ICANN | Internationalized Domain Names

ICANN Board Resolutions

A history of resolutions passed by the ICANN Board of Directors on IDNs is available here.

8 November 2005

Whereas, the ICANN Board on the 27 March 2003 meeting resolved that the ICANN Board endorses the IDN implementation approach set forth in the draft Guidelines for the Implementation of Internationalized Domain Names, as they may be amended in further consultation with registry operators or evolve in view of new technical standards, for implementation of IDNs.

Whereas, the following gTLD registries since then have been authorized to implement IDNs by following the IDN guidelines, .info, .museum, .biz, .org, .name, .com, .net.

Whereas, discussions concerning the issue of domain name spoofing in relation to IDN domain names has increased dramatically over the last year, and these discussions resulted in a focus from the IDN Registries and ICANN to work on a revision effort on the IDN Guidelines to prevent certain types of spoofing attacks.

Whereas, this focus was highlighted at the IDN Workshop in Luxembourg where the IDN Workshop panel agreed that revision of the current set of ICANN Guidelines for the Implementation of Internationalized Domain Names should be based on among others, the following principle: The successor document to the current guidelines must maximize the ability of a registry to support IDN in all regards where it is reasonably needed, and must minimize the ability for the abuse of IDN for deceptive purposes.

Whereas, a working group of gTLD and ccTLD representatives was formed to initiate the revision of the IDN Guidelines, with the following members: gTLD Registry Constituency Representatives: Cary Karp, MuseDoma; Pat Kane, VeriSign; Ram Mohan, Afilias and ccNSO Representatives: Hiro Hotta, JPRS; Mohammed EL Bashir, .sd Registry and ICANN Staff: Tina Dam

Whereas, a draft revised version of the IDN Guidelines was posted for public comments and subsequently modified in accordance with commentary received after which a final draft of version 2.0 then was submitted to the ICANN Board for endorsement.

Whereas, that the ICANN Board of Directors recognizes the considerable amount of concern, expressed in the received commentary, concerning the format of the IDN Guidelines.

Resolved (05.___) that the ICANN Board of Directors in thanking the working group members and thereby acknowledges the work that has been done to revise the IDN Guidelines to limit the deceptive use of visually confusable characters from different scripts in individual IDN labels

Resolved (05.___) that the ICANN Board of Directors endorses the version 2.0 of the IDN Guidelines for a period of nine months, and agrees that the President is authorized to implement the Guidelines by authorizing registration of IDNs in registries with agreements with ICANN on the basis of those Guidelines;

Resolved (05.__) that the ICANN Board of Directors tasks the IDN working group to continue its important work and return to the board with specific IDN improvement recommendations before the ICANN Meeting in Morocco, currently scheduled for June 2006. Additionally, the board supports the working group's continued action to reframe the guidelines completely in a manner appropriate for further development as a Best Current Practices (BCP) document, to ensure that the guideline directions will be used deeper into the DNS hierarchy and within TLDs where ICANN has a lesser policy relationship.

23 July 2004

Whereas, the ICANN Board recognizes that it is important that the Internet evolve to be more accessible to those who do not use the ASCII character set.

Whereas, the Board notes that the internationalization of the Internet's domain name system must be accomplished through standards that are open, non-proprietary, and fully compatible with the Internet's existing end-to-end model and that preserve globally unique naming in a universally resolvable public name space.

Whereas, the IETF has adopted a four-part protocol suite defining a standard for internationalized domain names in applications that was published as RFCs 3490, 3491, 3492, and 3454.

Whereas, a broad range of registries, experts, and other stakeholders in the ICANN community have been working hard for several years to develop registry-level registration policies, for example RFC 3743.

Whereas, the ICANN Board has had Working Groups investigate facts and identify issues that may arise concerning IDN's and these Committees have reported to the community.

Whereas, the Board reiterates the importance of implementing the technical standards for IDNs in a coordinated manner, that does not destabilize the global, single root, unique identifier system.

