[council] recent NC vote submission

["Ken Stubbs" <kstubbs@digitel.net>]

fellow council members

 

i have just returned from a trip to find a ballot in my box which, frankly; i am somewhat concerned with. 

At our most recent NC meeting we discussed taking some actions to express concern regarding , what was at that time, some eminent actions which were being proposed by the Verisign Global Registry.

 

in light of the recent  actions by verisign (SEE BELOW)  and, due to the fact that the proposed vote was placed before the council with very minimal opportunity for deliberations by council members with their respective constituencies, I strongly suggest that we consider withdrawing the ballot until we have had an opportunity to receive comments from our constituencies and review the impact of the verisign announcement which many of you may not have seem which I am quoting below. 

 

I have also been advised that some key "knowledgeable" members of the IDN task force were not provided adequate opportunity to provide input on this issue (due to a mix-up in TF mailing list) .

 

I am also quite concerned whether or not this type of  NC "action" is consistent with the by-laws and would feel quite uncomfortable moving forward without guidance in this area from those more knowledgeable

 

thank you in advance for your consideration

 

ken stubbs 

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Subject: [IDNList] Registrar Advisory: IDN Resolution Delay
Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 18:25:36 -0400
From: "VeriSign Global Registry Services" <info@verisign-grs.com>
Reply-To: "VeriSign Global Registry Services" <info@verisign-grs.com>
To: <idntestbed@verisign-grs.com>

To All IDN Registrars:

In response to registrar requests for additional time to allow them to
communicate with their customers, the timing of resolution of IDN names
in
the com, net and org zones will be delayed until mid-January 2002.  In
addition VGRS will be consulting with registrars regarding an
implementation
plan for moving from NamePrep 0.3 to 0.6.

ACE-Z

On October 27, 2001 VeriSign Global Registry Services (VGRS) will
generate
an ACE-Z representation of the Internationalized Domain Names and store
that
in the database along with the original RACE representation as
scheduled.
However, the process of setting all IDN Registrations to Active status
will
not occur on November 12, 2001 as previously scheduled.   As originally
planned for Phase 3.3 of the IDN testbed, VeriSign GRS will set all IDN
registrations to Active status in mid-January, 2002.

As a result of this event, registrars should be aware of these specific
points:

1. Registrars will continue to submit all IDN registrations to VGRS in
the
RACE format.
2. VeriSign will continue to generate the RACE.mltbd.com/net/org zones
and
they will continue to be the authoritative zone files.
3. VeriSign Registry Whois will continue to reflect all IDN
registrations in
RACE.
4. VeriSign Registry will post all existing IDN registrations in their
ACE-Z
and corresponding RACE format in a report to the registrar FTP site. We
will
continue to generate this report on a weekly basis.
5. New IDN registrations received post 27 October 2001 will be stored by
VGRS in the RACE and ACE-Z formats.
6. The IDN Conversion tool will be upgraded to accept either the RACE,
ACE-Z
or Native language characters as input and return the RACE, Z, and
native
language.

In our previous notification, we stated that we would stop publishing
and
updating the RACE.mltbd.com zone file as of November 12, 2001. With the
delay in putting ACE-Z formatted IDN registrations into the com, net and
org
zones, this is no longer true.  VeriSign GRS will discontinue the update
of
these files in mid-January in concert with placing Z in the zones.  When
this occurs:

1. The ACE-Z zone files become authoritative. Registrants will need to
update their RACE encoded name servers to reflect the Z representation
of
these same name servers. This will require registrars to inform their
affected customers of the Z representation of the RACE encoded domain
name.

2. Registrars will be able to obtain the Z representation of the RACE
IDNs
from the Weekly reports published by VeriSign Registry.

3. Registrants will be able to obtain the Z encoding of their domain
name
through ML Conversion tool


Name Preparation for Internationalized Domain Names

The VeriSign GRS Testbed is currently using IETF's name preparation
draft
version 03.   This version has been replaced and is currently at version
06.
VeriSign GRS intends to update to this latest version of name
preparation.
Version 06 is based upon Unicode 3.1.  The primary feature of Unicode
3.1 is
the addition of 44,946 new encoded characters. These characters cover
several historic scripts, several sets of symbols, and a very large
collection of additional CJK ideographs.

VeriSign GRS will be communicating the date for the cutover to the Name
Prep
06 during the week of December 3rd.  Prior to that date, VeriSign
Registry
Customer Service will be calling all IDN accredited registrars to ensure
that they understand this communication and obtain registrar feedback
regarding their end-user support requirements regarding the Name Prep
conversion.

Best Regards,

Chris Sheridan
Manager, Customer Service
VeriSign Global Registry Services
info@verisign-grs.com
www.verisign-grs.com