As a result of discussions surrounding the implementation of the new gTLD policy recommendations, ICANN Staff commissioned an economic review of vertical integration issues relating to new gTLDs in the registry and registrar marketplace. ICANN engaged Steven Salop (Professor of Economics and Law, Georgetown University Law Center) and Joshua Wright (Assistant Professor of Law and Economics, George Mason University) were selected for their notable reputations and diversity of viewpoints in the issue area. They have also participated and presented in an ICANN Meeting forum in Sydney, Australia.

The report is being produced for public consideration as part of the broader dialogue and inputs on the related issues. The ICANN Board assented to the publication of the report during its workshop in Nairobi on 7 March 2010. It is important to note that publication of the report should not be considered as a validation of the information or positions contained therein. Also, it is not offered as the viewpoint of ICANN, the ICANN Board of Directors or ICANN Management, but is being offered to inform the public debate on the topic.

The overall rules seem clear:

1) If you apply for an IDN ccTLD that is confusingly similar with an existing ccTLD, gTLD, or reserved name, then your request will be declined.

2) If you request an IDN ccTLD that is confusingly similar to a “validated” IDN ccTLD, then your request will be declined.

3) If you request an IDN ccTLD that is confusingly similar to another IDN ccTLD under evaluation, and yet not “validated”, then both request will be placed on hold until a solution is found.

4) If you request an IDN ccTLD that is confusingly similar to an applied-for gTLD string that has reached Board approval, and hence considered an existing TLD, then your request will be declined.

5) If you request an IDN ccTLD that is confusingly similar to an applied-for gTLD string, then both parties will be informed.

Validation, for the purpose of the Fast Track Process means that it has been established that the string is a meaningful representation of the corresponding country/territory name, and that it has successfully passed the DNS Stability Panel evaluation.

However, it is the notion of confusingly similar and exactly how it is established that two or more strings are so confusingly similar that they cannot co-exist in the DNS, that reasonably is raising questions.

As the Final Implementation Plan states, any such determination is on a case-by-case basis. However, it is probably useful to provide some insight into how the panel makes such a determination.

While the determination is done by the DNS Stability Panel, Fast Track participants should know that ICANN staff will provide them with concerns about confusability (if such is found) during the initial review of a Fast Track request. The requester then has the opportunity to either (i) change the string they requested, (ii) withdraw the request and resubmit at a later stage, or (iii) continue with the request as originally submitted.

Type styles, fonts, etc.

Issue: A sufficiently creative choice of type styles or the exploitation of information about scripts that a given user may be unable to display can result in one character (or a sequence of characters) in one script being visually confusable with one or more characters (or character sequence(s)) in another script.

The issue becomes even more serious for closely related scripts (for example, Greek/Latin/Cyrillic).

While we are aware of the issues, some level of risk must be accepted. These kinds of issues cannot be completely guarded against, especially as type styles and fonts (just like languages and scripts) evolve and change over time.

Instead, determining confusability is focused on issues that may arise from the basic geometry of characters that is preserved, to a greater or lesser degree, across a variety of fonts, styles, and formatting.

Two-character strings

Issue: Two-character strings that consist of Unicode code points in scripts such as the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic script blocks are intrinsically confusable with currently defined or potential future country code TLD (ccTLD) strings based on the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes.

This is particularly true when variations in font and presentation interface are considered. And it is not limited to the pairs of “visually confusable characters” identified in Unicode Technical Report #39. Those characters are based on Unicode Reference Fonts that are deliberately designed to reduce the potential for visual confusion.

Therefore, a very conservative standard is being used to assess applied-for strings that consist of two Greek, Cyrillic, or Latin characters, including a default presumption of confusability to which exceptions may be made in specific cases.

How are strings ranked?

The Fast Track Process recognizes the following rankings for requested two-character IDN ccTLD strings. The higher the rank the more likely the applied-for string as a whole presents a significant risk of user confusion.

[6] Both characters are visually identical to an ISO 646 Basic Version (ISO 646-BV*) character. [International Organization for Standardization, "Information Technology – ISO 7-bit coded character set for information interchange," ISO Standard 646, 1991.]

