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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 2 July 2010

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Public Comment: Proposed Changes to the ICANN Bylaws Article XI: Advisory Committees Relating to the Membership of the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC)

2 July 2010 | Pursuant to resolution 2010.06.25.04 passed by the ICANN Board at its meeting on 25 June 2010 the community is invited to provide comments on a proposed Bylaws amendments addressing the recommendations arising out of the SSAC review Working Group.

Accountability and Transparency Statement

1 July 2010 | Statement from CEO Rod Beckstrom, ICANN senior staff and the Accountability and Transparency Review Team.

Public Comment: Proposed Bylaws Amendment in Furtherance of the Board Review Working Group Recommendation to Add One Voting Director from the At-Large Community to the ICANN Board of Directors

1 July 2010 | On 27 August 2009, the Board approved in principle the recommendation of the Board review Working Group (BRWG) to add one voting director from the At-Large Community to the ICANN Board of Directors and removing the present At-Large Advisory Committee Liaison to the ICANN Board.

123 Registration, Inc. Loses ICANN Accreditation

30 June 2010 | ICANN terminated its accreditation agreement with 123 Registration, Inc. ("123 Registration") for failure to comply with the requirements of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA).

Brussels Statement from the Accountability and Transparency Review Team

29 June 2010 | The Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT) met with most of the constituent bodies within ICANN during the week of 20 June 2010 at the 38th ICANN meeting in Brussels, Belgium.

Public Comment: Community Comment Invited on the GNSO Council Operations Work Team and Constituency and Stakeholder Group Operations Work Team Recommendations

28 June 2010 | Pursuant to a Resolution passed by the GNSO Council at its meeting on 23 June 2010, the community is invited to provide comments on a set of GNSO Improvements recommendations submitted by the GNSO Council Operations Work Team and the Constituency and Stakeholder Group Work Team submitted to the GNSO Council for consideration at its meeting on 23 June 2010 at the ICANN meeting in Brussels, Belgium.


Upcoming Events

5 - 10 December 2010: 39th International ICANN Meeting - Cartagena, Colombia

About ICANN

ICANN Bylaws

Our bylaws are very important to us. They capture our mission of security, stability and accessibility, and compel the organization to be open and transparent. Learn more at www.ICANN.org.

Strategic Plan, 2010 - 2013

Adopted FY10 Operating Plan and Budget


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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."