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Strategic Outlook Trends Session

Invitation to Join Strategic Outlook Trends Identification Session

23 Mar 2020

Post-ICANN67 Policy Report

Post-ICANN67 Policy Report Now Available

23 Mar 2020

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ICANN Events Cancelled

23 Mar 2020

Open Data

ICANN’s First Version of the Open Data Platform is Now Live

23 Mar 2020

Announcements

Guidelines for Developing Reference Label Generation Rules (LGRs) for the Second Level Version 2

Open Date: 30 March 2020 Close Date: 12 May 2020 Originating Organization: Global Domains Division Categories/Tags: Second-Level Domains Brief Overview: ICANN org had published reference Label...

30 Mar 2020  |  Technology, Announcement

Addendum to the Initial Report of the Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) on the Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data Team – Phase 2

Open Date: 26 March 2020 Close Date: 5 May 2020 Originating Organization: Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Categories/Tags: Contracted Party Agreements Policy...

26 Mar 2020

Invitation to Join Strategic Outlook Trends Identification Session

LOS ANGELES – 23 March 2020 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) invites the community to participate in an open strategic outlook trends session to help ICANN continue to be aware of trends that affect its mission and...

23 Mar 2020

ICANN's GDD Industry Summit and DNS Symposium Cancelled

LOS ANGELES – 18 March 2020 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced that its annual GDD Industry Summit and ICANN DNS Symposium, which were to be held in Paris, France, in early May 2020, have been...

18 Mar 2020  |  Technology, Announcement

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ICANN67 Welcome from ICANN President & CEO Göran Marby

ICANN's President & CEO Göran Marby thanks everyone for their understanding, patience, and support as ICANN67 changes from an in-person meeting to an entirely remote Public Meeting. Marby also...

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Welcome to ICANN67 from ICANN Board Chair Maarten Botterman

ICANN Board Chair Maarten Botterman thanks the community for joining ICANN’s first entirely virtual Public Meeting. Botterman says the moment is a testament to the Internet’s ability to bring...

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2020 NomCom Update

Jay Sudowski, Chair of the 2020 ICANN Nominating Committee (NomCom), Ole Jacobsen, the 2020 NomCom Chair-Elect and Damon Ashcraft, the 2020 NomCom Associate Chair, give ICANN's James Cole an update...

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Customer Standing Committee (CSC) Update At ICANN66

Byron Holland, Chair, Inaugural CSC, discusses the successes and future of the CSC.

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Blog Posts

Becoming UA-Ready – ICANN Update

ICANN Decides on .COM Amendment and Proposed Binding Letter of Intent between ICANN and Verisign

EPDP Team Publishes Addendum to Phase 2 Initial Report for Public Comment

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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."