[Rt4-whois] Fwd: IDN - a few more changes to bring it up to the readability of the rest of the Summary

[Kathy Kleiman]

Dear All,
I appreciate the evolution of the IDNs text (and see nice changes in the 
findings). Canwe go a bit further? I was wondering if we might take one 
more attempt to a) define IDNs (for the many readers who will have no 
idea), b) and define better the ambiguous term "this environment".

For smarter (and more awake) people than I am, do you see a way to merge 
the two texts below? I truly want to make sure that everyone understands 
the importance and timeliness of our recommendations!

Also, I saw that Peter has some ideas in this area, but did not propose 
wording changes (I don't think). Does some of the text below cover your 
thoughts?

Best and tx,
Kathy


_Findings/Kathy:
_[from the Executive Summary] Policy and implementation of the Whois 
protocol and registration data have not kept pace with the real world. 
International Domain Names (IDNs) were introduced to great fanfare by 
ICANN in 2000, and in 2010 at the root level, without a corresponding 
change to its policies related to WHOIS.

What this means, is that while domain names can now be written in Arabic 
for example, the contact information for these domains must still be 
transliterated into a format ill-suited to the purpose. [from the Public 
Forum Slides] These are difficult issues, and members of the ICANN 
Community have worked hard to date, but the current Whois protocol has 
no support for non-ASCII characters and cannot signal a non-ASCII 
script. Some ccTLD registries and registrars have implemented ad hoc 
solutions and arbitrary mappings of local scripts onto ASCII code 
points, and as a result, IDN Whois data today often appears as a 
nonsense sequence of ASCII characters.

_Findings/Sarmad
_Perhaps it should be no surprise that within this environment [/Kathy: 
which environment?] /, policy and implementation have not kept pace with 
the real world.  A significant example of this is Internationalised 
Domain Names (IDN), which have been available for registration at the 
second level for over a decade, and at the Top Level for more than a 
year. During this time, WHOIS policies were not amended to accommodate 
the obvious need to support non-ASCII character sets even though there 
was a recognition that Internationalisation is essential for the 
Internet's development as a global resource. There is ongoing work 
within ICANN (e.g. joint gNSO and SSAC working group on 
Internationalised Registration Data -- IRD WG) in this area.  As the 
need is imminent, this work needs to proceed with priority in 
coordination with other relevant work outside the ICANN's ambit (e.g. 
WIERDS initiative at IETF), to make internationalised domain name 
registration data accessible.

The NORC Study on Data Accuracy highlighted IDN contact data as a major 
cause of apparent inaccuracy.  Having internationalized data will also 
address this source of inaccuracy.

[end]

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/rt4-whois/attachments/20120503/6484c5da/attachment.html