Re: [idn] homograph attacks

[Martin Duerst <duerst@w3.org>]

At 14:06 05/02/17, Erik van der Poel wrote:
>Michel Suignard wrote:
>> It is much more challenging for a worlwide TLD such as .com to
>> establish registration rules.  Typically script is a much better
>> selector than language to establish those tables and associated
>> rules.
>
>"Typically"? You make it sound like you've "been there, done that". :-)
>
>Seriously, would you please elaborate on your ideas for .com? I would 
really like to know what you have in mind, specifically, to combat the 
homograph problem.

Hello Eric,

I can't answer fro Michel. But I just had a look at the ICANN guidelines,
and they use the word 'language' 19 times (hope I counted correctly),
and the word 'script' not a single time.

However, there are at least as much 'script' aspects as there are
'language' aspects in the current problem, and if you look at actual
implementation in ccTLD registries that have deployed IDNs, it's
also quite a bit about 'script'. As an example, .ch has published
a single table although they are very clearly working with three
or four languages.

Too much emphasis on 'language' rather than 'script' also has lead
to strange claims such as that creating IDN TLDs is impossible
because we cannot create 6000 versions of .com. Again, looking
at this as a script problem is much more appropriate, after
all, neither "com" nor any ccTLD nor most of the gTLDs are
associated with any single language.

Regards,    Martin.