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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 22 May 2015

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Call for RSVPs | GNSO Working Group Newcomer Open House Session | 4 June 2015 at 20:00 UTC

22 May 2015 | The GNSO Working Group Newcomer Open House Session returns on 4 June 2015 at 20:00 UTC and we are pleased to invite you to participate. These informal sessions provide an ideal opportunity for participants to ask questions about the GNSO Policy Development Process and the specifics of taking part in a Working Group.

Pre-ICANN 53 Policy Update Webinar

21 May 2015 | The ICANN Policy Development Support Team will provide a Policy Update Webinar on Thursday, 11 June 2015 at 10:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC, summarizing policy activities across the ICANN policy development community and the ongoing Transition of Stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Functions and the ICANN Accountability efforts.

Chehadé Announces Intention to End His Tenure as ICANN President & CEO in March 2016

21 May 2015 | The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced that President and CEO Fadi Chehadé has informed the Board he will be concluding his tenure in March 2016 to move into a new career in the private sector (outside the Domain Name Industry).

What to Expect at ICANN 53: A Guide for Business Stakeholders

20 May 2015 | When: Monday, 1 June 2015 | 15:00-016:00 UTC

Call for RSVPs | Privacy & Proxy Services Accreditation Issues Working Group Webinar | 28 May 2015 at 14:00 UTC

19 May 2015 | Please join the interim co-chairs of the Privacy & Proxy Services Accreditation Issues Working Group for a one-hour webinar on Thursday 28 May 2015 at 1400 UTC, to hear about the preliminary recommendations that have now been published for public comment by the Working Group.

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."