AMMAN - Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property (AGIP) Regional Office Executive Director, Charles Sha’ban, has recently been elected to the Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) Working Group of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
“With the aim of developing an overall policy for IDN ccTLDs, the Working Group will join forces to start using the long-waited IDNs in a standard way, which will enable any Internet user who has the needed language capability, to access the web pages of the specified domain name from any PC in the world, whether the domain name is in English, Arabic, Chinese or in any other language,” Sha’ban said.
Representing the global IP community, Sha’ban is one of the two Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) members that were elected to the Working Group.
The idea of an Internationalized Domain Names Working Group was put forward by the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) council and approved by ICANN's board at the Los Angeles meeting which took place October 29 - November 2, 2007.
The Working Group will be comprised of members of the GNSO, ccNSO, GAC, ALAC, and SSAC. Additionally, a representative of the technical community and ICANN staff will be part of it.
The purpose of this Working Group is to develop and report on feasible methods, if any, that would enable the introduction, in a manner that ensures the continued security and stability of the Internet, of a limited number of non-contentious IDN ccTLDs while the overall policy is being developed.
For more information on the Working Group, please check: http://ccnso.icann.org/workinggroups/idncwg.htm