MINC Multilingual Internet Names Consortium

1
MINC - Multilingual Internet Names
Consortium

• Prof. Subbiah
• Board Director, MINC
• Chairman, i-DNS.net
• Stanford University and Nat. Univ. Singapore
• Khaled Fattal
• Chairman, MINC

2
MINC Vision , Objectives

• Allow non-English people to use the Internet
  easily via non-English naming systems domain
  names, keywords, email addresses.
  
• Input from local regional language groups
• Coordinate the development of a standard.
• Recognise that variants on the standard will
  happen due to politics (e.g. Urdu), geography
  (the Koreas), linguistic concerns (china/taiwan),
  demographics (tamil/India), history (MaoTseTung),
  cultural (Allah) besides mere technology issues.
  
• Settle variations by allowing them thru
  inter-operability arrangements, coordinations and
  long-term testbeds.
  
• Work with everyone thru education ICANN (2000),
  ITU (2001), IETF(1999/2000).
  

3
MINC - Organisation

• Non-profit Consortium
• Exists for the members has no authority.
• Anyone or group can join individuals (D.Conrad,
  P. Wilson, Pindar Wong), cctlds/nics (eg. JPNIC,
  KRNIC), companies (Neulevel, ), technology
  vendors (i-dns, Neteka), regional language groups
  (INFITT, CLWG).
• Elected Board Members
• Encourage creation and spin-off local regional
  language groups as independent entitites eg.
  JET, CDNA, AINC, INFITT, CLWG and now GLWG.
  
• Bottom-Up, Not Top-down. Grassroots. Members can
  do what they want.
  
• MINC coordinates and suggests

4
MINC Key Activities

• Provides forum for discussion and mailing lists
• Regular meetings and education thru conference
  and educating other groups eg. JPNIC(1999),
  KRNIC(1999), APNG (1999), INET(1999),IETF(1999),
  ICANN (2000), JET (2000), AINC (2000), ITU(2001),
  WIPO(2001), Apricot(1999), IDN cctld(2002) and
  now APT(2003).
• Create Regional stakeholder groups CDNA, JET,
  JDNA, INFITT, GLWG, RLWG, AINC.
  
• Creation, operation of Inter-operability testbed
• Development of language Tables CJK (JET),
  Russian, Byelorussian, Georgian, Tamil, Arabic,
  Farsi, Hebrew, Ukranian, Byelorussian, Bulgarian
  etc. by REGIONAL groups.

5
Pre-MINC IDN history

• IDNS invention, Singapore
• Prof. Tin-Wee Tan, S. Subbiah Students
• First IDN email address
• APNG testbed (1 yr). 10 Asian NICs (BIX, Subbiah,
  J. seng) apng.org
  
• Submit RFCs IETF no interest
• IDNS at Boston Unicode
• IDNS at APRICOT (great interest) ICANN Chair
  shows no interest but pre-TWNIC does
  
• Lack of West Interest spurs growth of APNG
  testbed. East European interest.
  

• Feb 98
• Jul 98
• Aug 98
• Oct 98
• Mar 99
• Mar 99
• Apr 99

6
Pre-MINC IDN history

• APNG-NUS-IDRC IDNS on IVP6 research
• APTLD committee for iTLDS IDN.IDN
• APNG testbed /BIX invited by IETF to initiate
  IETF working group at I-net San Jose
  
• APNG-BIX conducts KRNIC wkshp
• APNG-BIX conducst JPNIC wkshp at IWI 99
• APNG testbed closed as a success
• BIX-NUS runs out of funding and so commercialized
  spin-off i-DNS.net
  

• Jun 99
• Jun 98
• Jun 99
• Aug 99
• Sep 99
• Mar 99
• Sep 99
• Oct 99

7
Pre-MINC IDN history

• Since commercialisation needs non-profit
  coordination group that is global. APNG Kilnam
  Chon, Tin-Wee Tan suggest iDNSO later modified
  to be MINC
• IETF first workshop based on APNG testbed,
  Washington
  
• First coomercial launch in Taiwan with
  Communications Minister i-dns.net.
  
• Apricot Seoul, Discussion of MINC
• creation. KRNIC and JPNIC show own
  versions.
  
• 2nd company emerges, Neteka

• Nov 99
• Nov 99
• Dec 99
• Feb 99
• Mar 00

8
Pre-MINC IDN history

• Indian Tamil Nadu Chief Minister launches in
  Tamil with i-DNS.net.
  
• More companies emerge Wordlnames, ThaiURL,
  Native Names etc. Need for MINC is clear.
  
• IETF 2nd meeting in Adelaide .
• MINC preparation meetings in Australia, Seoul,
  Beijing and San Francisco.
  
• MINC incorporated and launched

• Mar 00
• Mar 00
• Mar 00
• Apr/May 00
• Jun 00

9
MINC Milestones

• Over 50 instituitional members all key industry
  players, cctlds.
  