[5] One character is visually identical to, and one character is visually confusable with, an ISO 646-BV character.

[4] Both characters are visually confusable with, but neither character is visually identical to, an ISO 646-BV character.

[3] One character is visually distinct from, and one character is visually identical to, an ISO 646-BV character.

[2] One character is visually distinct from, and one character is visually confusable with, an ISO 646-BV character.

[1] Both characters are visually distinct from an ISO 646-BV character.

Some disagreement may arise in assessing whether a string is confusingly similar with existing ccTLDs, gTLDs, or applied-for strings. Thus, these rankings are for guidance only, and the DNS Stability Panel makes its assessment based on the rankings and on the expertise of the panelists. In difficult situations, the panel may conduct extended evaluations that also can include drawing on additional linguistic expertise.

The likelihood of user confusion presented by a given two-character IDN ccTLD string does not depend strictly on the individual confusability of each character, if considered separately. The assessment of “visually distinct” and “visually confusable” takes into account both the individual features of each character and their combined effect.

In general, a two-character IDN string at rank [4] or higher presents a significant risk of user confusion.

In general, a two-character IDN string at rank [3] or lower does not present a significant risk of user confusion.

What about confusable strings already in the DNS root zone?

Some have argued that we already have TLDs in the DNS root zone that could be considered confusingly similar, so there is no need to prevent future confusingly similar strings from being entered in the root zone as well. There is only one answer to such statement: Just because there are issues today does not mean that we should make it worse for the future!

Finally, thank you to the DNS Stability Panel for all their work in this area and for generating the rankings based on their professional experience and prelaunch training!

Sections are:

• JPA/Affirmation
• Applicant Guidebook/new gTLDs
• Fast Track/IDNs
• Public comment periods
• Seoul meeting
• And the remainder

JPA/Affirmation
Last Wednesday, 30 September 2009, the Joint Project Agreement with the US government ended and in its place a new Affirmation of Commitments was signed.

This is obviously of enormous significance to ICANN, so it currently sits front and center on the ICANN front page. We have an announcement, the Affirmation itself, a video of CEO Rod Beckstrom explaining its significance, and reaction from the community. The Affirmation has been signed but obviously there is much that the community now needs to discuss, and that conversation will start in Seoul.

Applicant Guidebook / new gTLDs
The third version of the Applicant Guidebook was released today. It’s all out for public comment, as we have done twice before. We are gradually moving forward with the overarching issues and, again, Seoul will be place to have more discussions.

It is worth pointing out that today, Monday 5 October, is the document deadline for Seoul (15 working days before the start of the meeting), which is why so much stuff has appeared in the past few days. The idea is that everyone will now have plenty of time to read the documents and so be in a position to talk about their contents at Seoul.

The full rundown of documents can be found at http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/comments-3-en.htm, including red-lined versions so you can see what has changed.

Fast Track
This is the process for introducing internationalized domain names (IDNs) into the root – but only those that related to territories i.e. ccTLDs. The Fast Track final implementation plan was published last week for public comment, and the plan is to have the Board authorize it at the Seoul meeting (end of this month).

So, this is the last chance to have a look and have your say before it actually happens. You can find all the information you should need for that process at http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-30sep09-en.htm.

Public comment periods
As usual in the build-up to a meeting, we have a raft of public comment periods. Ignoring the ones for the Applicant Guidebook and Fast Track, both of which are mentioned above, we have also opened comment periods on:

• A root-scaling study by TNO
• The use of proxy services for domain registration i.e. people paying to ensure their personal details do not appear publicly as the owner of a particular domain name
• Board review final report i.e. the changes to be made to the Board itself as part of the ongoing independent review process
• SSAC review report – same as Board report above but not as far along in the process
• NomCom review report – same as SSAC above

Seoul meeting
Why we have this glut of material is, of course, the upcoming Seoul meeting at the end of October.

