Re: [council] Motion on International Domain Names

["Paul M. Kane" <Paul.Kane@reacto.com>]

I will second ....... on the basis that I believe the Constituencies need more
time to discuss the ramifications of allowing iDN resolution at the Second Level
to proceed without an IETF standard.
Please note I have no concerns with iDN resolving at the third level in testbed
mode, (which includes the Verisign initiative).

The climate today should be one of ensuring functionality and confidence in the
DNS system and it concerns me that the complications of bringing functionality
to email and ftp applications (excepting web traffic) to  iDNs is little
understood by the community.

Recognizing the appropriate body may be the ICANN Board, it could be that
Verisign themselves decide it is in their longer term interests that a small
delay in introducing (non-functional) iDNs at this stage, would be best served
by ensuring the functionality of iDNs before the "live" roll out (at a later
date).

Best

Paul

Elisabeth Porteneuve wrote:

> Colleagues,
>
> It seems to me we have a stable text.
>
> I move the motion the Names Council passes the following resolution
> regarding International Domain Names, and forward it to the ICANN Board.
>
> Do I have a second ?
>
> Elisabeth
> --
>
> DRAFT names Council motion on IDN (final version v4).
>
> 1. Whereas the technical work by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force)
>    is at the basis of Internet developments, and recognized as
>    such by the worldwide community and by ICANN;
>
> 2. Whereas the IETF IDN (International Domain Names) engineers have
>    determined twelve items to be defined  at the technical level before
>    the ML (Multi-Lingual) domain names should be used in order to preserve
>    globally unique naming in a universally resolvable public name space;
>
> 3. Whereas only an important but insufficient element in the encoding scheme
>    has been published to date by the IETF and that element only as a draft;
>
> 4. Whereas there cannot be an open competition at an application level
>    without all the IDN specifications completed and published;
>
> 5. Whereas the deployment of IDN space in countries using non ASCII
>    characters is an order of magnitude higher than in
>    English-speaking countries, because  it impacts on inherent culture;
>
> 6. Whereas the introduction of IDN names must have careful,
>    worldwide coordination across all TLD space to avoid political battles,
>    a profusion of encoding prefixes and corresponding confusion;
>
> 7. Whereas it is critical to understand how the whois accessible
>    databases for IDN would function for gTLD and ccTLD alike;
>
> 8. Whereas the International Treaty Organizations, WIPO and ITU, are
>    planning a joint Symposium on Multilingual Domain Names in Geneva,
>    December 6 and 7, 2001;
>
> 9. Whereas the domain name system is a key infrastructure component
>    of the Internet and ICANN is committed to preserve the stability
>    and security of this worldwide resource;
>
> The Names Council advises that having multiple and non-interoperable
> implementations in the DNS has the potential to be harmful for the
> stability and securty of the DNS.
>
> The Names Council therefore calls upon the ICANN Board to take the
> necessary steps to delay the transformation of any TLD IDN "testbed"
> into active domain names in the Root until such time as the IETF
> standards be completed;
>
> --