Whereas the Board recognises that significant work remains to be undertaken outside of ICANN's scope in order to provide end-to-end availability of IDN's to end-users and that close co-ordination of these efforts is needed.

Whereas, ICANN is committed to the further study of IDNs in the TLD space, and commits to facilitating venues in which IDN can be discussed, and encourages venues to further encourage the implementation of IDNs.

Resolved [04.68] that the ICANN staff report to the Board and community on the implementation status of IDNs and pending issues.

Resolved further [04.69] that the ICANN staff work with registries and other administrators who use IDNs to report back on usability, successes, and other relevant experiences.

Resolved [04.70] to thank the IDN Workshop organizers and participants for their important contributions to the Workshop, and sharing of knowledge on issues surrounding the implementation of IDN.

Resolved [04.71] that the Board instructs the President to establish a President's Advisory Committee on IDN, to provide the Board and ICANN community with advice on issues that relate to IDN policies, in particular issues that impact the implementation of IDN especially at the top level.

18 February 2004

Whereas, ICANN has authorized PIR (.org Registry) and VeriSign (.com and .net Registries) to proceed with Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) implementations in accordance with the published IDN Guidelines.

Whereas, both registries have pre-existing IDN registrations associated with the VeriSign IDN testbed launched in 2000.

Whereas, in its meeting on 25 September 2000, in resolutions numbered 00.77 through 00.80, ICANN called on VeriSign to "conduct the testbed in full compliance with its agreements with ICANN", urged "participating registrars to handle registrations within the testbed in a manner that protects the interests and expectations of both domain-name holders and affected third parties", and directed staff to report to the Board whether any addenda to the agreements with Verisign Global Registry Services are appropriate to facilitate the operation of the testbed in a manner that protects those interests and expectations, including provisions that facilitate evolution of the testbed to match evolving standardization efforts within the IETF."

Whereas, PIR has announced its plans for migration of the testbed registrations in .org, and VeriSign has announced that its migration to the final IETF standard ("Punycode") for IDN registrations will be completed on April 24, 2004.

Whereas, not all registrars that participated in the IDN testbed will continue to support IDN registrations once the migration to the new standard is complete, and therefore the customers of those non-migrating registrars will need to have their domains transferred to a registrar that is migrating.

Whereas, PIR and VeriSign have formally requested amendments to their registry agreements with ICANN in order to implement temporary processes designed to facilitate the smooth migration of IDN registrations to migrating registrars.

Whereas, ICANN has reviewed the registry-proposed IDN migration processes and concludes that ICANN should consent to their implementation;

Resolved [04.15] that in order to allow for the implementation of the IDN migration processes proposed by PIR and VeriSign, the President and General Counsel are authorized to negotiate and enter into the necessary and appropriate amendments to the .com, .net and .org registry agreements and appendices.

31 October 2003

Whereas, the Internationalized Domain Name Committee was established by resolution 01.94 to serve as a general coordination body for the work on policy issues related to Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs);

Whereas, the IDN Committee has issued a series of reports and recommendations regarding IDNs and related issues;

Whereas, in October 2002 the Internet Engineering Steering Group approved the publication of three proposed standards defining an application-level mechanism for IDNs;

Whereas, the ICANN community would like to thank the following IDN Committee members for their service on the IDN Committee: Masanobu Katoh (Committee Chair), Mouhamet Diop, Patrik Fältström, Qiheng Hu, John Klensin, Sang-Hyon Kyong, Stuart Lynn, Elisabeth Porteneuve, Mohd Sharil Tarmizi and Vincent Wen-Sung Chen.

Whereas, the President in consultation with the Chair of the IDN Committee formed a new President's IDN Registry Implementation Committee composed of interested registries, registrars, and technical experts to consider and exchange information on ways to resolve the issues associated with implementation of IDN capabilities in existing top level domains;

Whereas the Board requested the following individuals to serve on the President's IDN Registry Implementation Committee, the Board would like to thank the following members: Masanobu Katoh (chair), Neil Edwards, Patrick Falstrom, Hiro Hotta, Kenny Huang, Cary Karp, Andrew McLaughlin, Ram Mohan, Hualin Qian, James Seng, Mark Blanchet, YangWoo Ko, Edmon Chung, Yann Courtel, Geir Rasmussen, Tom McGarry, and Tina Dam.

