AT-LARGE GATEWAY
At-Large Regional Policy Engagement Program (ARPEP)
ALAC Liaisons and Representatives
At-Large Review Implementation Plan Development
Page History
Detailed Report of EPDP on IDNs session on 2 March 2024
What happened?
This session discussed two outstanding issues from the Charter Questions from Phase 2 of the EPDP on IDNs. These were: (a) Whether or not the EPDP should make a recommendation on the need for registries to evolve their own systems for IDN Table Harmonization; and (b) If the information returned by RDDS should include information on the variant set, noting that RDDS does not currently provide for information on variants.
What are the At-Large specific takeaways from this session?
IDN Table Harmonization is important for end-users amongst other stakeholders as harmonization ensures that there is a consistent and predictable way second-level labels behave at the second level. However, registries have difficulties in accepting any binding recommendation on how harmonization should be done.
End-users and registrants need a single source of information regarding variants, particularly delegated variants. Although RDDS doesn't currently provide information on variants, it is not difficult for registries to provide information on delegated variants.
What are the At-Large specific action items?
The ALAC team highlighted the fact that both registrants and end-users would benefit if there was a single consistent way second-level strings behave in different scripts. IDN Table harmonization contributes to this consistency and therefore is desirable.
On the RDDS search output, registrants and end-users should be able to access authoritative information on variants, especially the delegated variants of a primary label.
Next Steps
For String Harmonization, the EPDP team from Registries, registrars and ICANN Technical Staff will discuss further on how the current language may be modified to the satisfaction of everyone.
On RDDS, EPDP team needs to discuss further how to make information on variants accessible to everyone that requires it.