[Gnso-epdp-idn-team] order of variant activation / "primary" label

[Michael Bauland]

Dear colleagues,

at the end of yesterday's call, we had a short discussion about the 
order of variant activation, which we did not have enough time to 
conclude. I would like to quickly summarise the argument, which I wanted 
to make. I think we should continue the discussion in one of the next 
calls, whenever it fits best.

Due to the fact that variant dispositions are different, depending on 
which label you start with, it makes a big difference, which label you 
register first (if you don't want to register all at the same time).

Take the real life example of the Turkish brand "*Yapı Kredi*". They are 
currently using the domain yapikredi.com.tr.
Let's say, they would like to apply for their own TLD. For 
internationalisation reasons, they would like to start with ASCII 
version .yapikredi as a TLD string. Several years later, they would like 
to also register their variant TLD with the correct spelling: 
.yapıkredi. That's not possible, because it's a blocked variant.

As a consequence, they will have to start with registering the TLD 
.yapıkredi, even if they do not want to use it directly, just to make 
sure, they don't lock themselves out of using it at all.

The question is, how should such a use case be accommodated best? I see 
two possibilities:
1. Apply for both TLDs at the same time .yapıkredi and .yapikredi, but 
only activate the second one, keeping the first one inactive for years.
2. Apply for .yapikredi, but state in the application that the "main" 
TLD should be .yapıkredi, even though it's not applied for yet.

The first approach is the simpler one, but it might incur unnecessary 
cost as the applicant is not sure, whether they ever want to activate 
the second label. The second approach would require that each 
application needs to define a "primary" or "main" or "starting" label, 
however we want to call it. I personally would support Option 2 as that 
would also avoid some potential inconsistencies, when a variant TLD gets 
retired.

Similar examples also exist for other scripts, not just Latin.

Best regards,

Michael