[nc-idn] Re: Understanding consequences of possible IDN

[DannyYounger@cs.com]

Elisabeth,

You asked if we had additional questions...  I have some additional comments. 
 As someone who has worked in a registrar's customer service department 
during an idn testbed roll-out, I can attest to an enormous amount of issues 
that relate to "consumer confusion".   My experience has left me convinced 
that gTLD registrars have no business providing IDN services to their client 
base, and that such services are best offered only by the ccTLD community 
(which can easily provide registration services in the native language being 
requested).

With regard to US gTLD registrars that participate in IDN efforts, one notes 
that instructions to register a non-english domain name are not provided in 
the language being registered, only in english.   Should a client have 
questions, they are often not able to call the customer service department of 
these registrars and easily articulate their questions in English, neither 
are they able to understand the legal complexities of a Terms of Service 
contract in a language with which they have no great familiarity.   If the 
registration originates from overseas, there is also a high cost involved in 
the necessary telecommunication.   Furthermore, these customer service 
departments do not have representatives trained in the languages they 
ostensibly serve, and website FAQs often seem to create more questions than 
they answer.   

As a matter of policy, if our goal (as per the White Paper) is to encourage 
diversity and enhance user choice and satisfaction, we will not serve the 
world Internet community well if we place our products in the hands of those 
registrars that cannot offer an appropriate level of service.  

I believe that registrars should be accredited for IDN products on the basis 
of competency in the languages being offered, and that all necessary 
registrar legal documents should necessarily be available in those same 
languages.

In short, it makes a lot more sense in terms of policy to have .VN offer 
registrations in the Vietnamese language than it does for any current 
ICANN-accredited registrar to do so.