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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 28 September 2012

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Protection of International Olympic Committee (IOC) / Red Cross Names (RCRC) Drafting Team – Recommendations

28 September 2012 | The IOC/RCRC Drafting Team (DT) requests community comment on the latest recommendations created for second level protections of names relating to the International Olympic Committee and the Red Cross/Red Crescent.

Draft 2013-2016 Strategic Plan for Public Comment

24 September 2012 | The Draft 2013-2016 Strategic Plan is posted for public comment in accordance with the previously established timeline.

Uniform Rapid Suspension System for New gTLDs: ICANN Seeks Service Providers for Uniform Rapid Suspension

24 September 2012 | ICANN is issuing today a Request for Information (RFI) to identify potential Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) Service Providers [PDF, 112 KB].

Trademark Clearinghouse Update: Implementation Material for Public Comment

24 September 2012 | Today, ICANN is publishing two explanatory memoranda related to the Trademark Clearinghouse for a 45-day public comment period.

Save the Date: Webinar on Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS)

24 September 2012 | ICANN will host a webinar to on 3 October 2012 at 15:00 UTC to inform discussion in Toronto and continue development of the Uniform Rapid Suspension system.

Update on Registrar Accreditation Agreement Amendments

24 September 2012 | In advance of the ICANN meeting in Toronto, ICANN and the Registrars are posting two documents on the status of negotiations of amendments to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA).

ATRT Recommendation 6: Clarifying Document Published

24 September 2012 | In fulfillment of Recommendation 6 of the Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT), ICANN's Board Governance Committee has approved the publication of a document that seeks to identify items that are clearly subject to community consultation prior to Board consideration, and those do not require community consultation.

IDN Variant TLD Program – Procedure to Develop and Maintain the Label Generation Rules for the Root Zone in Respect of IDNA Labels

24 September 2012 | The Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) Variant TLD Program deals with the variant form of top-level domain (TLD) names in different scripts. To enable IDN Variant TLDs in the root, it is necessary to establish the Label Generation Rules (LGR) for the DNS Root Zone.

Community Input and Advice Process

24 September 2012 | This discussion document is posted at the request of the Board Governance Committee to solicit views from the ICANN community on ways to enhance the process by which the Board seeks advice from the ICANN community beyond the traditional public comment process.

Accountability Structures Expert Panel - Project Plan Posted

24 September 2012 | The Accountability Structures Expert Panel (ASEP) that is performing the review of ICANN's accountability structures has released its Project Plan, available at http://www.icann.org/en/news/in-focus/accountability/asep/project-plan-24sep12-en.pdf [PDF, 83 KB].


Upcoming Events

14 – 19 October 2012: 45th International Public ICANN Meeting – Toronto

About ICANN

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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."