• Over several hundred individual members
• Early founding supporters and early Board members
  include Pindar Wong, Paul Wilson, Bill Manning
  etc.
  
• First Chairman Mr. Kyong (Korea and went onto
  ICANN Board), and is Prof. Goto (JPNIC) and now
  Khaled Fattal (Arab).
  
• Three elections so far. Current Board includes
  Verisign, Neulevel, KRNIC, JPNIC, INFITT, RLWG,
  i-DNS.net and ICANN Board Members.
  
• Has created many Regional stakeholder groups
  CDNA, JET, JDNA, INFITT, GLWG, RLWG, EuroLINC,
  AINC each with tens to hundreds of members.
  
• Educated ICANN (LA 2000), ITU (2001), WIPO (2001)
  and many more.
  

10
MINC Milestones

• After waiting 3 years for IETF standard, is in
  process of starting its interoperability testbed
  originally announced in 2000.
  
• Has developed and continues to develop language
  Tables CJK (JET), Russian, Byelorussian,
  Georgian, Tamil, Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew,
  Ukranian, Byelorussian, Bulgarian etc. by
  REGIONAL groups.
• Continuing the difficult mission of regional
  dialogue - Eg. Urging the Pakistani and Indian
  Urdu speakers to coordinate ?
  

11
Commercial Launches of IDN (1999
to Now)

• Date Country Language Type
  Org Support
  
• Dec 99 Taiwan Chinese idn.idn
  i-dns.net Minister, ISPs
  
• Feb 00 China Chinese idn.idn
  i-dns.net ISP
  
• Mar 00 HK Chinese idn.idn
  i-dns.net Major ISP, Portal
  
• Mar 00 India Tamil
  idn.idn i-dns.net Chief Minister
  
• Apr 00 China Chinese idn.idn
  cnnic cnnic
  
• May 00 Tuvalu Many idn.tv
  dot tv/i-dns Minister
  
• Jun 00 Cooks .. Many idn.cc
  enic/i-dns Government
  
• Aug 00 Thailand Thai idn.idn
  i-dns.net Key ISPs
  
• Sep 00 Egypt Arabic idn.idn
  I-dns.net Minister
  
• Nov 00 World CJK idn.com
  Verisign
  
• 
  idn.net /org
  

12
Commercial Launches of IDN (1999
to Now)

• Date Country Language Type
  Org Support
  
• Feb 01 India Telegu idn.idn
  i-dns.net Chief Minister
  
• Mar 01 Nuie Swedish idn.nu
  Worldnames
  
• May 01 Russia Russian idn.idn
  i-dns.net Chamber Comm.
  
• Apr 01 Korea Korean idn.idn
  i-dns.net Major Registrars
  
• Apr 01 Israel Hebrew idn.idn
  I-dns/DTN Info Minister
  
• May 01 Japan Japanese idn.idn
  i-dns/ejapan
  
• Jun 01 India Hindi
  idn.idn i-dns/Synfo Prime Minister
  
• Jul 01 Japan Japanese idn.jp
  jpnic jpnic
  
• Feb 02 Belize Many idn.bz
  Neteka bznic
  
• Jun 02 Djbouti Korean idn.dj
  i-dns/dot DJ President
  
• Jun 03 China Chinese idn.cn
  cnnic cnnic
  
• Jul 03 Georgia Georgian idn.idn
  i-dns/Glwg ISP Assoc
  

13
Potential Near Future

• Following are actively considering
• IDN launches (I believe).
• Hknic, vnnic, lanic, cxnic, aenic

14
IDN deployment in Indian Languages

• S. Maniam
• Board Member
• INFITT
• A MINC Affiliate

15
Background

• 1.5 Billion population
• Over 600 languages (many more dialects)
• Many with their own scripts.
• 18 official languages on rupee currency note
• Hindi, Tamil, Urdu, Orissa, Gujerati, Marati,
• Kannada, Telugu, English etc.
• Contrary to popular belief only 125 M speak
  English.
  
• Largest is Hindi with 300M ( 10M)
• Urdu with 130M
  (160M)
  
• Tamil with 70M (
  6M)
  
• Telugu with 55M (
  3M)

16
Issues Diversity Overlaps

• Urdu
• 3rd largest non-latin script
• Pakistan (150M),India (130M)
• Arabic and Indic Script (but different unicode
  pts)
  
• Tamil diaspora is world-wide
• Mainly Tamil Nadu State in India (70M)
• National Language Singapore, Sri Lanka
• Official Language India, Mauritius, Malaysia
• Significant Use UK, USA, Canada, Australia,
• Germany,
  Switzerland, HK,
  
• South Africa.
• 30M Indians outside India

17
Problems

• Each of main 18 languages had about 32
• different encodings of the script.
• India has about 20 main states, with many of the
  
  
• main languages corresponding one to each
  state.
  
• The Federal Governments Advanced Computing
• Institute C-DAC developed one standard
  encoding
  
• for each language/state (1999).
• C-DAC was ignored by the states and their chief
  
  
• ministers.

