[registrars] IDN-RIC (Registry Implementation Committee)

["Edmon Chung" <edmon@neteka.com>]

Hi everyone,

For those who were not at the Rio meeting, I gave a brief update on the
discussions at IDN-RIC.
Myself and Yann were actually only officially added into the committee
yesterday and the IDN-RIC had an informal meeting yesterday afternoon.  The
main topic of concern was to discuss and refine the ICANN IDN statement:

http://www.icann.org/riodejaneiro/idn-topic.htm

More importantly a framework for the approval of gTLDs to launch IDN
registrations.

At this stage, the general concept from ICANN is to have a less invasive
approach on specific policies yet provide a solid framework that will
address key issues such as standardization and character equivalence issues
for multilingual domain names.  (character equivalence issues are issues
such as traditional chinese to simplified chinese mapping and visual
identicalness of capital letter <ALPHA> and <A>)

I think that currently the framework doesnt present too much of a risk or
issues to registrars, however, I do urge you to take a look at the statement
yourself as well.  However, as the IDN-RIC engages more deeply into
registration policy issues, it will definitely touch onto a lot of items
that are of concern to registrars.  For example, how much character
equivalency preparation responsibilities will fall on the registrars
shoulders... etc.

Upon the brief update, there was an energetic discussion on various issues
on IDNs.  Two more substantial issues are: 1. How can character equivalence
preparation rules be made consistent?  2.  What happens to the names
registered in the VGRS IDN testbed (should it be simply converted to
punycode and registration to continue?  what about character equivalency
issues? should it start over and have proper character equivalency
preparations and sunrise/landrush in place?)

I will be bringing these concerns to another informal IDN-RIC meeting
tomorrow.  Any additional feedback will also be most welcome.

Edmon