Whereas as the Chair informs the Board that the work of the IDN Committee is complete as to the current formulation of members.

Whereas the committees have successfully reached the conclusion of their work, the successful implementation of IDN will continue to involve the exchange of information on ways to resolve the issues associated with implementation of IDN capabilities in existing top level domains.

Whereas the ICANN Board wishes to express its extreme gratitude to Mr. Katoh for his services in chairing and leadership in the area of ICANN's IDN work, beginning with the Internal Working Group, the IDN Committee and the President's IDN Registry Implementation Committee.

Hereby resolved [03.172] to bring to a close the work of the IDN Committee, and the President's IDN Registry Implementation Committee.

Resolved [03.173] that ICANN will continue to participate and provide guidance on the community's work with the objective to achieve coordinated implementation of IDN.

27 March 2003

Whereas, the Board has repeatedly recognized the importance of adding to the domain-name system Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) capabilities to enhance the accessibility of the domain-name system to all those using non-Roman alphabets;

Whereas, ICANN's agreements with the operators and sponsors of top-level domain registries provide that ICANN authorization is required to begin accepting registrations of domain names with hyphens in the third and fourth positions;

Whereas, a three-part protocol suite defining a standard for internationalized domain names in applications was published as RFCs 3490, 3491, and 3492;

Whereas, the participants in the Internationalized Domain Name Registry Implementation Committee (IDN-RIC) have been working together with ICANN staff to develop a commonly agreed statement of Guidelines for the Implementation of Internationalized Domain Names, a draft of which was presented at the ICANN Public Forum on 26 March 2003;

Whereas, collaborative work on the draft Guidelines is continuing, with the affected registries under contract indicating their general agreement with the draft's approach, subject to further editing and communications with the Internet Architecture Board;

It is:

Resolved [03.47] that the ICANN Board endorses the IDN implementation approach set forth in the draft Guidelines for the Implementation of Internationalized Domain Names, as they may be amended in further consultation with registry operators or evolve in view of new technical standards, for implementation of IDNs;

Resolved further [03.48] that the President is authorized to implement the Guidelines by authorizing registration of IDNs in registries with agreements with ICANN on the basis of those Guidelines;

Resolved further [03.49] that the Board recommends the Guidelines to other registries, and encourages broad participation by registries, language experts, and others in consultative, collaborative, community-based processes to study and develop appropriate language-specific IDN registration rules and policies.

15 December 2002

Whereas, the IDN Committee has issued a series of reports and recommendations regarding IDNs and related issues;

Whereas, in October 2002 the Internet Engineering Steering Group approved the publication of three proposed standards defining an application-level mechanism for IDNs;

Whereas, technical analysis has shown that the IDN standards are not sufficient to limit collisions, confusion, and other potentially damaging side-effects stemming from the unrestrained potential to register IDNs using arbitrary characters available in the UNICODE encoding system;

Whereas, there remains a variety of other unresolved issues and potential problems associated with the use of IDN-based identifiers;

Whereas, deployment of IDNs before these issues are addressed raises serious operational and other concerns;

Whereas, under resolution 02.118, the IDN Committee was continued until the conclusion of the 2002 ICANN annual meeting;

Whereas, the President and the Chair of the IDN Committee were directed under that resolution to prepare a proposed charter and list of members for a new committee to address IDN implementation issues, for presentation to the Board at the 2002 ICANN annual meeting;

Whereas, the President and the Chair of the IDN Committee have recommended that it would be in the best interests of ICANN to retain the membership and charter of the existing IDN Committee to focus on such other policy issues as may arise, but that the President in consultation with the Chair of the IDN Committee should form a new President's IDN Registry Implementation Committee composed of interested registries, registrars, and technical experts to consider and exchange information on ways to resolve the issues associated with implementation of IDN capabilities in existing top level domains;

Whereas, the President has agreed to form such a committee in consultation with the Chair of the IDN Committee;

Resolved [02.153] the Board continues the IDN Committee until the end of the 2004 annual meeting, or such time as the Chair informs the Board that the work of the IDN Committee is complete, whichever is earlier.

