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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 24 February 2012

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Public Comment: Draft Advice Letter on Consumer Trust, Consumer Choice, and Competition

23 February 2012 | The Consumer Metrics Working Group requests community input on the draft Advice Letter on Consumer Trust, Consumer Choice, and Competition at the request of the ICANN Board.

CEO Search Update

21 February 2012 | The CEO Search Committee has been actively working to identify top candidates for ICANN's CEO/President position, to commence 1 July 2012.

Public Comment: Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Part B Policy Development Process – Recommendation 8 Concerning Standardizing and Clarifying WHOIS Status Messages

21 February 2012 | Public notice is hereby provided of the proposed change related to the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy to standardize and clarify WHOIS status messages that is considered for adoption as well as an opportunity to comment on the adoption of the proposed policy change, prior to ICANN Board consideration.

IDN Variant Issues Project: Final Integrated Issues Report Published and Proposed Project Plan for Next Steps is Now Open for Public Comment

20 February 2012 | ICANN is pleased to announce the publication of the final Integrated Issues Report and the posting of the proposed project plan for the next steps of the IDN Variant Issues Project for public comment.

Public Comment: Roadmap to a New Domain Name Registration Data Access Protocol (WHOIS)

18 February 2012 | ICANN is pleased to announce the posting of the draft roadmap to implement ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee's Report on Domain Name WHOIS Terminology and Structure (SAC 051).


Upcoming Events

11 - 16 March 2012: 43rd International Public ICANN Meeting - Costa Rica

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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."