ICANN and Governance, New gTLDs

Preliminary Issue Report on New gTLD Subsequent Procedures

ICANN logoBrief Overview

Purpose: This public comment proceeding is being opened to obtain community input on the Preliminary Issue Report on New gTLD Subsequent Procedures.

Current Status: This new Preliminary Issue Report on New gTLD Subsequent Procedures is posted for public comment and submitted to the GNSO Council in response to the Council’s request, pursuant to a Resolution passed during its meeting on 24 June, 2015.

Next Steps: Following review of public comments received on this report, the Staff Manager will update the Issue Report as appropriate to reflect public comment. The Staff Manager will submit a summary of the public comments received together with the Final Issue Report to the GNSO Council for consideration.

Section I: Description, Explanation, and Purpose

This Preliminary Issue Report [PDF, 1.28 MB] was created in response to the GNSO Council request to analyze subjects that may lead to changes or adjustments for subsequent New gTLD Procedures, utilizing a set of deliverables from the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Discussion Group (DG) as the basis for analysis. This Preliminary Issue Report is intended to help establish a baseline scope of subjects and to provide analysis that will hopefully further the work of the potential PDP Working Group, but it is not intended to discuss and provide solutions, as that is work expected to be accomplished by the PDP–WG.

This Preliminary Issue Report seeks to review the subjects identified by the DG in depth, to help the community in determining what, if any changes may be needed in regards to the existing GNSO Final Report on Introduction of New Generic Top-Level Domains, which has “been designed to produce a systemized and ongoing mechanisms for applicants to propose new top-level domains,” meaning those policy recommendations remain in place for subsequent rounds of the New gTLD Program unless the GNSO Council would decide to modify those policy recommendations via a policy development process. The DG saw the subjects it identified as possibly being addressed in the following ways:

  • Clarifying, amending or overriding existing policy principles, recommendations, and implementation guidelines;
  • Developing new policy recommendations, and/or;
  • Supplementing or developing new implementation guidance.

There are a number of New gTLD-related review efforts underway or planned within the community, which to the extent that they are known, are discussed in this report. A potential Policy Development Process (PDP) should not be expected to be limited to the subjects identified in this Issue Report, and should take into account the findings from these related efforts. In some cases, it may be determined that certain subjects can be fully addressed in these related efforts. The subjects identified by the DG have been organized in suggested groupings that could facilitate establishing teams to undertake the work. The list of subjects is a starting point, and a suggested method of organization, but it is not intended to be exhaustive or impose constraints on how a potential PDP–WG operates or the issues it discusses, provided that the issues are directly related to new gTLD subsequent procedures. The list of subjects may need to be supplemented, shrunk, or reorganized, to meet the needs of the substantive policy discussions of the PDP–WG.

The provisional groupings suggested by the DG and discussed in this Issue Report are enumerated directly below, which each contain a set of discrete subjects that have been researched and analyzed for the purposes of this Issue Report, and are likely to warrant additional discussion and possibly the development of recommendations by a potential PDP Working Group:

  1. Overall Process / Support / Outreach
  2. Legal / Regulatory
  3. String Contention / Objections & Disputes
  4. Internationalized Domain Names
  5. Technical and Operations

This document is being published for public comment to seek community input particularly with regards to information that may be missing from this Preliminary Issue Report, or necessary corrections or updates to information, as well as any feedback on the proposed PDP Working Group Charter. Furthermore, comments are sought on whether there are any issues that should be explored in the PDP in addition to those described above and in the Preliminary Issue Report.

Section II: Background

In 2005, the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) began a policy development process (PDP) to consider the introduction of new gTLDs. The two-year PDP process resulted in a set of 19 GNSO policy recommendations for implementing new gTLDs. In order to implement the policy recommendations of the GNSO, and to take into consideration subsequent additional policies and recommendations from the community (including the GNSO, GAC, ccNSO, ALAC, SSAC and the ICANN Board through the New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC)), a number of draft Applicant Guidebooks (AGBs) were developed by ICANN staff.

In June 2011, ICANN‘s Board of Directors approved the final AGB and authorized the launch of the New gTLD Program, although subsequent revised versions of the Final Applicant Guidebook were released by ICANN staff, including the ultimate final New gTLD Applicant Guidebook dated June 4, 2012, a few months after the application window closed.

The New gTLD Program application window opened on 12 January 2012 and a total of 1930 complete applications were received. The first set of Initial Evaluation results were released on 22 March 2013, followed by the first set of new gTLD delegations on 21 October 2013.

All applications have completed the evaluation process and as of the writing of this Preliminary Issue Report, there are over 700 gTLDs delegated and approximately 600 applications still proceeding through the remaining steps of the program. Though the 2012 round is ongoing, efforts to examine the round have already begun, which includes the creation of the GNSO New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Discussion Group (DG), was created to discuss the experiences gained by the first round of new gTLD applications and identify subjects for future issue reports, if any, that might lead to changes or adjustments for subsequent application procedures.

The DG prepared a set of final deliverables, which included a set of subjects that it anticipated should be analyzed in detail in the context of an issue report. On 24 June, 2015 the GNSO Council passed a resolution requesting the drafting of this Preliminary Issue Report on New gTLD Subsequent Procedures.

Section III: Relevant Resources

Section IV: Additional Information

Open Date: 31 Aug 2015 23:59 UTC

Close Date: 10 Oct 2015 23:59 UTC

Staff Report Due: 24 Oct 2015 23:59 UTC

This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
https://www.icann.org/public-comments/new-gtld-subsequent-prelim-2015-08-31-en