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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 27 August 2010

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Applicants Sought from Internet User Community for Seat on Board of Directors

26 August 2010 | The ICANN group representing individual Internet users is calling for applications from those who may be interested in helping to develop policy while serving on the organization's Board of Directors.

Save the Date! Learn About Meetings For the Next Decade Survey Results and Next Steps

25 August 2010 | Starting 7 September, you will be able to register to join the ICANN Participation and Engagement staff in a webinar about the Public Participation Board Committee's Meetings For the Next Decade ongoing work.

Bulk Transfer of Domain Names from Lead Networks Domains to Answerable.com

24 August 2010 | ICANN has authorized the bulk transfer of Lead Networks Domains Pvt. Ltd.'s gTLD domain names to Answerable.com (I) Pvt. Ltd., in response to a request from Lead Networks to designate Answerable.com as the gaining registrar for this bulk transfer effective upon the termination of Lead Network's RAA, and in accordance with ICANN's Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy and Procedures.

ICANN Publishes Draft Agreement on .XXX

24 August 2010 | A Revised Proposed Registry Agreement with ICM to be designated as the Registry Operator for a .XXX Sponsored Top Level Domain (.XXX), as well as documentation submitted by ICM Registry in connection with the expedited due diligence conducted at the direction of the Board was posted for public comment.


Upcoming Events

5 - 10 December 2010: 39th International ICANN Meeting - Cartagena, Colombia

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, 2010 - 2013

Adopted FY11 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."