NI-Limits Blog

Keeping you updated with the state of ICANN, they recently informed us about several new policies that were being implemented.

Tina Dam is in charge of IDNs (Internationalised Domain Names) and bringing a truly multi-lingual era to the internet, where not only the name of the website can be represented by the world’s different languages, but so too would it’s content:

After years of technical and policy development work, a fundamental milestone in the creation of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) has been reached with approval by the ICANN Board to introduce no less than 11 test top-level domains to the root of the Internet.

Literally test TLDs - the term "test" will be translated into Arabic, Persian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese and Tamil and put up on the Net. The top-level domains will host a series of wikis and people from across the world will be encouraged to run free in the new space so ICANN can see how the IDNs function.

With the RegisterFly fiasco finally at an end, it is time for Tim Cole (Services - RAA changes) and Craig Schwartz (Services - Registry agreements) to review the RAA (Registrar Accreditation Agreement), which is the contract that defines the relationship between ICANN and companies registering domain names:

Six suggested amendments to the RAA have been posted on the ICANN website and a public comment period on them, which is also open to other suggested changes, started on 30 July. It will close on 10 September.

In the meantime, a number of registry agreements are being reviewed. The ICANN Board approved renewal of the .name registry contract to 2012 at its 14 August meeting. The approval brings it in line with registry contracts covering .biz, .info and .org.

In a recent board meeting the selection of a company to run ICANN’s data escrow programme (where domain name ownership details are stored by a third party in case of registrar problems).

The Board approved Iron Mountain for the role.