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

[Jefsey Morfin <jefsey@wanadoo.fr>]

Thomas,
no flame needed: you are obsolete. While the ICANN asks for $50.000
to read a new TLD proposal, NSI has created scores of de facto TLDs
in translating into Chinese, Sanscrit, Japanese, etc... even French and
German (accents and speciale characters) the public TLD set. The
translation method is not conform to IEFT and is "experimental" ...
by a specialized company and in operations. ICANN only responded
by a mild press statement that IEFT should be used (see SNI and
ICANN sites). The protocol for registrars to transmit registrations to NSI
is proprietary. (BTW NSI shares into a 20 registrars consortium for
a new TLD). Figures published by NSI are that by 2004 there will be
120.000.000 of DNs: NSI probably wants through IDNs and new own ".com"
get at least $500.000.000 out of them plus services. They will accept
that ICANN gets $35.000.000 for a surviving.
And some still believe that democracy stays with a limited number
of TLDs....
The more I hear from Mr. Schüller, the more I feel is not bringing
anything new, but presenting it as it was (his site has a lot of German
so you may better comment?).
Jefsey




At 18:55 14/09/00, you wrote:
>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>