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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 23 May 2008

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Your Views Needed: Multilingualism in ICANN Survey

20 May 2008 | ICANN this week enabled an online survey, available in 11 languages including English, to facilitate understanding of the way in which the community uses existing materials prepared in multiple languages.

Ensuring Global Voices Heard at ICANN Cairo Meeting

20 May 2008 | ICANN is putting out the call for fellowship program applications for its 33rd International Public Meeting to be held in Cairo from 2-6 November 2008.

ICANN Sends Notice of Breach to Registrar

19 May 2008 | ICANN sent a notice of breach [PDF, 81 KB] to ICANN-accredited registrar Red Register, Inc. based on Red Register, Inc.'s failure to comply with the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy ("UDRP").

ICANN Posts Draft FY09 Operating Plan and Budget

17 May 2008 | This draft FY09 Operating Plan and Budget is being posted for community review with the support of the Board Finance Committee.


ICANN in the News

These links lead to external news stories. ICANN is not responsible for the content of these pages.

Web Hosting Company Hostway .Pro TLD Reported Approved (Web Host Directory)

22 May 2008 | Hostway has reported that RegistryPro, the exclusive operator of the .Pro top level domain (TLD) on the Internet, has received approval from the ICANN, to greatly expand the scope and availability of the .Pro TLD. The newly ratified terms of service increases the number of professionals who are eligible for the TLD, extends the availability globally, and streamlines the registration process.

Is Enough Progress being Made on IPv6? (IT Business Edge)

16 May 2008 | IPv6 is the corporate and government version of exercising and eating vegetables: Everyone agrees it's a good thing, but somehow most find a way to put it off.


Upcoming Events

18 - 24 May 2008 - APTLD - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - full program [PDF, 404 KB]

  • May 18 & 19 (Sunday & Monday) – Attack & Disaster Response Planning Workshop
  • May 20 & 21 (Tuesday & Wednesday) – World Cyber Security Seminar – Organised by MYNIC
  • May 22 & 23 (Thursday & Friday) – APTLD Member's Meeting
  • May 24, 2008 (Saturday) – APTLD Workshops on
    • ccTLD Policy Development Processes
    • ccTLD Marketing
    • Registry Software Options

20 June 2008 - EGENI Europe 2008 - Paris, France

22 - 27 June 2008: 32nd International Public ICANN Meeting - Paris, France


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.

Strategic Plan, July 2007 - June 2010

Draft FY09 Operating Plan and Budget [PDF, 476 KB]

Adopted Budget Fiscal Year 2007 - 2008 [PDF, 426 KB]


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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."