With respect to the meeting itself, there are several other pieces of information:

• The agenda is live - check it out to see what is going on, when and who will be speaking
• If you can’t attend, you can ask questions in the public forum online
• If you haven’t see it yet, the meeting has its own website at http://sel.icann.org

And the remainder
And there’s still more:

• Nairobi fellowship applications
• A new process for registry security requests
• A bulk transfer advisory

Hopefully that helps breaks down the work into manageable chunks. If you still have queries, please add them as a comment below.

Well, they are probably aware now.

For many of us at ICANN it can come as a shock – where the new gTLD process has been a part of everyday life for more than two years – to suddenly be reminded that despite all the discussions, the meetings, the public comment periods, the sessions across the world, and the seemingly endless documents, the whole process of opening up the domain name space has until recently gone largely unnoticed by the wider world.

From my perspective, a number of reporters “buried the lead” when they reported on this new study commissioned by British registrar Gandi. What they buried or didn’t report at all is that of 100 UK businesses surveyed, 81 percent say the gTLD expansion will be innovative, and 75 percent say it will be advantageous.

This is especially significant since nearly all the coverage up to now has focused on the struggle to find solutions to the remaining overarching issues such as trademark protection.

Gandi also commissioned Futurelab to survey 1,000 consumers (on top of the 100 businesses) about new gTLDs. Not surprisingly, the survey revealed that businesses are concerned the costs of a new gTLD, while many consumers are simply concerned that the Internet might become more cluttered and not be as navigable as it is today.

So the survey provides a spot check on where attitudes are today, but it also underscores a critical fact: that gTLD expansion is literally a work in progress and the application process won’t be opened up until the concerns are addressed.

We still have at least one more round of public comments on the next draft of the Applicant Guidebook. The most concerning aspect about this from the staff perspective, however, is that people will either not hear about the process in time or – worse – hear about it but do not become aware that they can have an impact and express their views – that ICANN is building a broad consensus view about how to move forward with the greatest ever expansion of the domain space.

The Implementation Recommendation Team (IRT) is a case in point. When we heard the concerns expressed about trademark, the concerned community was asked to come up with solutions to be fed back into the ICANN process. Now the IRT final report is published and out for public comments and our Sydney meeting later this month will give everyone else in the community the chance to say what they think about those solutions.

Undoubtedly, the Gandi study will fuel more discussion surrounding gTLD expansion at Sydney. Great, we welcome it. The most dangerous voice is the one not heard.

We have already set aside several months of awareness building after the Applicant Guidebook is finished and published; the earlier people become aware of the process, not only does it mean we have to reach fewer people but also more people learn about the fact that they can get involved in ICANN’s processes.

If you can’t attend the Sydney meeting we urge you to take part remotely.

قامت آيكان على مدار الأيام القليلة الماضية بنشر مجموعة من المستندات في إطار الاستعداد لاجتماع سيدني (٢١-٢٦ يونيو
٢٠٠٩) تمهيدا لمناقشتها خلال الاجتماع. وتشمل هذه المستندات ما يلي

المسار السريع لأسماء النطاقات الدولية لرمز الدولة: تم نشر الإصدار الثالث لمسودة خطة التنفيذ، ونسخة معدلة لاقتراح وثيقة المسئولية، وكذلك التفاصيل الخاصة بالمساهمة المالية المقترحة لدعم تطبيق أسماء النطاقات الدولية لرمز الدولة، بالإضافة إلى تحديث الورقة الخاصة بتطوير جداول أسماء النطاقات الدولية، ويمكن الاطلاع على جميع المستندات من خلال الرابط
http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-31may09-en.htm
ويمكن أيضا التعليق عليها من خلال الرابط
http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/public-comment-200907.html#fast-track
علما بأن التعليق على هذه المستندات سيكون متاحا حتى ١٥ يوليو ٢٠٠٩.

With Sydney opening on Monday 22 June, we strived to have this information up before this morning, Monday 1 June.

As such, it is probably as comprehensive a set of documents as ICANN has published for any meeting – addressing hard issues on IDNs, an important report on intellectual property issues as related to domain names, another huge piece of comment and analysis related to new TLDs, new financial analysis, more on community travel (which is coming), and other areas. I’m also pretty confident that this is the earliest (relative to an ICANN meeting) that this kind of material has been available.

