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ICANN56 Helsinki 27-30 June 2016

Register Today for ICANN56 in Helsinki

29 Mar 2016

Apply now ICANN56 NextGen@ICANN Program

NextGen@ICANN Application Round Open for ICANN56

29 Mar 2016

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Watch the ICANN55 Wrap Up Interview

29 Mar 2016

ICANN | GAC Governmental Advisory Committee

ICANN55 Marrakech GAC Communiqué Now Available

29 Mar 2016

Announcements

Data Retention Waiver - ONE.COM A/S, Denmark

DATA RETENTION WAIVER ONE.COM A/S, DENMARK ONE.COM A/S ("Registrar") submitted to ICANN a Registrar Data Retention Waiver Request ("Waiver Request") on the basis of Registrar's contention that compliance with the data collection and/or...

28 Mar 2016  |  Registrars, DNS Marketplace, Technology

Release of Country and Territory Names within the .TORAY and .PICTET TLDs

Open Date: 28 March 2016 Close Date: 10 May 2016 Originating Organization: Global Domains Division Categories/Tags: Top-Level Domains Second-Level Domains Contracted Party...

28 Mar 2016  |  gTLD, New gTLDs, Registries, Civil Society, DNS Marketplace, Technology

Call for Volunteers: Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) Implementation and Work Stream 2

WHAT IS THE CCWG-ACCOUNTABILITY? In December 2014, the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) was formed to deliver proposals that would enhance ICANN's accountability towards all...

25 Mar 2016  |  Accountability

Data Retention Waiver - 101Domain GRS Limited

DATA RETENTION WAIVER 101DOMAIN GRS LIMITED 101DOMAIN GRS LIMITED (Formerly - "Emerald Global Registrar Services Limited") ("Registrar") submitted to ICANN a Registrar Data Retention Waiver Request ("Waiver Request") on the basis of Registrar's...

22 Mar 2016  |  Registrars, DNS Marketplace, Technology

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Interview with GAC Representative Tracy Hackshaw During ICANN53

Interview with GAC Representative Tracy Hackshaw from Trinidad and Tobago, filmed in June 2015 in Buenos Aires

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Interview with GAC Representative Wanawit Ahkuputra During ICANN53

Interview with GAC Representative Wanawit Ahkuputra from Thailand filmed in June 2015 in Buenos Aires.

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ICANN55 Wrap Up Interview With Atallah And Crocker

ICANN's Luna Madi sat down with interim ICANN President & CEO Akram Atallah and ICANN Board Chair Steve Crocker to talk about ICANN's historic week. They discussed the community's extraordinary...

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Interview With Katrina Sataki ccNSO Chair At ICANN55

Interview With Katrina Sataki ccNSO Chair At ICANN55

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Blog Posts

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ICANN at RightsCon Silicon Valley

  |   By Rafik Dammak, NCUC Chair, and Adam Peake, ICANN Civil Society Engagement

Conduct at ICANN Meetings

  |   By Akram Atallah

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Contributing to Sustainable Development Goals

  |   By Jia-Rong Low, Vice President and Managing Director, ICANN Asia Pacific

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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."