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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 19 July 2013

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

GAC Communiqué Issued at ICANN 47

18 July 2013 | The Governmental Advisory Committee meeting at ICANN 47 in Durban, South Africa has issued its Durban Communique’.

Potential Postponement of the GNSO Review

15 July 2013 | The Board Structural Improvements Committee (SIC) is considering recommending to the ICANN Board of Directors that the review of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), which is mandated by ICANN Bylaws Article IV, Section 4, be postponed and that a new schedule for the review be established within the next 6 months.

ICANN's Durban Meeting Kicks Off with Signing of New Registrar and Registry Agreements [PDF, 159 KB]

15 July 2013 | Durban, South Africa… The first group of Internet Registries and Registrars has signed new agreements with ICANN, bringing new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) into the home stretch of going live online.

ICANN Strategy Panels Launched

15 July 2013 | During today's opening ceremony of ICANN 47 in Durban, South Africa, President and CEO Fadi Chehadé announced the creation of five new ICANN Strategy Panels that will serve as an integral part of a framework for cross-community dialogue on strategic matters.

Affirmation of Commitments Accountability and Transparency Review: Independent Expert – Request for Proposals – Extension of Deadline

13 July 2013 | As part of its review effort, the ATRT 2 issued a Request for Proposals (RfP) on 2 July 2013 in order to appoint an independent expert.


Upcoming Events

17-21 November 2013: 48th International Public ICANN Meeting - Buenos Aires

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, 2012 - 2015

Adopted FY13 Operating Plan and Budget

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."