[idn] Alpha Online

["D. J. Bernstein" <djb@cr.yp.to>]

[Some readers don't have UTF-8 MUAs yet, so I'll use ``q'' in this
message to mean a lowercase Greek alpha.]

A web search immediately reveals several organizations with ``Alpha
Online'' in their names: Alpha Online Berlin, Alpha Online Power, JN
Alpha Online, etc.

Presumably one of these organizations will want to register and use
qol.com. Yes or no: Will they be allowed to do so?

Under trademark law, cybersquatting law, etc., there is probably no
conflict between qol.com and aol.com, but there is obviously a conflict
between the uppercase versions of the same names, because those
uppercase versions use the same glyphs: AOL.COM.

The current IDN proposals insist on tying the lowercase and uppercase
versions together. Does this mean that qol.com won't be allowed?

We can avoid this problem. As I said before, the careful approach to
IDNs is to start with

   (1) case-sensitive IDNs in which
   (2) uppercase non-ASCII letters are prohibited by the registries.

If case-insensitivity turns out to be a good idea, we can add it later,
because of #2. Otherwise, we can avoid case-insensitivity problems, and
skip a horribly complicated part of IDN implementation, because of #1.

These observations are not new. They've been brought up repeatedly. The
only counterargument is speculation that users won't be able to adapt to
case-sensitive names---even though URLs are already case-sensitive!

To summarize: These proposals impose huge software costs and guarantee
mass confusion among domain names having the same glyphs, because the
proponents think users are too stupid to handle case-sensitive names.
Furthermore, the proponents insist on cementing this decision now,
rather than taking a careful approach that defers the commitment.

I continue to be amazed at the carelessness of the IDNA proponents.
Apparently they don't even listen when their ``internationalization''
proposals receive incredibly strong objections from the users most
affected by the proposals. IDNA would never have reached ``last call''
stage in a legitimate standards organization.

---Dan