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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 6 May 2011

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Public Comment Invited on: Proposed Permanent Charter of GNSO's Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group

6 May 2011 | A Public Comment Forum is being initiated to seek community comments on the proposed permanent Charter of the GNSO's Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG).

Public Comment: ICANN FY 12 Security, Stability & Resiliency Framework

2 May 2011 | ICANN has previously published two Security, Stability and Resiliency (SSR) Plans, in 2009 and 2010. ICANN has released the Fiscal Year 2012 version for public comment in 5 UN languages. This represents a new format for the FY 12 SSR Framework, which is being published to provide for community input prior to the ICANN 41 meeting in Singapore and publication of the FY 12 ICANN Operating Plan and Budget.

Public Comment: Proposed ICANN Process for Handling Requests for Removal of Cross-Ownership Restrictions for Existing gTLDs

2 May 2011 | Existing registry operators assert that they need their current restrictions on cross-ownership to be removed in order to be able to compete on a level-playing field with registrars that are planning to apply to operate new gTLDs. Commencing a public comment period on the process at this time is intended to solicit community input so the Board may consider the process on 20 June 2011 along with the new gTLD Applicant Guidebook.

Public Comment: Community Input Requested on Academia Representation on NomCom

30 April 2011 | On 21 April 2011, the ICANN Board approved the initiation of a 30-day period of public comment to obtain community input to inform the BGC's future work on the feasibility of identifying an entity to make appointments to the NomCom as called for in Article VII, Section 2.8.c of the Bylaws.

Upcoming Events

19 - 24 June 2011: 41st International Public ICANN Meeting - Singapore

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Strategic Plan, 2010 - 2013

Adopted FY11 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."