[ga] ICANN & Balkanization of the Net

[Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>]

The Register's Kieren McCarthy writes about a letter
from MINC's Khaled Fattal to ICANN -- see 
http://www.minc.org/files/CEO%20Letter.pdf and
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/05/minc_icann_letter/

Khaled makes four points:

1- to what extent are ICANN and IANA aware of the
serious and real risk that much of the good work and
effort they have fostered on IDNs in the past and the
vast challenge of work that still remains to be done
in the future which recently has been re-initiated to
create appropriate policies and mechanisms in
preparation of deploying IDNs/Multilingual domain
names, be totally dismissed as unrecognized and
unacceptable or
illegitimate by many Non-ASCII speaking regions of the
international community simply because it is done by
ICANN and IANA due to their ties to the US government
in the way they currently are and as consequence of
the severe international unpopularity of the current
US administration?

2- Wouldn?t the real internationalization of ICANN and
IANA, so that they are responsible and transparent to
the international community including the US
Government and not the US government singularly, truly
ensure that the great work and effort being
fostered and coordinated across many organizations
with ICANN on IDN/ Multilingual domain names does not
get dismissed outright purely as a retaliatory
response to the US Government so that if the US
government catches any future colds ICANN and IANA do
not continue to sneeze.

3- Shouldn?t ICANN, its board and its top executives
re-evaluate ICANN and IANA's strategic picture making
the real internationalization of ICANN and IANA their
number one priority and making the responsibilities
and accountabilities of both organizations be to the
international community including he USG and not just
the USG alone?

4- And wouldn?t failure to do that (in 3 above) risk
the great effort and work needed to be undertaken on
IDNs/Multilingual Domain names be squandered? And if
squandered partially or fully, lead inadvertently or
otherwise to serious forms of balkanization of the net
as we have already started to witness?


		
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