Institute for Internet Policy & Law @ Beijing Normal University

(Drafted by APRALO Statement; Hong Xue, Chinese Domain Name Users Alliance

Posted at https://st.icann.org/alac-docs/index.cgi?statement_on_icm_application_for_the_xxx_stld)

The following Statement was drafted by Hong Xue and unanimously supported and endorsed as an APRALO Statement at the meeting of 27/04/2010.

APRALO agrees with the statement made by ALAC The .XXX is primarily an issue of procedural justice. ICANN has to follow truthfully the procedures set up by itself. We support ICANN to be a transparent, neutral and effective coordinator of the Internet domain name system, rather than interfering with the issues that are not really in its mandate. However, we do not have an interest in supporting any specific TLD, which we believe is out of the mission of the At-Large community.

(Drafted for ALAC Statement on IDN Issues; Hong Xue, Chinese Domain Name Users Alliance

Posted at https://st.icann.org/idn-policy/index.cgi?alac_statement_idn_issues)

The Synchronized IDN ccTLDs is a proposal to resolve some critical problems of the fast-track IDN ccTLD implementation. Although the proposal facilitated the Board to make the resolution on completion of fast-track string evaluation of two Chinese-character IDN ccTLDs on April 22, which absolutely addresses the pressing need from the Chinese-language community and is warmly welcomed by At-large community, we have the reservation that the proposal should be generalized to cover the other language and culture. ICANN may wish to limit the solution to script or language group, which would truthfully reflect ICANN’s bottom-up, rather than one-set-fit-all, policy-making & implementing character.

Submitted to ICANN by Hong Xue, Chinese Domain Name Users Alliance

April 8, 2010

The Proposals seem a follow-up to the Fast Track IDN ccTLD Implementation Plan. Given that a request for a synchronized IDN ccTLD must have completed the String Evaluation in the Fast Track Process, the proposals, obviously, are patches to redress the insufficiency or unthoughtfulness of the original one. Although no one would really appreciates the patchwork, which would inevitably complicate the implementation, these remedial proposals do capture the most critical issues, particularly multiple corresponding strings deemed equivalent to one IDN ccTLDs. The issues are by no means new to the community or ICANN. During the policy develop process and implementation plan drafting process, the string equivalence or variants issues were repeatedly, consistently and vocally addressed by a few non-Latin script communities. For instance, both ALAC and APRALO made the submissions. After so many rounds of public consultations, it has been widely understood that solution to equivalent strings or variants is the center piece for implementation of IDN ccTLDs in the relevant IDN communities. No solution available, hardly IDN ccTLDs workable. This is why there were strong repercussions from the IDN communities after the Fast Track implementation took off. It is indeed positive that ICANN eventually moves to solve such “significant” problem for the communities. If the Fast Track was crafted to address the pressing need of non-Latin script users and non-solution to equivalent strings or variants would pose “significant problem for the community”, I cannot help but ask why such measures could not be incorporated into the implementation plan in the first place and have to be deferred to such a supplementary document.

(Hong Xue, Chinese Domain Name Users Alliance)

Unlike the Clearing House and URS that have been subject to hard-thought community review and improvement, the present PDDRP proposal is basically intact since the IRT report. With respect to this very complicated and special trademark protection mechanism that may be applicable to both top and second level, substantive works are still badly needed to be done. The present judgment criteria are highly subjective and in a large part subject to the discretion of the expert panel. Furthermore, application of the procedure at the second level imputes an indirect liability on Registry. This may have serious chilling effect to drive the registry to monitor and supervise not only the domain name strings but the content of the websites that the domain names are used to prove their innocence. As a result, this will impose new restriction on registrants.

Prof. Hughes and a group of J.D. students from Cardozo Law School paid a short visit to BNU law school. Prof. Zhao, Dean of BNU Law School, had a short meeting with Prof. Hughes and his students. They talked broadly about criminal justice and many other legal issues. Prof. Xue organized the whole event and acted as the interpretors at the meeting. Later, Prof. Xue and Prof. Hughes gave a joint lecture to American and Chinese students at a lecture hall. Prof. Xue’s lecture was well prepared and presented obviously.