ICANN participation

What it is | This is a meeting between members of the At-Large (Internet end-user) community in ICANN and the Registrar community.

Why it's important | This meeting provides an important opportunity for members of the ALAC and the Registrar community to discuss issues of common interest, in particular the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (“RAA”) amendment discussions currently underway.

Who should attend? | At-Large community members, Registrar constituency members.

What it is | A session to discuss support for IPv6 by domain name registries and registrars. The session will include case studies from both a registry and registrar who have implemented support for IPv6 in their regular automatic systems. This will be followed by an open discussion of the issues.

Why it's important | When domain name registrants cannot include IPv6 glue they have problems providing IPv6 support for their major external services. The free pool of IPv4 addresses will be exhausted within the next three years and so it is important to start the process of introducing IPv6 access to important services now.

Who should attend? | This session is important for registries, registrars, re-sellers, hosting providers and registrants.

What it is | This workshop will provide detailed information about the IDNA protocol. The IDNA protocol is a mechanism to handle non-ASCII characters in domain names in a standard fashion, and it is currently under revision. The protocol is allowing Internet applications, such as browsers, to use domain names with non-ASCII characters by converting them to ASCII labels that the DNS will understand and process. As such the protocol provides the foundation of what characters are considered valid and can be used in IDNs. On top of the protocol restrictions, registry operators will supply additional registration policies to eliminate for example confusion between two visually identical domain names, as much as possible.
The protocol revision is done by the IETF, and as speakers in this session we have the main authors of the proposed revised protocol. They will provide you with important information about what changes are proposed compared to the current version of the protocol, and why these changes are necessary.

Why it's Important | The protocol revision is intended to be finalized within a short timeframe and it brings the need to change the way IDNs are implemented today. This session will provide you with all the information necessary in order to make these adjustments. The changes will also affect the end-users, and hence understanding these changes will be important knowledge if you are in the business of selling IDN registrations.

Who Should Attend? | Anybody interested in the continued development of IDNs, in particular, registries, registrars, registrants and application developers. Government representatives are also encouraged to participate as the new protocol is anticipated to be used in the introduction of IDN TLDs.

What it is | The At-Large community is working to organise a meeting that would allow a representative of each At-Large Structure (ALS, or group of Internet end users) to come together in Cairo for a summit.

Why it's important | This meeting is to provide those interested in the ICANN community with an opportunity to express their views on the subject and to make suggestions or comments.

Who should attend? | At-Large community members, all others in the ICANN community interested in the At-Large summit proposed.

What it is | A rundown of ICANN's translation programme and the various efforts underway to make ICANN's work and processes accessible in multiple languages.

Why it's Important | It is the largest opportunity the community has to learn about ICANN's plans and to provide feedback and suggestions for improving the organisation's language capabilities.

Who should attend? | Anyone interested in the issue of ICANN's content and processes being provided in languages other than English.

What it is | The goal of this workshop is to provide interested parties with a summary of the advances and successes that have occurred since the adoption of the UDRP. Additionally, panelists and audience members will discuss UDRP compliance activities, challenges and the future direction of the UDRP.

Why it's important | This workshop will assist in facilitating joint understanding among UDRP providers, registrars and the community regarding UDRP-related contractual obligations under the Registrar Accreditation Agreement.

Who should attend? | Parties recommended to attend this workshop include, Registrars, Registrants, Trademark Attorneys and UDRP Dispute Resolution Service Providers.