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Future Policy and Outreach Ambassadors to Attend the Third At-Large Summit (ATLAS III)

By Heidi Ullrich, VP, Policy Development & At-Large Relations | 15 Oct 2019

  • A Blog about Friendship

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    We have a Swedish saying for when someone you love passes away: He is missed in me. As you now know, our dear friend Tarek has passed away and he is missed in me. There will be many eulogies written about this remarkable man who touched so many. I think many of us have...

  • Zoom Security Update

    Zoom recently added new settings to increase security and ensure meeting privacy. These new settings will enforce a password on all new meetings scheduled, but will not affect meetings that have been scheduled prior to 29 September 2019. The only participants who will be...

  • Public Comment Guidelines for the ICANN Organization

    Public Comment is a mechanism that gives the ICANN community and other stakeholders an opportunity to provide input and feedback on ICANN's work. It ensures ICANN and its community "operate to the maximum extent feasible in an open and transparent manner and consistent...

  • ICANN President & CEO Goals for Fiscal Year 2020

    Each year, I seek to focus the ICANN organization on strategic opportunities for improvement. A key element of this process is working with the ICANN Board to set my goals for the next fiscal year. As part of our commitment to accountability and transparency, I am sharing...

  • Chair’s Blog: Wrapping up the Los Angeles Workshop

    In this blog, I share some of the more significant discussions from the ICANN Board workshop that was held earlier this month on 6-8 September in Los Angeles, California, as well as a summary of the key resolutions passed during the public Board meeting. We followed the...

  • ICANN’s Carbon Footprint

    As you may have seen in the Operating Initiatives document put out for Public Comment earlier this year, one of the initiatives ICANN org will undertake in support of the ICANN Strategic Plan for FY 2021-2025 includes an evaluation of the long-term effectiveness,...

  • EPDP Team Makes Key Progress in Phase 2 Work

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    As the Chair of the Expedited Policy Development Process on the Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data Team (EPDP Team), I am pleased to report that the EPDP Team has made crucial progress towards our development of a System for Standardized Access/Disclosure...

  • The Board Leadership Slate

    I have an important message to share with you. The Board has selected Maarten Botterman as the next Chair of the ICANN Board following the process outlined in the Board Governance Committee Practice for Board Engagement in Developing Slate for Board Leadership. I am proud...

  • Chair’s Blog: A Preview of the Los Angeles Board Workshop

    The ICANN Board will meet for its fifth workshop of the calendar year on 6-8 September in Los Angeles, California. At this workshop we will welcome the three 2019 Nominating Committee selected Board members: Mandla Msimang (new), Ihab Osman (new) and Maarten Botterman...

  • North America Stakeholder Engagement Closes FY19 on a High Note

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    Every year, ICANN's Global Stakeholder Engagement (GSE) team produces a report on the progress made towards the North America Stakeholder Engagement Strategy. Today, I'm excited to release our latest year-end report. The report, which covers all of Fiscal Year (FY) 2019,...

  • Updated Lookup Tool for Domain Name Registration Data Now Available

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    Today, ICANN is launching an updated version of its lookup tool that makes use of the Registration Data Access Protocol, known as RDAP, to query, parse, and display registration data in a human-friendly format. The lookup tool – which gives users the ability to look up...

  • DNS and the Internet of Things: Opportunities, Risks, and Challenges

    The ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) has recently published SAC105, a report on the interplay between the Domain Name System (DNS) and the Internet of Things (IoT). Unlike typical SSAC publications, SAC105 does not provide particular recommendations...

  • ICANN in the Middle East – A Glance at the Past Year

    With ICANN's Fiscal Year 2019 (FY19) coming to an end, now is a good time to reflect on our achievements and provide an overview of the future of our engagement strategy in the Middle East. KEY HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR Community Regional Engagement Survey In June 2019, the...

  • Chair’s Blog: ICANN65 Meeting & Board Workshop

    Thank you to everyone who participated in ICANN65. This fourth Policy Forum was the second held in Africa and the third ICANN Public Meeting held in Marrakech, Morocco. ICANN65 served as a platform for cross-community dialogue on important issues and topics, such as the...

  • Known Zoom Vulnerabilities

    Earlier this week, two vulnerabilities in the Zoom application for Mac devices were disclosed by a security researcher. These vulnerabilities include the use of a local host web server on Mac devices to operate Zoom, and the way in which video is enabled for Zoom...

  • The NextGen@ICANN Program: Past Results and Future Plans

    The NextGen@ICANN Program is now five years old. To mark the anniversary, we've launched a consultation to take stock of its results so far and lay the groundwork for future improvements. Our goal is to take a close look at NextGen@ICANN to ensure it continues to evolve...

  • Operating Standards: Guiding ICANN’s Specific Reviews

    On 23 June 2019, the ICANN Board adopted the Operating Standards for Specific Reviews [PDF, 647 KB] at ICANN65 in Marrakech. This is a significant contribution to improving review effectiveness at ICANN. The Operating Standards are mandated by ICANN's Bylaws and guide how...

  • Thank you to Marrakech, Bonjour to Montréal

    Two words have always defined ICANN: evolutionary change. That principle is well established, regardless of whether we are talking about the community, the organization, or the Board. Evolutionary change will frame ICANN’s next Public Meeting, ICANN66, in Montréal,...

  • Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Morocco

    One of the unique aspects of the ICANN community is its truly global nature and the opportunity to meet and work with people from across the world. We’re getting that chance again here in Morocco – a country with a rich history, diverse culture, and a growing Internet...

  • Automated Transcripts from Zoom at ICANN65

    As you know, ICANN moved to Zoom as its web conferencing solution and we are pleased with the positive feedback we have received aboutthisnew system. One of the most welcome developments about Zoom has been the introduction of its automatic transcriptionfeature. You may...

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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."