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Contractual Compliance 2024 Archive

On 15 September 2025, an updated version of this page was published to reflect the addition of ICANN Contractual Compliance's enforcement of DNS Abuse requirements.

Updated 28 June 2024 to reflect the addition of ICANN Contractual Compliance's enforcement of DNS Abuse requirements.

ICANN Contractual Compliance - Functional Activities Overview

What we do:

  • Enforce ICANN org's agreements with Registry Operators, ICANN-Accredited Registrars and the community-developed policies incorporated into those agreements.
  • Enforcement activities include addressing external complaints, proactive monitoring to ensure contracted parties comply with the agreements, and conducting regularly scheduled audits.
  • Support ICANN's policy development processes and working groups efforts by providing input on clarity and enforceability of proposed recommendations and sharing relevant historical Compliance data and reporting.
  • Participate in training and outreach sessions to increase awareness and understanding of the role of ICANN Compliance in enforcing ICANN's agreements with Registry Operators and ICANN-accredited Registrars.
  • Produce, publish, and maintain detailed monthly metrics and reports on the enforcement activities of ICANN Contractual Compliance.

Enforcement Activities Highlights

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Enforcement of DNS Abuse Obligations

Audit Icon

Contractual Compliance Audit Program

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Reporting & Performance Measurement


ICANN Contractual Compliance Topics of Interest

Learn More About ICANN Contractual Compliance

Link to Archive Page

Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."