Industry News, Registries

Afilias Announces Spanish Names for .INFO

Company enhances the non-English speaking Internet by allowing individuals to register web site names with native Spanish characters.

Afilias, a registry services provider, announced that Internet users can now register .INFO domain names that include the Spanish characters á, é, í, ñ, ó, ú, and ü. The introduction of these new domain names, termed Internationalized Domain Names, now enables Spanish-speakers to establish Web sites using words commonly used in Spanish such as película.info, teléfono-móvil.info, Ídolo.info, Piñata.info, and others.

The registry states that this set of Spanish characters adds to their broad support of IDNs, bringing the total number of languages supported to ten. IT also states that these include scripts for Spanish, German, Polish, Swedish, Danish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian and Korean.

ICANN Announcements

Request to Provide Input to Issue Report on Introduction of IDN ccTLDs

At its meeting on 2 October 2007, the ccNSO Council resolved to call for an Issue Report to examine the need for a Policy Development Process (ccPDP) to consider:

1. Whether Article IX of the ICANN bylaws applies to IDN ccTLDs associated with the ISO 3166-1 two letter codes, and if it does not then to establish if Article IX should apply.

2. Whether the ccNSO should launch a PDP to develop the policy for the selection and delegation of IDN ccTLDs associated with the ISO 3166-1 two-letter codes.

The Council requested that, in preparing the Issue Report, the Issue Manager identify policies, procedures, and/or by-laws that should be reviewed and, as necessary revised, in connection with the development and implementation of any IDN ccTLD policy.

The Council, also at the 2 October meeting, appointed Bart Boswinkel as Issue Manager by the ccNSO Council, responsible for producing the Issue Report.