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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 14 March 2014

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Internet Technical Leaders Welcome IANA Globalization Progress

14 March 2014 | The leaders of the Internet technical organizations responsible for coordination of the Internet infrastructure (IETF, IAB, RIRs, ccTLD ROs, ICANN, ISOC, and W3C), welcome the US Government's announcement of the suggested changes related to the IANA functions contract.

Administrator of Domain Name System Launches Global Multistakeholder Accountability Process

14 March 2014 | The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today launched a process to transition the role of the United States Government relating to the Internet's unique identifiers system.

ICANN Grants Data Retention Waiver to OVH SAS

12 March 2014 | OVH SAS ("Registrar") submitted to ICANN a Registrar Data Retention Waiver Request ("Waiver Request") on the basis of Registrar's contention that compliance with the data collection and/or retention requirements of the Data Retention Specification in the 2013 RAA violates applicable law in France.

Panel on Global Internet Cooperation & Governance Mechanisms Submits NETMundial Contribution Following Sunnylands Meeting

11 March 2014 | RANCHO MIRAGE, CALIF. – On March 7, the Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms submitted a contribution to NETMundial following their second meeting to discuss guiding principles for a global Internet governance ecosystem at The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, California.

Draft Implementation Plan for the WHOIS Online Accuracy and Reporting System

11 March 2014 | The Draft Implementation Plan describes ICANN's proposed design for the new WHOIS Online Accuracy Reporting System.

Preliminary Issue Report on Access by IGOs and INGOs to the Curative Rights Protections of the UDRP and URS

10 March 2014 | To obtain community input on the Preliminary Issue Report requested by the GNSO Council concerning possible amendments to the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy and Uniform Rapid Suspension procedure, to enable access to them by protected International Governmental Organizations and International Non-Governmental Organizations.

Bulk Transfer of Domain Names from ABSYSTEMS INC dba yournamemonkey.com to EnCirca, Inc.

10 March 2014 | ICANN has authorized the bulk transfer of gTLD domain names from ABSYSTEMS INC dba yournamemonkey.com to EnCirca, Inc. due to compliance actions taken by ICANN that resulted in the de-accreditation of ABSYSTEMS INC dba yournamemonkey.com.


Upcoming Events

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

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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."