Fwd: PIR Response to IDNs in .ORG

[Marc Schneiders]

> Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 08:32:59 -0400
> From: Bruce Beckwith <bbeckwith at pir.org>
>
> I understand that there have been some postings on the NCUC mailing
> list regarding Public Interest Registry (PIR) and our treatment of
> legacy IDNs, and that this may be similar in some way to the situation
> with VeriSign and the SiteFinder service.

I think the reference is to an email of mine, in which I said that not
only Verisign but also PIR changed DNS behaviour without proper
notifying those concerned. PIR did not notify anyone about the
termination of working DNS for the .org legacy IDNs. Verisign told us
rather late, but they told us.

> PIR cannot
> allow the modification nor new registration of IDN domains until
> approved by ICANN.  Due to this requirement, PIR has chosen not to
> charge registrars (and consequently they not charge their
> customers/registrants) for the 140,000+ legacy IDN domains that were
> transitioned from VeriSign, until such time as we can roll out an IDN
> implementation that works for web sites and email, and follow the
> recently announced standards.  Some legacy .ORG IDN registrants may
> not like this approach,

And some who paid for multiple years (and are consequently still
in paid status) might even sue PIR over it.

> however, we believe that this is in the
> internet's best interest, follows the spirit of PIR's mission, and
> adheres to the ICANN/PIR contract.

The above was all clear from the beginning. But the IDNs also
continued (as promised) to resolve. They worked. Also after PIR took
over January 1, 2003.

However, all of a sudden, somewhere in March, this was changed. The
DNS for .org DNS did not work anymore. We were not informed about
this.

> Should there be further details that can be provided, I welcome
> inquiries regarding this policy,

The questions were never about this policy. The questions were about
stopping a service without telling anybody, not even those involved.

> though I must note that I adhere to
> the netiquette principle of not forwarding personal emails to mailing
> lists without the author's explicit permission.  Unfortunately, it
> appears that some displeased legacy IDN registrants do not adhere to
> this principle.  I have stopped my communicating with those folks when
> I realized that they were taking their complaint to public forums, and
> that my continued responses were not an expenditure of time that was
> in PIR's best interests.

My recollection is, that Mr Beckwith only started to give responses
when it ended up on a list. Before that he promised "full reports" "by
COB tomorrow" and then dropped silent, despite reminders.

I find it a bit silly to hide behind customer's privacy (as Mr
Beckwith did in earlier messages on the ga list) and now netetiquette.
I would say that the issue is too serious for this. Mr Beckwith may
not like it, but if a company or organisation stops responding, some
people take the topic public to put some pressure on it.

So in short: Why and when did PIR stop resolving .org IDNs? And above
all: Why was nobody told? Did PIR know about it itself? Or did some
other company perhaps pull the plug on the zone file for .org IDNs
without telling PIR? It is still is mystery, despite lots of emails
from me to Mr Beckwith. I hope he delivers the full report now soon.
If he doesn't want to talk to me anymore, maybe someone else can
repeat the question and see if that then helps?

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