[council] Bundling of IDN versions of TLDs

[Adrian Kinderis <adrian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Have everyone seen this?

http://www.icann.org/en/correspondence/andruff-et-al-to-dengate-thrush-beckstrom-11may11-en.pdf

This is, in my opinion, ridiculous.

This is an incredibly slippery slope to even bother with and we have covered 
this ground before.

This is nothing more than a real estate grab by those that stand to benefit 
from it (and the usual suspects they have been able to rope in to "support" 
them).

I thought the GNSO sorted out this issue a long time ago. Did VeriSign just 
decide how much it was going to cost to go for .com in every script all of a 
sudden?

It is really simple. You cannot clearly define the meaning of every word in 
English as it directly relates to other scripts.

So, if I went for .auto does that mean I get .auto in Arabic - what is the 
EXACT translation for that? Do you get everything close? How close does it have 
to be?

What about the reverse? What if I go for .auto in Arabic (whatever that is) 
does that mean I get .car, .automobile, .auto, .autobus etc etc in ASCII?

Finally, .music in ASCII) is not the same as .music (Arabic version). It is 
promoting competition. What amazes me is no one receives any bundled TLD's when 
they register under .com right now. VeriSign allows for separate registrations 
in each script. If they are the same, why don't they give each registrant every 
IDN variant?

I would really like to make a stand on this as a Council. This rule has been 
included in EVERY version of the guidebook. Now we are nearing the finish line 
these folks would prefer to make a wholesale change to their benefit.

What are the thoughts of the Council?


Adrian Kinderis