<incom> ICANN, ITU and UNESCO will forge universal standards towards a multilingual cyberspace

[Danny Butt]

Perhaps ICANN's usual way of making conciliatory noises without  
actually adjusting their governance issues that have suppressed action  
on IDNs for years? Or were UNESCO thinking this could be a good way of  
getting more involved in the ICT field, where a number of other  
intergovernmental agencies seem to have been more active?

Either way, my prediction is that UNESCO will have minimal leverage to  
move the "industry-led" ICANN toward a rights-based approach until the  
basic contracts with the US Government that inaugurate ICANN  
(especially the IANA contract) are internationalized. Which is not  
going to happen.

In the meantime, I predict a lot of very valuable international  
exchanges between people working in this area, the results of which  
will be unenforceable. All going well, alternative systems will sort  
this out in a way which is more responsive to local language groups  
and their needs.

Danny

--------------------

http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-2-15nov07.htm

Clarification

ICANN has agreed to work in partnership with the International  
Telecommunication Union and the United Nations Educational, Scientific  
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to encourage a multilingual  
cyberspace, and in fact co-hosted an IGF session with these bodies,  
but no formal agreement was signed. ICANN appologies for any  
misunderstanding that may have resulted in this regard.

On 15/11/2007, at 11:24 PM, Soenke Zehle wrote:

> http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=25641&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
>
> Steps taken for multilingual Internet
> ICANN, ITU and UNESCO will
> forge universal standards towards
> a multilingual cyberspace
> © ICANN
>
> 15-11-2007 (Rio de Janeiro)
>
> The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the
> International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and UNESCO will  
> collaborate
> on global efforts to forge universal standards towards building a
> multilingual cyberspace.
>
> The three agencies organized a workshop on this subject during the
> second Internet Governance Forum (IGF) taking place in Rio de Janeiro,
> Brazil, from 12 to 15 November 2007.
>
> The Internet is a key factor in developing a more inclusive and
> development-oriented information society, which stresses plurality and
> diversity instead of global uniformity. Multilingualism is a key  
> concept
> to ensure cultural diversity and participation for all linguistic  
> groups
> in cyberspace. There is growing concern that hundreds of local  
> languages
> may be sidestepped, albeit unintentionally in the radical expansion of
> Internet communication and information. The World Summit on the
> Information Society (WSIS) recognized the importance attached to
> linguistic diversity and local content, with UNESCO given the
> responsibility to coordinate implementation of the Summit Action Line.
>
> Thanks to ICANN's evaluation of Internationalized Domain Names,  
> Internet
> users around the globe can n ow access wiki pages with the domain name
> "example.test" in the 11 test languages - Arabic, Persian, Chinese
> (simplified and traditional), Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish,
> Japanese and Tamil. The wikis will allow Internet users to establish
> their own sub-pages with their own names in their own language; one
> suggestion is: example.test/yourname.
>
> Domain Names, which are currently mainly limited to characters from  
> the
> Latin or Roman scripts, are seen as an important element in enabling  
> the
> multilingualisation of the Internet, reflecting the diverse and  
> growing
> language needs of all users. "ITU is fully committed to assist its
> membership in promoting the diversity of language scripts for domain
> names," said Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of ITU. "This workshop
> represents an important opportunity to strengthen the need for
> cooperation with relevant organizations, such as UNESCO, WIPO and  
> ICANN
> among others to ensure Internet use and advancement across language
> barriers."
>
> The Plenipotentiary Conference of ITU, which took place in Antalya,
> Turkey in November 2006, recognized the need to make Internet content
> available in non-Latin based scripts. Internet users are more
> comfortable reading or browsing through texts in their own language  
> and
> a multilingual Internet is essential to make it more widely  
> accessible.
> The WSIS outcomes also focused on the commitment to work towards
> multilingualisation of the Internet as part of a multilateral,
> transparent and democratic process involving governments and all
> stakeholders.
>
> UNESCO, joined by both ITU and ICANN, seeks to convene all major
> stakeholders around the world towards an agreement on universal
> standards regarding language issues in cyberspace. Such issues are far
> broader than the single issue of IDNs as they extend to standards for
> fonts and character sets, text encoding, language implementations  
> within
> major computer operating systems, content development tools, au  
> tomatic
> translation software, and search engines across languages. Ultimately,
> equitable access to information can be only achieved if we resolve
> language barriers at the same time we build communications
> infrastructures and capacity building programmes.
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