The IDN World Report is a long-standing research project of EURid, UNESCO and the Coordination Center for TLD.RU/.РФ. The project started in 2011, and is supported by the regional ccTLD organisations CENTR, APTLD and LACTLD, and by numerous individual ccTLD registries who share data each year on their IDN experiences.
The IDN World Report is the initiative of EURid. EURid provides financial support for the research, editorial input and strategic direction for the project. EURid is committed to enhancing multilingualism in cyberspace. EURid provides customer support and documentation in the European Union’s 24 official languages. To reflect the scripts used in the European Union, EURid has supported internationalised domain names (IDN) in Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts at the second level under .eu since 2009. In the same year, EURid also applied to ICANN for the Greek and Cyrillic script equivalents of ‘eu’ at the top level. In 2016 it launch registrations under .ею (.eu in Cyrillic) and will launch the long-awaited .ευ (Greek script) in late 2019.
UNESCO is responsible for reporting on the implementation of WSIS action line C8 (Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content), and adopted the Recommendation concerning the promotion and use of multilingualism and universal access to cyberspace (2003), and is one of the founding partners of the IDN World Report.
The Coordination Center is the ccTLD for Russia. It launched IDNs at the top level under .РФ in 2009 and has been active in supporting IDNs and universal acceptance initiatives. The Coordination Center joined the research project in 2020.
Emily Taylor is CEO of Oxford Information Labs. She is an Associate Fellow of Chatham House, Editor of the Journal of Cyber Policy and a Research Associate at the University of Oxford Internet Institute. She is a founder of ICANN accredited registrar, Netistrar Limited. A lawyer by training, Emily has worked in the Internet sector for more than 20 years. Emily’s research papers cover a wide range of Internet policy issues and is lead author of the World Report. Volunteer roles include membership of the ICANN EPDP team, Chair of ICANN WHOIS Review Team, UN Internet Governance Forum Multistakeholder Advisory Group, a researcher for the Global Commission on Internet Governance, Director of Legal and Policy for Nominet. Emily has written for the Guardian, Wired, Ars Technica, the New Statesman and the Slate, and is a regular commentator on technology issues in news and broadcast media including the BBC and Sky News.
Mark Robertshaw is one of the founders of Oxford Information Labs. He has a degree in Mathematics from Oxford University, and has more than 15 years’ experience of software development for the web, using numerous programming languages such as C, Java, Perl, PHP, Javascript, HTML5, CSS, XML and other web standards. Mark undertakes the zone file analysis, website crawl, and language analysis for the IDN World Report.
A founder of Oxford Information Labs, Lucien Taylor is a highly experienced software programmer and designer. Lucien graduated with a first class degree in Mathematics and Computing and obtained an MBA from the Open University. Lucien designed and implemented Nominet’s Dispute Resolution Service workflow software in 2001, and specialises in graphical user interface design, workflow modelling and data analysis.
Giovanni Seppia is the External Relations Manager at EURid, the .eu registry, a position he has held since 2007. He has devised and implemented EURid’s award winning marketing strategy, is responsible for EURid’s institutional relationships with the European Commission, Internet Governance Forum and ICANN. He has served on the board of CENTR (the European ccTLD organsation) of which he was elected Chair in 2014. Giovanni manages a team of more than 20 people, and coordinates account management with EURid’s 750 accredited registrars. He has been responsible for numerous initiatives whilst at EURid, including the organisation’s accreditation for the environmental standard EMAS, launch of the .eu Web Awards, and EURid’s Insights research publications.
Giovanni has been involved in the IDN World Report since its inception in 2011. He provides editorial oversight and liaison with key partners from the ccTLD and gTLD registry communities worldwide.
Giovanni has lectured on EU internet law and governance at the College of Europe in Bruges and the Scuola Sant’Anna, Pisa. Other recent research projects include ICANN Middle East Domain Name Marketplace Study (2015) and ICANN Latin America and Caribbean Domain Name Marketplace Study (2016).
Prior to joining EURid, Giovanni worked for a number of other well-known organisations in the domain name sector, including ICANN, CENTR, and the Institute of Informatics and Telematics (the .it registry).
Giovanni has a degree in Political Science from the University of Pisa, with a thesis in international law.
Mark McFadden has more than 20 years of operational and policy experience with internet protocol addressing and large-scale internetworking. Since 2012, Mark has been a member of the UK delegation to the ITU’s Study Group on Security and has been the UK lead on Cloud Computing Security. He is an active contributor to the work of the Internet Engineering Task Force and ICANN. He is also a regular contributor to the work of the Regional Internet Registries, including serving as the Chair of ICANN’s Address Supporting Organisation. Mark is an associate at Oxford Information Labs.
Mark has been involved in the IDN World Report project since 2013. His focus is on the usability of IDNs – universal acceptance. He has provided chapters on universal acceptance of IDNs in every issue since 2013.
Mark has led major research projects and studies for the UK regulator Ofcom, including major studies on IPv6 Deployment, Carrier Grade Network Address Translation, and DNSSEC. Research projects for ICANN have included a critical analysis of the effectiveness of ICANN’s policy development process (the GNSO PDP), commissioned by the second Accountability and Transparency Review Team. Mark led InterConnect Communications’s team alongside partners from University College London, in providing evaluation panel support for ICANN’s new gTLD programme. Mark is also part of the research team for ICANN’s Latin America and Caribbean Domain Name Marketplace Study (2016).
Previous roles for Mark have included Resource Specialist at the IANA, Principal Strategist for Internet Naming and Addressing for BT, and Director, Internet, Internet Security and Wireless Certification Programs at the University of Wisconsin.
