Variants and Wildcarding

Variant characters are two or more representations of the same character, which may look visually similar. ICANN.org states the variant TLD dilemma as follows, “[a]llowing variant TLDs may result in user confusion, while excluding them may ‘disenfranchise’ cultures that use the characters in the excluded TLD strings.”

ICANN further explains that a team will determine whether the blocking or reservation of variant TLDs is necessary to prevent user confusion. While In the short term, variant TLDs will not be delegated.

What should ICANN do?

Any TLD variant that can cause confusion should be forwarded/aliased to it’s doppleganger TLD (in the same language). Similarly, .cm names should have been forwarded to .com (though these aren’t technically “variants” the issue of confusion is similar). Such forwarding eliminates confusion for Internet users and it adds value by helping users reach their intended targets more quickly.

|***Update: After sleeping on it, I thought of some more complex variant riddles that ICANN must be dealing with. Of course, as stated above if there are confusingly similar TLD applications, as a general rule, the first in time TLD should be granted and all confusingly similar TLDs should be forwarded to the first. The concept above is similar to the “.cm” or “.xom” concept mentioned as it would increase efficiency to forward confusing “typo” type TLDs, especially in the same language. Here are some more difficult situations:

Variant TLDs between two languages. The most common example is that Roman letters .py for Paraguay are the accepted first in time TLD. Then the Cyrillic characters for .ru are .ру, and if Russia applied for a Cyrillic .py extension (in reality, Russia opted for .рф instead) this would be too confusing and shouldn’t be allowed. Should the Cyrillic .py be forwarded to the Roman .py? No. That would be unnecessary since people typing in the Cyrillic .py are definitely not looking for Paraguay. As such the Cyrillic .py should be blocked (or forwarded to another Russian TLD).

Using the example above, what if there was no “first in time” applicant but two separate country applicants applied for the Cyrillic .py at the same time as the Roman .py? Well you can only choose one and block the other. Which do you choose? This is one of the forks in the road where the ccTLD Fast Track process gets difficult. I would recommend that linguistically, you must determine which language has fewer viable alternative TLDs (which sounds simpler than it is) so that you don’t “disenfranchise” a certain population, and ICANN should award the TLD in question to the more limited country at the expense of the other.

But how about population size, and the expense that already went into marketing and branding this applied for extension, should these factor into a decision when it comes to dueling variant TLD applications? Perhaps, one country with a population size of 50 million applies for a TLD and China with a population size over 1.3 billion applies for a variant. Would you be achieving a greater utility by giving preference to the country with more constituents? Would this lead to a systematic discrimination against smaller countries?

I’d love to hear your comments below.