[db-wg] Fw: Not yet NWIs: Support for IDNs

Hi,

On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 10:52 AM ripedenis--- via db-wg <db-wg at ripe.net> wrote:
>
>
> Please do Leo :)

Here's my draft for people to kick around and improve.

Kind regards,

Leo Vegoda

The RIPE NCC service region includes countries whose language is not
written using Latin script. Languages using other scripts include (in
English alphabetical order) Arabic, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, and
Russian. Many of the languages used in the RIPE NCC service region are
written in Latin script but use diacritical marks that fall outside
the US-ASCII character set. Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)
support the use of these scripts in DNS.

ICANN began delegating IDN Top-Level Domains as part of a test program
in 2007 and the IETF updated the IDNA protocol in 2008 and as of mid
2020, there were over 160 IDN TLDs in the root zone.

The IETF published eight standards track RFCs on using IDNs in e-mail
in 2012 and 2013. It is reasonable that organizations communicating
with people whose preferred script is not Latin-based would want to
use an IDN domain for e-mail as well as a web presence. It is also
likely that the registry for an IDN TLD would want to use that TLD for
its e-mail addresses.

In November 2019, Ronald F. Guilmette noted that the RIPE Database
already has at least one e-mail address that makes use of Latin script
diacritical characters in the domain name.

RFC 3912 explicitly notes that the WHOIS protocol has not been
internationalized while recognizing that some servers attempt to do
so. RDAP is the protocol designed to replace WHOIS, has been deployed
by the RIPE NCC, and explicitly supports internationalization by UTF-8
encoding all queries and responses.

The RIPE community could decide to ignore EAI by trying to require
organizations to deploy a secondary e-mail address for use in the RIPE
Database. This would reduce the effectiveness of the RIPE Database as
the secondary address is less likely to be monitored and used, and so
to be effective.

Adding support for e-mail addresses that use IDNs in the RIPE Database
leads to the question of where else the RIPE NCC would need to add
internationalization support in order to provide a properly integrated
set of services. For instance, if support is added for registering
e-mail addresses, there is likely to be a demand for the names used in
"person:" and "role:" objects to be displayed as recorded on official
identity documents.

References
IANA Root Zone Procedures for Test IDN Deployment | Draft
(https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/idn-iana-root-zone-procedures-2007-06-02-en)
Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA): Protocol
(https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5891)
Standards and Other Documents Related to Universal Acceptance
(https://uasg.tech/wp-content/uploads/documents/UASG006-en-digital.pdf)
Root Zone Database (https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db)
[db-wg] Internationalized domain names in the data abase?
(https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/db-wg/2019-November/006413.html)
WHOIS Protocol Specification (https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3912)
JSON Responses for the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP)
(https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7483)