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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 9 February 2007

A weekly electronic newsletter from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

— No announcements this week —

Visit the new ICANN Blog.

ICANN in the News

Internet Attack Detailed (Red Herring)

7 February 2007

Root Server Attack Fizzles (eWEEK)

7 February 2007

Hackers Target Core Internet Computers (Guardian Unlimited)

7 February 2007

ICANN At Work

ICANN staff recently provided input to the Internet community at events such as:

  • Domain Pulse in Zurich, Switzerland, 8 – 9 February. Staff participated in a discussion of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) at this yearly event co-hosted by the registries for .ch .de and .at
  • The Arabic Domain Names Working Group Meeting in Cairo, Egypt, 30 – 31 January. This meeting was attended by members of nine Arab countries, in addition to representatives from the Arab League, the ITU Arab Regional Office, the UN ESCWA and ICANN. ICANN was invited to provide a status update on IDNs, in which the main area of focus was the IDN-PAC work that was achieved over the past year; the ongoing discussions within the technical community about the IDNA protocol and its potential enhancements; and most importantly, the IDN laboratory test that has recently been carried out by Autonomica. The Group welcomed the efforts exerted by ICANN in this endeavor and particularly the laboratory test in which the Arabic script was among a range of scripts selected for the test.

ICANN Featured Individual: Tim Cole, Chief Registrar Liaison

Tim Cole is Chief Registrar Liaison for ICANN. In that capacity he works in conjunction with the Director of Contract Compliance to review the operations of the gTLD domain name registrars. This involves promoting their compliance with ICANN agreements and policies and partnering with them to assure smooth operations. He oversees the registrar new and renewal accreditation process. Tim also provides oversight for the ICANN approved dispute resolution service providers who administer UDRP and other domain name dispute services.

Previously, Tim led the Digital Brands Practice for the Los Angeles office of Ladas & Parry LLP. His experience also extends to domain name dispute issues, having formerly held the position of Director of Intellectual Property and Internet Dispute Solutions for the National Arbitration Forum, one of four ICANN-approved dispute resolution service providers.

Tim holds a law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School and is a member of the Minnesota Bar. He is past Chair of the Intellectual Property and Online Dispute Resolution Committee of the ABA's Section of Dispute Resolution. He has been active in a variety of professional organizations and committees, and has published numerous articles on Internet-related matters. He has delivered CLE presentations for various groups in California, New York, Minnesota, Texas, and Washington. He has also given presentations in his ICANN role in the United States and abroad.

Upcoming Events

12 February 2007 — RIPE NCC Roundtable, Amsterdam, Netherlands

13 February 2007 — IGF Stakeholder Consultation, Geneva, Switzerland

21 February 2007 – 2 March 2007 — APRICOT 2007, Bali, Indonesia

25 – 26 February 2007 — Non-Technical ccTLD Training, Bali, Indonesia

26 February 2007 – 2 March 2007 — APNIC 23, Bali, Indonesia

27 February 2007 — apTLD Meeting, Bali, Indonesia

7 March 2007 — 22nd CENTR Legal and Regulatory Workshop

8 – 9 March 2007 — CENTR General Assembly, Prague, Czech Republic

18 – 23 March 2007 — 68th IETF

26 – 30 March 2007 — ICANN Meeting, Lisbon, Portugal

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 [PDF, 72 KB]

Operating Plan (Draft) Fiscal Year 2006 – 2007

Proposed Budget Fiscal Year 2006 – 2007 [PDF, 180 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."