Re: [I18ndir] Study Group on Use of Emoji as Second Level Domain

["Patrik Fältström " <[e-mail]>]

On 8 Mar 2019, at 23:45, John C Klensin wrote:

> A few small observations to supplement Patrik's two messages, partially because the first point below interacts with what
> draft-faltstrom-unicode11 should say...
>
> (1) Unless ICANN decides to depart from IDNA2008, allowing emoji in domain names would require a substantive change to RFC 5892 and probably 5891.  Perhaps one should not extrapolate, but, given our inability to engage on even relatively minor
> clarifications, I'd a little skeptical about the IETF being able to do that.  From a technical standpoint, such a change would either require allowing all So code points or would require
> continuing to disallow that general category but then allowing emoji by exception.  Such an exception, whether by block or by enumerating code points, would almost certainly lead to a
> requirement for normative updates to 5892 with every version of Unicode and more pressure to do them quickly, not just
> statements that nothing of significance has changed.

FWIW, I do not see ICANN moving away from IDNA2008, the contrary. The board decision was firm, and now I can find it (not being on 30' feet).

<https://www.icann.org/resources/board-material/resolutions-2017-11-02-en#1.e>

Resolved (2017.11.02.09), the Board hereby directs that conformance to IDNA2008 and its successor will continue to be a necessary condition to determine valid IDN TLD labels.

Resolved (2017.11.02.10), the Board requests that the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) and the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) engage with the SSAC to more fully understand the risks and consequences of using a domain name that includes emoji in any of its labels, and inform their respective communities about these risks.

Resolved (2017.11.02.11), the Board requests that the ccNSO and GNSO integrate conformance with IDNA2008 and its successor into their relevant policies so as to safeguard security, stability, resiliency and interoperability of domain names.

Resolved (2017.11.02.12), the Board directs the ICANN CEO, or his designee(s), to engage with gTLD and ccTLD communities on the findings and recommendations in SAC095.

> (2) In addition to the issues mentioned by Patrik about
> representations of individual characters, emoji combining
> sequences are defined by Unicode, but are defined without
> normalization or rendering rules that would facilitate
> unambiguous comparison, either of strings by computers or by people looking at displays.   To the extent to which we consider non-decomposing code points a problem to be concerned about, even if all we do is to put those code points on a "troublesome"
> list, emoji strings would pose a far more challenging set of issues.  The combining problem could be eliminated by
> prohibiting emoji-containing labels of more than one code point, but not only would that contradict the long-standing principle of avoiding single-character labels (because of the original reason for that principle), but, despite what I gather is
> current practice, I can't imagine those who are anxious to sell domain names with emoji in them would allow such a restriction for very long.

Agree.

> (3) I've looked briefly at UTR#46 for Unicode 12
> (https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr46/ and
> https://unicode.org/Public/idna/12.0.0/IdnaMappingTable.txt and it still allows emoji (or at least a considerable number of them -- I haven't spotted any exceptions).  Because (except for
> earlier emoticons) they are prohibited by IDNA2003 as well as IDNA2008, there should be no further pretense that it is about "transition".  Instead, it is a third, orthogonal, standard.  It also causes a nasty problem (and ambiguity in that spec) for ZWJ and JZNJ, the former of which has a special interpretation for emoji that I'll leave as an exercise.
>
> Madness.  I hope those who are at the ICANN meeting,
> particularly Harald (as IETF liaison) and Patrik will be
> explaining that to relevant parties.

Thanks. And yes, we need all help we can to ensure the very very few that do allow emoji in some way to really be outliers. SSAC have been working hard to get the above board resolutions through in 2017, including as you can see that it not only talks about emoji, but also alignment with "IDNA2008 and its successor" which cements ICANN should not start to play the game of standards, but reference what IETF is doing.

Yes, that puts the hot potato back to here (i.e. IETF)...

   Patrik