Follow-up from Tuesday's discussion of digits in the

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Fri, Dec 05, 2008 at 08:28:24AM +0100, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> else> label; registry policy *can* outlaw the mixtures (but only if the 
> registry wants to).

> I got the impression from the mail I was replying to that you were 
> saying that wuerth and würth would always be bundled by registry policy, 
> and just wanted to make sure it's clear to everyone that this isn't 
> always the case.
> 
> I don't want to reopen the discussion of whether they *should* be 
> bundled, because I believe that's out of scope for this discussion (and 
> indeed out of scope for the IETF to make rules about).

I'm highlighting the above because it seems to me to get to the core
of (one arm of) the issue.  Some believe that the protocol needs to
enforce non-mixing of different series of digits.  Those who object to
that can point to examples like the above, and note that registries
already have all the power they need here.  So what's so different
about the digits that their case shouldn't be treated the same?  Note
that it is completely irrelevant, I think, whether national
governments, linguistic experts, or anyone else thinks the protocol
should do.  What is relevant is whether they have some evidence to
bring to bear on what makes the digits so special.

I still think I don't know the answer to what makes the digits
special.  I _think_ it's that they're a really unusual case, and so
even though it would be a violation of the general principle that we
push everything possible to registry policy, it's ok to violate the
principle to get something much simpler to understand and implement.

I'm not sure I'm convinced by that, but it's my current understanding
of the argument.  Someone more convinced by it could correct me, I'm
sure.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at shinkuro.com
Shinkuro, Inc.