FYI on press release by Walid (Jan 14, 2003)

> >General Patent to License, Enforce WALID's Key Internet Patent
> >
> >SUFFERN, N.Y., January 14, 2003 - IDN Technologies LLC (IDNT) announced
today that General Patent Corporation International (GPCI), a premier patent
enforcement firm, will manage the licensing and enforcement of its patent
portfolio covering the use of internationalized domain names for the
Internet, recently acquired from WALID, Inc.  IDNT and GPCI are
headquartered in Suffern, New York.
> >
> >IDNT's patented technology allows Internet users to access web pages and
use Internet applications with domain names that include non-English and
other special characters, which are known as Internationalized Domain Names
(IDN).  Currently, the Internet Engineering Task Force's RFC 1035 standard
only permits domain names to include 37 English characters - the letters
A-Z, the numbers 0-9, and the hyphen/minus sign "-".  The restriction on the
types of characters permitted in domain names has hampered the proliferation
of the Internet in non-English-speaking countries.  IDNT's patented
technology is expected to satisfy the pent-up demand of non-English speaking
Internet users, and also fully complies with the proposed standard for
Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications, recently approved by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group on October 24, 2002.
> >
> >"IDN Technologies is exploring a number of alternatives pertaining to the
licensing and enforcement of its patents," said Alexander Poltorak, Chairman
& CEO of GPCI.  "We would like the technology to be widely available to the
world's Internet users so as to promote the growth and usage of IDNs," he
added. "To that end, IDN Technologies intends to offer the patents for
license on attractive terms."
> >
> >"At the same time, if necessary, GPCI will vigorously enforce the patent

Re: Newbie's questions implementing the [IDNA]

CAN **ANYONE** tell the world when this RFC is going to be published and we
are going to get this IDN **FINALLY** going?

Any estimates even???

> William Blackwood <wblackwo <at> tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > Do you have any estimate when the RFC is going to be published?
>
> I don't.  It's now in the hands of the RFC editor.  People with more
> IETF experience than I have might be able to guess how long it will
> take.
>
> > How far behind, in terms of calendar months/years is this working
> > group's output according to the original schedule?
>
> I joined the working group after it was already a year old, so I'm not
> sure I ever saw the original schedule.  The only schedule I can find now
> is shown here:
>
> http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/idn-charter.html
>
> It gives 2001-Jun as the goal for working group last call (which
> actually happened in 2002-Jan).  The schedule gives no goals for IESG
> approval (which happened in 2002-Oct) or RFC publication (which has yet
> to happen).
>
> AMC
>
>

Re: Newbie's questions implementing the [IDNA]

At 9:52 PM -0500 1/23/03, William Blackwood wrote:
>CAN **ANYONE** tell the world when this RFC is going to be published and we
>are going to get this IDN **FINALLY** going?

No, ***NO ONE*** can. (Man, it has been a long time since I used 
multiple asterisks on a mailing list...)

>Any estimates even???

Sure, everyone can give you those. Why would you believe any of them?

See <http://www.ietf.org/tao.html> for an overview of the IETF process.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium

Re: Newbie's questions implementing the [IDNA]

Paul Hoffman / IMC <phoffman <at> imc.org> writes:

> See <http://www.ietf.org/tao.html> for an overview of the IETF process.

In addition, see

http://www.rfc-editor.org/queue.html

for the status of these RFCs. The current issue is still

2002/10/24   draft-ietf-idn-idna-14.txt
IANA
P. Falstrom, P. Hoffman, A. Costello
Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)
Bytes: 43004

2002/10/24   draft-ietf-idn-nameprep-11.txt
IANA
P. Hoffman, M. Blanchet
Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names
Bytes: 8047

Regards,
Martin

Verisign's i-Nav plug-in services - will this become the de facto IDN standard?

RE: Verisign's i-Nav plug-in services - will this become the de facto IDN standard?

[[ Removing the obnoxiously large attachment ... ]]

At 3:23 PM -0800 1/24/03, Michel Suignard wrote:
>Verisign is not the first one which has written this kind of plug-in.

Correct.

>  To the best of my knowledge, Microsoft has nothing to do with this.

Correct. There is nothing in the VeriSign press release that says 
that Microsoft has approved this, or even helped on it. There is 
nothing on the Microsoft press site that indicates anything about 
them working with VeriSign on this.

>  Please don't propagate these kinds of rumors unless you can 
>substantiate them.

Fully agree.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium

RE: Verisign's i-Nav plug-in services - will this become the de facto IDN standard?

IAB letter on IDNs and VeriSign

ICANN has recently posted a letter from the IAB to ICANN on the ICANN 
web site. The letter is the IAB's response to the way that VGRS is 
currently running the .com and .net TLDs. Folks following IDNs should 
be interested in it.

<http://www.icann.org/correspondence/iab-message-to-lynn-25jan03.htm>

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium

Re: IAB letter on IDNs and VeriSign

<quote>
[14] At the core of all of the IAB's concerns is the architectural principle that the DNS is a lookup service
which must behave in an interoperable, predictable way at all levels of the DNS hierarchy. Furthermore,
as a lookup service it is such a fundamental part of the Internet's infrastructure that converting it to an
application-based search service, as the deployed system does, is not appropriate even in the case where
the query presented would not normally map to a registered domain.
</quote>

I have to accept IAB's concerns about VGRS solutions. But,  if such solutions will be timedout and 
phased out after 2 years and operated with care under IAB's new "operational guidelines", those harms can be
minimized, while it will give great boostup to plugins distributions. I expect ICANN will consider the 
bright side of the solutions and make balanced decisions. Many asian region  NICs are considering to
  put even non-ASCII labels in their zone (not IDNA-compatibile) with slightly different approaches, even
after they become fully aware of those caveats behind their approaches.

