Tag Archives: top level domains

Cybersecurity

ICANN – IDN Variant TLD Case Study Update

On April 20, 2011, ICANN announced its approach to move forward with the IDN Variant TLDs Issues Project by publishing the Final Proposal for the Project [PDF, 195 KB] and the Call for Volunteers [PDF, 112 KB]. This project is dedicated to identifying the issues involved in the delegation of IDN Variant TLDs.

Today, we are pleased to announce the formation of six case study teams, comprising a total of 66 experts from 29 countries and territories. In addition, six organizations are in the process of being selected to be local hosts for each of the case studies. A local host organization will provide meeting and other facilities to support the case studies work. A decision and announcement will follow shortly.

Individual members are listed at the end of this announcement and they offer expertise in the following areas: DNS, IDNA, linguistics, security & scalability, policy, registry/registrar operations, and community representatives.

On Saturday, 18 June 2011, all-day project team meetings are being planned in Singapore at which the case study teams will meet together in plenary sessions and in individual breakout working sessions.

Interested members of the community can receive updates and participate in the discussions of this work by subscribing to vip@icann.org mailing list (https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/vip) or by visiting https://community.icann.org/display/VIP/.

Arabic Case Study

  1. Sarmad Hussain (Coordinator)
  2. Abdulaziz Al-Zoman
  3. Behnam Esfahbod
  4. Fahd A. Batayneh
  5. Huda Sarfraz
  6. Khaled Koubaa
  7. Manal Ismail
  8. Mohamed El-Bashir
  9. Raed Al-Fayez
  10. Siavash Shahshahani
  11. Syed Iftikhar H. Shah

Chinese Case Study

  1. Xiaodong Lee (Coordinator)
  2. Chris Dillon
  3. Hong Xue
  4. James Seng
  5. Jian Zhang
  6. Joe Zhang
  7. Jonathan Shea
  8. Joseph Yee
  9. June Seo
  10. Shianyong Tseng
  11. Wei Wang
  12. Yoshiro Yoneya

Cyrillic Case Study

  1. Alexey Sozonov (Coordinator)
  2. Alexei Mykhaylov
  3. Alexey Ptashniy
  4. Daniel Kalchev
  5. Iliya Bazlyankov
  6. Oksana Prykhodko
  7. Saso Dimitrijoski
  8. Sergey Sharikov
  9. Vladimir Shadrunov

Devanagari Case Study

  1. Dr. Govind (Coordinator)
  2. Amardeep Singh Chawla
  3. Bal Krishna Bal
  4. Basanta shrestha
  5. Bhavin Turakhia
  6. James Galvin
  7. Jitender Kumar
  8. K. B. Narayanan
  9. Kalyan Kale
  10. Mahesh Kulkarni
  11. Manish Dalal
  12. Prabhakar Kshotriya
  13. Pramod Pandey
  14. Raiomond Doctor
  15. Rajiv Kumar
  16. Satyendra Kumar Pandey
  17. Shashi Bharadwaj
  18. Tulika Pandey

Greek Case Study

  1. Vaggelis Segredakis (Coordinator)
  2. Asimina Giannopoulou
  3. Catherine Tsapikidou
  4. Evangelos Melagrakis
  5. Fotia Panayiotou
  6. George Papapavlou
  7. Giannis Papaioannou
  8. Panagiotis Papaspiliopoulos

Latin Case Study

  1. Jothan Frakes (Coordinator)
  2. Andrzej Bartosiewicz
  3. Cary Karp
  4. Eric Brown
  5. Francisco Obispo
  6. Giovanni Seppia
  7. Wil Tan
  8. Will Shorter

Others

  • The joint ccNSO-GNSO Working Group on IDNs (JIG) will appoint an observer for each case study.

