Re: [idn] case folding

[John C Klensin <klensin@jck.com>]

--On Wednesday, 31 May, 2000 17:27 +0200 Maurizio Codogno
<mau@beatles.cselt.it> wrote:

> it depends. I agree that it's not the best thing in the world
> to allow that caffè.it (with `e) and CAFFÈ.it (with `E) are
> both assigned to different people, but I don't know if the
> Principle of Least  Astonishment says that if the URL is given
> to you in lowercase you can digit it UPPERCASE.

If FOOCAFFÈ (excuse the mixed-language example) turns out to be
a registered trademark in Italy (or, worse, a "well-known"
name), then the separate Principle of Minimization of Trademark
Lawyers argues strongly that FOOCAFFÈ.it and foocaffè.it (and
probably even foocaffe.it) had better not be registered/assigned
to different people.

For better or worse, whatever protocol comes out of these
processes has got to exist in the real world.  Much as one might
occasionally wish it otherwise, trademark issues (and the
associated lawyers) do exist in the world in which
internationalized names will be used.  We can consider their
issues to be part of the requirement set and do things that work
in their world as well as in the technical one. Or we can ignore
those issues and let ICANN try to figure out a series of
restrictions on what can be registered and by whom (at all
levels of the tree, not just the first and second levels).

I would predict that the latter would make life really difficult
for users and DNS zone administrators and for close-to-top-level
registrants, registrars, and registries alike.  If I'm right, it
would be wise for us to consider user and lawyer views of what
names are equivalent as engineering constraints and design
accordingly; creating a mess for someone else to solve just
isn't good engineering.

    john