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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 8 May 2015

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

gTLD Registries Stakeholder Group (RySG) Charter Amendments

8 May 2015 | In March 2015, the gTLD Registries Stakeholder Group (RySG) of the GNSO submitted a set of Charter revisions to the Staff for processing in compliance with Phase I of the Process For Amending GNSO Stakeholder Group and Constituency Charters. As part of its Process Phase II responsibilities, Staff determined and reported to the Board's Structural Improvements Committee (SIC) that the proposed changes did not present any fiscal or liability concerns for the ICANN organization. The SIC has subsequently directed Staff to open a Public Comment Forum to solicit community input concerning the RySG Charter amendments.

ICANN Holds Calls with Community on Public Comments Submitted on the Draft FY16 Operating Plan and Budget

5 May 2015 | ICANN will be holding community calls during which the comments submitted on the Draft FY16 Operating Plan and Budget will be presented by the submitters to ICANN Staff, in order to enhance the understanding of the comments, and thus supporting an improved response quality.

GNSO Privacy & Proxy Services Accreditation Issues Working Group Initial Report

5 May 2015 | This public comment proceeding seeks to obtain community input on the Initial Report from the GNSO's Policy Development Process Working Group on issues relating to the accreditation of privacy and proxy service providers.

Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) - Input Needed on its Proposed Accountability Enhancements (Work Stream 1)

4 May 2015 | The CCWG-Accountability requests community feedback on the proposed enhancements to ICANN's accountability framework it has identified as essential to happen or be committed to before the IANA Stewardship Transition takes place (Work Stream 1).

WEBINAR: Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability): Presentation on the Draft Report for Public Comment

4 May 2015 | The Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability was established to initiate a related process to the IANA Stewardship Transition process to ensure that ICANN's accountability and transparency commitments to the global Internet community are maintained and enhanced in the absence of its historical contractual relationship with the U.S. Government.

IDN ccTLD Request from Greece Successfully Passes String Evaluation

4 May 2015 | ICANN is pleased to announce the successful evaluation of the proposed IDN ccTLD string for Greece.


Upcoming Events

21-25 June 2015: 53rd International Public ICANN Meeting – Buenos Aires

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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."