Massive shakeup of the Chinese market...

[Edwin]

http://www.chinatechnews.com/index.p...e=news&id=3613

I don't know if it will affect IDN as well, but the fact that they are not going to use ICANN's nameservers any more could have a MASSIVE (potentially negative) impact on Chinese domains.

[IDNCowboy]

Originally Posted by Edwin

http://www.chinatechnews.com/index.p...e=news&id=3613

I don't know if it will affect IDN as well, but the fact that they are not going to use ICANN's nameservers any more could have a MASSIVE (potentially negative) impact on Chinese domains.

wow ;-( this is a slap in the face towards icann.

[thegenius1]

Wouldnt that make chinese domains more valuable if they create a " intranet" within china, our names will allow them to go Global ?

[jose]

I have posted here before a couple of days ago and I was very criticized for saying:
“That I didn’t trust Chinese domains because they [Chinese Gov] could very well start follow their own rules”

[idnowner]

Seems like part of China's plan to supress FREE SPEECH - controlling information from coming into or going out of China. I would guess this could have a very negative effect on Chinese IDNs and is a very troubling development for the Internet if they stay on this path.

It's not clear, though, if they will have IDN.IDN versions to match those planned by Verisign, and/or how they will restrict Chinese IDN.com and IDN.IDN.

[Drewbert]

Actually, I think the writer might be a little confused.

It sounds like they're splitting away fromt eh ICANN root (ie creating an "alternative namespace", but I don't think that's what's really going on.

My guess is this:

Threee new 2LD's:

mil.cn
gov.cn
ac.cn

as he says "there are now three top-level Chinese domain names under the .CN country indicator. Those three are .AC, .GOV, and .MIL."

"China", "Company" and "Network" are the script equivalents of .com .net and .cn and I think these are simply CNAMED (or similar) at the .cn DNS root server.

True, they will have added those 3 as TLD, bt I think they're still using the zone files from Verisign for .com and .net so haven't split the root.

Of course, he MAY mean they're going to run their own .gov .mil and .ac TLD's which means they'll ignore the ICANN zone files for those TLD - and have split the root. If that's the case, it's a black mark for ICANN in the diplomacy dept.

[IDNCowboy]

Originally Posted by Drewbert

Actually, I think the writer might be a little confused.

It sounds like they're splitting away fromt eh ICANN root (ie creating an "alternative namespace", but I don't think that's what's really going on.

My guess is this:

Threee new 2LD's:

mil.cn
gov.cn
ac.cn

as he says "there are now three top-level Chinese domain names under the .CN country indicator. Those three are .AC, .GOV, and .MIL."

"China", "Company" and "Network" are the script equivalents of .com .net and .cn and I think these are simply CNAMED (or similar) at the .cn DNS root server.

True, they will have added those 3 as TLD, bt I think they're still using the zone files from Verisign for .com and .net so haven't split the root.

Of course, he MAY mean they're going to run their own .gov .mil and .ac TLD's which means they'll ignore the ICANN zone files for those TLD - and have split the root. If that's the case, it's a black mark for ICANN in the diplomacy dept.

Here's a better article
http://www.interfax.cn/showfeature.a...AIN%20NAME-DNS

does this mean the .com's will now map to the chinese equivalents?

[idnowner]

Originally Posted by Jeff

does this mean the .com's will now map to the chinese equivalents?

I didn't see anything in that article about Verisign or DNAME mapping.

[thegenius1]

I posed this question a week ago, due to this link http://www.tuantuanyuanyuan.com/ I asked how did he get IDN.IDN ?

[sarcle]

Interesting this was conspicuously posted on icann's homepage just now. also.

http://icann.org/announcements/announcement-27feb06.htm

"The UseSTD3ASCIIRules flag described in RFC 3490 must be set when performing ToASCII conversions to produce ACE names."
This is a verbatim restatement of what was in both v.1.0 and the v.2.0 that was posted for public review, without being the focus of any specific commentary whatsoever.
The preparation of v.2.2 is already in progress and will address a number of additional matters still pending from the previous round of public commentary. The Working Group wishes to do this in light of the IAB report on "IDN nextsteps".

Coincidence?

Something big is happening.

[thegenius1]

Can we get a synopsis of the ICANN article ?

[sarcle]

Originally Posted by thegenius1

Can we get a synopsis of the ICANN article ?

"The UseSTD3ASCIIRules flag described in RFC 3490 must be set when performing ToASCII conversions to produce ACE names."

This right here says it. They are clearly saying that the ascii .com is to convert to .idn.

Now whether it is an answer to China's movment or is the reason for it I can't decifer from those articles.

In other words

IT'S GOOD NEWS!

[Drewbert]

I still think they're merely mapping

.中国 -> .cn

.公司 -> .com

.网络 -> .net

It'll only work for users within China, because you'll have to use a DNS server in China (who all refer to the official Chinese master DNS servers that probably block out undesirable domains).

On wednesday, someone in china will type

公司.公司

into their browser, the browser will request

xn--55qx5d.xn--55qx5d

and the chinese DNS will map it to

xn--55qx5d.com

and Bob's your uncle.

