[Blog Post] Making Progress on Internationalized Domain Names
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/making-progress-on-internationalized-domain- names Fahd Batayneh ICANN
On Sat, Nov 01, 2014 at 10:32:12PM +0000, Fahd Batayneh wrote:
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/making-progress-on-internationalized-domain- names
That posting contains at least one pretty glaring error: "In 2010, hostnames used in the DNS were limited to a subset of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) characters used for alphabetic letters, digits, and the hyphen (known as "LDH")." RFC 3490, "Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)", was published in 2003 (which is why it's now informally called "IDNA2003"). There were doubtless some concerns with IDNA2003, but forcing everone to use LDH was not among its faults. There are other things about the posting that are pretty strange: First, I have no idea what Russ's OpenStand blog posting has to do with IDNA. Second, "While these numbers represent significant progress, there is still more work to be done to ensure people around the world can access the Internet in their local language." For most people, there is _no problem at all_ accessing the Internet in a local language. HTML and HTTP have included language and encoding negotiation effectively forever. Email bodies have been internationalizable since the publication of MIME, and even very old mail user agents have been able to cope with that -- I recall using pine on a conservatively-administered SunOS machine in the 1990s and being able to read internationalized mail bodies. The problem that IDNA solves is the internationalization of (mostly server) identifiers on the Internet. The problem that EAI (internationalized email) solves is internationalizing the local-part of the mail address (the ajs in ajs@anvilwalrusden.com), and nothing else. These are both important advances, but it hardly does anyone any service to overplay their importance in the same way that some of the more ridiculous claims being made in support of the update to Resolution 133 do. Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@anvilwalrusden.com
Thanks Andrew for pointing out some of the errors. Patrik
On 2 nov 2014, at 00:28, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@anvilwalrusden.com> wrote:
On Sat, Nov 01, 2014 at 10:32:12PM +0000, Fahd Batayneh wrote:
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/making-progress-on-internationalized-domain- names
That posting contains at least one pretty glaring error: "In 2010, hostnames used in the DNS were limited to a subset of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) characters used for alphabetic letters, digits, and the hyphen (known as "LDH")." RFC 3490, "Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)", was published in 2003 (which is why it's now informally called "IDNA2003"). There were doubtless some concerns with IDNA2003, but forcing everone to use LDH was not among its faults.
There are other things about the posting that are pretty strange:
First, I have no idea what Russ's OpenStand blog posting has to do with IDNA.
Second, "While these numbers represent significant progress, there is still more work to be done to ensure people around the world can access the Internet in their local language." For most people, there is _no problem at all_ accessing the Internet in a local language. HTML and HTTP have included language and encoding negotiation effectively forever. Email bodies have been internationalizable since the publication of MIME, and even very old mail user agents have been able to cope with that -- I recall using pine on a conservatively-administered SunOS machine in the 1990s and being able to read internationalized mail bodies. The problem that IDNA solves is the internationalization of (mostly server) identifiers on the Internet. The problem that EAI (internationalized email) solves is internationalizing the local-part of the mail address (the ajs in ajs@anvilwalrusden.com), and nothing else. These are both important advances, but it hardly does anyone any service to overplay their importance in the same way that some of the more ridiculous claims being made in support of the update to Resolution 133 do.
Best regards,
A
-- Andrew Sullivan ajs@anvilwalrusden.com
Wait a second! That was one of the most confusing blog posts with the most number of errors I have seen in a while. And it does definitely not help ICANN. Can this please be resolved ASAP before meetings start in Busan at PP14 on Monday morning? I.e. can ICANN please correct this? For example by withdrawing the post for now, and then posting something that is at least a bit correct? Patrik Fältström
On 1 nov 2014, at 23:32, Fahd Batayneh <fahd.batayneh@icann.org> wrote:
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/making-progress-on-internationalized-domain-...
Fahd Batayneh ICANN
On Nov 1, 2014, at 8:45 PM, Patrik Fältström <paf@frobbit.se> wrote:
Wait a second!
That was one of the most confusing blog posts with the most number of errors I have seen in a while.
I'm in full agreement with Patrik and Andrew here. The article completely confuses "when ICANN allowed IDNs in the root" with "when existing TLDs allowed IDNs in their zones".
And it does definitely not help ICANN.
Right. The article makes it sound like ICANN got to decide when IDNs were used below the root zone, which is both arrogant and factually wrong. Many ccTDLs and gTLDs allowed IDNs as SLDs way before ICANN allowed them as TLDs.
Can this please be resolved ASAP before meetings start in Busan at PP14 on Monday morning? I.e. can ICANN please correct this? For example by withdrawing the post for now, and then posting something that is at least a bit correct?
Yes, please. --Paul Hoffman
On 2 nov 2014, at 17:10, Paul Hoffman <paul.hoffman@vpnc.org> wrote:
On Nov 1, 2014, at 8:45 PM, Patrik Fältström <paf@frobbit.se> wrote:
Wait a second!
That was one of the most confusing blog posts with the most number of errors I have seen in a while.
I'm in full agreement with Patrik and Andrew here. The article completely confuses "when ICANN allowed IDNs in the root" with "when existing TLDs allowed IDNs in their zones".
And it does definitely not help ICANN.
