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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 3 August 2007

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

New Monthly Magazine Provides the Inside Scoop on ICANN

3 August 2007 | This week ICANN launched a new magazine that will provide all the latest news and developments within the organization to online subscribers.

Fellowships to Ensure Global Voices Heard at ICANN

2 August 2007 | More voices from across the globe will be heard at ICANN's 30th International Public Meeting in Los Angeles later this year thanks to the global fellowships program being launched this week.

SSAC Response to ICANN's Proposed Next Steps for IDN Deployment in the Root Zone

31 July 2007 | The Security and Stability Advisory Committee has been invited to comment on ICANN's proposal for IDN deployment at the root level of the DNS.


ICANN in the News

These links lead to external news stories. ICANN is not responsible for the content of these pages.

After the dot: the latest net revolution (Guardian Unlimited)

31 July 2007 | Kieren McCarthy, journalist and ICANN's general manager of public participation, discusses the liberalisation of top level domains. It could mean a change in the way the online world works.

ICANN opens registrar reform up to public comment (The Register)

30 July 2007 | Long overdue changes to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) are now open for public comment on the ICANN website, as the aftershocks of the RegisterFly failure continue to ripple through the organization entrusted with the technical stability of the internet we all know and love.


ICANN Featured Individual: Paul Levins, Executive Officer and Vice President - Corporate Affairs

Paul has over 25 years experience at the most senior levels of the government, business and non-government sectors. At ICANN he is responsible for communications (which encompasses media relations and public participation), meetings, and website development.

Prior to joining ICANN, Paul was General Manager, Operations and Corporate Affairs at Bilfinger Berger Australia, a German-owned holding company in the infrastructure, building and services sector with a turnover of almost $2.5 billion and over 5000 staff. In this role he directed the company's government affairs and communications effort and was its main spokesperson. He has also worked as a corporate affairs manager for Telstra Corporation, a leading telecommunications and information technology provider in the Asia Pacific region.

Paul has substantial public sector policy experience having been a Chief of Staff to Government Ministers in portfolios as diverse as Health; Urban Affairs and Planning; Housing; Social Security; Higher Education; Employment Services; Water; Infrastructure and Natural Resources. He has worked at the Australian Human Rights Commission on the introduction of Tax File Number and Privacy legislation, and has worked in the education and youth policy sectors.

Paul holds a Bachelor of Arts from Macquarie University and is an Honorary Associate at the Graduate School of Government at the University of Sydney.


Upcoming Events

29 August - 7 September 2007 - APNIC 24 - New Delhi, India

29 August - 7 September 2007 - SANOG 10 - New Delhi, India

23 - 28 September 2007 - AfriNIC 7 - Durban, South Africa

17-19 October 2007 - ARIN XX - Albuquerque, NM, USA

22-26 October 2007 - RIPE 55 - Amsterdam, Netherlands

29 October - 2 November 2007: 30th International Public ICANN Meeting - Los Angeles, CA USA


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, July 2007 - June 2010

Operating Plan (Draft) Fiscal Year 2007 - 2008

Adopted Budget Fiscal Year 2007 - 2008 [PDF, 426 KB]


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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."