Re: "International" email addresses

--On Wednesday, November 26, 2014 11:03 +0000 Andre Schappo
<A.Schappo@lboro.ac.uk> wrote:

> There are some interesting Registry rules for IDNs.
> 
> Take verisign rules for allowable Chinese characters in IDNs 
> 
> http://verisigninc.com/assets/languagefiles/CHI.html is an
> exhaustive list of all the allowable characters for
> registration of IDNs. From the Unicode "CJK Compatibility
> Ideographs" block only the single character "U+FA28 CJK
> COMPATIBILITY IDEOGRAPH-FA28" is allowed.

Andre,

_Every_ registry (not just TLD or SLD, but all the way down the
tree) is expected to establish its own rules, potentially on a
per-zone basis, about what characters are permitted.

For TLD names (names in the root zone), ICANN currently has
separate procedures for determining acceptability cTLD-related
names and for gTLD-related names, procedures that depend on
evaluation committees (and, at least in one case, an evaluation
committee whose job it is to second-guess the initial evaluation
committee if people don't like the results).  There is a plan
about changing at least some of that to depend on "Label
Generation Rules", but it is less clear when that plan will take
effect other than it won't be for any application in the current
found.

For SLD names, there is, in general, no enforcement of the
requirement to create per-zone names.  SLDs are encouraged (and
some are required) to register what they are doing/allowing with
IANA, but many haven't done that and some have specified rules
so permissive that they violate the intent of the IDNA
requirement for per-zone rules.

Below the second level, there isn't even a generally-available
registry at which one can look for the rules (whether they are
supplied or not).

So, yes, Verisign has rules.  So do, probably, a few million
other zones whose rules you might or might not be able to find
easily.   As a result, I don't see what about your comment might
be actionable here because trying to track down and test for
those rules on a per-zone basis would almost certainly lead to
madness.  On the other hand, if you don't like Verisign's rules,
you probably want to take it up with them because it is fairly
clear than no one else has any authority to get them to change
them.

FWIW, I happen to agree that allowing one, and only one, CJK
Compatibility Character is a little strange.  I just don't think
that belief is particularly helpful.

best regards,
    john

Received on Wednesday, 26 November 2014 13:50:22 UTC