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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 25 February 2011

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

IDN ccTLD Request From Pakistan Successfully Passes String Evaluation

25 February 2011 | ICANN is pleased to announce the successful completion of String Evaluation on proposed IDN ccTLD string for Pakistan.

ICANN Revises 2011 Meeting Sponsorship Program

24 February 2011 | We have listened to concerns expressed by our community and today are announcing a revised sponsorship program that reduces the cost for many of our lower level sponsorship packages while retaining some of the higher level opportunities.

Public Comment: Proposed Recommendations for a GNSO Global Outreach Program

24 February 2011 | Pursuant to a Resolution passed by the GNSO Council at its meeting on 24 February 2011 the community is invited to provide comments on a proposed recommendations for a global outreach program.

Public Comment: Proposed Changes to Section 5.0 of the GNSO Council Operating Procedures

24 February 2011 | Pursuant to a Resolution passed by the GNSO Council at its meeting on 24 February 2011 the community is invited to provide comments on proposed changes to Section 5.0 of the GNSO Council Operating Procedures.

GAC Releases Scorecard on New gTLD Outstanding Issues

23 February 2011 | In preparation for the upcoming ICANN GAC - Board consultations in Brussels, the GAC has furnished a scorecard on outstanding issues related to the New gTLD Program.

Updated: New gTLDS: Briefing Papers for ICANN Board-GAC Consultations

23 February 2011 | The Root Zone Scaling paper is now available.

New gTLD Program: Public Comment Summary & Analyses and Supporting Documents

22 February 2011 | ICANN published the summaries and analyses of public comment on the previous version of the Applicant Guidebook and on other previously published New gTLD Program papers.

Call for Public Comments: The Security, Stability and Resiliency of the DNS Review Team

21 February 2011 | In anticipation of the ICANN Silicon Valley Meeting, the Security, Stability & Resiliency of the DNS Review Team now wishes to solicit input from the community on a set of issues.

IDN ccTLD Fast Track Review: Public Comment Summary & Analysis

21 February 2011 | ICANN would like to thank all participants for taking part in the first annual review of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process. The review of the process is being conducted to ensure that the process functions as well as possible for the Internet community and its users, and as such participation is very important.

2011-2014 Strategic Plan

21 February 2011 | This updated version of the 2011-2014 Strategic Plan will be presented to the Board for approval during the upcoming Silicon Valley / San Francisco Meeting, 11-18 March 2011.

New gTLDS: Briefing Papers for ICANN Board-GAC Consultations

21 February 2011 | In preparation for the ICANN Board-GAC consultation in Brussels on 28 February and 1 March 2011, ICANN prepared briefing papers to address the 12 topics identified in the GAC's Cartagena communiqué.

Public Comment: Draft Proposal for the Study of Issues Related to the Delegation of IDN Variant TLDs

21 February 2011 | ICANN published for public comment a Draft Proposal for an IDN Variant Issues Project – a proposal for moving this work forward.

Public Comment: Proposed ICANN Meeting Dates 2014 - 2016

21 February 2011 | While ICANN continues to examine the overall structure of its meeting dates and geographic rotation, it is important to move forward with future planning. In an effort to secure the dates for ICANN meetings through 2016, staff recommendations have been developed for public review and comment.

Public Comment: Proposed New GNSO Policy Development Process

21 February 2011 | As part of GNSO Improvements, the Policy Development Process Work Team was tasked to develop recommendations for a new GNSO policy development process. Following review of the comments received on its Initial Report and continued deliberations on remaining issues, the PDP-WT now publishes its Proposed Final Report which contains amongst others forty-eight (48) recommendations, an outline of the proposed new Annex A as well as a supporting document that is envisioned to be included in the GNSO Council Operating Procedures as the PDP Manual.

Public Comment: Post-Expiration Domain Name Recovery Working Group Presents Its Proposed Final Report

21 February 2011 | The GNSO Post-Expiration Domain Name Recovery Policy Development Process Working Group was tasked to address questions in relation to what extent registrants should be able to renew their domain names after they expire. At issue is whether the current policies of registrars on the renewal, transfer and deletion of expired domain names are adequate. Following review of the comments received on its Initial Report and further deliberations, the Working Group now presents its Proposed Final Report, which contains fourteen (14) recommendations to address the five charter questions it was assigned.

Public Comment: Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Part B Working Group Presents Proposed Final Report

21 February 2011 | The GNSO Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Part B Policy Development Process Working Group was tasked to address five issues focusing on issues related to domain hijacking, the urgent return of an inappropriately transferred name and "lock status". Following review of the public comments received on the Initial Report and further deliberations, the Working Group now presents its proposed Final Report which contains nine (9) recommendations to address the five charter questions it was tasked with.


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13 - 18 March 2011: 40th International Public ICANN Meeting - San Francisco, CA, USA

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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."