592810 - Allow IDN in Israel (dot-il)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 597030

(Core Graveyard :: Networking: Domain Lists, defect)

Description

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

Israel Internet Association (ISOC-IL) announced few days ago that they are in the process of allowing the usage of Hebrew characters under Israel TLD (.il). 

Currently they are in the sunrise process [2] which will finish at the end of October 2010, but I'd be happy if we can get prepared for this by the release of Firefox 4.0.

As a side note, please note that there is plans for <.israel> ccTLD which will contain the same time. It is not yet decided by the Ministry of Communication office who will control the local ccTLD, but according to ISOC-IL plans they will own it and it will contain the same domains (register once, get your domain on two different TLDs!). I'll open separated bug when it will be more actual. 



Following are their official [1] character registration rules (personally I won't be too surprised if it will soon get extend by allowing the usage of Arabic, Russian and some other character sets) -

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4.3. Hebrew Domain Name

A "Hebrew Domain Name" is a Registered Domain Name meeting all the following requirements:

    Permitted Characters

    A Hebrew Domain Name can only be comprised of the following characters:
        Hebrew alphabet characters – Hebrew letter Aleph "א" to the Hebrew letter Tav "ת" including final forms (corresponding to Unicode Code-Points U+05D0 to U+05EA).
        Digits – The digit "0" to the digit "9" (corresponding to Unicode Code-Points U+0030 to U+0039).
        Hyphen – The hyphen-minus character "-" (corresponding to Unicode Code-Point U+002D).
    Length

    A Hebrew Domain Name must be no longer than 63 characters, when represented in the standard A-Label Form, and no shorter than 2 characters long when in the U-Label Form.
    Additional Limitations
        The limitations detailed in Section. ‎4.2.c) above, also apply to Hebrew Domain Names.
        Additionally, a Hebrew Domain Name must not start with a digit.
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[1] http://isoc.org.il/domains/il-domain-rules.html
[2] http://isoc.org.il/domains/idn_eng/idn_sunrise.html

Contact person: Benny Lipsicas, .IL registry manager at Israel Internet Association (ISOC-IL) - [e-mail]

Comment 1

[Jothan Frakes]

This is not actionable in its current form.  There is some data missing...

Please update the bug and include the specific punicode (xn--) string(s).

The typical process has been to watch for the ICANN Board resolution and tracking these within the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process, if in advance of adding strings that are in the root zone.  

This sounds like it is not a new TLD in the ROOT, but rather a local ISP initiative within their DNS realm.  I personally have no judgment over this and recognize the innovation of such an initiative.  

That said I haven't seen any strings get added to this TLD list here unless they get into the root zone database at IANA or are darn far along in the fast-track process.

Comment 2

[Jothan Frakes]

My bad, I misread this as a request for a .<israel> in haste.

Tomer, thank you for the report, I will add the diff here for review by the IDN team.

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is still not actionable in its current form, because we require registries to get in touch with us and request addition to the whitelist. Tomer: you may want to email Benny Lipsicas and point him at this bug, and at:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/tld-idn-policy-list.html

Gerv