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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 7 October 2011

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Public Comment: Variant Issues Project -- Arabic Case Study Team Issues Report

7 October 2011 | ICANN is publishing today the issues report completed by the Arabic case study team, for public comment.

Public Comment: Variant Issues Project -- Latin Case Study Team Issues Report

7 October 2011 | ICANN is publishing today the issues report completed by the Latin case study team, for public comment.

Public Comment: Variant Issues Project -- Greek Case Study Team Issues Report

7 October 2011 | ICANN is publishing today the issues report completed by the Greek case study team, for public comment.

Public Comment: Variant Issues Project -- Cyrillic Case Study Team Issues Report

6 October 2011 | ICANN is publishing today the issues report completed by the Cyrillic case study team, for public comment.

Enhanced Terms & Conditions for Registrar Accreditation Applications

4 October 2011 | In order to provide further clarity on the respective obligations of the applicant and ICANN in relation to registrar accreditation applications, ICANN is introducing an enhanced set of terms and conditions for registrar accreditation applications.

Public Comment: Community Input on Draft 2012-2015 Strategic Plan

3 October 2011 | ICANN continues to pursue the Strategic Planning process in accordance with our published timeline. We are posting a draft version of the 2012-2015 Strategic Plan that is the result of community consultation and staff work. We are soliciting your feedback and comments.

Protecting Trademark Rights for New gTLDs: ICANN Seeks Service Providers for Trademark Clearinghouse Operation

3 October 2011 | ICANN is issuing today a Request for Information (RFI) to identify potential Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) Service Providers.

Coordination Team Formed for IDN Variant Issues Project

3 October 2011 | The benefits and risks associated with the potential delegation of variant TLDs have been widely discussed. On 20 April 2011, ICANN announced the initiation of the IDN Variant Issues Project. This project is dedicated to identifying the issues involved in the delegation and use of IDN Variant TLDs.

Public Comment: Draft Final Report of the Internationalized Registration Data Working Group

3 October 2011 | ICANN is seeking public comments on the draft Final Report of the joint SSAC-GNSO Working Group on Internationalized Registration Data (IRD-WG).

Public Comment: Variant Issues Project -- Devanagari Case Study Team Issues Report

3 October 2011 | ICANN is publishing today the issues report completed by the Devanagari case study team, for public comment.

Public Comment: Variant Issues Project -- Chinese Case Study Team Issues Report

3 October 2011 | ICANN is publishing today the issues report completed by the Chinese case study team, for public comment.

Upcoming Events

23 - 28 October 2011: 42nd International Public ICANN Meeting - Dakar

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."