[council] ICANN Comment Concerning Trailing-Hyphen Domain Names

[Louis Touton <touton@icann.org>]

To the Names Council:

        You may have recently seen comments in the media and 
on the lists regarding mistaken registration of .com/.net/.org 
domain names having second-level labels with trailing hyphens.  
ICANN staff has prepared the following comment on this issue, 
which may be of interest to the Names Council.

Louis Touton
ICANN Vice President and General Counsel


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Comment Concerning Trailing-Hyphen Domain Names
(7 January 2000)

Since the implementation of the Internet domain-name system
in the 1980s, the specifications published and implemented
by the Internet community have not permitted labels making 
up domain names to have trailing hyphens (e.g., "example-.com").
Througout this period, the specifications for the format 
of domain names have been well-known throughout the Internet 
technical community.  They have been set forth in several RFCs, 
including RFC 1035 (published in 1987) and RFC 1123 (published 
in 1989).  The commonly accepted specifications are reflected 
in the functional specification for the Shared Registry System, 
through which competitive registrar services were introduced 
in the .com/.net/.org top-level domains last year, which 
requires that labels end with letters or digits, not hyphens.
 
In the past several weeks, however, over 800 domain names 
with labels containing trailing hyphens were registered 
by mistake in the .com/.net/.org registry.  These names 
do not conform to the the functional specification 
under which the .com/.net/.org registry is operated.  
The registry software in use before January 3, 2000, however, 
permitted registrars to enter these malformatted names into 
the registry, and some registrars' software similarly 
failed to screen out requests to register these names.  
Promptly upon learning that these names had been 
registered, the registry operator (NSI-Registry) revised 
the software to reject additional requests to register 
names of this format.

ICANN supports these corrections to maintain the stability 
of the Internet.  At the ICANN annual meeting on November 4, 
1999, the ICANN Board approved a package of agreements 
among NSI, ICANN, the United States Department of Commerce, 
and the ICANN-accredited registrars.  Those agreements 
require any names that are registered to comply with the 
format specified in the registry's functional specification.  
They also provide that those registering domain names must 
agree to cancellation of the registration in the event 
of a registry or registrar mistake, and in the case of 
every one of the trailing-hyphen names the registering 
party did in fact have such an agreement.

The use of domain names in this noncompliant format 
presents interoperability problems.  The documented
format is well-known throughout the Internet technical 
community.  Among other things, domain names that 
violate this format have the potential of causing 
software written in reliance on these formats to 
malfunction, and several instances of actual 
malfunctions have been identified.

The U.S. Government's Statement of Policy on the 
Management of Internet Names and Addresses, 63 Fed. 
Reg. 31741 (June 10, 1998) (commonly known as the 
"White Paper") specifies that preserving the stability 
of the Internet should be the first priority of any 
DNS management system.  A second principle that the 
White Paper states should guide DNS-management 
activities is the promotion of competition in the 
provision of registration services.  

After consultation among ICANN, NSI-Registry, and 
the registrars involved, notices have been given to 
the registering parties that these names were accepted 
and registered by mistake and will be cancelled.  
These cancellations reflect implementation of 
longstanding policy, rather than adoption of any 
new policy.  ICANN commends NSI-Registry and the 
registrars involved for working constructively 
within the competitive framework adopted at the 
March and November 1999 ICANN meetings to 
effectively and promptly address this challenge 
to Internet stability.  This sort of commitment 
to stability and competition will continue and 
expand the many public benefits the Internet 
has brought.