IDNA/stringprep/nameprep introduce confusions,collisions and uncertainty to the DNS systems much
more 
than VGRS specific implementation/deployment solutions does ,as explained in ICANN BoD's last
resolutions in 
Shanghai.. IESG/IAB are willing to justify that IDNA by supplemental Registrations guidelines ?
If IDNA can be justified in such a way, why not VGRS solutions ?   
Still I hope IAB can express such consistent conservatism  also to IDNA/nameprep itself, which is
the source of all these hassles....

Soobok Lee
 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Hoffman / IMC" <phoffman <at> imc.org>
To: <idn <at> ops.ietf.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 6:14 AM
Subject: [idn] IAB letter on IDNs and VeriSign


> ICANN has recently posted a letter from the IAB to ICANN on the ICANN 
> web site. The letter is the IAB's response to the way that VGRS is 
> currently running the .com and .net TLDs. Folks following IDNs should 
> be interested in it.
> 
> <http://www.icann.org/correspondence/iab-message-to-lynn-25jan03.htm>
> 
> --Paul Hoffman, Director
> --Internet Mail Consortium
>,

Re: IAB letter on IDNs and VeriSign

--On Tuesday, 28 January, 2003 13:27 +0900 Soobok Lee 
<lsb <at> postel.co.kr> wrote:

> <quote>
> [14] At the core of all of the IAB's concerns is the
> architectural principle that the DNS is a lookup service which
> must behave in an interoperable, predictable way at all levels
> of the DNS hierarchy. Furthermore, as a lookup service it is
> such a fundamental part of the Internet's infrastructure that
> converting it to an application-based search service, as the
> deployed system does, is not appropriate even in the case
> where the query presented would not normally map to a
> registered domain. </quote>
>
> I have to accept IAB's concerns about VGRS solutions. But,  if
> such solutions will be timedout and  phased out after 2 years
> and operated with care under IAB's new "operational
> guidelines", those harms can be minimized, while it will give
> great boostup to plugins distributions. I expect ICANN will
> consider the  bright side of the solutions and make balanced
> decisions. Many asian region  NICs are considering to   put
> even non-ASCII labels in their zone (not IDNA-compatibile)
> with slightly different approaches, even after they become
> fully aware of those caveats behind their approaches.

> IDNA/stringprep/nameprep introduce confusions,collisions and
> uncertainty to the DNS systems much more  than VGRS specific
> implementation/deployment solutions does ,as explained in
> ICANN BoD's last resolutions in  Shanghai..

Soobok,

With the understanding that I'm not on the IAB any more and did 
not participate in the writing of that statement...

First, designing anything for the Internet on the assumption 
that it will be deployed and then "phased out after 2 years" 
just doesn't recognize reality.  We have had almost zero success 
in "phasing things out" when they are deployed only on servers. 
The problem is much worse when implementations require replacing 
software on client machines and the protocols are still vaguely 
operational.  Our last success in making a major and rapid 
phase-out solution was the "phase out" of NCP. That was 20 years 
ago and with the benefit of credible threats to remove any host 
from the network which did not comply.

Second, there is no reason to predict that ICANN will do 
anything that is sensible, measured, and that shows a good 
understanding of either the technical or the policy issues of 
IDN deployment -- rather than just the short-term politics or 
agreement that internationalization is good.  Certainly the 
resolutions adopted in Shanghai should not be considered good 
news in this respect.  Those resolutions basically say "there is 
a problem, we should proceed carefully, and the lifetime of the 
so-far-ineffectual committee should be extended to work on it 
without changes that will make it more effective".

> IESG/IAB are
> willing to justify that IDNA by supplemental Registrations
> guidelines ? If IDNA can be justified in such a way, why not
> VGRS solutions ?    Still I hope IAB can express such
> consistent conservatism  also to IDNA/nameprep itself, which is
> the source of all these hassles...

At the risk of reopening a debate that was never satisfactorily 
resolved, if the issue is merely one of permitting non-ASCII 
characters to be used in identifiers, with those identifiers 
being placed in DNS labels, IDNA is fine.  It may even be more 
complex and protective than is needed for that purpose (just as 
the LDH rules were more than is needed for strict identifier use 
in ASCII). To my knowledge, neither the IAB nor the IESG have 
taken a formal position on whether registration guidelines are 
either necessary or sufficient to resolve any presumed problems 
with IDNA.  If, by contrast, someone is expecting IDNA to solve 
the most general of user-interface searching and navigation 
problems, that expectation is completely unrealistic.  I think 
just about everyone knows that is the case at this stage, if 
only because it is clear that the DNS is inadequate to solve 
that problem for names that are restricted to ASCII.  Some 
marketing organizations might like to pretend otherwise, but 
that doesn't make success in use of the DNS as a general-purpose 
search environment any more likely.

So your point was?

    regards,
      john