listed for this meeting (TTW)

f. Must be neutral to IDN matters (Elisabeth P and Lee YE)

 

Chairperson summarised two candidates

Lee Young-Eum 3 EP HH AC

Tan Tin Wee 1 SS

(Votes indicated)

 

Abhisak called for a vote.

EP clarified that it should be one vote per ccTLD present.

Abhisak clarified that if there is one vote per ccTLD present, and then it should be taken to the ccTLD-discuss mailing list.

HH suggested that the status of this TF is to create charter.

Before fixing it, and proposing it to ccSO (ccNSO), he proposes "one vote per interested ccTLD".

EP reiterated that in this meeting, and in this vote for a chairperson, expression of support should be the case and each ccTLD should have one voice of support.

The matter was left unresolved.

 

4. Interested ccTLDs

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ccTLD representatives who declared interest to work on IDN matters were listed, as far as they were known.

 

Oscar Robles .mx

Yann Kwok .mu

Hiro Hotta .jp

Elisabeth Porteneuve .fr

TWNIC .tw

Bernard Turcotte .ca

UAEnic .ae

Lee Young-Eum, representing KRNIC .kr

 

5. Task Force Charter

--------------------

 

The Chairperson considered that the principal task of the ccTLD IDN TF is to coordinate the various IDN activities in the ccTLD community as well as in other regional and global communities since the ccTLD user communities will be the principal users of IDN. She offered the version 1.1 Nov 2002 of the Task Force charter in Annex 2.

 

HH agreed with ccTLDs' role, arguing that if IDNs do have language-semantics, the basic source of information for IDN definition and IDN usage is ccTLDs.

 

TW questioned the "Introduction" of the Charter of the TF, arguing that ccTLDs are the most diverse group and most difficult to unite in a single voice. So if ccTLD is to coordinate IDN efforts, they should be restricted to coordinating IDNs which are translated in their respective ccTLD, leaving other types of non-geographically related IDNs to other more suitable groups.

 

TW also suggested that the "Objectives" section of the charter should clearly state where the ccTLD IDN TF's mission should end, at those IDNs which are not sliced according to geographical boundaries of ccTLDs, and those which transverse multiple ccTLDs in a trans-ccTLD manner.

 

EP mention that within the EU, there is a rule that ccTLD should be open for registration to the Member states. It means than if IDNs are implemented, it implies Latin, Cyrillic and Greek altogether from a script perspective, the scripts listed being examples of those used within European Union.

 

TW reminded that one of the key charter points should be for the ccTLD IDN TF to identify which issues are not within their scope and shed light on how these issues if handled by other competent entities, must satisfy ccTLD's criteria and requirements, so that these other entities will have a better understanding of what solutions are acceptable to ccTLDs and which are not.

 

TW continued: In the areas which ccTLDs decide that they do not wish to go into, ccTLD IDN TF must come up with requirements list which will satisfy the needs of the ccTLDs This should be one of the deliverables of the TF which can guide other groups to move forward.

 

And to help others move this forward, ccTLDs TF should identify the competent entities which it would like to work with to achieve those aims which it cannot do on its one, and those tasks which ccTLD IDN TF has identified it cannot do, or is not well positioned to carry out, he added.

 

Having identified which parties it wishes to work with on what aspects and issues, it should start trying to lay the ground work to cooperate with these parties as negotiations take a long time to come to fruition. In this regard, it should quickly identify specific partner organizations it wishes to work with.

 

 

6. Issues List

--------------

Chairperson proposed the following issues list.

- Technical issues: IETF IDN's support for PUNYCODE, Resolution Solutions

- Policy issues: Language Groups, Verisign

- TC/SC issues: how should we resolve it? Agreements within CDNC?

 

S Subbiah reminded the meeting of the ongoing challenge of WALID to lay claim over the IETF IDN proposed standards.

 

Regarding the policy issues list, the most crucial is the problem which WALID patent will pose to the IETF IDN proposed standards because IETF will not adopt standards unless it is free of intellectual property encumbrances. It is not clear if Walid will release its IPR on IDN if IETF adopts IDNA as standard.

 

EP also indicated that Bill Semich also has laid claim to a patent on IDNs as well.

 

Chairperson requested that documentation on these IPR issues should be added to the archives.

 

7. ccTLD Workshop on IDN Activities

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The Chairperson tabled the proposal of draft Agenda of the Workshop in February during APRICOT meeting and this document was revised during the discussion of this meeting (See Annex 3).

