Hi NCSG,

Below is an important matter that needs your input and guidance. This is related to diacritics, which I believe @Tapani Tarvainen and @Stephanie Perrin have opinions about. But there is an additional procedural issue surrounding how the diacritics issue is potentially resolved that needs our attention. 

For a brief background for those who've not followed the diacritics issue, an applied-for IDN gTLD string in the Latin script containing diacritics (e.g .Québec versus .Quebec), which is NOT an allocatable variant label of the base ASCII string (existing or applied-for) according to RZ-LGR, are sometimes seen as equivalents. In some instances however, the base ASCII string is seen as a workaround and not necessarily “correct”. The base ASCII string and the Latin diacritic string  may be determined to be confusingly similar (i.e., in which case, the strings would be placed in a contention set or if an existing gTLD is involved, the applied-for label would not pass the String Similarity Review and therefore be rejected - the case of .Quebec).

As you may also be aware, the Council Small Team Plus has been working to address some SubPro recommendations not adopted by the Board and one of them is Recommendation 24 - which relates to string similarity singular and plurals and this is up for council vote on April 18.

ICANN staff is suggesting that the Council delays that vote and modify that recommendation to allow the same entity to apply for (and obtain) a visually similar string if the similarity is diacritic base (case of Québec and .Quebe).  What this means is that if the council accepts this approach, it may need to task the current Small Team + on SubPro to study this diacritic issue and propose a recommendation on diacritics as part of Recommendation 24.

My question to you is:
  1. Should our councillors vote to allow SubPro Rec 24 to be used to address the diacritics issue?
  2. Should the Small team Plus be tasked with this additional work of developing a proposed supplemental recommendation that addresses the diacritics issue?

Warmly,
Tomslin



---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Steve Chan via council <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2024 at 07:15
Subject: [council] Interim Update on Mechanism(s) to Address Latin Diacritics
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>


Dear Councilors,

 

As you may have seen, the April Council meeting is scheduled to have an update on the research and analysis ICANN org has performed to understand the mechanism(s) that might be available to progress the work related to Latin diacritics. While we will provide a more comprehensive update during the Council meeting, we wanted to share an early preview of the update, as it may have implications on the Council’s vote on a subset of the SubPro Supplemental Recommendations. In brief, our recommended approach is for the Council to consider modifying/amending the non-adopted recommendations related to string similarity (i.e., Recommendations 24.3 and 24.5) if it wants to take up the issue of Latin diacritics. Under the ICANN Bylaws and GNSO Operating Procedures, there are two avenues to pursue this path, which are either Section 16 of the PDP Manual (see page 10) or the Supplemental Recommendation process, as employed by the Small Team Plus.

 

With the Council’s consideration and potential adoption of Supplemental Recommendations 24.3A, 24.3B, and 24.3C during its April meeting, there may be challenges to using either Section 16 or the Supplemental Recommendation process to progress the Latin diacritics issues:

  1. Section 16: The PDP Manual states that, “approved GNSO Council policies may be modified or amended by the GNSO Council at any time prior to the final approval by the ICANN Board…”. If the Council approves Supplemental Recommendations 24.3A, 24.3B, and 24.3C AND they are adopted by the ICANN Board, this option would no longer be available (i.e., “final approval” will have occurred).
  2. Supplemental Recommendations: If the Council approves Supplemental Recommendations 24.3A, 24.3B, and 24.3C, the Council would not be able to develop further Supplemental Recommendations related to Latin diacritics.

 

We understand the Council has committed to taking action on the Supplemental Recommendations during its April meeting, so we believe it is important to provide you with this information in advance of your meeting for effective planning and decision-making. Please let us know if you have any questions.

 

Best,

Steve

 

 

Steven Chan


VP, Policy Development Support & GNSO Relations

 

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) 

12025 Waterfront Drive, Suite 300

Los Angeles, CA 90094-2536


                                                                  

Email: [log in to unmask]

Skype: steve.chan55

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