[DNS] New WHOIS

[DNS] New WHOIS

From: Kim Davies <kim§cynosure.com.au>
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2006 20:15:49 +0000
Quoting James Andrewartha on Monday November 27, 2006:
| 
| > How is that different from if someone presents an IDN label in a 
| > hostname today? It is not like IDNs can't be supplied as hostnames right 
| > now. The hostname non-compliant software will see will look like plain 
| > ASCII.
| 
| Because part of supporting IDNs will be supporting the policy preventing
| visually similar names being registered. So even though the hostname does 
| have a plain ASCII representation, the registrar will have to perform 
| additional checks.

That has nothing to do with what Bennett is talking about. The issue is
domain representations in the hostnames for authoritative nameservers,
not the domain name itself. Even if auDA maintains a complete prohibiton
on registering IDNs under .au, I can submit as an authority for
cynosure.com.au an IDN domain that I registered in, say, .com. Why would
there be tests for visual confusion for that?

| See http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/tld-idn-policy-list.html for 
| links to the IDN policies of other registrars.

I helped compile this list and have worked alot on IDNs in other
countries so I'm relatively familar with IDN policy around the world.

| I do have to wonder where the demand for IDN is coming from, as English is 
| by far the dominant language both online and offline and has no need for 
| extra characters beyond ASCII.
| [..] 
| Has auDA proposed a list of what characters/scripts will be allowed in .au?

As far as I know there has been no consideration of this kind of stuff
at all, it is just someone trying to stir up trouble. The registry was
required to introduce internationalisation support to ensure that
should IDNs be decided to be implemented, the registry wasn't going to
say "our systems can't support it". However I'd be very surprised if
IDNs are even being entertained without first doing a full PDP process.

I will note however that in my experience, those who say there is no
demand for IDNs are only the native English speakers of the world. IDNs
relative lack of adoption thus far has primarily been due to lack of
software support in IE, and lack of labels in the root for non-Latin
scripts.

kim
Received on Sun Nov 26 2006 - 20:15:49 UTC

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