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Universal Acceptance (UA) Ambassadors Share Their Experiences

14 Mar 2019

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Apply Now for ICANN and PTI Leadership

14 Mar 2019

ICANN64 Community Forum

ICANN64 Kobe GAC Communiqué

14 Mar 2019

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ICANN66 Fellowship Application Round Now Open

14 Mar 2019

Announcements

Proposed Renewal of .org Registry Agreement

Open Date: 18 March 2019 Close Date: 29 April 2019 Originating Organization: Global Domains Division Categories/Tags: Brief Overview: ICANN organization is posting for public comment the...

18 Mar 2019  |  gTLD, Registries, DNS Marketplace, Announcement

Proposed Renewal of .info Registry Agreement

Open Date: 18 March 2019 Close Date: 29 April 2019 Originating Organization: Global Domains Division Categories/Tags: Contracted Party Agreements Brief Overview: ICANN organization is posting for...

18 Mar 2019  |  gTLD, Registries, DNS Marketplace, Announcement

ICANN Invokes Process to Protect Registrants

LOS ANGELES – 15 March 2019 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ("ICANN") today announced it has terminated the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) with registrar Alpnames Limited (IANA #1857), effective immediately. ...

15 Mar 2019  |  Technology, Announcement

ICANN64 Kobe GAC Communiqué

KOBE – 14 March 2019 – Today, the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) meeting at ICANN64 issued its Kobe Communiqué. It is available for review here. About ICANN ICANN's mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global...

14 Mar 2019  |  Technology, Announcement

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Universal Acceptance (UA) Ambassadors Share Their Experiences

Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) Secretary General Don Hollander interviews UA Ambassador Mark W. Datysgeld, UA Ambassador Ashish Modi, Chair UASG Ajay Data, Vice-Chair – UASG Dušan...

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Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) Update

ICANN's Brad White, North America Communications Director sits down with GNSO Chair Keith Drazek and GNSO Council Liaison to the EPDP Team Rafik Dammak to discuss Expedited Policy Development...

Artworks 000504172647 y1l4r1 t500x500

Universal Acceptance (UA) Ambassadors Share Their

Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) Secretary General Don Hollander interviews UA Ambassador Mark W. Datysgeld, UA Ambassador Ashish Modi, Chair UASG Ajay Data, Vice-Chair – UASG Dušan...

Artworks 000503488644 5nsx58 t500x500

Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) Update

ICANN's Brad White, North America Communications Director sits down with GNSO Chair Keith Drazek and GNSO Council Liaison to the EPDP Team Rafik Dammak to discuss Expedited Policy Development...

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Blog Posts

Returning to Marrakech: Looking Ahead to ICANN65

Independent Review Process Standing Panel – Call to Action

Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Kobe, Japan

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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."