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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 30 July 2010

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Expressions of Interest for 2010-2011 Nominating Commmittee Chair - Deadline for Submission Extended to 30 August 2010

30 July 2010 | The Board Governance Committee ("BGC") has decided to extend the deadline for submitting expressions of interest to become the Nominating Committee Chair for 2010-2011 term to 30 August 2010.

Composition of Affirmation Review Teams 2 and 4

29 July 2010 | Whereas a composition of the Affirmation Reviews 2 and 4 – Security Stability and Resiliency of the DNS – and WHOIS Policy – was initially announced at the Brussels meeting in June 2010, Selectors of Review Teams 2 and 4 – Mr. Rod Beckstrom and Mrs. Heather Dryden – are now circulating a revised composition of both Review Teams.

Public Comments Requested on Interim Paper on Policy Aspects Regarding Introduction of Single Character IDN TLDs

27 July 2010 | The joint ccNSO and GNSO IDN working group (JIG) is pleased to announce the publication of the working group's Initial Report on the introduction of Single Character IDN TLDs.

Bulk Transfer of Domain Names from 123 Registration to NamesBeyond

27 July 2010 | ICANN has authorized the bulk transfer of 123 Registration, Inc.'s gTLD domain names to 2030138 Ontario Inc. (dba NamesBeyond.com), due to a compliance action taken by ICANN that resulted in the de-accreditation of registrar 123 Registration, Inc. (123 Registration).

Call for Independent Experts – Preserving Security, Stability and Resiliency of the DNS Review (AoC)

26 July 2010 | ICANN now invites interested individuals to apply for a position of Independent Expert on the Security, Stability and Resiliency of the DNS Review Team.

Call for Independent Experts, Law Enforcement Representatives and Global Policy Experts – WHOIS Policy Review (AoC)

26 July 2010 | ICANN now invites interested individuals to apply for a position of Independent Expert, Law Enforcement Representative or Global Policy Expert on the WHOIS Policy Review Team.

Upcoming Events

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

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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."