Right. The article makes it sound like ICANN got to decide when IDNs were used below the root zone, which is both arrogant and factually wrong. Many ccTDLs and gTLDs allowed IDNs as SLDs way before ICANN allowed them as TLDs.
Can this please be resolved ASAP before meetings start in Busan at PP14 on Monday morning? I.e. can ICANN please correct this? For example by withdrawing the post for now, and then posting something that is at least a bit correct?
Yes, please.
There have been some side discussion which have involved not only ICANN but also ISOC and IETF as some sources ICANN did use was at ISOC and IETF, and in that I wrote the following (so you know what I have suggested):
So I would write the most problematic paragraph in the ICANN text as follows:
In 2010, although hostnames since 2003 could use non ASCII the first so called top level domains where added to the root zone in January 2010. This meant that not until 2010 the domain names could not be internationalized for all scripts in the world. It was in 2008 the IETF released a revised version of the IDNA standard that made it possible for ICANN to between 2008 and 2009 develop the process needed for accepting IDN-ccTLDs, and later when the new gTLD process launched all scripts and characters allowed by this standard could be allowed for new gTLDs. We also see in the applied for strings, and already strings live, that this has been a success. Russ Housley, Chairman of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and former Chairman of IETF, wrote about the IETF IDNA standards process here.
And then link to not the web page on OpenStand but to the remarks he made for ITU.
<http://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/20121119-GSS-Housley-Rema...>
On top of this, the ISOC initiative was due to discussions at ITU PP14 on "what has happened regarding IDN between 2010 and 2014" and the text was also to kill texts and statements that said "nothing has happened since 2010". That is also an important context that is sort of lost. Patrik
agree on many comments. Am I right thinking that this blog post was done « fast » to be live during the discussions of PP, in order to tell the ITU « this problem is well underway and you don’t need to be involved » ? I’m saying that because maybe it is better to not be withdrawn, but instead just fixed, so that the underlying message is kept? Regards, Marc.
Le 2014-11-02 à 12:17, Patrik Fältström <paf@frobbit.se> a écrit :
On 2 nov 2014, at 17:10, Paul Hoffman <paul.hoffman@vpnc.org> wrote:
On Nov 1, 2014, at 8:45 PM, Patrik Fältström <paf@frobbit.se> wrote:
Wait a second!
That was one of the most confusing blog posts with the most number of errors I have seen in a while.
I'm in full agreement with Patrik and Andrew here. The article completely confuses "when ICANN allowed IDNs in the root" with "when existing TLDs allowed IDNs in their zones".
And it does definitely not help ICANN.
Right. The article makes it sound like ICANN got to decide when IDNs were used below the root zone, which is both arrogant and factually wrong. Many ccTDLs and gTLDs allowed IDNs as SLDs way before ICANN allowed them as TLDs.
Can this please be resolved ASAP before meetings start in Busan at PP14 on Monday morning? I.e. can ICANN please correct this? For example by withdrawing the post for now, and then posting something that is at least a bit correct?
Yes, please.
There have been some side discussion which have involved not only ICANN but also ISOC and IETF as some sources ICANN did use was at ISOC and IETF, and in that I wrote the following (so you know what I have suggested):
So I would write the most problematic paragraph in the ICANN text as follows:
In 2010, although hostnames since 2003 could use non ASCII the first so called top level domains where added to the root zone in January 2010. This meant that not until 2010 the domain names could not be internationalized for all scripts in the world. It was in 2008 the IETF released a revised version of the IDNA standard that made it possible for ICANN to between 2008 and 2009 develop the process needed for accepting IDN-ccTLDs, and later when the new gTLD process launched all scripts and characters allowed by this standard could be allowed for new gTLDs. We also see in the applied for strings, and already strings live, that this has been a success. Russ Housley, Chairman of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and former Chairman of IETF, wrote about the IETF IDNA standards process here.
And then link to not the web page on OpenStand but to the remarks he made for ITU.
<http://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/20121119-GSS-Housley-Rema... <http://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/20121119-GSS-Housley-Remarks-AsPrepared.pdf>>
On top of this, the ISOC initiative was due to discussions at ITU PP14 on "what has happened regarding IDN between 2010 and 2014" and the text was also to kill texts and statements that said "nothing has happened since 2010". That is also an important context that is sort of lost.
Patrik
At 20:05 02/11/2014, Marc Blanchet wrote:
agree on many comments.
Am I right thinking that this blog post was done « fast » to be live during the discussions of PP, in order to tell the ITU « this problem is well underway and you donât need to be involved » ? Iâm saying that because maybe it is better to not be withdrawn, but instead just fixed, so that the underlying message is kept?
Dear Marc, I understand your point. However, any way you do it, the message has been sent, understood, and already been noticed. ICANN is not a reliable focal point for information about IDNs. Trying to correct it too visibly would only underline and confirm the point. IMHO the new message should be two folded in order to be true, credible and positively accepted: 1. that the IETF Internet IDN technology is sound, reliable and being used. 2. However, the IDNs use and governance call for a multistakeholder tuning and information among the international naming, internet users, ccTLD, ITU, Libre, and ICANN communities, wth the IETF technical assistance and IAB guidance. jfc
participants (6)
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Andrew Sullivan -
Fahd Batayneh -
JFC Morfin -
Marc Blanchet -
Patrik Fältström -
Paul Hoffman