Naela Sarras, on behalf of the IDN Variant TLD Team
We have scheduled public webinar on 27 June 2013 to share with you important developments and next steps regarding IDN Variant TLDs.
This webinar will be of interest to attendees with all levels of understanding in and involvement with IDN Variant TLDs. Whether you are an applicant in the New gTLD Program and have applied for an IDN TLD that has variants, or someone who would like to learn more about IDN variants, and why they pose such complexity, we encourage you to attend and join in the discussion.
Where We Stand Now
Many IDN TLD applications have successfully completed the Initial Evaluation phase of the New gTLD Program. That’s great news, but what happens if any of these IDN TLD applications included a variant string?
The mission of the IDN Variant TLD program, which has been underway since late 2010, has been to develop a mechanism to identify variants for applied-for labels in the root zone.
Developing Variant Evaluation Rules
To help ensure that variants do not threaten the stability or security of the Internet, the IDN Variant TLD program focused on creating a procedure that would develop rules for identifying and managing variants. This was the genesis of the Procedure to Develop and Maintain the Label Generation Rules for the Root Zone in Respect of IDNA Labels [PDF, 1.39 MB] (the LGR Procedure).
The resulting LGR Procedure provides a formal mechanism for creating and maintaining the rules with respect to IDN labels in the root. This mechanism will be used to determine which Unicode code points are permitted for use in U-labels in the root zone, what variants (if any) are possible to allocate in the root zone, and what variants (if any) are automatically blocked.
Making the Label Generation Rules a Reality
Now that the LGR Procedure is in place, we need to “execute” the procedure so we can reach the output in the form of a tool that will determine if a particular label can be allocated. Executing the LGR Procedure requires the formation of generation panels by the different writing system communities in order to define and populate Label Generation Rules.
These rules are then vetted by a second expert panel, the Integration Panel, and the results are added to the IDN LGR for the root-zone. For more information about how the process is progressing and how to get involved, please visit the IDN Variant page at: http://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/variant-tlds.
In the meantime, please mark your calendar to attend our IDN Variant Program Update webinar on Thursday, 27 June 2013 at 23:00 UTC (duration 1 hour). Full details about the webinar are available at http://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/variant-tlds/presentations.
We hope you can join us.
