Skip to main content
Resources

Registry Annual Certification of Compliance

Registry operators that meet the conditions outlined below during at least part of the calendar year being reviewed are required to submit an annual certification of compliance case to ICANN org:

  1. If a registry operator or a registry-related party also operates as a provider of registrar or registrar-reseller services, it must certify it is compliant with the Registry Operator Code of Conduct (Specification 9).
  2. If a registry operator is exempt from Specification 9, it must certify that it continues to meet the criteria for a Code of Conduct Exemption.
  3. If a registry operator has a .Brand TLD registry agreement, it must certify that it meets the criteria of a .Brand TLD per Specification 13 (.BRAND TLD provisions).

Important: Registry operators must submit the applicable annual certification(s) within twenty (20) calendar days following the end of each calendar year (1-20 January).

Please note registry operators must include the following when submitting a new service request:

  • Dates of certification period.
  • A certification of its compliance with the applicable contractual provisions.
  • (Only for Specification 9 and Specification 13): Results of internal reviews conducted by the registry operator to verify compliance with contractual provisions.

If you have further questions, please review the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) or reach out to your ICANN Account Manager.

A note about our terms of service:

We have updated our electronic terms of service to provide greater transparency and align with laws applicable to us. Learn more.

This site uses cookies to deliver an efficient user experience and to help us see how the site is used. Learn more.OK

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."