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  • Our Communications in Latin America and the Caribbean During 2017

    This blog is becoming a tradition! It's interesting to see how far we have come by reading our previous blogs: 2015 LAC Communications highlights and 2016 LAC Communications highlights. For the third year in a row, as the year comes to an end, we are happy to share our...

  • Tec Monterrey and the Fourth LAC DNS Forum

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    Some say the key to sustainable development is the knowledge economy. A place that exemplifies this idea in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region is Monterrey, Mexico. The city is home to the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education – also known as...

  • What’s New with Reviews?

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    ICANN Reviews are one of several important accountability mechanisms that help demonstrate how ICANN delivers on its commitments. There are many ways you can get involved and share your input to Reviews. Learn about the latest participation opportunities below. Specific...

  • ICANN61 Confirmed for Puerto Rico

    The ICANN Meetings team recently visited Puerto Rico to assess the recovery progress made since Hurricane Maria, and are pleased to reconfirm San Juan as the location for ICANN61. The meeting will be held from 10-15 March 2018. We recognize that Puerto Rico is still in...

  • ICANN Participation in Global Conference on Cyberspace 2017

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    The Global Conference on Cyberspace (GCCS) brings governments, the private sector, and civil society together to promote practical cooperation in cyberspace, work towards enhancing capacity building, and discuss norms for responsible behavior in cyberspace. The GCCS...

  • Eastern European DNS Forum: Two Years Old and Growing

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    On 12 and 13 October 2017, we held the second Eastern European DNS Forum (EE DNS Forum) in Minsk, Belarus, hosted by Belarusian country code top-level domain (ccTLD) technical administrator hoster.by. With over 160 participants from more than 10 countries from the region...

  • ICANN in Wuzhen, China - Fourth World Internet Conference and More

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    In a few days, I will be visiting China for the Fourth World Internet Conference (WIC), and will also visit Chinese community members in the vicinity. ICANN is not new to the WIC, also known as the Wuzhen Summit. Members of the ICANN community, Board, and organization...

  • Inaugural Central European Internet Governance Forum Held in Warsaw

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    Last week marked an important milestone for Internet governance in Central Europe, as the region held its first Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Warsaw, Poland. This regional IGF comes on the heels of the Polish IGF, which was held for the first time last year and...

  • Assisting Registrants in Areas Affected by Hurricane Maria

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    We have recently heard from community members that registrants affected by Hurricane Maria may be unable to renew their domain name due to ongoing issues with the electric power grid and telecommunications infrastructures in the Caribbean and surrounding areas. This means...

  • Data Protection/Privacy Activity Recap

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    We have just returned from a very busy ICANN60 meeting in Abu Dhabi, where there were many productive community discussions focused on the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We want to provide you with a brief recap of these dialogues, recent...

  • Transparency of Security Efforts in ICANN

    Security vulnerabilities in systems are an unfortunate fact of life. The Engineering and Information Technology team in the ICANN org is working hard on many fronts to protect and enhance the security of our systems. From time to time events occur that result in specific...

  • Chair's Blog: ICANN60 Meeting & Board Workshop

    Before I share my thoughts on the latest Board Workshop and some aspects of ICANN60, I want to take a moment to reflect. I am deeply honored to have been selected as the new Chair of the ICANN Board and do not take lightly the responsibilities concomitant with my new...

  • Community Onboarding Pilot Program ICANN60 Update

    ICANN60 marked the beginning of the second year of the ICANN Community Onboarding Pilot Program (COP). In our two pre-ICANN60 meetings with participants of the COP, we agreed to use our face-to-face meeting in Abu Dhabi to take stock of progress to date and to identify...

  • A Look Ahead to ICANN61 in Puerto Rico

    ICANN60 has been a successful and productive meeting by all accounts. As many of you know, this was our Annual General Meeting – it is our longest meeting of the year and focuses on outreach and engagement, in addition to the development of policy that is the hallmark of...

  • Recognizing Our Community

    Community-driven work is at the core of ICANN's mission. Countless hours are spent in working groups across our Supporting Organizations, Advisory Committees, and other groups, including the Nominating Committee. Together, these community groups develop and refine...

  • Board Member Integrity Screening

    I have no doubt that all of ICANN agrees that the ICANN community and the organization should expect Board members to hold themselves to the highest standards of integrity, and to uphold the reputation and credibility of the Board as a whole. To that end, I want to share...

  • How Will WE Deal with Confrontation?

    There are two common ways people react to confrontation. One way is taking a noble, ethical, or diplomatic course or response, especially in response to negativity or ill treatment – choosing the course of action which is the least likely to harm or upset other people....

  • Making Progress with the Arabic Script in Domain Names

    Members of the Task Force on Arabic Script Internationalized Domain Names (TF-AIDN) The TF-AIDN is a community-driven working group. It was formed by ICANN’s Middle East Strategy Working Group (MESWG) in 2013 to work on technical issues and solutions. The TF-AIDN...

  • Reputation Block Lists: Protecting Users Everywhere

    Cybercrime is a constant problem. What many Internet users don’t know is that the vast majority of users are being protected all the time by Reputation Block Lists (RBLs). RBLs are built into the Internet services we all use every day to keep harmful material out of your...

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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."