Mozilla Implements TLD Whitelist for Firefox in Response to IDN Homographs Spoofing

Thu Jul 28 20:07:55 UTC 2005

>>Homographs are a classical example of a PR attack.  It's a complete
>>non-issue.

I am inclined to agree.

>But since the TLD registry operators can, and do, control the delegation 
>of their TLDs, they have de-facto control over the sets of labels that 
>can be used for second-level domain labels that are publically visible 
>within their TLD domains

Indeed.  The actual problem is that ICANN has been captured by the
trademark community (WIPO, basically) and has internalized two bad
ideas, that domains are like trademarks, and it is ICANN's job to
protect them.  Once the registrars and registries realized that this
meant a thousand first-day registrations in a new domain (you may be
sure that disney.xxx has been presold), there hasn't been any serious
opposition so there are continuing inane arguments about how to
prevent 2LD homographs, even as everyone agrees that it's impossible.

Mozilla's approach strikes me as the least bad way to appease the
trademark crazies without interfering too badly with useful work.  I
will be interested to see what they do when a cctld declares that
their policy is that they permit any name.

R's,
John