It is possible that ICANN will decide to run these IDN->gTLD maps in the root servers and allow other non-latin countries to nominate ther own mappings too.

It is possible that ICANN will decide to run these IDN->gTLD maps in the root servers and allow other non-latin countries to nominate ther own mappings too.

[Edwin]

But it does THEORETICALLY mean that the Chinese NIC could sell 公司.公司 (#1) to somebody inside China who registered it through a Chinese registrar, while somebody else owns 公司.公司 (#2) registered at an ICANN-accredited registrar.

#1 would resolve for all users in China, and no users outside China
#2 would resolve for all users outside China, and no users in China

Given how much the Chinese government seems to want to control what the population can do online, I would think that the above scenario would look pretty appealing to them.

If it happens (and is upheld despite the inevitable protests etc.) then that would drop the value of all "blocked" (i.e. ICANN) Chinese IDN to zero, or thereabouts.

[sarcle]

Yes, but "THEORETICALLY" China always could do this anyway and haven't yet. I don't think it's a coincidence that the articles and the posting at icann was on the same day. This is good news for us.

Originally Posted by Edwin

But it does THEORETICALLY mean that the Chinese NIC could sell 公司.公司 (#1) to somebody inside China who registered it through a Chinese registrar, while somebody else owns 公司.公司 (#2) registered at an ICANN-accredited registrar.

#1 would resolve for all users in China, and no users outside China
#2 would resolve for all users outside China, and no users in China

Given how much the Chinese government seems to want to control what the population can do online, I would think that the above scenario would look pretty appealing to them.

If it happens (and is upheld despite the inevitable protests etc.) then that would drop the value of all "blocked" (i.e. ICANN) Chinese IDN to zero, or thereabouts.

[Drewbert]

Wooh - check out ths part of http://www.icann.org/general/idn-guidelines-22feb06.htm

"4. Permissible code points will not include: (a) line symbol-drawing characters (as those in the Unicode Box Drawing block), (b) symbols and icons that are neither alphanumeric nor ideographic language characters, such as typographic and pictographic dingbats"

So all those dingbat domains are actually not permitted?

And the last paragraph of that report:

"The current restriction of top-level labels to the 26-letter basic Latin alphabet makes it necessary to determine the language attributes of an IDN without consideration of the top-level label. The discussion that is in progress about permitting a more extensive character repertoire in top-level labels may change this, as well as raise need for guidelines specific to the new condition."

Originally Posted by Edwin

But it does THEORETICALLY mean that the Chinese NIC could sell 公司.公司 (#1) to somebody inside China who registered it through a Chinese registrar, while somebody else owns 公司.公司 (#2) registered at an ICANN-accredited registrar.

If it happens (and is upheld despite the inevitable protests etc.) then that would drop the value of all "blocked" (i.e. ICANN) Chinese IDN to zero, or thereabouts.

Oh, absolutely.

[Edwin]

Originally Posted by Drewbert

Wooh - check out ths part of http://www.icann.org/general/idn-guidelines-22feb06.htm

"4. Permissible code points will not include: (a) line symbol-drawing characters (as those in the Unicode Box Drawing block), (b) symbols and icons that are neither alphanumeric nor ideographic language characters, such as typographic and pictographic dingbats"

So all those dingbat domains are actually not permitted?

If that's really the case, then posting of those types of domains should immediately be banned in here, as they are likely to be as tainted (long-term) as phishing-friendly ones would be, and it's not the right image for the nascent industry to encourage that kind of thing.

I just feel sorry for anyone who's shelled out $xxx (or more) to acquire one in the aftermarket!

[blastfromthepast]

Edwin, I know you are biased against symbol domains, but quite a few people thought they were rather valuable. In any case, they are legal domains at present.

[Drewbert]

Originally Posted by sarcle

Interesting this was conspicuously posted on icann's homepage just now. also.

http://icann.org/announcements/announcement-27feb06.htm


Coincidence?

Something big is happening.

Don't thing so.

From a quick investigation, UseSTD3ASCIIRules merely means that when soft ware is prepping an IDN name to convert it to ascii they have to make sure that any ASCII characters ALREADY in the name following the normal rules for DNS, meaning letters, numbers and hyphen only, and no leading or trailing hyphen on the name.

So if you try to create an IDN name with an ASCII _ or % or $ or # in it, the nameprep software won't let you.

Nothing sinister.

With the dingbat names, some questions need to be asked of registrars and Verisign.

OpenSRS won't lt you register a name with a dingbat in it.

According to that spec, the registry certainly shouldn't be letting it happen.

Originally Posted by blastfromthepast

Edwin, I know you are biased against symbol domains, but quite a few people thought they were rather valuable. In any case, they are legal domains at present.

Not according to ICANN, they aren't.

And they're God, in this matter, as much as it pains me to say so.

[Edwin]

Looks like it could be a case of lazy programming of the pre-registration filtering on the part of certain registrars i.e. you should never actually be able to register a domain with a dingbat/graphic in it - period.

That is, of course, if we're reading the information correctly. Hopefully somebody can come up with an independent source to verify/debunk it.