So what was included?

IDNs: We posted the third revision to the Fast Track Implementation Plan. This was accompanied by explanatory memos that discuss: the form of agreement we will have with IDN TLD operators, financial contributions to ICANN, and the use of variant tables. The bottom line – we plan to launch this process right after the meeting in Seoul.

New gTLDs: We posted the Analysis of public comment, as we did before the Mexico City meeting. This document is intended to demonstrate ICANN’s careful consideration of all the comment. We decided to not publish a new version of the Guidebook since the overarching issues are not yet resolved.

Instead, we have identified several areas where the Guidebook can be amended and published excerpts – just those sections that are changing. We also published explanatory memos: discussing whether Chinese, Japanese, and Korean TLDs should be allowed to register one or two-character names since complete words in those languages are generally that short; describing all the research that has been done regarding morality & public order issues; describing a process for contractual compliance in community-based TLDs; and advocating a requirement that registries maintain thick Whois databases.

IRT and Trademark Protection: The Implementation Recommendation Team was created by a resolution of the Board to develop solutions to trademark protection issues. The IRT made its final report, it was posted yesterday. The report represents a ton of work by the 18 members of the team for which we are very grateful.

As an ICANN staff member closely associated with this important and huge amount of work, I would like to thank everyone from staff and the community that worked so hard in making it possible to publish this in time for review and discussion in Sydney.

ICANN has been working on a process for widely opening up the Internet space for a number of years. As that process has got closer to reality, people have started paying it more and more attention.

The “new gTLD program” envisions a very significant increase in the number of “generic top-level domains” – or Internet extensions like dot-com, dot-net, dot-info etc. At the moment there are 21 of these extensions of three characters or more. But the gTLD program is estimating a further 500 within the next two years or so. It’s a huge change in the Internet’s domain name system.

The “Applicant Guidebook” is what it says it is – a guidebook for those that plan to apply for a new Internet extension. In it, all the rules, procedures and processes are outlined in some depth. And currently ICANN is running an extensive and ongoing public comment and review process using that guidebook as the focus for discussion.

Which leads to the question of this blog post: so where are we up to with these new Internet extensions?

The Sydney meeting

ICANN makes its big decisions at international public meetings where the Internet community comes together and thrashes things out. There are currently three a year and the next one is at the end of next month, 21-26 June in Sydney, Australia.

It makes sense then to outline progress of the new gTLD work in terms of ICANN meetings – what will be done before the meeting, happen at the meeting, and be done for the next meeting (in Seoul at the end of October).

So, following the announcement made last night:

• We won’t be producing a third version of the Applicant Guidebook for Sydney (the first was published in October 2008 for our Cairo meeting in November; the second in February 2009 for our Mexico City meeting in March)
• Instead, the focus will be on what we have called “overarching issues” – particular areas of concern flagged up by the community
• However, there will be some excerpts of the guidebook with suggested changes following community feedback from the second version

Overarching issues

There were four overarching issues identified back in February:

• Trademark protection
• Security and stability
• Malicious conduct
• Demand and economic analysis

ICANN’s staff has been working hard with the community to find solutions to the questions and concerns raised about each.

Most visible has been trademark protection. In a nutshell, people are concerned that an explosion in Internet extensions will also see an explosion in cybersquatting and companies will either not be able to keep track or they will have to spend small fortunes making sure they are. So they want additional protections in place to stop this from happening.

On the flipside, many in the Internet community are concerned that if companies get too many controls on this expansion of the Internet that they will end up with too much influence and this may damage the innovative edge that the Internet has become renowned for. So a careful balance is being sought.

To cut a long story short, there is currently a report produced by those companies most concerned about this issue which has been put out for public comment and that comment period closes on 24 May – in time for comment to be summarized and the results to be discussed in Sydney. The hope, of course, is to get closer to a solution by the end of the meeting. There will no doubt be other suggestion solutions but at the moment this report is the focus of community attention.

