[UA-discuss] ICANN EAI infrastructure

[Andre Schappo]

ICANN should be leading by example otherwise it becomes a case of, as my dad used to jokingly say — "Don't do as I do. Do as I tell you".

The leading by example in this case is the usage and correct usage of IDNs. The obvious first 3 IDNs that ICANN should register and (correctly) use are

icann.संगठन
icann.机构
icann.орг

all of which translate to icann.org and all of which are, according to whois.icann.org, reserved names.

Redirecting the above IDNs to the ASCII icann.org is a good start but is not correct usage of IDNs. The IDNs are not being treated equally to icann.org as they are just being used for temporary transitioning to icann.org

To give all icann domain names equal ranking they should all remain in the browser address bar. eg

icann.संगठन/news/announcements should not redirect to icann.org/news/announcements

icann.संगठन/news/announcements and icann.org/news/announcements should both be treated equally.

If ICANN have used relative url addressing throughout their site  then it will just work as the Domain Name that will be used and displayed will be the one used for site entry.

Another issue is that ICANN is forcing the www prefix by redirection. eg

icann.org/news/announcements is redirected by ICANN to www.icann.org/news/announcements

This is especially an issue with IDNs as we will end up with mixed script domain names. eg www.小山.中国 instead of 小山.中国

ICANN should not be performing this www prefix redirection. Yes, by all means, redirect from http to https but not the www prefix. Actually, even with straight ASCII Domain Names, I consider it bad practice to force the www prefix by redirection.

Don: Actually I was not quite sure how to interpret your sentence "With respect to ICANN using IDN’s, toward what end.". One interpretation is that I need to convince you that ICANN should be using IDNs. I hope that is not the case, because if I have to convince the UASG group that ICANN should be using IDNs then what chance is there with the rest of the world?

André Schappo

> On 25 Mar 2016, at 17:31, Don Hollander <don.hollander at icann.org> wrote:
> 
> Andre,
> 
> We know that EAI fails with ICANN - and I suspect many many other organisations.
> 
> The good news is that they are working on it - basically waiting for their supplier (I think).
> 
> D
> 
> 
>> On 26/03/2016, at 4:48 AM, Andre Schappo <A.Schappo at lboro.ac.uk> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks to Raed I now have a cool new arabic script email address.
>> 
>> Works fine with gmail
>> 
>> So what of ICANN's mail system. 
>> 
>> I sent a test email to ua-international using my arabic email address and subsequently received the error message
>> 
>> ➤ SMTPUTF8 is required, but was not offered by host  pechora5.icann.org[192.0.46.71]
>> 
>> So, #fail for ICANN wrt EAI
>> 
>> André Schappo
>> 
>