Eszett and IDNAv2 vs IDNA2008

Shawn Steele (???) Shawn.Steele at microsoft.com
Thu Mar 12 22:55:56 CET 2009


> - If you try to look up a WHOIS record at Denic for a domain spelled
> with ß (e.g. süßes.de) you will get an error message that the domain
> is not valid. The registrant who registered süsses.de never had two
> domains, people just had the option, that in some applications (featuring
> INDA2003) they were redirected from süßes.de to his domain instead of
> getting an error.

That's what IDNA does.  Of course süßes.de doesn't work, IDNA makes that work by mapping ü and ß. So if you now tried to register süßes.de with an IDN aware registrar, it would find the existing domain süsses.de and disallow the new registration.  Ergo süßes.de *IS* currently a valid domain, registered to the same person that owns süsses.de (because they're the same).

Having a distinct mapping for süßes.de in a future version of IDN would break the current behavior.  That might be acceptable, but I seriously doubt it is worth the effort and risk.  Suppose you have the domain name "beart.com" in English.  Probably someone's name or something.  What about "BeArt.com"?  Completely different meaning.  ß and ss can probably coexist just like casing does.

Consider a little-used word like Fußball and point it somewhere other than fussball.de  Regardless of the linguistic subtleties of some words, most users will expect ß and ss to behave the same.  Even if it weren't true in Germany, would a German web site really want to risk that a Swiss or Austrian customer might hit a competitor's site?

So what if someone can't register buße.de and someone else busse.de?  AAA Locksmith can't register AAA.com either.  The problem isn't that they both NEED to be distinct and registerable.  The problem is that one you've registered it, you need to tell people whether you're gonna help with their busses or psyche, so you need a decent way to show your preferred display name.

- Shawn



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