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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 25 November 2011

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Deadline for EBERO RFI Extended

23 November 2011 | ICANN is extending the deadline for the Emergency Back-End Registry Operator Request for Information (EBERO RFI) to 5 December 2011 at 5:00 PM Pacific Time.

Implementation Notice - Version 3.0 of IDN Guidelines

22 November 2011 | Following the ICANN Board's acceptance at the October 2011 meeting in Dakar, Senegal, ICANN is today providing notice of implementation for version 3.0 of the Guidelines for Implementation of Internationalized Domain Names.

Public Comment: Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Part B – Recommendation #8 and #9 Part 2 – Staff Proposals

22 November 2011 | The IRTP Part B Working Group, ICANN Staff has prepared the following two proposals: ICANN Staff Proposal on IRTP Part B Recommendation #8 and ICANN Staff Proposal on IRTP Part B Recommendation #9 part 2. Before submitting these proposals to the GNSO Council for its consideration, ICANN Staff is requesting your input.

Nominating Committee Convenes in Dakar

22 November 2011 | The 2012 ICANN Nominating Committee (NomCom) has convened and met for the first time on 28 – 29 October 2011, immediately following the 42nd International ICANN Public Meeting in Dakar, Senegal.

New gTLD Customer Service Center Expands to Offer More Services

21 November 2011 | In anticipation of the opening of the New gTLD application round on 12 January 2012, ICANN is expanding the New gTLD Customer Service Center.

New gTLD Program: ICANN Seeks Independent Objector

21 November 2011 | ICANN is seeking expressions of interest from persons or organizations to serve as the Independent Objector for the New gTLD Program. The Independent Objector shall act in the public interest when determining whether to file an objection to a given application for a new gTLD.

Public Comment: Preliminary Issue Report on 'Thick' Whois

21 November 2011 | ICANN Staff is seeking comments on its Preliminary Issue Report on 'Thick' Whois.

Public Comment: Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Part C Policy Development Process

21 November 2011 | The Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Part C Policy Development Process Working Group is requesting your input on its Charter Questions to help inform its deliberations.

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."