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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 19 February 2010

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Updated: Call for Applicants for the Position of Volunteer Review Team Member

19 February 2010 | Extension of Application Deadline to 7 March 2010

Public Comment: One & Two-Character .INFO Domains

18 February 2010 | ICANN is opening a public comment forum on a proposed amendment from Afilias Limited to Appendix 6 & 7 of the .INFO Registry Agreement.

Pre-Nairobi ICANN Policy Update Briefing Meeting Details and How to Participate

17 February 2010 | Whether you plan to participate in the upcoming Nairobi meeting remotely or in person, you're invited to a quick reminder of the background and current status of each major policy issue currently under discussion in ICANN.

New gTLD Program Makes Available New Documents for Community Discussion

15 February 2010 | ICANN has published several materials related to the New gTLD Program.

Public Comment: Draft Report on WHOIS Accuracy

15 February 2010 | The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) recently completed a study commissioned by ICANN to determine the percentage of domain names registered under the top 5 gTLDs (i.e., .com, .net, .org, .biz, and .info) that contain accurate WHOIS data. The draft report is being posted for review and comment through 15 April 2010.

Fiscal Year 2011 Operating Plan and Budget Framework Posted for Community Review

15 February 2010 | The release of ICANN's Proposed Framework for the Fiscal Year 2011 (FY11) Operating Plan and Budget kicks off the operational planning process for ICANN, providing the community the first look at the planned work and financial resources required for FY11.

Non-Lawyers' Guide to the 2009 RAA

15 February 2010 | ICANN has produced a Non-Lawyers' Guide to the May 2009 Registrar Accreditation in response to the At-Large Advisory Committee's request for such a guide.

Upcoming Events

7 - 12 March 2010: 37th International Public ICANN Meeting - Nairobi, Kenya

20 - 25 June 2010: 38th International Public ICANN Meeting - Brussels, Belgium

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.

Draft Strategic Plan, 2010 - 2013

Adopted FY10 Operating Plan and Budget

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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."