1. 1 Updated as of 1 July 2014 Issues of the day at ICANN Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) KISA-ICANN Language Localisation Project Module 2.3

2. 2 Updated as of 1 July 2014 Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) Variants

3. 3 Updated as of 1 July 2014 IDN Variants Background:  Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) are domain names in different (non-ASCII) scripts – e.g. Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Greek …  An IDN Variant TLD is an IDN TLD that looks like or is considered interchangeable with another by a user of the related writing system – e.g. in Simplified & Traditional Chinese

4. 4 Updated as of 1 July 2014 Chinese 顶级域名 vs 頂級域名 Devan ā gar ī vs vs Arabic Possible Examples of IDN Variants IDN variant can look alike or be considered interchangeable in other ways – definition based on script

5. 5 Updated as of 1 July 2014 Problem:  How to decide which characters to allow to form IDN TLD labels?  How do we decide if two such labels are variants of each other? What is the issue we are trying to resolve? What have we done to date? PHASE 1 (2011) Case Studies: Arabic Chinese Cyrillic Devanagari Greek Latin PHASE 2 (2011-12) Integrated Issues Report PHASE 3 (2012-13) Projects: P1 LGR XML Specification P2.1 LGR Process for the Root Zone P6 User Experience Study for TLD Variants

6. 6 Updated as of 1 July 2014 What are Label Generation Rules?  Rules which define how to form a valid label for a domain name  Each script has its own Label Generation Rules (LGR)  The LGR defines: Which code points are permissible Which code points have variants Are there any label level additional checks Which labels formed by these code points may be allocated Label Generation Rules (I)

7. 7 Updated as of 1 July 2014 Basic LGR Principles for the root zone: Different languages may use the same script slightly differently As root zone is a globally shared resource, the LGR must provide a consistent treatment for each script across all languages using the script LGR to be developed by script communities proposing solutions and ICANN integrating them into the root zone LGR – balance linguistic expression vs. security and stability concerns Label Generation Rules for the Root Zone (II)

8. 8 Updated as of 1 July 2014  Script-specific LGR proposals need to be developed by the community; and then integrated by the Integration Panel.  ICANN is seeking volunteers to form new (or join existing) LGR Panels for all scripts currently in use Without a community-based Generation Panel for a given script, there is no process for handling IDN labels in the root for that script. No IDN Variant TLDs for a script will be implemented until this is completed. What needs to be done? Generation Panels from the community Arabic Bengali Chinese Cyrillic Devanagari Georgian Greek Gujarati Gurmukhi Hebrew Japanese Korean Latin Sinhala Tamil Telugu Thai

9. 9 Updated as of 1 July 2014  Volunteer requirements: What needs to be done? (II) Generation Panels – need for Volunteers

10. 10 Updated as of 1 July 2014  Send your Expression of Interest to join a Language Generation panel to idntlds @ icann.orgidntlds @ icann.org  More information can be found on:https://community.icann.org/display/croscomlgrprocedure/Root + Z one + LGR + Projecthttps://community.icann.org/display/croscomlgrprocedure/Root + Z one + LGR + Project How can the Asia Pacific community contribute?

11. 11 Updated as of 1 July 2014  ICANN Background Information on IDN Variants: http://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/variant-tlds http://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/variant-tlds  ICANN Integrated Issues Report on IDN Variants: http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/idn-vip-integrated-issues-final- clean-20feb12-en.pdf http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/idn-vip-integrated-issues-final- clean-20feb12-en.pdf  Procedure to Develop & Maintain the LGR for the Root Zone in respect of IDNAs: http://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/variant- tlds/draft-lgr-procedure-20mar13-en.pdfhttp://www.icann.org/en/resources/idn/variant- tlds/draft-lgr-procedure-20mar13-en.pdf  IDN TLD Community Workspace: https://community.icann.org/display/VIP/Home https://community.icann.org/display/VIP/Home For further information

12. 12 Updated as of 1 July 2014 apachub@icann.org Thank you. Questions?