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  • Chair’s Blog: Wrapping up the Istanbul Workshop

    In this blog, I share some of the more significant discussions from the ICANN Board workshop, which was held earlier this month in Istanbul, Turkey, as well as a summary of the key resolutions passed during the public Board meeting in Istanbul. I will also update you on...

  • ICANN to Participate in the Upcoming Africa Internet Summit

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    This year, members of the ICANN community and organization will participate in the Africa Internet Summit (AIS) taking place in Kampala, Uganda, from 9 to 21 June, which is a multistakeholder conference on information and communication technologies. The Summit will bring...

  • Registration Directory Service (RDS) Roadmap Update

    The ICANN organization (org) wants to keep the community informed as the policy and management of registration data is evaluated. New information about ongoing projects related to Registration Directory Service (RDS) has just been published. Updates to this roadmap,...

  • Coming Soon: Operational Improvements to the RSEP Process

    For the last several months, the ICANN organization has collaborated with the gTLD Registries Stakeholder Group (RySG) to improve the efficiency and predictability of the process for reviewing registry operator requests under the Registry Services Evaluation Policy...

  • Raising Awareness About Registrant Issues and Challenges

    Today, the ICANN organization Registrant Program published the second edition of a report on Issues and Challenges Impacting Domain Name Registrants [PDF, 263 KB] containing updated data from the ICANN Global Support Center (GSC), the Contractual Compliance department and...

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

    From 1-3 May, the ICANN Board will convene in Istanbul, Turkey, for its third Board workshop of calendar year 2019. We’ll use this time to discuss and deliberate on some important topics, such as Internationalized Domain Names, the subsequent round of new generic...

  • ATRT3 Review Team Makes Progress at First Face-to-Face Meeting

    The third Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT3) had its first face-to-face meeting in Los Angeles on 3 – 5 April 2019. The main objectives of the meeting were to: Develop and prioritize scope items for our review, as guided by ICANN's Bylaws (see Article 4,...

  • Capacity Development Community Survey Results

    Capacity development has become an increasingly important part of regional engagement for the ICANN organization. Preliminary qualitative data collected from the regional engagement teams indicate requests for technical and leadership training are increasing. This...

  • Next Steps for the Technical Study Group & EPDP

    During ICANN64, the Technical Study Group on Access to Non-Public Registration Data (TSG) presented a Draft Technical Model. The team took feedback from the community of a range of topics and is currently working to revise the Model to reflect the relevant comments. You...

  • Transitioning ICANN's Remote Participation Platform to Zoom

    After careful consideration, ICANN org has decided to transition our official remote participation platform from Adobe Connect to Zoom. In January 2019, we entered into a contract with Zoom to license its product for widespread deployment. Plans are being executed now so...

  • Take Part in ICANN's Age Diversity and Participation Survey

    The ICANN organization has launched an Age Diversity and Participation Survey as a continuation of its pilot project to collect data on ICANN community perceptions involving various forms of diversity. The age survey is an extension of the Gender Diversity and...

  • Chair’s Blog: ICANN64 Meeting & Board Workshop

    With ICANN64 now behind us, I'd like to briefly share thoughts on our week in Kobe, summarize the highlights of the Board workshop, and provide a summary of the key resolutions that the Board recently passed. Our Week in Kobe Let me start by thanking everyone who...

  • A Review of the Eastern European DNS Forum: First Takeaways

    On the 28 January, a community survey was sent out to previous participants of the Eastern European DNS Forum and the regional community as a whole. The survey aimed to understand participant satisfaction and solicit feedback on improvements that could be made to the DNS...

  • Technical Study Group Engages with Community in Kobe

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    After a productive week of meetings with community groups at ICANN64 in Kobe, Japan, the Technical Study Group on Access to Non-Public Registration Data has charted a course toward finishing its work by mid-April. On behalf of the entire team, I'd like to thank the...

  • Next Steps for ICANN Board Working Group on Anti-Harassment

    The ICANN Board Working Group on Anti-Harassment met with a small cross-section of interested community members at ICANN64 in Kobe, Japan, to discuss the Board Working Group's workplan and agree on next steps. The community members in attendance shared many valuable ideas...

  • Returning to Marrakech: Looking Ahead to ICANN65

    We kicked off 2019 ICANN Public Meetings with a successful ICANN64 in Kobe, Japan. Now I welcome the community back to Africa for ICANN65 in Marrakech, Morocco from 24-27 June. ICANN65 is a four-day Policy Forum, which gives the global Internet community a chance to focus...

  • Independent Review Process Standing Panel – Call to Action

    As we work collectively to complete the full implementation of the updated Independent Review Process (IRP), ICANN organization seeks community inputs on the process for the selection of a standing panel to hear IRPs. There are still open questions on how ICANN’s...

  • Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Kobe, Japan

    Perched between Osaka Bay and soaring Mount Rokko, Kobe is diverse and surprising. The Kobe, Osaka, and Kyoto metropolitan area, known as the Keihanshinregion, is the second most populous area in Japan behind greater Tokyo. The port city of Kobe was one of the first...

  • Welcome to ICANN64

    Welcome to Kobe, Japan, for ICANN64. As a few of you may recall, the last time an ICANN meeting was held in Japan was in the year 2000, for ICANN06. Quite a lot has changed since then, but the intention of these meetings remains the same – to come together to find...

  • ようこそ！Yokoso! Welcome to Kobe for ICANN64!

    If this is your first time attending an ICANN Public Meeting, let me start with a couple of insider tips: Please bookmark the ICANN64 Meetings pageand download the Meetings app. These tools will help you navigate some 300 sessions taking place over the week. Join us for...

  • Efforts to Provide a Safer Environment

    As we approach ICANN64 in Kobe, Japan, I want to share some important information regarding the Office of the Ombudsman. I am pleased to announce that Barbara (Barb) Curwin will once again be part of the Ombuds Team at ICANN64. Her presence and assistance were greatly...

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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."