So, that’s trademark protection. Oh – no – a quick addition. After Sydney, once ICANN (hopefully) has a fairly solid solution, the staff are going to run four meetings in London, New York, Hong Kong and Abu-Dhabi during July/August so that word gets out and people are able to make suggestions for any further tweaks.

This is one of the problems of overseeing a global network – you have to get the word out around the world so that people don’t feel as if they didn’t have a chance to comment on the proposal before it happens.

Also, just to give a quick insight into the difficulties of this sort of work, if the community in Sydney still disagrees widely about the best solution to trademark protection, ICANN staff wouldn’t have much to take around the world and so would have to consider cancelling the planned global meetings
(as well as devise another way of trying to find a solution to the issue).

Anyway, quickly going through the rest of the overarching issues:

• Security and stability: the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) has long been a part of ICANN and it has been looking at the issue of what impact a large number of new Internet extensions may have on the domain name system. The SSAC will have a series of public meetings in Sydney discussing their work on this so far.
• Malicious Conduct. I think this has been renamed “malicious behavior” because we are talking about people behaving in ways that may be legal but which are still “malicious” – and “conduct” has legal implications. Anyway, the very popular “e-crime” session from the last meeting in Mexico City has been adapted to become a “malicious behavior” session – so serving two purposes in one session in Sydney.
• Demand and economic analysis. This was about trying to foresee the economic impact that the new Internet extensions may have – so everyone has a clearer idea about what we were embarking upon. ICANN commissioned two reports to this end and they were published for Mexico City and put out to public comment. I’m not sure what additional work has been done in this regard but there will be something for Sydney.

Other issues

Those aren’t the only issues surrounding the program but they are the big ones. Other issues include the complexities surrounding the fact that the new gTLD program will also include for the first time ever Internet extensions in other scripts and languages (called Internationalized Domain Names, or IDNs). So you will be able to have extensions in Chinese, Arabic, Hangul and so on. As you can imagine this is an additional layer of complexity.

And there is also an issue of “geographic names” – where people may apply for an Internet extension that is the name of a country or a city, town etc. Governments are, for obvious reasons, concerned about this. But at the same time there are already some people that have got the backing of the city councils and so on to apply for and run an Internet extension named after that city. So, this is another area where there needs to be careful discussions about what to do so everyone is comfortable with the final solution.

Your participation and comments

It is worth noting at this point that the reason ICANN goes through this extensive and repetitive comment and review process is so that everyone has a chance to make their case and have their views noted and listened to. We do this with every piece of important work.

One of the most common gripes however is that ICANN has “ignored” someone’s comments. No matter how many times staff try to explain that changes are only made once a huge variety of different views have been considered, it is of little consolation to those who believe strongly that their perspective was the correct one but that it wasn’t followed.

We do understand this frustration and so recently we have been producing extensive and objective summaries and analyses of the comments received on important pieces of work. The idea is that while you may still be annoyed that your suggestion wasn’t included, you can see all the other ideas and options outlined by others. Where possible, ICANN staff explains the logic and reasoning behind going one route rather than another.

Staff are never going to get it right straight off and so that is why the big items of work – and this new gTLD program is the biggest at the moment – are put through several iterations of public comment so that the careful compromises are then put out again for review. The idea of course is that over time people grow more and more comfortable with the proposed solution.

Anyway, with that in mind, we should be producing an extensive summary/analysis of the comments made to the second version of the Applicant Guidebook before the end of this month.

Third version

Normally that summary/analysis would be used to produce a third version of the Applicant Guidebook. But because work is still continuing on the overarching issues, it was decided not to put out an entire new version that would have big, undecided gaps in. Particularly when the overarching issues will have an impact in many different sections of the overall guidebook.

So, the focus is on the overarching issues for Sydney, plus there will be excerpts of parts of the guidebook that include suggested changes derived from the feedback received to the second version. The idea is to progress both with the overarching issues and with those parts of the guidebook that people specifically focussed on last time around.

Timeline

So there you go, that’s where we’re up to. An enormous amount of work to be done in Sydney. The hope is that the various meetings go well enough that it will be possible to produce the third version of the Applicant Guidebook in time for the Seoul meeting in October.

