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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 8 June 2012

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Period of 07 - 17 June 2012: Public Comment Periods Approaching Closing Date

8 June 2012 | The Following Public Comment periods are approaching their Comment or Reply Period Close dates, 07 – 17 June 2012.

Open-Source Reference Implementation of a Domain Name RESTful Whois Server - Responses to RFP Questions

8 June 2012 | The following 26 questions were submitted to rws-opensource@icann.org between 16 May and 5 June 2012. The full set of questions and responses are being posted on ICANN's website for the benefit of all the respondents.

New gTLD Batching Announcement

6 June 2012 | Given the large number of new generic top-level domain (gTLD) applications, we will divide and evaluate them in batches.

Public Comment: ICANN Board Conflicts of Interest Review - Independent Expert Report

5 June 2012 | To receive public comment on the Report prepared by the team of independent international experts as part of their review of ICANN's conflicts of interest and ethical frameworks.

ICANN Board Conflicts of Interest Review - Independent Expert Report

4 June 2012 | As part of ICANN's ongoing focus on improving how the ICANN Board addresses conflicts of interest, as well as enhancing ICANN's ethical culture, ICANN is posting the work of the team of international ethic experts in this regard.

RAA Negotiations - Update

4 June 2012 | In advance of the Prague Meeting, ICANN is posting a group of documents on the status of negotiation of amendments to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA).

Roadmap to Implement SAC 051

4 June 2012 | As requested by the ICANN Board, ICANN is publishing the updated Roadmap for the coordination of the technical and policy discussions necessary to implement the recommendations outlined in SAC 051.

Preliminary GNSO Issue Report on the Protection of International Organization Names in New gTLDs

4 June 2012 | ICANN staff is seeking community input on the Preliminary GNSO Issue Report on the Protection of International Organization Names in new gTLDs.

New gTLD Program: Updated Applicant Guidebook Available

4 June 2012 | ICANN has issued today a new version of the gTLD Applicant Guidebook.

Request for Community Input on Formulation of 2013-2016 Strategic Plan

4 June 2012 | The purpose of this public comment period is to obtain feedback and collect input on the proposed development timeline that will later inform the final version of the 2013-2016 Strategic Plan for approval.

Interisle Consulting Group's WHOIS Proxy/Privacy Reveal & Relay Feasibility Survey

4 June 2012 | This survey, conducted by the Interisle Consulting Group in Boston, MA, USA, is intended to help the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council determine the feasibility of conducting an extensive analytical study ("full study") into communication Relay and identity Reveal requests sent for gTLD domain names registered using Proxy and Privacy services.

Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Part C Policy Development Process Initial Report

4 June 2012 | The Generic Names Supporting Organization's (GNSO) Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy (IRTP) Part C Working Group has published its Initial Report and is looking for community input on its proposed recommendations for changes to the existing IRTP.


Upcoming Events

24 - 29 June 2012: 44th International Public ICANN Meeting - Prague

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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."