On Sun, 26 Nov 2006, Kim Davies wrote:

> That has nothing to do with what Bennett is talking about. The issue is
> domain representations in the hostnames for authoritative nameservers,
> not the domain name itself. Even if auDA maintains a complete prohibiton
> on registering IDNs under .au, I can submit as an authority for
> cynosure.com.au an IDN domain that I registered in, say, .com. Why would
> there be tests for visual confusion for that?

I wasn't really sure what was being talked about, so my apologies for 
grabbing the wrong end of the stick.

> | See http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/tld-idn-policy-list.html for
> | links to the IDN policies of other registrars.
>
> I helped compile this list and have worked alot on IDNs in other
> countries so I'm relatively familar with IDN policy around the world.
>
> | I do have to wonder where the demand for IDN is coming from, as English is
> | by far the dominant language both online and offline and has no need for
> | extra characters beyond ASCII.
> | [..]
> | Has auDA proposed a list of what characters/scripts will be allowed in .au?
>
> I will note however that in my experience, those who say there is no
> demand for IDNs are only the native English speakers of the world. IDNs
> relative lack of adoption thus far has primarily been due to lack of
> software support in IE, and lack of labels in the root for non-Latin
> scripts.

You snipped the part my email that noted that most ccTLD's policies (.io 
has no native population) only allow specific characters related to the 
primary language(s) spoken in the ccTLD's country. I have no doubt of the 
utility of IDNs, just not in .au - English is by far the dominant language.

James Andrewartha