If that happens, and if people are pretty happy with it in Seoul (so there are comparatively few changes), then it should be possible to get the whole thing agreed to and signed up by the end of the year. And then the whole process could open up in the first quarter of 2010.

So that’s the current timeline – although it is all dependent on you, the community, to find consensus on a lot of still-undecided issues. Staff is doing all it can to get that agreement as fast as possible without rushing people. If it all goes smoothly, we will see an extraordinary expansion of the Internet’s naming system in 2010 – and who knows how that will change how we all see this revolutionary network.

But if there are still problems and issues, ICANN — us as staff and you as the community — will continue working away until we get there.

See you all in Sydney.

Mexico City is no exception. Although this time, it is very much easier to get a quick overview of what is out for public comment by looking at the front page of the ICANN website (the third box down on the right).

Just to present you with another avenue to finding out about these public comment periods, there are all listed below with quick explanations of what they are and the dates when they close.

Open comment periods

1. GNSO Constituency Renewals. Closes 25 FEB
As part of the ongoing changes to ICANN’s main policy-making body, the GNSO, all the existing constituencies have put in submissions stating that they have followed the bylaws and so should be reconfirmed as valid constituencies. You are free to comment on these submissions.

2. IPv4 Global Policy. Closes 26 FEB
We are running out of IPv4 address space and so ICANN has been working with the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) to decide what system we follow as the addresses get more and more scarce. The policy here proposes that each RIR be allocated one “slash-8″ – equating to roughly 16.7 million IP addresses – as soon as they are only five blocks left. If you have a comment on this you can make it between now and 26 February.

3. Single and Two-Character .BIZ Domains. Closes 15 MAR
The company that runs the .biz registry, NeuStar, wants to make single and two-character domains available. Until recently, no registries were allowed to do this because of technical concerns. But those rules have relaxed over the past year or so. To be allowed to create, for example, i.biz, NeuStar has to change its contract with ICANN, and ICANN puts all contract changes out for public comment and review. So if you have an opinion about this, you can make it online.

4. Geographic Regions Working Group Charter. Closes 24 MAR
As an organization hoping to represent global stakeholders, ICANN has followed the common approach of splitting the world up into different regions in order to make things manageable. The problems is: where do you draw the lines? It may seem simple but the closer the issue is looked at, the more complex it becomes. So, in order to review what these regions are and who they include, ICANN has created a Working Group to go through all the issues and make recommendations at the end of it. The first step in that process is to create a charter for the group – outlining the scope and methodology that will be followed. This public comment period opens that charter up to public review.

5. Fast Track Proposed Solutions. Closes 6 APR
The Fast Track is the process by which governments and the managers of different countries’ registries will be able to apply for and receive versions of their country name in different languages scripts at the top-level of the Internet i.e. the part after the dot in a domain name. An example would be “China” in Chinese characters. These “internationalized domain names” or IDNs are being put out on the Internet for the first time as the technical issues that make it possible have only recently been resolved.

It is not a simple process by any means, so ICANN has been producing drafts of an “implementation plan” to make this process a reality. In this iteration, as well as the latest version of the Fast Track Implementation Plan, there will be three papers identifying specific issues that still need to be resolved. You can see all the papers in question and make comments about them now and until 6 April.

6. ALAC Review Final Report. Closes 17 APR
ICANN regularly reviews of its main supporting organizations and advisory committees to make sure they remain relevant and in the correct format. The At Large Advisory Committee or ALAC exists to represent ordinary Internet users and it has been under review for roughly a year and the process is drawing to a close. A final report of the working group created to carry out much of the review has been released for its final piece of public comment before being formally submitted to a Board Committee that then puts it forward to a vote by the whole Board. So if you want your say on how ordinary Internet users should be represented within the ICANN model, this is your last chance. Until the ALAC is reviewed again in a few years.

