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ICANN's New Meeting Registration Platform

Evolving ICANN’s Multistakeholder Model: Continuing the Conversation and Preparing for ICANN65

Evolving the Governance of the Root Server System

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GNSO Policy Briefing

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Read the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Policy Briefing ICANN65 Edition and learn about the important work by the GNSO taking place at the ICANN65 Policy Forum. This report provides you with helpful links about the GNSO and background information on relevant GNSO policy efforts.

Pre-ICANN65 Policy Report Now Available

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The Pre-ICANN65 Policy Report provides a high-level overview of the planned work and activities of the ICANN Supporting Organizations (SOs) and Advisory Committees (ACs) in Marrakech.

ICANN Launches New Registration System

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ICANN is launching a new registration platform for ICANN Meetings and Events. If you have registered in the past you will receive an email to opt in. Click the link above for more information.

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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."