Joint Engineering Team (JET) Guidelines for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) Registration and Administration for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean
RFC 3743

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Network Working Group                                         K. Konishi
Request for Comments: 3743                                      K. Huang
Category: Informational                                          H. Qian
                                                                   Y. Ko
                                                              April 2004

              Joint Engineering Team (JET) Guidelines for
         Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) Registration and
            Administration for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean

Status of this Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
   not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).  All Rights Reserved.

IESG Note

   The IESG congratulates the Joint Engineering Team (JET) on developing
   mechanisms to enforce their desired policy.  The Language Variant
   Table mechanisms described here allow JET to enforce language-based
   character variant preferences, and they set an example for those who
   might want to use variant tables for their own policy enforcement.

   The IESG encourages those following this example to take JET's
   diligence as an example, as well as its technical work.  To follow
   their example, registration authorities may need to articulate
   policy, develop appropriate procedures and mechanisms for
   enforcement, and document the relationship between the two.  JET's
   LVT mechanism should be adaptable to different policies, and can be
   considered during that development process.

   The IETF does not, of course, dictate policy or require the use of
   any particular mechanisms for the implementation of these policies,
   as these are matters of sovereignty and contract.

Abstract

   Achieving internationalized access to domain names raises many
   complex issues.  These are associated not only with basic protocol
   design, such as how names are represented on the network, compared,
   and converted to appropriate forms, but also with issues and options
   for deployment, transition, registration, and administration.

Konishi, et al.              Informational                      [Page 1]
RFC 3743                 JET Guidelines for IDN               April 2004

   The IETF Standards for Internationalized Domain Names, known as
   "IDNA", focuses on access to domain names in a range of scripts that
   is broader in scope than the original ASCII.  The development process
   made it clear that use of characters with similar appearances and/or
   interpretations created potential for confusion, as well as
   difficulties in deployment and transition.  The conclusion was that,
   while those issues were important, they could best be addressed
   administratively rather than through restrictions embedded in the
   protocols.  This document defines a set of guidelines for applying
   restrictions of that type for Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK)
   scripts and the zones that use them and, perhaps, the beginning of a
   framework for thinking about other zones, languages, and scripts.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  Definitions, Context, and Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       2.1.  Definitions and Context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       2.2.  Notation for Ideographs and Other Non-ASCII CJK
             Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   3.  Scope of the Administrative Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
       3.1.  Principles Underlying These Guidelines . . . . . . . . . 10
       3.2.  Registration of IDL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
             3.2.1.  Using the Language Variant Table . . . . . . . . 13
             3.2.2.  IDL Package. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
             3.2.3.  Procedure for Registering IDLs . . . . . . . . . 14
       3.3.  Deletion and Transfer of IDL and IDL Package . . . . . . 19
       3.4.  Activation and Deactivation of IDL Variants  . . . . . . 19
             3.4.1.  Activation Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
             3.4.2.  Deactivation Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
       3.5.  Managing Changes in Language Associations. . . . . . . . 21
       3.6.  Managing Changes to Language Variant Tables. . . . . . . 21
   4.  Examples of Guideline Use in Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   5.  Syntax Description for the Language Variant Table. . . . . . . 25
       5.1.  ABNF Syntax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
       5.2.  Comments and Explanation of Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . 25
   6.  Security Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
   7.  Index to Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
   8.  Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
   9.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29