In message <17839.1574194412@segfault.tristatelogic.com>, I wrote:
This is exactly what I had suggested. Using only punycode for domain names would restrict the representation of the domain names in the data base to traditional 7-bit US-ASCII.
My apologies to everyone. When I posted that reply I didn't even notice the fact that the representation of domain names in the data base was/is now being discussed also on the anti-abuse mailing list. This very topic has already been discussed on the DB working group mailing list, which is arguably a more appropriate place for this discussion since abuse contact email addresses (and their associated domain name parts) are quite certainly not the only places where email addrsses may appear within the WHOIS data base. Regards, rfg