OT: Cyrillic character domain names

[Zbigniew Koziol]

Christopher Browne wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 4:47 AM, Rajinder Yadav <devguy.ca-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>   
>> Dean Collins wrote:
>>     
>>> UPDATE - This is really really bad - check out the paypal phishing example
>>> on my blog already using Cyrillic characters
>>>
>>>
>>> http://blog.collins.net.pr/2009/12/de-latinisation-of-web.html
>>>
>>>
>>> Please forward to everyone in a position to stop ICANN, i cant believe
>>> they didn't think of this in advance.
>>>       
>
> "I can't believe they didn't think of this in advance"...
>
> Actually, Dean Collins is using something like irony to try to suggest
> he *DOES* think that ICANN was ignorant of the issue.
>
> This is a Well Known Issue that people have been aware of for many
> years now.  There was a paper in CACM back in 2002 on homograph
> attacks; see link from
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack>
>
> There is a counterposition that the "reactionary" attempt to keep the
> web Latinized is the racist/imperialist actions of the Anglo-American
> bits of the world, trying to hold down people of other languages and
> alphabets.
>
> If you are into assuming whatever you like to assume, then all of
> these are simultaneously fairly reasonable positions to hold.
>
> Reality is a sufficiently complex thing that there is no trivial
> resolution to this from either technical or political perspectives.
>
> Note that if ICANN were to refuse to accept IDN name registration,
> this would be likely to increase the risk of a splitting of the root,
> as countries that:
>  a) Don't use Latin characters, and
>  b) Are powerful enough to be important on the world stage, and
>  c) Are prideful enough to like dominance over Latin-based portions of the world
> are likely to be willing to go their own way.
>
> China falls into that category, for sure, but is surely not alone.
>   

Christopher, this is a good summary of the situation.

I however suspect that there is one more important factor that plays a 
role in this game: greed. ICAN, even though a nonprofit organization, as 
a any large organization is under influence of business. And these would 
simply like to make more money on creating a new wave of registration 
requests.

zb.


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