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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 30 January 2015

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Selection of International Law Advisor to the Enhancing ICANN Accountability Process

30 January 2015 | The Accountability & Governance Public Experts Group (PEG) announces the selection of the 7th and final Advisor to the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG).

ATRT2 Implementation Program Update

30 January 2015 | We are pleased to provide the second update on the implementation of recommendations from the Second Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT2).

Third Face-to-Face Meeting for the Task Force on Arabic Script IDNs (TF-AIDN) to Convene in Singapore

30 January 2015 | Since the second Face-to-Face meeting of the TF-AIDN in Istanbul, Turkey last June, the group has been working on several fronts related to Arabic Script IDNs including scrutinizing the code point repertoire and defining variant code points for the proposal for Root Zone Label Generation Rules (LGR) and the Universal Acceptance of Arabic script IDNs. The third face-to-face meeting in Singapore will conclude the work covering topics such as the Arabic Script Code Point Repertoire, Code Point Variants, Variant Disposition, Whole Label Evaluation Rules and the XML Representation of the Data, all in the context of finalizing the proposal for the Arabic script for the Root Zone LGR. The group will also discuss the next steps to be taken like addressing the Universal Acceptance of Arabic script IDNs.

WEBINAR: Cross Community Working Group (CWG) On IANA Naming Related Functions: Current Progress and Key Issues

27 January 2015 | Following the request of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) for ICANN to “convene a multistakeholder process to develop a plan to transition the U.S. government stewardship role” with regard to the IANA Functions and related root zone management, a Cross Community Working Group (CWG-Stewardship) was formed with the purpose of developing a consolidated transition proposal for the elements of the IANA Functions relating to domain names.

Joint CWG-Stewardship & CCWG-Accountability Chairs' Statement

26 January 2015 | As both Cross Community Working Groups prepare for community engagement and work sessions at ICANN52 in Singapore, the Chairs of the CWG-Stewardship and CCWG-Accountability would like to recognize the interdependence and connected nature of the work of their respective groups, as set out by the ICANN processes and further reinforced by each working group's Charter.


Upcoming Events

8-12 February 2015: 52nd International Public ICANN Meeting – Singapore

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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."