31 October 2002

Whereas, the IDN Committee has issued a series of reports and recommendations regarding IDNs and related issues;

Whereas, earlier this month the Internet Engineering Steering Group approved the publication of three Proposed Standards defining an application-level mechanism for IDNs;

Whereas, there remains a variety of other unresolved issues and potential problems associated with the use of IDN-based identifiers;

Whereas, deployment of IDNs before these issues are addressed raises serious operational and other concerns;

Whereas, under resolution 02.89, the IDN Committee is currently scheduled to formally terminate at the conclusion of the ICANN meeting in Shanghai;

Resolved [02.118] that the IDN Committee is continued until the conclusion of the 2002 ICANN annual meeting;

Resolved [02.119] that the President and the Chair of the IDN Committee are directed to prepare a proposed charter and list of members for a new committee to address IDN implementation issues, for presentation to the Board at the 2002 ICANN annual meeting.

28 June 2002

Whereas, the ICANN Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) Committee has completed work on a set of policy papers relating to the potential introduction of non-ASCII characters to the DNS, including most recently its discussion papers on Non-ASCII Top-Level Domain Policy Issues and Registry Selection Considerations for Non-ASCII Top-Level Domains;

Whereas the IDN Committee has submitted to the Board a Final Report on its activities, meeting its anticipated deadline of 30 June 2002;

Whereas the IDN Committee's documents have generated and benefited from significant substantive feedback from various interested organizations, experts, and users;

Whereas the Board has begun consideration of the substance and implications of the IDN Committee's papers and final report, but is not yet prepared to determine its next steps in this area;

It is resolved [02.88] that the Board conveys its sincere thanks to the members of the ICANN IDN Committee for their diligent work and valuable contributions: Masanobu Katoh (Chair), Mouhamet Diop, Patrik Faltstrom, Qiheng Hu, John Klensin, Sang-Hyon Kyong, Stuart Lynn, Elisabeth Porteneuve, Mohd Sharil Tarmizi, and Vincent Wen-Sung Chen; and thanks Andrew McLaughlin and David Thompson for their staff support; and

Further resolved [02.89] that the Board asks the members of the IDN Committee to delay the Committee's formal termination until the conclusion of the October ICANN meeting in Shanghai, so that the committee can continue to monitor developments in the IETF, review further community feedback on its discussion papers and Final Report, and be available to advise the Board as needed in the area of internationalized domain names.

14 December 2001

Whereas in resolution 01.94 the Board established the IDN Committee to serve as a general coordination body for the work on policy issues identified in the IDN Working Group Report presented at the ICANN Public Forum held in Montevideo on 9 September 2001;

Whereas in resolution 01.120 the Board directed the President and the Chair of the IDN Committee to present a work plan and schedule, and any additional proposed members, to the Board for approval;

Whereas the President and the Chair of the IDN Committee have not completed a work plan and schedule, but have proposed to the Board that Mouhamet Diop, John Klensin, and Elisabeth Porteneuve be added as members of the IDN Committee;

It is therefore resolved [01.139] that the Board appoints Mouhamet Diop, John Klensin, and Elisabeth Porteneuve as additional members of the IDN Committee.

15 November 2001

Whereas in resolution 01.98 the President was directed, in consultation with IDN Committee Chair Masanobu Katoh, to propose for approval by the Board representatives to serve on the IDN Committee from the ICANN Board, the Supporting Organizations, the Governmental Advisory Committee, and such other individuals who in his judgment could meaningfully contribute to this effort;

Whereas in resolution 01.100 the IDN Committee was requested to present its initial work plan, schedule, and proposed budget for approval by the Board at this Annual Meeting,

