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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 15 January 2010

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Announcements This Week

Bulk Transfer of Hosting365 Inc. Domains to Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd.

15 January 2010 | ICANN has authorized a bulk transfer of Hosting365 Inc.'s gTLD domain names to Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd., due to a compliance action taken by ICANN that resulted in the de-accreditation of registrar Hosting365 Inc.

Reminder: Draft Strategic Plan Public Comment Closing January 21st

15 January 2010 | As the next element of consultation on the Strategic Plan, ICANN invites comments from the community on a first draft of the plan based on material presented to the community at the Seoul meeting.

Call for Applicants for the Position of Volunteer Review Team Member

13 January 2010 | ICANN invites interested individuals to express interest in serving as a volunteer review team member, representing a Supporting Organization or Advisory Committee.

Application Round Opens for Brussels Meeting Fellowships

11 January 2010 | ICANN has launched the 10th round of Fellowship program applications for its 38th International Public Meeting to be held in Brussels, Belgium on 20-25 June 2010.

Upcoming Events

7 - 12 March 2010: 37th International Public ICANN Meeting - Nairobi, Kenya

20 - 25 June 2010: 38th International Public ICANN Meeting - Brussels, Belgium

About ICANN

ICANN Bylaws

Our bylaws are very important to us. They capture our mission of security, stability and accessibility, and compel the organization to be open and transparent. Learn more at www.ICANN.org.

Draft Strategic Plan, 2010 - 2013

Adopted FY10 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."