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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 7 February 2014

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Request for Information on Contact Data Validation and Verification Systems (Available Until 7 March 2014)

7 February 2014 | ICANN is publishing a Request for Information (RFI) to identify any commercially-available services and software that might be capable of validating or verifying domain name registration contact data (such as WHOIS).

WHOIS Privacy Proxy Services Questionnaire (Available Until 28 February 2014)

5 February 2014 | The Expert Working Group on gTLD Directory Services (EWG) is seeking information from Privacy and Proxy (P/P) Service Providers on existing practices to inform its deliberations as it develops recommendations on best practices for the proposed Next Generation Registration Directory Service (RDS) to replace today's Whois system.

Express Interest in Becoming a Panel Member for the New gTLD Program PIC Dispute Resolution Procedure

5 February 2014 | ICANN is seeking Expressions of Interest to serve on the Public Interest Commitment Dispute Resolution Procedure Standing Panel.

Invitation to Join the GNSO-SSR | A GNSO Sponsored Security, Stability, Resiliency (SSR) Mailing List

4 February 2014 | This charter briefly describes an open group sponsored by the GNSO. This group will informally review SSAC reports to determine whether they contain recommendations that might deserve broader consideration in the GNSO.

Dubai Forum to Examine Business Opportunities in Domain Name Sector

3 February 2014 | On the 3rd and 4th of February the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (TRA) of UAE, ICANN and ISOC will host the Middle East DNS forum in Dubai.


Upcoming Events

23-27 March 2014: 49th International Public ICANN Meeting – Singapore

About ICANN

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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."