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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 1 November 2013

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Proposed Bylaws Changes Regarding the Technical Liaison Group

30 October 2013 | Bylaws changes are proposed in order to increase availability of technical advice to the Board as well as the effectiveness of the Technical Liaison Group as set forth in the Bylaws.

ICANN's Draft Vision, Mission & Focus Areas for a Five-Year Strategic Plan

29 October 2013 | In line with ICANN's commitment to the multi-stakeholder model, a working draft is provided for community discussion and public comment. It proposes a new Vision, reiterates ICANN's existing Mission, and describes five proposed Focus Areas with goals.

ICANN Names New Chief Security, Stability and Resiliency Officer

29 October 2013 | Los Angeles, California… John Crain has been named ICANN's new Chief Security, Stability and Resiliency Officer. In this newly created position Crain will assume the responsibilities of Jeff Moss, who announced he is stepping down from his position as Chief Security Officer at the end of the year.

ccNSO FoI WG's Interim Report on "Revocation"

28 October 2013 | The ccNSO Framework of Interpretation Working Group (FoI) seeks public comment on its initial recommendations related to "Revocation", defined as redelgations undertaken without the consent of the ccTLD manager.

UNESCO, ICANN and ISOC to Launch Development of Glossary on Internet Governance for Arabic Speakers

27 October 2013 | UNESCO, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Internet Society (ISOC) are finalizing a framework to establish an Arabic glossary of Internet governance terms to support engagement in multistakeholder Internet governance processes by Arabic-speaking communities.

Upcoming Events

17-21 November 2013: 48th International Public ICANN Meeting - Buenos Aires

About ICANN

ICANN Bylaws

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Adopted FY13 Operating Plan and Budget

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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."