This proposal will do nothing to increase the ability of people to
communicate over the Internet. In fact, it will make it more difficult for
them to do so.
I have no doubt that many users want to be able to use eight-bit names in
email addresses. However, these users may not know how much this will cost
them.
A proposal such as you describe is easy to define and not terribly difficult
to implement. The difficult part is educating the entire Internet about it,
and getting the software widely deployed.
Everyone in the Internet will suffer if such a proposal is adopted. What's
worse is that no new functionality is gained for that pain. A significant
fraction of the Internet may 'benefit' because they can use their login id
for their email address. However, the majority of the Internet will gain
nothing. And everyone will lose because there will be another piece of
"black magic" that users have to know to use email effectively.
By all means, let's work on a directory service that allows us to address
people by their real names, and let's interface it to our UAs. When that
happens there will be some pain, but we will gain something incredibly
useful in return.
Keith Moore