ALL incumbent registries want to extend their TLD assignment into 100 new scripts. Including especially the ccTLDs. Note that China did not wait for ICANN, it created the Chinese character version of .cn all by itself. What registry operator in their right mind would not want to do that? The issue for us, and for icann as a whole, is the trade iff between usability and competition/diversity. Dr. Milton Mueller Syracuse University School of Information Studies http://www.digital-convergence.org http://www.internetgovernance.org >>> Danny Younger <[log in to unmask]> 05/09/06 8:43 >>> Re: "VeriSign would no longer be entitled to claim that it should own the transliterations of the .com in the other language strings, especially those spoken by huge populations" VeriSign is not the only organization claiming such entitlement. Please see the PIR document "Principles for the Foundation of Top Level IDNs" that puts forward similar arguments. PIR has cited brand fragmentation, security and stability issues, registrar disenfranchisement, regulatory burdens, intellectual property concerns and internet fragmentation worries in defense of their view with respect to managing all .org IDN transliterations. http://www.icann.org/topics/idn/pir-idn-principles-23jun06.pdf Was this document discussed in Amsterdam? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com