Mixing scripts (Re: Unicode versions (Re: Criteria for exceptional characters))

Marcos Sanz/Denic sanz at denic.de
Fri Dec 22 16:42:28 CET 2006


Harald,

> > So far I have seen no single *technical* reason to forbid mixing 
scripts
> > in the protocol.
> 
> If you accept that mixed-script spoofing is a technical issue, you've 
heard 
> a technical reason.

Spoofing is an inherently non-technical issue, which existed before there 
were domain names. You can try to address it with technical tools, but it 
is far from being solved by banning mixed scripts: there will still be 
single-script confusables and whole-script confusables and people who will 
confuse "deutsche-bank.de" with "your-deutsche-bank.de" (what I call 
conceptually confusables) and people who will not be wearing there glasses 
when the click on a link.

So instead of trying to address the spoofing issue in an incomplette 
manner at the wrong level (and generating new kind of unexpected problems 
with that), leave the decision of what is a spoof of something else to the 
information experts. For instance, the WIPO has decissions based in the 
UDRP, Paragraph 4ai, which specifically already protects owners of 
trademarks when "the domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a 
trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights".

> > So please leave layer 7+ issues out of it.
> 
> Careful - names are a layer 7 (application) issue by definition.

Sure. With "7+" it was meant "above 7" :-)

> There are layer 8+ issues too, which we can't ignore, but layer 7 is 
> definitely inside our purview :-)

:-)

Best
Marcos


More information about the Idna-update mailing list