--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
John L wrote:
At its base, IDN is a technical matter. That is the realm of the
IETF, not ICANN. ICANN can deploy and administer solutions developed
in the IETF, but it cannot create them. That's not its job and it's
not its skillset.
There are both technical issues and non-technical issues. The technical
issues of mapping Unicode to DNS are indeed the IETF's problem. But
assuming we solve that, there's considerably more to deploying IDNs.
So, it's probably good that I (later) noted "technical, administrative,
operations and human factors difficulties"...
The point I am trying to make is that the sorts of issues that ICANN can
reasonably be expected to deal with are typically the sort that come *after*
having a viable technical solution.
There seems to be some continuing, serious questions about whether that solution
yet exists.
Homographic mappings are an example of just how difficult the topic is. I am
pretty sure that that is something for the IETF and not ICANN.
At least, I *hope* it is.
Still, it's true that any topic can be politicized, even technical ones.
For example, what homograph rules apply to what domains? Are the rules
per-TLD or some other granularity? What are the appropriate rules for
GTLDs, since they don't have a native language other than the de-facto
English? If there are new TLDs with translations of existing TLD names.
e.g., business in Arabic and Chinese, are these aliases for .COM or
.BIZ, or are they different? If people have registered ASCII
approximations of names, e.g., letters without diacriticals, do they get
first crack at the correctly spelled IDN with the diacriticals?
Every time that ICANN has attempted to dabble in the arena of name conflicts, of
the type that exist outside the Internet and in the realm of "confusion", it has
invited more controversy and less solution than most folks desire.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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