7. Operating Plan and Budget FY2010. Closes 30 APR
People are constantly asking how much money ICANN has and how it decides where to spend it. What few people recognise however is that those decisions are heavily influenced by the community itself. Every year, ICANN runs through a public strategic planning process that outlines what the organization needs to do in the next year. It then turns that into an Operating Plan and from that devises its budget. The community is invited every year to provide their feedback on the process of where ICANN spends it money. This is a comment period on the first version of the Operating Plan and Budget for ICANN’s 2010 financial year. The comments from this will be used to revise the plan and budget and it will then be put out a second time before being approved by the Board in June.

And that’s it for now. Much of the community will be focussed on the revised Applicant Guidebook for new generic top-level domains that will come out in the next day or so, but please do not forget these other public comment periods.

You can view all open and recently closed public comment periods on one page, as well as an archive of older comment periods: http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/.

In order to provide some answers and perspective, ICANN’s most senior executives dealing with the process – the CEO Paul Twomey, the COO Doug Brent and the Senior Vice President for Services Kurt Pritz – have done a video update on where we are now and where the process is going.

You can see it on the right-hand-side of this post. A transcript is below. Enjoy.

* Applicant Guidebook Update – February 2009
* [computer keys tapping]
* Applicant Guidebook Update – February 2009 ICANN
* Hi, I’m Paul Twomey, the President and CEO of ICANN–
* Paul Twomey, President & CEO, ICANN
* –and I thought I’d take this opportunity to make a few overarching comments–
* –about the new generic top-level domain process presently being undertaken by ICANN.
* The process has had 2 parts.
* The first has been a long-term process of consultation and policy development from the community up through the Generic Names Supporting Organization
* –which has taken nearly 3 years.
* Since June last year, the board of ICANN has then asked the staff of ICANN to work through what is feasible in terms of implementation–
* –and that is where we are presently in the process.
* End of last year, we put out for comment a draft Applicant Guidebook for people who were thinking of applying and to get the feedback.
* I’m very pleased to say that we received over 1,000 responses to that document–
* –and I think that’s a great success.
* We are not yet complete by any means.
* Doug Brent – Chief Operating Officer, ICANN
* In a lot of ways, I think this new gTLD process that we’re running is exemplary of how the ICANN model really works.
* So the cycle is really pretty simple.
* Policy approval led to an implementation guidebook that was reviewed by the board and approved for posting.
* The community provided extensive feedback.
* That feedback is now being processed and the guidebook updated as we process these comments.
* The result will be an analysis of the comments so the community can see their comments were really heard–
* –and an updated draft guidebook that will be reviewed by the board and, as you can imagine, particularly on some key issues.
* That then updated guidebook will be posted in English and 5 other languages–
* –presented to the community in Mexico City–
* –and undoubtedly considered further after that time.
* I think we have already seen, through this response period, very clearly–
* –that there is a demand from a large number of people who are looking at potentially putting in applications.
* There has been another family of responses, many of them from industry associations–
* –focusing on some broader, overarching issues.
* First of all, and probably the most pressing, has been brand protection issues.
* Secondly has been concerns about whether the introduction of new gTLDs, DNSSEC, IDNs–
* –is imposing a form of challenge to scale in being able to implement.
* One of the third major issues is is the implementation of new gTLDs going to make it more difficult to manage–
* –some of the malware, phishing, pharming, and related type issues that already exist within the DNS system?
* I don’t think it’s anyone’s intention that brand holders should be held to any form of extortion in the operation of new gTLDs–
* –particularly at the second level, and that’s an issue which needs to be discussed.
* On the concerns about potential confusion and for the increase in malicious behavior that might emerge from having many more new gTLDs–
* –I think we really should think about this in a more creative way.
* I personally consider that we are facing now actually an opportunity for us to explore what the contractual frameworks could be for the new gTLDs–
* –both at the registry level and potentially flow through to the registrar level–
* –that might help us address some of the existing concerns that we already have.
* We have a body of legacy contracts and experience–
* –but potentially with these new gTLDs, we might be able to review and consider the contractual terms and frameworks–
* –which might help address some of the concerns of the people who are rightly concerned with these sort of malware and malicious behavior environments.
* One has to be conscious, however, that that can only be done in the context of national laws and what is feasible under those laws–
* –but nevertheless, I think we now also want to consider this an opportunity for an outreach and discussion with that community–
* –to think what would be feasible as well as with registries and registrars–
* –so that we can consider the new gTLD environment as a new way of considering–a new opportunity to consider–these contractual environments–
* –separate, if you like, from the legacy contracts that have been in place now for 10 years or more.
* Innovation is not something driven simply by demand in a marketplace.
* It is provided also by the opportunities in the structure of the marketplace and the technology available.
* We would not have a Skype, a Google, a Facebook simply because people said, “Would you like to have a Facebook?”
* These all come from entrepreneurs offering opportunities to a market and seeing what is feasible in an environment of innovation–
* –and that is an important part, I think, of the framework in which we need to consider the new gTLD round.
* Kurt Pritz – SVP of Services, ICANN
* The next version of the applicant guidebook will be published in anticipation of ICANN’s meeting in Mexico City in March.
* Some of the changes you’ll see in this new version of the guidebook will include changes to the evaluation criteria–
* –more detailed procedures, changes in fees paid by gTLD registry operators, more protections for others.
* You’ll also see areas where additional study will be undertaken or additional consultations will take place.
* So to summarize, I am very pleased and thankful to all the members of the global internet community–
* –who have responded to this first round process of consultation on the draft applicant guidebook for new generic top-level domains.
* It has been a very successful process of feedback.
* We will follow our usual ICANN process of consultation, putting things back out for discussion, try to summarize, get more consultation.
* That is the way we work.
* This can be a noisy and sometimes heated process–
* –and we will think through those issues and potentially put forward yet again another round of an Applicant Guidebook–
* –that people can look at and consider.
* So we are listening very carefully–
* –we are wanting to engage and discuss–
* –we are following the usual ICANN processes, and I’d like to thank you very much for being involved in that–
* –and being part of the community that’s actually making the future of the DNS.
* New gTLDs and the Internet
* Openness
* Change
* Innovation
* ICANN