 

8. Compilation of Documentation List

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Chairperson urged all to build up the document archive.

A draft list has been compiled by JPRS/JPNIC.

 

SS mentioned that there are a lot of pre-history documents from 1998 to 1999 from the APNG testbed and also some ITU and WIPO documents, and requested TTW and Arabic groups to come up with more information.

 

9. End of Meeting

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The meeting was adjourned at 1730h UTC.

 

 

Annex 1

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Proposed ccTLD IDN TF meeting Agenda

(Monday, January 13, 2003, 15:00 UTC)

*************************************

 

 1. Discussion of TF Charter

 2. Development of Issue List

   - Technical issues: IETF IDN's support for PUNYCODE, Resolution Solutions

   - Policy issues: Language Groups, Verisign

   - TC/SC issues: how should we resolve it? Agreements within CDNC?

 3. Review IDN document list: corrections, additions

 4. Plan for meeting in Apricot

 

Annex 2

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ccTLD IDN TF Charter

Version: 1.0

Written: October 30, 2002 (by Young-Eum Lee, yesunny@nuri.net)

Version 1.1

Revised: November 21, 2002 (by Young-Eum Lee, yesunny@nuri.net)

 

Interim Chair: Young-Eum Lee  (yesunny@nuri.net)

 

1. Introduction

 

Various local, regional, and global efforts towards the development of internationalized domain names (IDN) have existed since the late 1990s. Recently, IDN went through the standardization process at IETF which approved publication of four proposed standards.

 

In light of these activities, the ccTLD community, with its international membership consisting of the major users of IDN, is considered to be the most appropriate group for coordinating internationalized domain name efforts around the globe.

 

2. Objectives

 

The objective of this Task Force is to provide a regular forum among the various stakeholders of IDN development so that we may coordinate IDN activities in order to enable the ccTLD registries to prepare for IDN services. The coordinating activities of the ccTLD IDN Task Force will include exchanging information and addressing issues for the various language groups.

 

3. Work Items

 

The ccTLD IDN Task Force has the following work items in mind.

 

Development of Issues List

Development of Recommended Best Practices

Creates archives of various resources from around the world

Undertake public relations effort, including outreach

 

4. Schedule

 

Pre-Meeting: 2002 Dec. 14, in Amsterdam

First IDN Forum: Feb. 25 (Tue), 2003: During APRICOT in Taipei

(Extended) IDN Committee Meeting: March 22, 2003 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Second IDN Forum: June 21, 2003 in Montreal, Canada

 

5. Participants

 

There is no limitation on qualification of participants. People who are interested in IDN development are strongly encouraged to participate. We especially would like to encourage participation of various language groups.

 

 

Annex 3

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Proposed Workshop on IDN Activities

Dates: February 24-26, 2003

Venue: Taipei back to back with APRICOT

 

Feb 24 - Pre-Meeting

Feb 25 - Main Session

Feb 26 - Wrap-up session and adoption of draft resolutions regarding IDN

 

9:00 - 10:30 Identification of Issues

   Technical

   JET - TWNIC representative; Hiro Hotta

   IETF - James SEng

 

   Policy

 

   Issues - Lee Young-Eum, former chair, Registration Policy WG, MINC

   Problem languages/Scripts:

   - Han Script Chinese TC SC problem

   - Tamil Script cross national borders problem.

   - Urdu Arabic script cross-India-Pakistan problem.

   - Arabic script 22 countries

   - Cyrillic script trans-national and trans-language

 

10:45 - 12:30 Individual ccTLD Development Efforts

   China

   Taiwan

   Japan

   Korea

 

2:00 - 3:30 Regional and Language Group Efforts

   JET

   CDNC

   AINC

   INFITT - S Subbiah or a representative from INFITT ExCo

   EUROLINC - Jefsey Morfin

   CLINC - Sergey Charikov

   Report of Arabic Language Effort - Khaled Fattal

   Japanese Effort - Hiro Hotta

   Chinese Traditional Effort - Vincent Chen, TWNIC

   Korean Effort - ?, KRNIC

 

3:45 - 5:00 International Efforts

   IETF

   ICANN IDN - Masanobu Katoh, Elisabeth Porteneuve

   MINC IDN Interoperability Efforts - Tan Tin Wee

 

 

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