Re: Seems a silly issue
So true - the issue is how the user responds to the symbol displayed and not what the computers are using internally to represent it.
There is a necessary trade-off between making things easy or friendly for the less IT-literate (i.e. most non-IT) people, and giving those same people a risk-proportionate way of avoiding ne'er do wells. The risk is browser makers/writers putting in things like that Firefox IDN punycode default to simultaneously shield users from the details while opening an avenue for said users to be misdirected by the ne'er do wells.
A typical UK or US English user is unlikely to need a URL to include Cyrillic or other variants of their normal symbols appearing in URLs. Same for typical French or Arabic or other users - that should apply en masse per locale/region and doesn't seem to be a particularly insurmountable technical problem.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
