CIRA IDN - got it right - Roundtable

I think bundling is a practical solution. There are some comments on that site, and for the most part completely miss the point which is disappointing but unsurprising.

There are some interesting comments though, such as "what if foobar and fööbár have completely different meanings?", and I'd think some sort of resolution process could be invented to handle those infrequent requests.

Sean

-- Sean Walberg sean@ertw.com http://ertw.com/

Adam Thompson

2 Feb 2 Feb

5:50 p.m.

I agree that their proposed reservation system seems workable. However, I’m trying to come up with an example where diacritics alter the meaning of a word. There are relatively few examples of homonyms that differ by diacritics, and the majority appear to be conjunctions or adjectives that would not typically be found in a domain name.

For example,

Sur = above/on top of

Sûr = sure/certain

(«www.sur.ca» does exist, BTW)

The only noun I’ve found so far is matin/mâtin, where there does exist a «matin.qc.ca» – and presumably a specialty dog breeder might want «mâtin.qc.ca».

I know we have several francophones & francophiles reading this list, surely someone must be able to come up with a better example?

What I find interesting is that every single homonym I’ve checked has lead to a domain-squatting page. What does *that* tell you about the current system?!

-Adam Thompson

athompso@athompso.net

(204) 291-7950 - direct

(204) 489-6515 - fax

From: roundtable-bounces@muug.mb.ca [mailto:roundtable-bounces@muug.mb.ca] On Behalf Of Sean Walberg Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 2:44 PM To: Continuation of Round Table discussion Subject: Re: [RndTbl] CIRA IDN - got it right

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 5:34 AM, Trevor Cordes trevor@tecnopolis.ca wrote:

Speak of the devil, looks like they got it right...

I think bundling is a practical solution. There are some comments on that site, and for the most part completely miss the point which is disappointing but unsurprising.

Sean

-- Sean Walberg sean@ertw.com http://ertw.com/

John Lange

6:10 p.m.

Even if there are good examples of french and english words with the same spelling but different meanings, I don't really see how that would matter?

Just sticking to English only, there are tons of words that have several different meanings (and are even pronounced differently) depending on the context.

Just for example:

train: Rail cars and locomotive train: Part of a wedding dress train: learning train: physical training

So if the railroad business registers train.ca, then a Gym wants it for a workout website, to bad, first-come-first-served. If there happens to be a French version of that with a different meaning, so what?

It's also worth noting that the french/english policy is the same one that was put into place for the provincial extensions. If you register the base; train.ca, nobody could register train.mb.ca or train.sk.ca etc.

John

Sean Walberg

6:11 p.m.

Whenever you make a policy on something you're trying to treat everyone the same. Invariably there will be exceptions such as this.

A good policy:

- Has few exceptions relative to the number of uses and relative to the severity of a "cache-miss" (think "I didn't get my domain name" vs "we didn't mandate enough testing on pacemakers") - Has a way for people to get exceptions in a fair manner. (Fair meaning "same rules apply to everyone", not "I didn't get what I want") - (optional) leaves your options open for future interpretation and expansion

I'm sure there are more exceptions than the ones you found, but even if there are a hundred more, it's something that can be handled by a small group of people. And limiting it to only French and English reduces the scope of problems, and leaves the option open to bring in other languages later.

Sean

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 11:50 AM, Adam Thompson athompso@athompso.netwrote:

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