[ICANN-EU] IDN or: Are users Unicode-aware?

[Thomas Roessler <roessler@does-not-exist.org>]

This message is some kind of follow-up to Mr. Schüller's web chat
from this afternoon.  In the chat, Mr. Schüller argued in favor of
Internationalized Domain Names.  Basically, he believes that we
should not prescribe to people from other cultures how they are
going to write their name, and that users in asiatic countries who
don't speak English are about to be excluded from the net.

On the other hand, personally, I'm not convinced that IDNs are a
good idea.  Additionally, I do believe that when they will get into
widespread use, some administrative proceudres may be needed on the
registrars' end in order to avoid a great lot of confusion.

Here's why: Domain names are displayed to and memorized, recorded,
and typed by human beings.  However, this is only possible if the
human beings in question are able to read and distinguish the
characters used.  This is nicely guaranteed with phone numbers, and
it's kind of guaranteed with the current us-ascii character set.
However, assuming that we are heading towards a world with
internationalized domain names, this feature won't persist, since -
even given correctly functioning software, which I doubt will exist
- users are generally not Unicode-aware.  Europeans just don't read
Arab or Chinese alphabets in general, and Chinese people won't read
Hebrew.

This implies that domain names can't be used globally any more,
because they can't be typed or read globally (note that phone
numbers can).  That is, domain names become close to useless as
globally unique addresses which they, technically, still are.

Nevertheless, people will happily register domain names with
national characters in them, and note the problems they create that
way too late.

I do believe that domain registries should make sure that global
addressibility in the DNS is preserved - and be it by forcing
equivalent us-ascii domains upon users.

(Note that just taking the us-ascii transcription of domain names
may not be sufficient - the IETF IDN working group's drafts say that
software merely MAY permit input in that transcription (I think it
should be a MUST), and, additionally, that transcription isn't that
much more aesthetic or memorable than a raw IPv6 address.)

Comments and flames welcome.

-- 
Thomas Roessler                         <roessler@does-not-exist.org>