[council] Universal Acceptance of All TLDs - Prague Meeting

[Glen de Saint Géry <Glen@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-31may12-en.htm
Universal Acceptance of All TLDs - Prague Meeting
31 May 2012

Universal acceptance of all top-level domains is an on-going initiative within 
ICANN. Our goal is to raise awareness among all Internet users about the 
diversity of domains on the Internet. In the 1980s and 1990s the number of 
top-level domains (TLDs) was small and they all shared the same basic format - 
two-character ASCII country code TLDs (ccTLDs) or a handful of three-character 
ASCII generic TLDs (gTLDs). This standard format led software vendors and web 
site developers to build their programs making specific assumptions about what 
was considered a valid TLD. As long as the software recognized the TLDs, people 
were able to use them. In the past decade newer ASCII gTLDs longer than three 
characters were introduced, plus new domains written in various non-Latin 
scripts - known as Internationalized domain names (IDNs) - were added. In the 
not so distant future we will be seeing even more TLDs, including IDN TLDs, 
thanks to the new gTLD program and IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process. This is why 
ICANN is committed to raising awareness among Internet software developers so 
they can build their software to ensure compatibility with all domains, rather 
than relying on outdated assumptions.

During the ICANN meeting in Costa Rica we held a roundtable discussion on TLD 
Acceptance. A panel of experts shared their experiences with the issue. We 
heard many suggestions on how to better guide our efforts in raising awareness 
of this initiative from the experts as well as from the community.

At the upcoming ICANN meeting in Prague we will not have a session specific to 
this topic. Instead we are reaching out to groups such as The At-Large Advisory 
Committee (ALAC), Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) and others 
in order to schedule times to talk with them about the initiative and how they 
can help raise awareness.

If you have any questions about this effort or would like to schedule a time 
during the Prague meeting to learn more about the initiative and how you can 
help raise awareness, please contact ICANN staff at 
tld-acceptance@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:tld-acceptance@xxxxxxxxx>.

Glen de Saint Géry
GNSO Secretariat
gnso.secretariat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://gnso.icann.org