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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 6 February 2015

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

500+ New gTLDs Introduced into the Internet

6 February 2015 | The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced that over 500 new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) have now been introduced into the Internet.

CWG-Stewardship Publishes Discussion Document for ICANN 52

6 February 2015 | The CWG-Stewardship has created a Discussion Document for the ICANN 52 meeting in Singapore.

IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group - Fourth Face-to-Face Meeting & Public Session at ICANN 52

5 February 2015 | The IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) will be holding its next face-to-face meeting from Friday, 6th to Saturday, 7th February 2015 from 09:00-17:00 SGT/ 01:00-09:00 UTC in Singapore.

Design Team Selected for DNS Root Zone Key-Signing-Key

4 February 2015 | In December, ICANN solicited Statements of Interest for inclusion on a Design Team to provide expert input into the plan to change the current DNS Root Zone Key-Signing-Key.

Adiel Akplogan to Join ICANN as VP of Technical Engagement

4 February 2015 | Veteran Internet technology expert Adiel Akplogan is joining ICANN in the newly created role of Vice President for Technical Engagement.

Overview of Africa Sessions During ICANN 52 Meeting in Singapore

3 February 2015 | ICANN's 52nd Public Meeting is taking place in Singapore from 8 -12 February at the Raffles City Convention Centre. This meeting comes at a critical time especially with the recent developments since the historic NTIA announcement to transition stewardship of the IANA functions to the multistakeholder community last March 4, 2014.

Generation Panel for the Armenian Script ‭Root Zone‬ Label Generation Rules (LGR) Seated‬‬‬‬

3 February 2015 | ICANN is pleased to announce that the Generation Panel for the Armenian Script Root Zone Label Generation Rules (LGR) has been seated.

Draft Report: Rights Protection Mechanisms Review

2 February 2015 | ICANN is posting a draft review report on the rights protection mechanisms (RPMs) established as safeguards in the New gTLD Program.

RSSAC Elects Tripti Sinha as Co-Chair

2 February 2015 | The Root Server System Advisory Committee (RSSAC) has elected Tripti Sinha, Assistant Vice President and Deputy CIO for the Division of Information Technology at the University of Maryland, as co-chair effective 1 January 2015.

IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group – Announcement Regarding Community Comments

2 February 2015 | The IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG)'s Request for Proposals from the operational communities noted the following: "While the ICG is requesting complete formal proposals through processes convened by each of the operational communities, and that all interested parties get involved as early as possible in the relevant community processes, some parties may choose to provide comments directly to the ICG about specific aspects of particular proposals, about the community processes, or about the ICG's own processes. Comments may be directly submitted to the ICG any time via email to icg-forum@icann.org."

Upcoming Events

8-12 February 2015: 52nd 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."