.NZ IDN Sunrise Registration Period

Background

As previously reported here and here the Domain Name Commission (DNC) has been preparing policies on introducing a limited set of international domain names (IDNs) to the .NZ space to allow the supporting of the Māori language language. This requires adding the 5 macronised vowels ā, ē, ī, ō and ū to the English alphabet.

Policy

They have now written and published the IDN Sunrise Policy (or pdf) for registration during a "sunrise period" that will allow the existing registrant of a Maori name spelled without macrons to register the macronised version of the name.

More on IDNs

Since writing yesterday's entry on Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) I've done a bit more thinking.
Is there any history that gives a guideline as to what may happen?
Many, if not all, common Māori words are registered in the .co.nz space, and also in the .com world. The .com registry has permitted IDNs for a long time so I started investigating that. With the help of NZ History's 100 Maori words every New Zealander should know and a couple of other sites, I investigated a few common words.

• Māori: Maori.co.nz, Maori.com, and Māori.com all registered, but 3 different registrants
• Tāne: Tane.co.nz, Tane.com, and Tāne.com all registered, again 3 different registrants
• Pākehā: Pakeha.co.nz & Pakeha.com were registered, to two different registrants. (I've grabbed Pākehā.com)
• Waitematā: Waitemata.co.nz &Waitemata.com were registered, again to different registrants. (I regged Waitematā.com too)

DNC Second Consultation on Internationalised Domains Names

Originally domain names could only contain the ASCII letters A-Z, digits 0-9 and the hyphen. When countries using other alphabets, and accented characters started to have domain names, a mechanism had to be found to support them. The solution "Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs)" supports this requirement.
Unfortunately as some character sets have letters that look like the latin letters, they have been misused and abused. Phishing attacks using them became common resulting in some browsers refusing to show them and some registries, including .nz, refusing to allow them to be registered.
Some time back the Domain Name Commission (DNC) conducted a consultation on the use of IDC in domain names, specifically with the intent to allow the pōtae macronised vowels: ā,ē,ī, ō, and ū used in te reo Māori.
They have decided they should proceed with the implementation of IDNs in .nz. The next phase of the process is to consider mechanisms for a fair distribution of names.

1. They plan that there will be a "sunrise" pre-registration period during which the registered owner of (for example) Maori.co.nz will be given exclusive rights to register Māori.co.nz.
2. After the sunrise period first come, first serve will apply to IDNs in the same way as they apply to normal domain.
3. Normal registration fees will apply to the macronised names.