The first public comment period on the Draft Applicant Guidebook for new gTLDs has closed. The period opened on 24 October 2008, and was 76 days long after it closed 7 January to account for later publication of the Guidebook in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish. ICANN continued to receive and accept English comments received until the January 7 deadline considering the end of year holidays.

The comment period received over 300 comments from participants from 24 different countries. Among the many participants were individuals and organizations representing intellectual property interests, brand owners, business owners, ICANN supporting organizations, domain name industry players, and governments.

“This level of interest and feedback to the Draft Guidebook shows that the comment process is working. All the comments and concerns will be considered and a response will be provided,” said Paul Levins, Executive Officer and Vice President Corporate Affairs.

Some of the key concerns raised by the community that are immediately obvious are:

* Brand protection issues and the impact on brands and trademark owners
* Financial considerations, including evaluation fees, ongoing registry fees, and refund procedures
* Various issues surrounding the proposed registry agreement, particularly, price controls, registry/registrar separation, the management of future agreement amendments, equitable treatment, and others
* General comments and concerns related to expanding the top level and its impact on the global marketplace, specific industries and Domain Name System stability.

“There is no doubt that we need to address these and other legitimate concerns before proceeding to open the application process” said Mr Levins.

Respondents had the option to comment on the Guidebook as a whole or on one of its six modules. Just over half (55 percent), chose to comment on the Guidebook; the rest commented on specific modules or topics. The fifth module, covering the base agreement between new registries and ICANN, received the most comments (around 30 percent).

The responses are now being summarized and evaluated. A comprehensive analysis of the comments will be released in early February.

“We will also be holding conferences in different global locations to further explain the Guidebook, the changes envisaged and to have further dialogue. Alongside the feedback received from these and other outreach events, the summary and analysis will inform ICANN staff through the next program development phase, which will mean amending the current guidebook” Mr Levins said.

“I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all those that contributed their responses to the first public comment period. ICANN looks forward to continuing a productive dialogue on this that will result in amendments to the application process” Levins said.