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(by Diwaskar Chettri & Nikhil Pahwa) The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is expected to approve this week international domain names - or addresses- that can be written in non-Latin script. The proposed IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process ( pdf ) enable the introduction of a limited number of internationalized country-code top level domain names (IDN ccTLDs). Once implemented, this will be the first time that users can obtain a domain name with the entire string i

According to our contacts at the current ICANN meeting in South Korea ICANN staff has announced that the schedule for new gTLDs will be pushed out even beyond Q2/2010 due to the controversy and amount of different opinions and comments from the community. In the meantime other working groups are pushing ahead to introduce IDN ccTLDs. When the the expansion of the root zones came up, there were no concerns to add as many as 100 zones in a short period of time. Another topic of discussion is

WIPO’s inconsistency called out at ICANN meeting. Tucows CEO Elliot Noss seized an opportune moment to call out UDRP provider World Intellectual Property Organization during the first day of ICANN’s Seoul meetings. During a session on Post-Expiration Domain Name Recovery, WIPO’s Eun-Joo Min commented that one of the problems with domain expiration is that registrars handle it inconsistently and in a non-transparent manner: I think it is really important for the — not only for — especiall

ICANN.org redesign moves forward. For an organization that’s at the center of the internet, ICANN’s web site is outdated and difficult to use. Over the summer it asked for feedback on the current web site and is working through the process of redesigning its web site. An outside consultancy compiled survey results and interviewed users of the web site to put together a new web site structure. First images of what the web site might look like are promising , highlighting the most freque

Rod Beckstrom took over as ICANN President/CEO on July 1, 2009, so October 9 marked his 100 th day in office--and a good opportunity to examine the progress made by ICANN during his short tenure. Of course, the ICANN community (Board, staff and stakeholders) deserve credit for their hard work prior to Rod's appointment, which made ICANN's recent achievements possible. But to borrow an analogy from American football: when you have the ball in the Red Zone, you need to score touchdowns, not fi