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How about you RTFA?
And registrars are not even allowed to disallow certain characters.

DNS isn't allowed to disallow certain characters.
Registrars most certainly can, and do.

TFA doesn't give an example of a domain with a soft hyphen in the name.
Again, give me just ONE example. That's all it takes to prove me wrong.

This is about using soft hyphens to hide the real domain name in e-mails, not about using a real domain name that actually contains a soft hyphen. It'd be rather useless for this purpose, because the RFC for URIs doesn't allow for unicode characters in URLs, and the RFC for SMTP doesn't allow them in e-mail addresses. Which is why we have the IDNA translation system for web URLs in the first place, which translates e.g. http://www./åbo.fi/ to the real name of http://www.xn--bo-xia.fi/
(see RFC3454, RFC3491 and RFC3492 for more details)

Also, see http://mct.verisign-grs.com/ and try using a soft hyphen (character code 173 or 00AD in UTF-16).
Watch the error message you get.

Where is this misinformation coming from? You asked this last time there was an eNom story too. Get a clue. http://registrar.verisign-grs.com/cgi-bin/whois?whois_nic=GANDI+SAS&x=19&y=12&type=registrar&whois_tld=Whois+TLD Gandi is not a reseller, they're a legitimate registrar. If you spend 30 seconds on google, you could have found this too. Instead, you choose to beg the question over and over again in an attempt to discredit or at least associate them with eNom. /former Dotster employee. And no, we weren't an eNom reseller either...

experts-exchange.com was created over 10 years ago http://registrar.verisign-grs.com/cgi-bin/whois?wh ois_nic=experts-exchange.com&type=domain&x=0&y=0 yet ExpertSexChange.com is still forwarded as a chain letter (and apparently posted/modded up) as an example of an unfortunate ambiguous URL.

Does anyone mirror the gTLDs so that I don't have to deal with continuous bullshit like this?

Verisign controls .fr ccTLD? Since when? I thought it was AFNIC (www.afnic.fr) whol looked after .fr?

Verisign Global Registry Services manages the root zone, which does indeed contain both .com and .fr. Verisign GRS also manages the .com and .net zones, and AFNIC manages the .fr zone, but the root zone is the absolute top of the hierarchy above top-level domains.

I don't know if it is still active, but on their (rather optimistic) PR accouncement from September of last year Verisign lists sitefinder@verisign-grs.com as an address for feedback. Back then, they said they "invite additional comments". I wonder if it still works?

I called them just now and basically said the stuff above. I own a few domain names bought from them, and will be transferring them to another provider. When I told them why, they read off a script that told me why their service was so great. Here's their answers and my responses:

"Before, the user would get an unhelpful error message. Now, users always know where to go!"

"That's good on paper, but the problem is that DNS is an inappropriate area to conduct that redirection. Yahoo or Google.com are well-known and can supply searches if users don't know where to go. In addition, Microsoft has a search feature in Explorer that redirects users to MSN. Putting this feature in DNS breaks the Internet technical specifications, called RFCs, and damages many processes on the Internet."

"This won't affect your domain names, people will still be able to get to you."

"The main problem is that Internet processes -- mail, DNS, and transfer-related software -- often use the information that no site was found in order to know what to do next. If a domain name always gets resolved, much of it will break."

"Verisign has set this up as a feature to improve the Internet."

"I'm sorry, but I don't believe that; your company has a lot of bright people working for it who know that this is not a feature in any way, shape, or form. It's my opinion that Verisign is trying to grab traffic from well-known search sites by using its control of the .com and .net TLDs to redirect users to a search engine branded by Verisign. I'm not going to transfer my domains yet, because I'm going to wait and see for a week or two, because I'm hoping your company will change their minds and understand that this isn't a good thing for the Internet. But I am going to transfer them if this issue does not get resolved."

Anyway, they gave me this email address: sitefinder@verisign-grs.com . Send 'em an email. And call that number! Be patient -- it's not the call-center people's fault and they won't like being screamed at -- but be firm, because they're reciting from a brochure given them by upper management, and they're going to give you the canned answers found above. The call-center girl sounded pretty tired of answering this, and I figure a lot of people are complaining. If they see half their business disappearing down the tube, maybe they'll see the light. ;)

I e-mailed sitefinder@verisign-grs.com.

It looks like they've caught on and the e-mails are being routed to Customer Service. I got this auto-response:

Thank you for contacting VeriSign Customer Service. We have received your email and a member of our Customer Service team will be responding to you shortly.

Best Regards,

Customer Service
VeriSign, Inc.
www.verisign.com

If you really want to make sure Verisign hears you, try some of my suggestions from other posts, duplicated below.

A list of contact information is here. The Verisign main number is 1-877-438-8776, which gives you a long list of options. Depending on what you pick, you'll probably end up talking to a Network Solutions guy. Tell him you're distressed about the SiteFinder service, ask about what your options are, and ask if there's anyone else to talk to. They probably won't be much help, but write down everything they tell you, get their employee ID, and keep track of date/time for calls as well as time on hold (might be helpful).

After some lengthy conversation, I found out that I should be talking to the Verisign Global Registry, but that they can't give me a phone number, because (supposedly) NSI doesn't even have a phone number. However, I did get an e-mail address -- sitefinder@verisign-grs.com, which is routed to someone's inbox (as in, a person, not a support center), which currently yields an "Out-of-office reply" that gives out a cell phone number (!). I don't think I'm going to call it, but at least I have more contact information on file now and an e-mail that will get read.

Additionally, you might want to try calling the office of Russel Lewis, who's the VP of the Verisign directory services. He's at the Virginia office (1-703-742-0400), but I got disconnected instead of transferred and haven't called a second time (yet). If you try this number, you'll probably get a secretary, to whom you should explain that the standard procedures for communicating with Verisign have failed, that you are "very disappointed" and that you "want to make things right". (It works better if you're actually a Verisign customer.) If you're nice about it -- knowing that the secretary probably doesn't know anything about it and can't do anything anyway -- you can probably get routed to someone in the directory services division, where you can register further complaints.

[...]

I have been unable to raise the Chicago local office by phone, and when I went to visit, the visitor center couldn't even get a hold of them. Weird.

I called their headquarters in CA a few times now. I was hung up on, randomly transferred to someone's voice mail (I'm not sure who), and finally talked to a particularly helpful representative who passed my queries to his manager. They said that SiteFinder was run by NSI, to which I responded that NSI said that SiteFinder was run by Verisign, to which I added that Verisign (as a global registry) is the only organization with the power to do something like that. He went to talk to his manager, told me that they were promised more information on SiteFinder by the end of today (9/17), and promised me a call-back in 24 hours.

Updates to follow.

If you really want to make sure Verisign hears you, try some of my suggestions from other posts, duplicated below.

A list of contact information is here. The Verisign main number is 1-877-438-8776, which gives you a long list of options. Depending on what you pick, you'll probably end up talking to a Network Solutions guy. Tell him you're distressed about the SiteFinder service, ask about what your options are, and ask if there's anyone else to talk to. They probably won't be much help, but write down everything they tell you, get their employee ID, and keep track of date/time for calls as well as time on hold (might be helpful).

After some lengthy conversation, I found out that I should be talking to the Verisign Global Registry, but that they can't give me a phone number, because (supposedly) NSI doesn't even have a phone number. However, I did get an e-mail address -- sitefinder@verisign-grs.com, which is routed to someone's inbox (as in, a person, not a support center), which currently yields an "Out-of-office reply" that gives out a cell phone number (!). I don't think I'm going to call it, but at least I have more contact information on file now and an e-mail that will get read.

Additionally, you might want to try calling the office of Russel Lewis, who's the VP of the Verisign directory services. He's at the Virginia office (1-703-742-0400), but I got disconnected instead of transferred and haven't called a second time (yet). If you try this number, you'll probably get a secretary, to whom you should explain that the standard procedures for communicating with Verisign have failed, that you are "very disappointed" and that you "want to make things right". (It works better if you're actually a Verisign customer.) If you're nice about it -- knowing that the secretary probably doesn't know anything about it and can't do anything anyway -- you can probably get routed to someone in the directory services division, where you can register further complaints.

[...]

I have been unable to raise the Chicago local office by phone, and when I went to visit, the visitor center couldn't even get a hold of them. Weird.

I called their headquarters in CA a few times now. I was hung up on, randomly transferred to someone's voice mail (I'm not sure who), and finally talked to a particularly helpful representative who passed my queries to his manager. They said that SiteFinder was run by NSI, to which I responded that NSI said that SiteFinder was run by Verisign, to which I added that Verisign (as a global registry) is the only organization with the power to do something like that. He went to talk to his manager, told me that they were promised more information on SiteFinder by the end of today (9/17), and promised me a call-back in 24 hours.

Updates to follow.

Actually, I've made several support calls, and plan to visit to their Chicago office in a few hours. (No one was answering the phone, so I guess I have to walk in there before I can talk to someone.)

A list of contact information is here. The Verisign main number is 1-877-438-8776, which gives you a long list of options. Depending on what you pick, you'll probably end up talking to a Network Solutions guy. Tell him you're distressed about the SiteFinder service, ask about what your options are, and ask if there's anyone else to talk to. They probably won't be much help, but write down everything they tell you, get their employee ID, and keep track of date/time for calls as well as time on hold (might be helpful).

After some lengthy conversation, I found out that I should be talking to the Verisign Global Registry, but that they can't give me a phone number, because (supposedly) NSI doesn't even have a phone number. However, I did get an e-mail address -- sitefinder@verisign.com, which is routed to someone's inbox (as in, a person, not a support center), which currently yields an "Out-of-office reply" that gives out a cell phone number (!). I don't think I'm going to call it, but at least I have more contact information on file now and an e-mail that will get read.

Additionally, you might want to try calling Russel Lewis, who's the VP of the Verisign directory services. He's at the Virginia office (1-703-742-0400), but I got disconnected instead of transferred and haven't called a second time (yet). If you try this number, you'll probably get a secretary, to whom you should explain that the standard procedures for communicating with Verisign have failed, that you are "very disappointed" and that you "want to make things right". (It works better if you're actually a Verisign customer.) If you're nice about it (knowing that the secretary probably doesn't know anything about it and can't do anything anyway), you can probably get routed to someone in the directory services division, where you can register further complaints.

I'll post more information as I get it.

Tech support (ha!) now claim that this number is just for info, and are referring all calls such as this to the sitefinder@verisign-grs.com bitbucket.

Just pondering - is this THE weapon of mass destruction the military has been looking so hard to find ....

By long-established convention, a zone's administrator can be contacted by sending an email to the address published in the RNAME field of the zone's SOA record. VeriSign publishes the email address nstld@verisign-grs.com in the RNAME field of the .com and .net zone SOA records and actively reads and responds to legitimate messages sent to this address.

They are asked to hand over the pengaol.org [pengaol.org] domain name. Not the pengaol.com

I agree with a previous poster, Pengaol.org should aquire themselves a lawyer, and perhaps even counter-sue AOL for needless abuse, harassment, etc.

As much as we English loving types had no use for real names, it was a viable way for Asian countries to use their own characters for DNS entries. It had a chance of being a standard.

Speaking of standards...

The IETF Internationalized Domain Names Working Group
IBM On Unicode Domain Names
Slashdot: Why Unicode will Work on the Internet
Verisign's Internationalized Domain Name Testbed

-Waldo Jaquith

Verisign offer Tours of their Virginia NOC. Do they take you there blindfolded?

You think that stuff is ugly? Take a look at this. That's a list of all the registered nameservers that match 216.227.56.20, which is supposed to be ns1.telocity.net. In particular, note the last entry, which has no IP address, but the name is 216.227.56.20! Yes, that's right, that's "216.227.56.20." in a zone file (note the trailing dot), with "20" as the top-level domain!

I can understand a lame-ass registrar with poorly-written software not catching this, but the NSI Registry (aka Verisign GRS) should know better, and should have rejected it.

I would like to offer a bit of perspective on why Verisign is doing this. First it is important to note that it is Verisign GRS (the registry) which is considering this and not Network Solutions (the Verisign Registrar). Currently when a name expires it is up to each registrar to determine what happens to that name. When a domain expires it is actually automatically renewed by the registry. It is then up to the registrar to decide if the name should be deleted permanently. The registrar has up to 45 days to make that decision before the 1 year renewal fee is permanent.

Now, Verisign the Registrar releases a lot of domains to the public right now after a certain period of time. At this time the names are released and numerous registrars attempt to snag those names when they are dropped. This practice has caused headaches to no end at Verisign the Registry. It essentially acts as a denial of service attack as all the different registrars pound the registry trying to snatch those dropped names. Were talking hundreds of thousands of queries every minute.

This new propsed system is a response to this situation. It is designed to end the constant pounding of the registry. Granted it may not be the best solution but it is only the first draft and it must be okayed by ICANN first, thus there is a strong possibility that it will not be implemented. However something is needed in order to make the domain deletion process less system intensive as the registry cannot continue to support the amount of traffic caused by these domains dropping.

The general FAQ answers how the names will appear in a web browser, but they use a GIF to show the Chinese name. So I'm still wondering how it will look to someone without an OS that displays the characters properly. Never mind that you can download extensions to display the content in the web browser; the location will be garbage, right?

Will this be a good kick in the butt for internationalization of your OS?