ICANN is now opening a public comment forum for the second annual review of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process. Community members and specifically those who were directly involved in the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process, including requesters, public authorities, and end users of the delegated IDN ccTLDs, are kindly asked to provide feedback on their experience in the process.

Public Comment Box Link: http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/fast-track-review-2012-09apr12-en.htm

AFNIC will shortly be opening the registration of IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names) to their ccTLD portfolio. All those who already are owners of .FR domain names or wish to register new ones will benefit from this feature. Starting May 2012, web site owners will be able to buy domain names with accents and special characters.

On February 3, Afnic, the organization that manages French domain names, announced the introduction of special characters in web addresses ending with .FR (France), .RE (La Réunion), .TF (French Southern and Antarctic Lands), .WF (Wallis and Futuna), .PM (Saint-Pierre and Miquelon) and .YT (Mayotte).

A total of 30 new characters will be introduced, including almost all accented vowels (à, é, è, î, ô, ù …), also the “i” and some consonants like “ñ” or “ß” (double “s” in German). Prior to this, domain names were restricted to numbers and Latin letters without accents.

The AFNIC will implement the launch of IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names), in two stages;

• 3 May 2012: Launch of the IDN sunrise period with the “Grandfathering” rule.
• 3 July 2012: Opening with IDN attribution according to the “first come, first served” rule.

Between May 3 and July 3, 2012, the owners of a domain name will be given the opportunity to buy different versions of their name with special characters. For example, societe.fr will be the only buyer who can purchase société.fr. However, after this two-month period, purchase of domain names will be open to all buyers. No privilege will be given to domain owners with the equivalent name without the special characters and a domain name will be sold to the first person who wants to buy it.  So it is essential that one secures their web addresses and protect individual brand names before someone else does.

The “sunrise” or the “Grandfathering” is designed to protect the acquired rights of existing domain owners. The name requested should be the exact equivalent of the name previously held. The requested name is registered in the same extension as the name filed initially in the ASCII (the code that allows only unaccented characters). For .e.g. the owner of “societe.fr” may save “société.fr” but not “société.re”. On the other hand the holder of a name such as “Muller-strasse.fr” may choose three possible variants of this name, namely “Müller-straße.fr”, “Muller-straße.fr” and “Müller- strasse.fr “or only one of them. Registering one of these options will retain his rights for a possible subsequent registration because the accents do not induce any change in meaning of the name in ASCII.

This opening of IDNs only concerns 30 new characters: ß, to, á, â, ã, ä, å, æ, ç, è, é, ê, ë, ì, í, î, ï, ñ, ò, ó, ô, õ, ö, ù, ú, û, ü, ý, ÿ, ow. Cyrillic and Arabic characters are not accepted at this time.

In response to comments made by participants at the ICANN public meeting in Costa Rica, ICANN has extended this public comment period for 21 days until 8 April 2012.

ICANN has also received a number of constructive comments for amendments to the proposed project plan.  As a result, it is likely that ICANN will publish a revised project plan in April 2012, also for public comment.

Additional comments on the current published project plan are welcomed to help shape the revision.

DUBLIN–(Afilias Limited, the ICANN-designated registry operator for the .INFO top level domain (TLD) and a global provider of technical registry services, today announced that it will apply for the Simplified and Traditional Chinese language equivalents of .INFO under ICANN’s new gTLD program.

“Given the global presence of Afilias, Internationalized Domain Names — informally known as IDNs — have always been of great interest to us. We were the first company to launch IDN email, and believe that having IDN equivalents of .INFO for the world’s most populated country, in its primary languages, will be a major benefit to all Internet users in China,” said Ram Mohan, Executive Vice President and CTO, Afilias.

Roland LaPlante, Afilias Senior Vice President and CMO, said, “ICANN will only accept applications for new gTLDs between January 12, 2012, and April 12, 2012. Since it will likely be several years before anyone can again apply for an IDN version of a gTLD, we’re pleased to lead the way for IDN use and adoption.”

Afilias will support the new Chinese versions of .INFO with the same technology that will support many other new TLD applications: a state-of-the-art EPP registry, a globally diverse and redundant Anycast DNS network, 24×7 call-center and technical support, and links to the global distribution channel. In addition, Afilias provides other premium solutions to augment its registry offerings, including technology to enable mobile phone compatibility for websites and a unique IDN-capable email solution.

All Afilias services are DNSSEC and IPv6 ready, and reflect more than 10 years of experience in supporting gTLDs operating under ICANN contracts.

15 December 2011

Following the ICANN Board’s approval on 8 December 2011 of the amendment to the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process Implementation Plan, ICANN is providing this notice of publication for the Revised Implementation Plan. This amendment was considered following guidance received from the ccNSO during the ICANN meeting in Dakar, Senegal.

Two versions are posted: 1) the revised IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process Implementation Plan (http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/idn-cctld-implementation-plan-15dec11-en.pdf [PDF, 851 KB]) and 2) a version that tracks the changes from the previous version (http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/idn-cctld-implementation-plan-redline-15dec11-en.pdf [PDF, 902 KB]). The community should take note that the original version of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process Implementation Plan is now archived and superseded by the Revised Implementation Plan.

Background

On 26 October 2011, the ccNSO Council approved a resolution and communicated it in a letter from ccNSO Chair to ICANN Board Chair asking the Board to direct staff to amend the relevant sections of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Implementation Plan. The amendment is to address specific cases when a requested IDN ccTLD string may be confusingly similar with the two-letter ASCII ccTLD corresponding to the same country or territory.

This work was developed out of the ccNSO Council Resolution from the ICANN meeting in San Francisco in March 2011. This resolution requested a sub-group of the IDN ccPDP Working Group 1 to develop, as soon as possible, guidelines (within the framework of the existing rules for the Fast Track) to improve the predictability of the evaluation process relating to string confusion as defined in the IDNC WG Final Report and the Final Implementation Plan, as adopted by the ICANN Board in November 2009.

ICANN conducted an initial review of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process and its implementation between October 2010 – January 2011. A summary and analysis was published in February and the Board acknowledged the Fast Track review at the ICANN meeting in March 2011.

The IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process Implementation Plan was approved by the ICANN Board at its meeting in Seoul, Republic of Korea in October 2009. A link to the original Implementation Plan may be found at: http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/idn-cctld-implementation-plan-16nov09-en.pdf [PDF, 498 KB]

Following the ICANN Board’s acceptance at the October 2011 meeting in Dakar, Senegal, ICANN is today providing notice of implementation for version 3.0 of the Guidelines for Implementation of Internationalized Domain Names. The IDN Guidelines are a list of general standards that many top-level domain registries deploying IDNs are required to follow based on the Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA) protocol standard from the IETF.

The Guidelines document was developed by IDN Guidelines Revision Working Group (comprised of ccTLD and gTLD registry representatives with IDN experience supported by ICANN staff). The new version modifies the current Version 2.2 to reflect the IDNABIS revision (“IDNA2008 protocol”) of the initial IDNA protocol (“IDNA2003″). ICANN previously published a draft version of the guidelines for public comment (see http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/idn-guidelines-revision-27jul11-en.htm). The ICANN Board of Directors endorsed version 3.0 of the IDN Guidelines during their meeting on 28 October 2011. Registries offering IDN registrations should begin transitioning to version 3.0 of the IDN Guidelines.

The Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA) protocol is the technical standard for the implementation of IDNs for TLD registries, registrars and software developers that make IDNs available for their customers. The IDNA protocol references and further detail about the 2008 revision can be found here: http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/rfcs.htm