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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 4 June 2010

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

WEBINAR ANNOUNCEMENT: Learn About Remote Participation Opportunities At ICANN Meeting No. 38 – Brussels, Belgium

4 June 2010 | Whether you plan to attend the upcoming ICANN International Meeting (No. 38) in Brussels, Belgium in-person or you would like to participate in the various sessions from a remote location, you're invited to a brief overview of ICANN's remote participation plans and goals for the meeting.

Global Policy Proposal for Autonomous System Numbers - Background Report

3 June 2010 | At its meeting on 27 August 2009, the Board resolved to request tracking of the development of a Global Policy Proposal for "IANA Policy for Allocation of ASN Blocks to Regional Internet Registries", under discussion in the addressing community. The status overview presented below is compiled in response to this request and will be further updated as developments proceed, for information to ICANN entities and the wider community. This is the third issue of the tracking of this policy.

Global Policy Proposal for the Allocation of IPv4 Blocks to Regional Internet Registries - Background Report

3 June 2010 | At its meeting on 23 April 2009, the Board resolved to request tracking of the development of a Global Policy Proposal for the Allocation of IPv4 Blocks to Regional Internet Registries, under discussion in the addressing community. The status overview presented below is compiled in response to this request and will be further updated as developments proceed, for information to ICANN entities and the wider community. This is the fifth issue of the tracking of this policy.

AoC Accountability and Transparency Review: Independent Expert - Request for Proposals

2 June 2010 | As part of its review effort, the Affirmation of Commitments (AoC) Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT) now issues a Request for Proposals (RfP) in order to appoint an independent expert.

ICANN Status Report to the GNSO Council on AGP Limits Policy Implementation

2 June 2010 | ICANN today is posting its third status report to the GNSO on the implementation of its recommendations for the Add Grace Period (AGP) Limits Policy. This report presents ICANN's experience implementing the Policy, provides statistical information on net new registrations, AGP deletes, the percent of names deleted during the AGP for each TLD, and the disposition of exemption requests for the period.

Updates to New gTLD Posting

1 June 2010 | ICANN published yesterday for public comment the Draft Applicant Guidebook, version 4 and several accompanying documents. These documents are being updated today.

Call for Applicants for a Position of Volunteer Review Team Member

1 June 2010 | The Affirmation of Commitments calls for a periodic review of four key ICANN objectives.

New gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook, Version 4 Available for Public Comment

31 May 2010 | A fourth draft of the Applicant Guidebook that describes the process of applying for new generic top-level domains was released today along with explanatory memoranda and detailed analysis of comments received.

Proposed GNSO Working Group Guidelines Published

31 May 2010 | The Working Group (WG) Work Team (WT) has developed a document, entitled 'GNSO Working Group Guidelines', which brings together two different elements of the Working Group process.

New GNSO Policy Development Process Revealed

31 May 2010 | Today, the PDP-WT is presenting its Initial Report, containing amongst others forty-five (45) draft Recommendations and a flow chart that is intended to serve as the basis for the new Annex A of the ICANN by-laws, for Community input.

Post-Expiration Domain Name Recovery Working Group Publishes its Initial Report

31 May 2010 | The PEDNR WG was tasked to address questions in relation to what extent should registrants be able to reclaim their domain names after they expire. At issue is whether the current policies of registrars on the renewal, transfer and deletion of expired domain names are adequate.

Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Working Group Publishes its Initial Report

29 May 2010 | The Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy (IRTP) Part B Policy Development Process (PDP) Working Group has published its Initial Report today. The Initial Report presents a number of preliminary conclusions and recommendations for Community input, including a proposed Expedited Transfer Reverse Policy.

Registration Abuse Addressed

29 May 2010 | Following a public comment period on its Initial Report, the Working Group reviewed the comments received and issued this Final Report. The Report includes concrete recommendations to address domain name registration abuse in gTLDs for consideration by the GNSO Council.


Upcoming Events

20 - 25 June 2010: 38th International Public ICANN Meeting - Brussels, Belgium

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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."