18
Progress

• INFITT and a pre-INFITT group, spearheaded
• and now leads the effort to standardize the
  encodings.
  
• INFITT is the International Forum for Information
  
  
• Technology in Tamil (infitt.org)
• Formed in 2000 based on a pre-INFITT group,
  partly
  
• with input from MINC.
• Worldwide group with 13 countries India,
• Singapore, Malaysia, UK, USA, Sri Lanka,
  Germany,
  
• Switzerland, Mauritius, South Africa, Canada,
  HK,
  
• Australia.

19
Progress led by INFITT

• INFITT helped create the TAB/TAM standard taking
• the best from the 30 other encodings and the 6
  
  
• governments that have Tamil as a
  national/official
  
• language endorsed it via local steering
  committees in
  
• 2000.
• INFIIT pushed Tamil as the first Indian language
  to
  
• be put in Windows 2000.
• Popularity and use is steadily growing while
  prior
  
• encodings are dying.
• Based on the INFITT model, two other Indian
• languages and their state governments have
  been
  
• officially standardized in encoding Hindi
  and
  
• Telugu.
• Both are in Windows XP.

20
INFITT Structure

• INFITT has 51 council members and 7 working
• groups ranging from Unicode to Linux.

21
INFITT Outreach

• INFITT has annual conferences with reviewed
  papers,
  
• presentations, publications, posters and
  workshops
  
• since 2000
• Singapore 2000 ( 85 000 attendees,
  500 delegates)
  
• Malaysia 2001 (100 000 attendees,
  800 delegates)
  
• San Francisco 2002 ( 500 attendees, 150
  delegates)
  
• Chennai India 2003, Au (300 000 atts, 3000
  dels).
  
• INFITT events have been launched by
• Prime Minister M Mahatir of
  Malaysia
  
• President SR Nathan of
  Singapore
  
• Chief Minister Karunanithi of Tamil
  Nadu, India
  

22
INFITT IDN Efforts

• IDN working group was initiated in 2000. I am
• Chairman (S. Maniam).
• Tab/Tam was selected as the encoding for Tamil
  and
  
• endorsed by all countries.
• Windows support was arranged in 2000.
• The IDN gTLDs equivalent for .com, .net, org,
  .edu
  
• .gov were finalised as shown below

23
IDN Deployments

• These gTLDS were commercially deployed in Tamil
  
  
• Nadu State in India in 2000 with state
  support.
  
• The growth has been slow, owing to total internet
  
  
• users in India is only 8 million and Tamils 1M. Many
  
• of these early-users already fluent in English.
  
  
• But the need is increasing.
• Hindi and Telugu were commercially deployed in
  
  
• 2001, by Information Minister and Deputy
  Prime
  
• Minister of India and by the Chief Minister of
  Andhra
  
• Pradesh, respectively.
• Like Tamil, growth slow but increasing need.

24
INFITT IDN Effort and MINC

• INFITT has been involved with MINC since its
  founding
  
• in 2000.
• In 2002, the INFITT IDN working group announced
  a
  
• cooperation agreement between MINC and INFITT,
  to
  
• participate in the anticipated
  inter-operability testing for
  
• IDN deployments pursuant to the final IETF
  IDNA
  
• standard.
• INFITT intends to participate aggressively and
  as a leader
  
• in the IDN movement to keep a 4000 year old
  language
  
• not only alive, and current but also leading
  the way.
  

25
Summary

• The mission of INFITT is to facilitate the
  ancient Tamil language and its sister Indian
  languages to remain current, vibrant and modern
  by keeping up with global IT developments,
  particularly in English.
• http//www.infitt.org
• http//www.minc.org
• S. Maniam

26
Status Summary

• Almost 20 years since English DNS in use.
• IDN invented since 1997
• IETF took 3 years to come up with a
  standard that
  
• many are not happy and insufficient in
  iteself problems are political, not only
  engineering.
  
• Almost US70M spent (Mostly i-dns.net,
  Versign)
  
• ICANN may have spent less than 1M
• About 1 M people worldwide paid but got no
  service in Verisign testbed failure.
  

27
Status Summary

• Almost all the technology vendor companies have
  since died or inactive in IDN Native Names,
  Thai URL, Worldnames, Walid
  
• Walid has a US patent on one of the core parts of
  IETF standard and has been very active with legal
  campaign against companies and organizations.
  Very succesful law firm is waiting for someone to
  make revenue. Its technically not an IETF or
  ICANN problem
• Even with ICANN/IETF standard since Mar 03, only
  jpnic and .jp is strictly IETF complinat.
  Verisign and .cn (only other ICANN signed
  registries) are not compliant in different
  ways.
• Unintended but a group of Western/American
  dominated organisations ICANN, Verisign, IETF,
  Realnames, Microsoft have controlled the agenda
  and failed so far to deliver any conclusive
  solution.
• WHAT NEXT ?