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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 15 February 2013

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Composition of the Accountability & Transparency Review Team 2 (ATRT 2)

15 February 2013 | On 5 October 2012, ICANN invited interested individuals to apply for a position of Volunteer Review Team Member, representing a Supporting Organization or Advisory Committee, or for a position of Independent Expert on the second Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT 2).

Whois Registrant Identification Study, Draft Report

15 February 2013 | This study, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, uses Whois to classify entities that register gTLD domain names, including natural persons, legal persons, and Privacy/Proxy service providers.

Expert Working Group on gTLD Directory Services Members Selected

14 February 2013 | On 13 December 2012, Fadi Chehadé, ICANN's President and CEO, announced the creation of an Expert Working Group on gTLD Directory Services (EWG) and invited volunteers to submit applications to indicate their interest in serving on it.

New gTLDs Website, Renewed

12 February 2013 | As the New gTLD Program matures, so should its communications. That's why ICANN is committed to improving the microsite.

New Meeting Strategy Working Group Launched

11 February 2013 | In line with the Board resolution adopted on February the 2nd 2013, ICANN is creating a new Meeting Strategy Working Group and now invites interested individuals to apply for Volunteer Member positions - in representation of a Supporting Organization or Advisory Committee - to serve on the Meeting Strategy Working Group.

Upcoming Events

7 - 11 April 2013: 46th International Public ICANN Meeting - Beijing

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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."