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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 29 May 2015

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

ICANN Announces Phase One Results from Multiyear Consumer Study on the Domain Name Landscape

29 May 2015 | The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today published the findings from its ICANN Global Consumer Research Study, Phase One, conducted on its behalf by Nielsen, to measure aspects of consumer awareness, perceived consumer choice, experience and trust related to the current generic top-level domain (gTLD) landscape and the domain name system (DNS).

Proposed Renewal of .PRO Unsponsored Registry Agreement

28 May 2015 | ICANN is posting for public comment the proposed agreement for renewal of the 2010 Registry Agreement for .PRO, which was originally set to expire on 22 April 2015.

Proposed Renewal of .CAT Sponsored TLD Registry Agreement

28 May 2015 | ICANN is posting for public comment the proposed agreement for renewal of the 2005 Registry Agreement for .CAT, which is set to expire on 19 December 2015.

Catching Up with Fellowship Alumni: Highlights from the Fellowship Survey Report

28 May 2015 | The ICANN Fellowship program, now hosted by the Development and Public Responsibility Department (DPRD), has grown tremendously since first being held at ICANN 29 in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2007.

Announcement: New gTLD Applicant and GDD Portals Update

27 May 2015 | The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today provided an update on its investigation into a data exposure issue in the New gTLD Applicant and GDD (Global Domains Division) portals, first reported on 1 March 2015.

Africa Internet Summit '15 | Tunis, Tunisia | 24 May - 5th June, 2015

26 May 2015 | ICANN is proud to be part of the third edition of the Africa Internet Summit 2015 in Tunis, Tunisia this year.

Release of Country and Territory Names within the .KOMATSU and RICOH TLDs

26 May 2015 | Two (2) Registry Services Evaluation Policy (RSEP) requests were submitted by the registry operators listed below to allow the release of country and territory names for the below TLDs. In total, the requests concern 2 New gTLDs.

Community Using Neo-Brahmi Scripts Forms Generation Panel for Developing the Root Zone Label Generation Rules (LGR)

26 May 2015 | ICANN is pleased to announce the formation of the Generation Panel to develop Label Generation Rules (LGR) for the Root Zone for nine Neo-Brahmi scripts.

ICG Announces Upcoming Conference Calls

25 May 2015 | The IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) has scheduled its seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth conference calls.

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."