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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 18 December 2009

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Public Comment: One & Two-Character .CAT Domains

18 December 2009 | ICANN is opening a public comment forum on a proposed amendment from Fundacio puntCAT to Appendix 6 of the .CAT Registry Agreement.

New gTLD Program — ICANN Proposes Draft Expression of Interest / Pre-Registrations Model

18 December 2009 | ICANN is publishing for public comment a draft model for soliciting Expressions of Interest for new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs).

Fellowship Program Selection for ICANN Meeting 37 Announced

18 December 2009 | Global input and ideas will be on the rise at the 37th International Public Meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers thanks to ICANN's on-going Fellowship program.

Public Comment: STI Report on Trademark Protection in New gTLDs

17 December 2009 | The Special Trademarks Issues Working Team (STI) has published its Report on its recommendations to create a Trademark Clearinghouse and Uniform Rapid Suspension procedure to protect trademarks in the New GTLD Program.

Advisory Concerning Posting of Registrar Fees for Restoring Deleted Domain Names

17 December 2009 | In an effort to minimize registrar confusion and encourage compliance with the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA), ICANN developed an Advisory regarding the Expired Domain Deletion Policy (EDDP).

ICANN Status Report to the GNSO Council on AGP Limits Policy Implementation

16 December 2009 | ICANN is posting its second status report to the GNSO on the implementation of its recommendations for the Add Grace Period (AGP) Limits Policy.

ICANN Consultation on New gTLD Registry Agreement

15 December 2009 | ICANN invites community participation in an open consultation regarding the proposed registry agreement for new gTLDs.

Upcoming Events

7 - 12 March 2010: 37th International Public ICANN Meeting - Nairobi, Kenya

20 - 25 June 2010: 38th International Public ICANN Meeting - Brussels, Belgium

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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."