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-3-09jun11-en.htm

ICANN and Governance

ICANN Board Votes to Enhance New gTLDs Competition

New gTLD Registrars and Registries will Compete for the Benefit of ConsumersICANN’s Board of Directors voted to allow new gTLD registries to own registrars, opting not to create new rules prohibiting registrars from applying for or operating new gTLD registries.Following over two years of community discussions, which had not resulted in consensus, the Board carefully considered expert economic advice, community comments, and numerous proposed approaches to registry-registrar cross-ownership.”In the absence of existing policy or new bottom-up policy recommendations, the Board saw no rationale for placing restrictions on cross-ownership;” said Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman of the Board. “Any possible abuses can be better addressed by properly targeted mechanisms. Co-ownership rules are not an optimal technique in this area.”Under the Board resolution additional enforcement mechanisms have been added. New gTLD registry agreements are to include: (1) a Code of Conduct prohibiting any misuse of data or other abusive conduct arising out of registry-registrar cross-ownership; (2) robust auditing requirements; (3) graduated sanctions up to and including contractual termination and punitive damages; and (4) ICANN’s right to refer competition issues to appropriate government competition authorities.Background: The cross-ownership provisions have varied over time and no formal “policy” on this topic has ever been recommended or adopted by ICANN. (For example, each of the seven new gTLDs delegated by ICANN in the 2000-2001 proof-of-concept introduced by ICANN in 2000 have featured some degree of registry-registrar cross-operation or cross-ownership.)The ICANN community has been discussing whether to continue, expand or remove the restrictions in current registry agreements that limit the existing registries from owning more than 15% of a registrar. Some have urged the creation of new rules that would for the first time prohibit registrars from applying for or operating new gTLDs.The ICANN Board had previously attempted to spur a consensus view, asking ICANN’s GNSO to resolve the registry-registrar cross-ownership question. In May 2010, the ICANN Board encouraged the GNSO to develop a consensus based policy on this issue, but indicated that the Board would review the issue if no consensus position was reached. The GNSO recently reported that it has been unable to reach consensus.###To read the resolutions passed by ICANN Board, go here: icann.org/en/minutes/resolutions-05nov10-en.htmTo learn more about gTLDs, go here: icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld-program.htmThis ICANN announcement was sourced from:
icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-09nov10-en.htm

ICANN and Governance

ICANN: Public Comments Requested on Interim Paper on Policy Aspects Regarding Introduction of Single Character IDN TLDs

ICANN logoThe joint ccNSO and GNSO IDN working group (JIG) is pleased to announce the publication of the working group’s Initial Report [PDF, 192 KB] on the introduction of Single Character IDN TLDs. This Report is intended to be a stocktaking of the policy issues regarding the introduction of Single Character IDN TLDs and some viewpoints on possible policy implementations that could address those issues. The JIG solicits input and comment from the community on these policy issues and viewpoints. The working group identifies the following policy issue area’s:

  1. Possible confusion with reserved single character ASCII TLD strings
  2. Whether special financial considerations should be considered
  3. Whether due to the relatively smaller pool of possible names that special allocation methods should be considered
  4. Whether due to the relatively shorter string, it may be easier for users to make mistakes, and that special policies should be considered
  5. Whether additional criteria should be introduced to qualify a Single Character IDN TLD as an IDN ccTLD or IDN gTLD
  6. Whether special policies are required to address usability of Single Character IDN TLDs given existing application environments

To be most helpful you are kindly requested to submit your comments by 9 September 2010 at: http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/public-comment-201009-en.htm#jig-initial-report

An archive of all comments received will be publicly available.

Background and Next Steps

The ccNSO and GNSO Councils recognized there may be topics and/ or issues related to the introduction of IDN TLDs which are of common interest to both the GNSO and ccNSO, and which are preferably addressed in a collaborative effort through the GNSO and ccNSO. For that matter the Councils established a joint IDN working group. The charter of the working group can be found at: http://ccnso.icann.org/workinggroups/jiwg.htm.

According to its charter the purpose of the joint working group is to identify and explore issues and topics of common interest, if any, and of relevance to both the cNSO and GNSO, report on such an identified issues to the ccNSO and GNSO Councils and propose a methodology to address the issue. To date the JIG identified the following areas of common interest:

  1. Single Character IDN TLDs
  2. IDN TLD Variants
  3. Universal Acceptance of IDN TLDs

After closure of the comment period, the working group will finalise the Initial Report taking into account the public comments and input and publish a Final Report to be submitted to the ccNSO and GNSO Councils for their consideration. During the public comment period the Working Group will continue its work on the other topics identified by the working group as of common interest to both the ccNSO and GNSO.

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-27jul10-en.htm