June 26, 2008 Biggest Expansion in gTLDs Approved for Implementation

Paris, France: The Board of ICANN today approved a recommendation that could see a whole range of new names introduced to the Internet's addressing system.

"The Board today accepted a recommendation from its global stakeholders that it is possible to implement many new names to the Internet, paving the way for an expansion of domain name choice and opportunity" said Dr Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN.

A final version of the implementation plan must be approved by the ICANN Board before the new process is launched. It is intended that the final version will be published in early 2009.

"The potential here is huge. It represents a whole new way for people to express themselves on the Net," said Dr Twomey. "It's a massive increase in the 'real estate' of the Internet."

Presently, users have a limited range of 21 top level domains to choose from — names that we are all familiar with like .com, .org, .info.


For more, don't hesitate to visit ICANN's home page at http://www.icann.org
or read more details here: http://cmb.md/igf/78-news-from-icann-.html "

June 26, 2008 - ICANN Concludes Successful 32nd Meeting in Paris!!!

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) concluded its 32nd International Public Meeting in Paris today after four days of discussions that will shape the future of the Internet.

The conclusion of the meeting saw the approval of a proposal to expand the world’s Domain Name System and to work on adapting it to accommodate top level domain names in scripts such as Arabic, Cyrillic or other non-Latin scripts.
"This was an extremely successful meeting that will be remembered as a milestone in the development of the Internet," said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN's Board Chairman. "New generic Top Level Domains and Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) will open up the Internet and make it look as diverse as the people who use it," Dengate Thrush added.

Other important resolutions passed by the ICANN board included:

* The adoption of two measures to eliminate "domain tasting" (the practice of using the add grace period to register domain names in bulk to test their profitability)

* The adoption of ICANN’s Operating Plan and Budget for fiscal year 2008-2009.

* Begin public input on a report on the "fast track" for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) for country codes and have staff work with the community on how to implement IDNs.

* Implementation of measures to improve the Generic Name Supporting Organization (GNSO), and a timeline for agreement on how different groups are represented on it.

* Selection of Mexico City as the site of ICANN’s first meeting in 2009.

For more information, visit ICANN's Web page:http://www.icann.org

February 15, 2008: Veronica Cretu, President of the "CMB" Training Center, ICANN At Large Advisory Committee Member for Eastern Europe, is happy to share with you some conclusions from the ICANN New Delhi meeting.
For more info visit www.icann.org

ICANN Concludes Successful India Meeting February 10-15, New Delhi, India

Discussions on Internationalized Domain Names provide direction for progress

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers put the wrap on its 31st International Public Meeting in New Delhi today after five days of discussions about the future of the Internet.

"These meetings are vital to ICANN's model of bottom-up, consensus driven policy making in action," said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN's Board Chairman.

A total of 720 participants from 76 countries, including 290 participants from the host country India, took part in the meeting, and helped ICANN move forward on a number of discussions.

The ICANN board passed a number of resolutions at the meeting, including:

- Directing staff to continue implementation work on New generic top-level domains, inform the GNSO and the public on progress made in implementation efforts, discuss some issues raised by the staff and Board regarding implementation with the GNSO Council, and provide information to the Board in a timely manner to enable the Board to discuss the recommendations and implementation issues and quickly determine a course of action for the introduction new gTLDs, with staff to provide an update at the Board workshop on 17 April 2008;

- Asking ICANN's Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees to continue their ongoing collaborative efforts and commitment to recommend a course of action to the Board in a timely manner;

- Have ICANN deploy IPv6 across its infrastructure and provide regular feedback to the community on progress and lessons learned;

- Approval of the Framework and Principles on Accountability and Transparency;

- Approval of a bylaw-change request from the At-Large Advisory Committee that will provide Regional At-Large Organizations with an important role in evaluating applications and increase transparency of the consideration of applications.

