Business Constituency comment on Internationalized Registration Data Interim Report

[Steve DelBianco <sdelbianco@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The ICANN Business Constituency (BC) supports the proposal for 
internationalized registration data (IRD) published by the IRD Working Group on 
10 April 2014, with the following comments:

-The BC recommends the use of free-form text for all name and address fields. 
Specifically we support "Proposal 3" for free-form text in the address fields.  
Applying a different standard for address fields, in the broader workflow of a 
registrant typing in their identity data, is cumbersome and unnecessary.

-To balance the needs of domain name owners, registrars, and users of Whois, It 
is important that non-ASCII character sets are supported  but not required. Per 
the Whois Accuracy Specification, phone numbers and e-mail address formats 
should still be validated.

-The BC supports localizing data labels based upon registrant location, but it 
is important that standard US-ASCII data labels still also appear.

Overall, the BC cites the guiding principle of the internationalization effort:

"Where possible, existing standards that are widely used in registry and 
registrar systems for handling internationalized data should be applied.  Where 
simpler standards exist for internationalization, they should be preferred 
rather than the more complex standards."

These comments were drafted by Tim Chen and Elisa Cooper.

-
Steve DelBianco
Vice chair for policy coordination
ICANN Business Constituency