[council] Draft Revised IDN Guidelines: Public Comment Period

[Bruce Tonkin]

From: http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-20sep05.htm 

Draft Revised IDN Guidelines: Public Comment Period

20 September 2005

ICANN has opened a 30-day public comment period on a draft revised
version of the Guidelines for the Implementation of Internationalized
Domain Names ("IDN Guidelines"). This draft reflects the experiences of
the IDN registries in the implementation of Version 1.0 of the
guidelines. Particular attention has been paid to concerns that have
arisen about the deceptive use of visually confusable characters from
different scripts in individual IDN labels.

Analysis concerning such usage has been ongoing for several months and
culminated when the IDN registries met during the ICANN meeting in
Luxembourg. Some of the results from this meeting and from the
Luxembourg IDN workshop 
(http://www.icann.org/meetings/luxembourg/idn-workshop-13jul05.htm )
have been reflected in the draft revised IDN Guidelines. This includes:


* The registries will follow established authoritative language tables
when such exist. 

* The registries will not permit the co-mingling of scripts in a domain
label when no language table exists. 

* The successor document to the current guidelines must maximize the
ability of a registry to support IDN in all regards where it is
reasonably needed, and must minimize the ability for the abuse of IDN
for deceptive purposes. 

* Policies based on script are needed in addition to those based solely
on language, and developing script-based policies should be an immediate
focus of action. 

Following the Luxembourg ICANN meeting, a working group of registries
with IDN experience was formed to work on a revision of the guidelines,
to be put forth for public comment. The working group includes the
following members:


* gTLD Registry Constituency Representatives: 
Cary Karp, MuseDoma 
Pat Kane, VeriSign 
Ram Mohan, Afilias 

* ccNSO Representatives: 
Hiro Hotta, JPRS 
Mohammed EL Bashir, .sd Registry 

* ICANN Staff: 
Tina Dam 

The revised version is now posted for public comments, and will
subsequently be modified in accordance with commentary received. A final
draft of version 2.0 will then be submitted to the ICANN Board for
endorsement.

The IDN Guidelines v.1.0 can be found here.
http://www.icann.org/general/idn-guidelines-20jun03.htm

The draft IDN Guidelines v.2.0 can be found here. 
http://www.icann.org/general/idn-guidelines-20sep05.htm


Comments must be submitted by 19 October 2005, 23:00 UTC.