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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 21 March 2014

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

ICANN Seeks Public Comment on 2013 RAA Data Retention Specification Data Elements and Legitimate Purposes for Collection and Retention

21 March 2014 | ICANN has been in discussions with a number of Registrars regarding data retention waiver requests (“Waiver Requests”) submitted under the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (the "2013 RAA").

Notice of Preliminary Determination To Grant Registrar Data Retention Waiver Request for NAMEWEB BVBA

21 March 2014 | ICANN has made a preliminary determination that it is prepared to grant a data retention waiver request submitted by Registrar NAMEWEB BVBA under the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (the "2013 RAA").

Public Comment Invited: Proposal for the Use of Mandatory Policy Advisory Boards for Regulated Industry Sector and Consumer-Trust-Sensitive New gTLD Strings

21 March 2014 | The purpose of this public comment period is to obtain feedback and collect broader community input into the further development of the PAB model, and to which TLD strings it may best apply.

ICANN Expands Global Stakeholder Engagement Team

20 March 2014 | ICANN has announced new developments to enhance its Global Stakeholder Engagement (GSE) efforts, with the creation of two new leadership positions and the hiring of two new regional Vice Presidents.

Global Community to Discuss the Future of the Internet at ICANN's Singapore Meeting

19 March 2014 | ICANN Leaders to Answer Journalists' Questions At Opening News Conference.

Audio Files, Transcripts from Community Calls with ICANN Board Chair and CEO

19 March 2014 | Were you unable to join the community call with ICANN Board Chair Steve Crocker and ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehadé on Saturday? Don't worry that you missed out, because an audio file and transcript is available online now.

Annual Independent Audit RFP

18 March 2014 | ICANN is issuing today a Request for Proposals (RFP) to identify audit firms interested in performing ICANN's annual independent audit.

Upcoming Events

23-27 March 2014: 49th International Public ICANN Meeting – Singapore

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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."