IDN Internal Working Group

IDN Internal Working Group
Status:	Closed
Issue Areas:	IDNs
Date Established:
Charter:	[ WG Charter]
Workspace:	[ Community Wiki]

The IDN Internal Working Group, the Internationalized Domain Names Internal Working Group of the ICANN Board of Directors or simply the IDN Working Group was created on March 13, 2001, when the ICANN Board adopted Resolution 1.39 during ICANN 8 in Melbourne, Australia The stated task of the IDN Working Group in the board resolutions reads:

"In order to promote better understanding of the technical and policy issues surrounding the internationalization of domain names, the Board designates an internal working group … to identify the various internationalization efforts and the issues they raise, to engage in dialogue with technical experts and other participants in these efforts, and to make appropriate recommendations to the Board."

Mission

The primary mission of the IDN Working Group is to gather information regarding the technical issues, possible solutions, legal and policy questions, and the current activities being done in connection to the IDNs to educate the ICANN Board and the ICANN Community regarding the issue as well as to help the internet governing body to fulfill its responsibility in the technical management of the internet domain names ad IP addresses.

Members

• Masanobu Katoh (Chairman)
• Karl Aurbach
• Ivan Moura Campos
• Vinton Cerf

IDN Working Group Report

The Working Group distributed several surveys within the ICANN community to determine the technical and policy issues associated with the implementation of IDN services. It also consulted different groups working on IDN such as the Arabic Internet Names Consortium, MINC and JPNIC. Masanobu Katoh reported the results of the survey during the Stockholm ICANN Meeting, presenting the Group's Final Report on August 28, 2001. Based on the final report of the Working Group, the ICANN community expressed their strong support for the implementation of the IDN, however there were technical issues that needed to be addressed first that would possibly harm the stability of the Internet. The Working Group found that there were two main technological approaches that could be possibly adopted: the UTF-8, which requires reconfiguration of all internet servers, and the client-side approach, which requires the installation of a software that allows translation of local encoding from the user's computer into ASCII Compatible Encoding. Since the neither of the identified approaches are identified as the best approach, the IETF IDN Working Group is having difficulties in adopting a standard for IDN implementation. The ICANN IDN Working Group opined that the IETF is leaning towards adopting the client side approach. The Working Group also reported that a possible increase in cybersquatting may occur upon the implementation of IDN, and the ICANN community suggested several solutions such as the used of UNDRP arbitrators familiar with non-Latin scripts. The Working Group also found that there were already 1 million registered IDNs waiting for IETF to implement an IDN standard.

Recommendations

The ICANN IDN Working Group recommended that the ICANN Board create an IDN Steering Committee, with representatives from the Supporting Organizations, to coordinate with the IETF IDN Working Group to expedite the adoption and implementation of an IDN standard. The IDN Steering Committee should work on promotion of interoperability, cybersquatting prevention, competition, market access and consumer protection principles. Furthermore, GAC and the Working Group should provide advice to the ICANN Board regarding policy issues related IDN.

Internationalized Domain Name

Internationalized Domain Name

Internet Engineering Task Force