Re: "International" email addresses

On 26 Nov 2014, at 13:49, John C Klensin wrote:

> --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.
> 

I was not expecting anything to be actioned. I just thought it an interesting 
example of how unexpected/surprising rules for allowable characters 
in IDNs can sometimes be in practice.

André

> 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 16:23:21 UTC