Whereas the President, after consultation with the community, has proposed the following individuals to serve on the IDN Committee: Director Sang-Hyon Kyong, Patrik Falstrom (IETF), Vincent Wen-Sung Chen (TWNIC), Qiheng Hu (Internet Society of China), Mohd Sharil Tarmizi (GAC Vice Chair), and Stuart Lynn (ICANN CEO), and reports that he is still in the process of identifying other individuals who could meaningfully contribute to this effort;

Whereas the President and the Chair of the IDN Committee expect that the final work plan will include a schedule for the Committee to complete its work by 30 June 2002;

Resolved [01.118] that the individuals proposed by the President are hereby appointed as members of the IDN Committee;

Further resolved [01.119] that the President is authorized to spend up to US$100,000 for staff, travel, and other expenses for the support of the IDN Committee, subject to adjustment upon the submission and approval by the Board of a work plan and schedule;

Further resolved [01.120] that the President and the Chair of the IDN Committee are directed to present a work plan and schedule, and any additional proposed members, for approval by the Board at its next Board meeting.

10 September 2001

Whereas, in resolution 01.39 the Board established an internal working group on Internationalized Domain Names to identify the various internationalization efforts and the issues they raise, to engage in dialogue with technical experts and other participants in these efforts, and to make appropriate recommendations to the Board;

Whereas, the internal working group conducted various information-gathering activities, including the posting of a community survey;

Whereas, the internal working group presented an interim report at the ICANN Public Forum held in Stockholm on 3 June 2001, and that report was discussed at the Public Forum, at the Board Meeting, and on ICANN's Internationalized Domain Names web-based public forum;

Whereas, the internal working group presented its final report at the ICANN Public Forum held in Montevideo on 9 September 2001;

Whereas, the final report identified several policy issues meriting further evaluation and recommended that the examination of these issues proceed in parallel with continuing technical standardization and other preparatory work for the introduction of IDNs;

Whereas, these policy issues cannot be fully resolved until the Internet Engineering Task Force completes work on a deployable IDN standard, but initial work on the policy issues that will arise can and should proceed concurrently;

Whereas, the final report also recommended that the Board establish an IDN Committee to coordinate the work of various ICANN supporting organizations, committees, and other groups on the policy issues and to promote timely development of policy recommendations on them; and

Whereas, the Board has considered public comment on the final report made electronically and at the Montevideo Public Forum;

Resolved [01.94] that IDN Committee is hereby established under Article VII, Section 1(c), of the ICANN bylaws to serve as a general coordination body for the work on policy issues identified in the IDN Working Group Report and such other policy issues that the IDN Committee shall identify;

Further resolved [01.95] that the IDN Committee shall be responsible for promoting the coordination of the work of the ICANN supporting organizations, committees, and other groups on the policy issues arising from IDNs, as documented in the final report, and to promote timely development of policy recommendations on those issues for consideration by the community and the ICANN Board;

Further resolved [01.96] that in its policy-coordination activities, the IDN Committee should seek to ensure that any recommendations are achieved through a bottom-up process, and that those recommendations reflect a wide range of expertise on the different aspects relevant to the issues;

Further resolved [01.97] that the IDN Committee shall be chaired by Director Masanobu Katoh;

Further resolved [01.98] that the President, in consultation with the IDN Committee Chair, shall propose, for approval by the Board, representatives to serve on the IDN Committee from the ICANN Board, the Supporting Organizations, the Governmental Advisory Committee, and such other individuals who in his judgment could meaningfully contribute to this effort;

Further resolved [01.99] that the IDN Committee is encouraged to commission panels of volunteer experts from different countries with practical experience in the policy issues identified in the Final Report, and linguistic experts (including experts in non-ASCII character sets and languages not spoken by persons active in current discussions); and

Further resolved [01.100] that the IDN Committee is requested to present its initial work plan, schedule, and proposed budget for approval by the ICANN Board at the third ICANN annual meeting, to be held in Marina del Rey in November 2001.

