.nz Reviews - Authorisation of Registrars; Privacy; Registering, Managing and Cancelling Domain Names Policies
As part of the ongoing review of .nz policies, two policies are now being reviewed. Along with these reviews, an amendment is also being proposed to clarify a clause in a third policy.
The policies are:
Authorisation of Registrars Policy
This policy details the process that potential registrars must follow to gain authorisation from the Domain Name Commission in order to access the shared registry system ("SRS"), as per the Authorisation Agreement. The current policy can be seen at http://dnc.org.nz/content/authorisationprocess.html.
No operational issues have been identified with the current policy. It is being reviewed as part of the regular, ongoing review of .nz policies.
Privacy Policy
This policy relates to the collection and use of personal information to effectively operate the DNS. Only personal information that is directly related to the function of the .nz register, and that is necessary for, or directly related to this functioning, will be collected. This is in line with other Internet domain name registration services worldwide. The current policy can be seen at http://dnc.org.nz/content/privacypolicy.html.
No operational issues have been identified with the current policy, however there is a reference to “InternetNZ” in Section 5 of the policy that should be replaced with “Domain Name Commission Limited” given DNCL is now a separate entity and not an operational office of InternetNZ. It is therefore proposed that this change be made. No other changes are being proposed and this review is part of the regular, ongoing review of .nz policies.
Clause 4.2 of the Registering, Managing and Cancelling Domain Names Policy (RMC)
There was a recent issue where 17 IDN .nz names were registered contrary to the policy requirements limiting what characters were permitted in .nz “domain names”. These names were subsequently cancelled and it was agreed that the Clause setting out what .nz names must conform to should be amended to clarify the situation.
Currently the wording of clause 4.2 of the RMC states:
4.2 Any new name must conform to the relevant Internet standards (in particular RFC's 1034 and 2181) as well as specific .nz policy requirements - otherwise such applications may be automatically declined:
4.2.1 A domain name can consist of only roman alphabet characters (letters), ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, digits and the '-' hyphen.
4.2.2 The maximum length of each name element (called a label) is 63 characters.
4.2.3 The maximum length of a domain name (inc separators) is 255 characters.
4.2.4 Domain names must commence and end with a letter or a digit; interior characters of domain names may be letters, digits or the hyphen character; no other characters may be used; names are case insensitive.
4.2.5 Domain names must conform to a supported encoding scheme.
It is proposed that this clause be amended to read:
4.2 Any new name must conform to the relevant Internet standards (such as RFC's 1034, 2181, 5890 and 5891 and any future relevant modifications to those documents) as well as specific .nz policy requirements - otherwise such applications may be automatically declined:
4.2.1 A domain name can consist of only lower case letters (a-z), macronised vowels (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū), digits (0-9) and the '-' hyphen.
4.2.2 The maximum length of each name element (called a label) is 63 characters.
4.2.3 The maximum length of a domain name (including separators) is 253 characters.
4.2.4 Domain names must not commence or end with a hyphen, hyphens '--' cannot be the third and fourth characters (unless used in a valid Internationalised Domain Name (IDN)).
4.2.5 Only valid IDNs (as specified in RFCs 5890 and 5891) may commence “xn--“, the characters represented by the IDN are restricted to the characters specified in 4.2.1 and must include at least one macronised vowel.
We are seeking comments in relation to any of these three policies. Submissions should be made by email to [email protected], by post to PO Box 11881, Wellington 6142 or by fax to 04 4952115. As submissions are received they will be published at http://dnc.org.nz/reviews_AOR_PRI_RMC.
Submissions closed midday on Wednesday, 6 November 2013