The 32nd ICANN Meeting will take place in Paris, France during 22-27 June, 2008. For more visit: http://public.icann.org/node/346


November 21, 2007

The "CMB" Training Center representatives, Veronica Cretu and Nicu Cretu, have recently returned from the Second Internet Governance Forum, which was held from November 12 -15, 2007 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Veronica Cretu, Program Coordinator of "Youth Leaders for Community Development through Internet Governance" project has made one presentation on the GKP supported project, within the DiploFoundation Best Practices Forum Sessions, on Tuesday, during the "IG Capacity Building Program: A model for Regional Training". Veronica has also facilitated together with Robert Guerra of Privaterra, another DiploFoundation Best Practices Session, on Wednesday, November 14: " ICT and Security Challenges: A selection of Case Studies".

"CMB" team has also participated in other workshops and meetings and comments/impressions from the IGF meetings are available on our page.

Our dedicated page for the IGCD program also provides you with the Chairman's Summary on the main sessions organized during the Second IGF in Brazil.

The other news related to IGF is the fact that Veronica Cretu was also one of the ISOC (Internet Society) Ambassadors for IGF in Rio, more about ISOC and its current role in the developments on the Internet can be found at: www.isoc.org

October 17, 2007
ICANN Establishes Forum on Allocation Methods for Single-letter and Single-digit Domain Names
As recommended by the GNSO Council, ICANN is commencing a forum on potential allocation methods for single-letter and single-digit domain names at the second level in gTLD registries. Examples include a.com, i.info, 4.mobi, 8.org. Since revenue will result from this allocation, comments regarding the potential uses for this revenue are also requested.

October 16, 2007
My Name, My Language, My Internet: IDN Test Goes Live
ICANN launches global test of Internationalized Domain Names
(15 October 2007)
MARINA DEL REY, Calif.: Internet users around the globe can now experiment with their name in their language on their Internet with today’s launch of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers live testing of Internationalized Domain Names in 11 languages.

“This is one of the most exciting times yet in the development of IDNs,” said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO. “Internet users who speak the 11 languages of the test can play a key role in testing how IDNs operate, and help us move toward full implementation for all the languages of the world.”

Internet users around the globe can now access wiki pages with the domain name example.test in the 11 test languages -- Arabic, Persian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese and Tamil. The wikis will allow Internet users to establish their own subpages with their own names in their own language -- one suggestion is: example.test/yourname.

ICANN has also put a video explaining the evaluation process on YouTube, and available on the ICANN website.
The wiki pages can be accessed by typing example.test in the characters of one of the 11 languages, or by going to http://idn.icann.org.

“These wikipages are key to the test. We want to know how the URL displays in the Internet browser, if it works when you cut and paste it into the body of an email to a friend, and how all of this impacts the root zone,” Dr Twomey added.
The 11 evaluation wikis will remain online until IDNs are fully implemented and the first top-level domain is introduced in the evaluation language.
The full introduction of IDNs will mean that people can write the whole of a domain name in the characters used to write their own language. Presently you can only use these characters before the dot, so .com, .net, .org and the like can only be written in characters from basic Latin. IDNs will change this so that literally tens of thousands of characters will be available to the world.


October 2, 2007
ICANN will hold its next meeting in its home town of Los Angeles between 29 October and 2 November 2007 at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport.

This is a unique opportunity for the world's Internet community to gather together in the city that was in many ways the birthplace of the Internet and which was the home of its earliest pioneers. It will also be ICANN's 30th meeting, a milestone that the organisation is keen to share with anyone and everyone with a passion and interest in the Internet.
Learn more about this meeting at http://losangeles2007.icann.org

September 30, 2007

ICANN Studienkreis will have Annual Conference 2007: find more about the Program and the Speakers here: Warsaw 2007 Program
Veronica Cretu, President of the "CMB" Training Center and IGCD Program Coordinator is invited as a commentator for the Will Late Starters become Front Runners in new Markets? session.