13 March 2001

Whereas:

The ICANN Board has begun to receive inquiries about its role and views with regard to the various efforts to internationalize the domain name character sets supported by the domain name system. In addition to the IETF's working group on internationalized domain names, several other initiatives to use non-ASCII characters for domain names have begun, including the VeriSign testbed for the .com/.net/.org registries, trials of non-ASCII character sets by ccTLD registries, and the marketing of internationalized domain name pre-registrations by private corporations and others.

The ICANN Board on 25 September 2000, approved a set of resolutions (00.77 to 00.80) relating to the VeriSign testbed. In those resolutions, the Board recognized the importance of the Internet evolving to be more accessible to those who do not use the ASCII character set. The Board emphasized that the internationalization of the Internet's domain name system must be accomplished through open, non-proprietary standards that are fully compatible with the Internet's existing end-to-end model, and that preserve globally unique naming in a universally resolvable public name space.

In advance of the Melbourne meetings, ICANN called for public comment on five general topics:

Internationalized Domain Name Standardization and Testbed Deployment Process.
Intellectual Property Considerations in IDNs.
Relationship of Character Sets for Internationalized Domain Names to Their Parent Languages.
Public Education and Outreach on IDNs.
IDNs and ICANN Registry/Registrar Agreements.

Within the ICANN process, there has been increasing interest in — and concern over — issues surrounding internationalized domain names.

At its Melbourne meeting, the DNSO Names Council has adopted a business plan calling for the establishment of a task force to develop consensus policies for the implementation of internationalized domain names.

In its Melbourne communiqué, the Governmental Advisory Committee has reported that it will be forming a working group on internationalized domain names "to examine and report on issues for consideration."

The Board understands that the Root Server System Advisory Committee has begun discussions of the possible implications of these efforts for the operation of the root servers.

It is resolved:

[Resolution 01.38] The Board expresses its concern over likely confusion about the nature and implications of the numerous existing internationalization testbeds and pre-registration services, and urges wider and more intensive education and dialogue among the global Internet community.

[Resolution 01.39] In order to promote better understanding of the technical and policy issues surrounding the internationalization of domain names, the Board designates an internal working group consisting of Masanobu Katoh (chair), Vint Cerf, Karl Auerbach, and Ivan Campos to identify the various internationalization efforts and the issues they raise, to engage in dialogue with technical experts and other participants in these efforts, and to make appropriate recommendations to the Board.

[Resolution 01.40] The Board asks that the working group submit a report on its efforts at the next Board meeting in June.

25 September 2000

Whereas, Verisign Global Registry Services has announced a multilingual testbed under the .com, .net, and .org top-level domains to be available for all accredited registrars passing technical certification;

Whereas, ICANN recognizes that it is important that the Internet evolve to be more accessible to those who do not use the ASCII character set;

Whereas, the internationalization of the Internet's domain name system must be accomplished through standards that are open, non-proprietary, and fully compatible with the Internet's existing end-to-end model and that preserve globally unique naming in a universally resolvable public name space;

Whereas, constructive experimentation with extensions to the domain name system to support multilingual names should be encouraged, provided it is done in a manner consistent with promoting responsible standardization, it avoids disrupting the stability of the Internet or the interoperability of Internet services, and its experimental character is clearly understood by all affected;

RESOLVED [00.77] that the ICANN Board calls on Verisign Global Registry Services to consult closely with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Architecture Board concerning the design and implementation of the testbed, with the goal that the testbed should promote, rather than complicate, technical standardization efforts in this area;

RESOLVED [00.78] that the ICANN Board calls on Verisign Global Registry Services to conduct the testbed in full compliance with its agreements with ICANN, including by providing equivalent access within the testbed to all ICANN-accredited registrars that meet reasonable technical-qualification requirements;

RESOLVED [00.79] that the ICANN Board urges participating registrars to handle registrations within the testbed in a manner that protects the interests and expectations of both domain-name holders and affected third parties;

RESOLVED [00.80] that the President and staff are directed to investigate and report to the Board whether any addenda to the agreements with Verisign Global Registry Services are appropriate to facilitate the operation of the testbed in a manner that protects those interests and expectations, including provisions that facilitate evolution of the testbed to match evolving standardization efforts within the IETF.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers