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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 27 March 2015

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

Notice of Preliminary Determination To Grant Registrar Data Retention Waiver Request

27 March 2015 | ICANN has made a preliminary determination that it is prepared to grant a data retention waiver request submitted by Registrar COREHUB S.R.L. ("COREHUB") under the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (the "2013 RAA").

Results Available for 25 March 2015 New gTLD Program Auction

25 March 2015 | On 25 March 2015, Power Auctions LLC, ICANN's authorized auction service provider, conducted a New gTLD Program Auction to resolve string contention for two new generic top-level domain (gTLD) strings: .PING and .SRL.

CCWG-Accountability Co-Chairs Statement | Istanbul, 25 March 2015

25 March 2015 | Members and participants of the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) met in Istanbul, Turkey, on 23-24 March 2015.

ICANN Grants Data Retention Waiver to Secura GmbH

24 March 2015 | Secura GmbH ("Registrar") submitted to ICANN a Registrar Data Retention Waiver Request ("Waiver Request") pursuant to Section 3 of the Data Retention Specification of the 2013 RAA, which provides that if a registrar is subject to the same applicable law that gave rise to ICANN's request to grant a previous data retention waiver under the 2013 RAA, a registrar may request that ICANN grant a similar waiver, which request shall be approved by ICANN, unless ICANN provides Registrar with a reasonable justification for not approving such request.

ICANN Announces 2015 Hardware Security Module Replacement Project for the Root Key Signing Key

23 March 2015 | The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced the 2015 Hardware Security Module Replacement Project for the Root Key Signing Key.

Call for Expressions of Interest to Host ICANN Meetings in 2017 and 2018

23 March 2015 | ICANN is actively seeking hosts for its public meetings to be held in 2017 and 2018 in Europe, Africa, Asia/Australia/Pacific, North America, and Latin America/Caribbean.

Call for Expressions of Interest to Host ICANN Meetings in Latin America and North America in 2016

23 March 2015 | ICANN is actively seeking hosts for its public meetings to be held 27-30 June 2016 in Latin America/Caribbean Islands and 29 Oct - 4 Nov 2016 in North America.


Upcoming Events

21-25 June 2015: 53rd International Public ICANN Meeting – Buenos Aires

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, 2012 - 2015

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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."