(Draft) version 0.3

MINC Position to Multilingual Community on Multilingual Domain Names

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Oct. 26 Draft Position version 0.1

Oct. 31 Draft Position version 0.2

Nov. 3 Draft Position version 0.3

Comments received after version 0.2

Stefan Probst, Nov. 1(MINC Individual member)

Kilnam Chon, Nov 1(MINC Organization member)

John Klensin, Nov. 1(IAB Chair, IETF)

Comments received after version 0.1

Stefan Probst, October 28th(MINC Individual member)

Kilnam Chon, October 29th(MINC Organization member)

David Conrad, October 31st(MINC Board member)

John Klensin's personal opinion(IAB Chair, IETF)

I. Introduction

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MINC's mission is to promote multilingual Internet names. The

promotional efforts will cover the whole spectrum of the names' life

cycle from R&D to service. In order to promote, MINC will cooperate

with other global organizations such as ICANN(IDN Committee, etc),

IETF, ISO, and Unicode as well as many other regional and national

organizations.

In this position paper, MINC addresses the internationalized domain

names under ASCII TLDs(ccTLD and gTLD) and multilingual TLDs.

MINC also works on non-domain names such as Keywords, which

will be addressed in a separate position paper later.

III. Interoperability Testing

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To ensure interoperability, MINC should initiate call for interoperability

testing to ensure each of these systems interoperate with each other.

All vendors and TLDs who participate in interoperability testing will

get a certificate of participation and if they achieve interoperable

status, receive a stamp of MINC Interoperability.

As the IETF protocol specifications, both for multilingual names

in the DNS and for high-level searching and keyword functions are

completed, MINC expects to review the work and where appropriate,

recommend to ICANN that mutlilingual interoperability certification

requirements be included in the requirements for registrar certification.

IV. mTLD(multilingual TLD) Space Plans

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Before Internet community explores mlTLDs, MINC proposes to seek

cooperation from the relavant organizations such as Internet Coporation

for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN) by informing them that identified

challenges which shall be implemented with the relevant bodies' cooperation.

While recognizing the inherent complexities and tradeoffs,

MINC and its members continue to believe in the importance

of evolving to a system in which top-level domains can be

expressed in the language of the user and/or that of the relevant

countries.

MINC looks forward to working with ICANN, regional and language-based

organizations and to achieve this goal while preserving seamless

connectivity and international accessibility across the Internet. The

regional and language organizations identified so far are

Arabic Internet Names Consortium

AINC: To be provided later.

Chinese Domain Names Consortium

CDNC: http://www.cdnc.org/e-index.shtml

Japanese Domain Names Association

JDNA: http://www.jdna.jp/index-e.html

International Forum for Information Technology in Tamil

INFITT: http://www.infitt.org/

V. mTLD Space Dispute Resolution

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Where there are more than one party wishing to have rights to mlTLD,

MINC volunteers as a coordinator together with ICANN which shall be

explored between the two entities to coordinate all requests for right to

operate a "mTLD", and form an "Arbitration Committee" to provide the

coordination.

VI. Language code TLD(lcTLD) Space Coordination with ccTLD Group

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MINC Board will issue a call for proposal to all ccTLDs in conjunction with

ICANN to invite them to set up language code TLDs(mlcTLDs).

a. AINC on formalising multilingual TLDs in Arabic

(list to be worked out between AINC and MINC)

b. INFITT on formalising multilingual TLDs in Tamil

(list to be worked out between INFITT and MINC)

c. An expanded CDNC including other Chinese speaking stakeholders

in other places on formalising multilingual TLDs in Chinese(Zhongwen)

(list to be worked out between CDNC and MINC)

d. IAK, NNC, KRNIC on formalising multilingual TLD in Hangul

(list to be worked out between would-be entity and MINC)

e. Russian WG on formali multilingual TLDs in Russian

(list to be worked out between would-be entity and MINC)

Appendix: Terminology Definition

Multilingual TLD(mTLD)

- Multilingual ccTLD: Local language version of ccTLD

- Multilingual gTLD: Local language version of gTLD

Language Code TLD(lcTLD)

- TLDs based on language codes

Multilingual Language Code TLD(mlcTLD)

- Local language version of language code TLD