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The TLD Universal Acceptance Project

21 March 2014
By

In addition to the U.N. six languages, this content is also available in

As the global Internet expansion continues to move forward, ICANN’s motto of, “One World, One Internet,” has never been a more apt rallying cry.

The growing number of TLDs will doubtlessly affect us all, but the benefits are most likely to be felt most deeply by two very different groups. The first group is the non-Latin-based-writing population of the world, a huge segment of humanity for whom the Internet has hardly been accessible. The second group is comprised of those users who will benefit from the new ways the Internet can be used with the new, Latin-script-based TLDs. Both of these groups are equally important, as the expansion efforts give more and more people the chance to partake in the benefits of the tremendous global community that is the Internet.

One of the challenges of the growing Internet is to improve the way certain web-applications and software in general treat domain names that include new TLDs. Some barriers are currently being used, among other things, to screen invalid domain names, including those with TLDs containing more than three letters or non-Latin character-based TLDs, or simply because they are new TLDs. The TLD Universal Acceptance initiative seeks to encourage the acceptance of all TLDs across the Internet.

The upcoming TLD Universal Acceptance session at ICANN 49 Singapore will allow attendees to learn who will be the most affected by the barriers that some TLDs experience. It will also permit ICANN to better understand the potential scope of the situation by adhering to our multi-stakeholder model, listening to constituency voices and identifying organizations that hold the keys to success.

We hope to see you there!

http://singapore49.icann.org/en/schedule/mon-tld-acceptance

Authors

Francisco Arias

VP, GDS Technical Services