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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 30 May 2008

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

ICANN Calls for Expressions of Interest to Host 2009 Asia Pacific Meeting

28 May 2008 | ICANN is actively soliciting expressions of interest from organisations seeking to host its Asia Pacific International Public Meeting in 2009.

Clarification: "Worst Spam Offenders" Notified by ICANN

23 May 2008 | ICANN has sent enforcement notices and notices of concern to certain registrars, including those reported this week as being the registrars for the majority of websites advertised in spam emails.


ICANN in the News

These links lead to external news stories. ICANN is not responsible for the content of these pages.

Analysis: Crackdown on domain name crooks (United Press International)

29 May 2008 | The non-profit association that oversees Internet addresses is trying to crack down on shady Web pages used by spammers and hackers.

ICANN looks to lend a hand in spam fight (Beta News)

29 May 2008 | The administrative body in charge of the Internet's mapping of IP addresses says it has sent compliance letters to registrars commonly used by spammers, although it admits it can do little to stop spam itself.

ICANN Takes Action Against Spam Havens (Redmond Media Group)

28 May 2008 | The organization that oversees administration of the Internet last week reported that it has sent enforcement notices to a handful of domain registrars identified as having registered the names of the majority of illicit Web sites using spam to generate traffic.

Final APTLD Kuala Lumpur Meeting Communiqué, 22-23 May 2008 (APTLD.org)

24 May 2008 | APTLD members and supporters met in Kuala Lumpur for a series of meetings in late May, with over 110 people from 27 ccTLDs and 27 other organisations participating in a range of workshops and seminars. Two days of APTLD members meetings were preceded by an Attack & Disaster Response Planning (ADRP) workshop and the MYNIC World Cyber Security Seminar, and followed by a day of APTLD organised workshops on ccTLD policy development, marketing and registry software options.


Upcoming Events

20 June 2008 - EGENI Europe 2008 - Paris, France

22 - 27 June 2008: 32nd International Public ICANN Meeting - Paris, France


About ICANN

ICANN Bylaws

Our bylaws are very important to us. They capture our mission of security, stability and accessibility, and compel the organization to be open and transparent. Learn more at www.ICANN.org.

Strategic Plan, July 2007 - June 2010

Proposed FY09 Operating Plan and Budget [PDF, 476 KB]

Adopted Budget Fiscal Year 2007 - 2008 [PDF, 426 KB]


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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."