GNSO new TLDs Committee

 

Part B:  Final Report

 

Introduction of New Generic Top-Level Domains

 

Table of Contents

 

PART ONE -- POLICY DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

PART TWO -- PARTICIPATION TABLE

PART THREE – INTERNATIONALISED DOMAIN NAMES WORKING GROUP REPORT (IDN-WG)

PART FOUR – RESERVED NAMES WORKING GROUP FINAL REPORT

PART FIVE – PROTECTING THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS WORKING GROUP FINAL REPORT

PART SIX  – GOVERNMENTAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE PUBLIC POLICY PRINCIPLES

PART SEVEN – CONSTITUENCY IMPACT STATEMENTS

PART EIGHT -- REFERENCE MATERIALS

Return to Final Report: Part A

 

 

PART ONE -- POLICY DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

 

1.      This section provides detailed information about the progress of the policy development process and the documentation produced throughout the series of teleconferences and face-to-face consultations that have taken place since December 2005, through 2006 and 2007.  All of the meetings were open to observers and many different stakeholders attended the meetings taking an active part in the discussion.  In addition, all meetings were open to remote participation by teleconference and file-sharing technology for some meetings.  Participation data is provided in Part Two below.

 

2.      The first step of the policy development process was the release of the  Issues Report on 5 December 2005.  The Report sets out an early collation of issues that the GNSO wished to take into account in developing the Terms of Reference for future rounds.  For example, the selection criteria used in previous application rounds for new top-level domains were used to guide the development of Term of Reference Two in this PDP.  An evaluation of the selection criteria and methods used in the re-bidding of the .org and .net registry contracts was also conducted.  The Issues Report contained Staff Recommendations about potential terms of reference and, in the main, those Recommendations were adopted by the GNSO Council.  The Report is found at http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/gnso-issues-rpt-gtlds-05dec05.pdf.

 

3.      A Public Comment Period was launched on 6 December 2005 to solicit input from the ICANN community about the proposed Terms of Reference (found at http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-06dec05.htm).  The Public Comment Period ran until 31 January 2006.  For this PDP public comment periods have been used in different ways than in the past.  In general, public comment calls have been far more targeted and highly structured to get responses on particular areas of concern to the Committee.  This was a successful initiative enabling information to be collected in a consistent way that improved the quality of subsequent Reports.  The archive of comments can be found at http://forum.icann.org/lists/new-gtlds-pdp-comments/). 

 

4.      In addition to a Public Comment Period, a Call for Expert Papers was announced on 3 January 2006 (found at http://icann.org/announcements/announcement-03jan06.htm).  The request for input was advertised widely in the international press and yielded eleven responses from a diverse range of stakeholders.  The authors of the papers were invited to present their papers and participate in a question and answer session at the 23 - 25 February 2006 Washington meeting.  A full listing of all the inputs, including the Expert Papers, can be found at http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/new-gtld-pdp-input.htm.

 

5.      The ICANN Board has been regularly updated on the progress of and taken a keen interest in the work of the new TLDs Committee.  For example, the Board meeting of 10 January 2006 shows discussion within the Board about its involvement in new TLDs policy development process (found at http://www.icann.org/minutes/minutes-10jan06.htm).  The Board passed a resolution at the March 2006 Wellington meeting urging the Committee to work as quickly and efficiently as possible.

 

6.      A draft Initial Report was released on 19 February 2006 (found at http://icann.org/topics/gnso-initial-rpt-new-gtlds-19feb06.pdf) and a request for public comments was announced at the same time that was open between 20 February 2006 and 13 March 2006.  The archives for those comments are found at http://forum.icann.org/lists/new-gtlds-pdp-initial-report/.  The draft Initial Report was used to facilitate discussion at subsequent Committee meetings and to give some guide to the broader community about the Committee's progress in its early stages.

 

7.      The GNSO's new TLDs Committee held a three day meeting in Washington DC between 23 and 25 February 2006.  The meeting notes can be found on the GNSO's Committee archive at (http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-council/msg00030.html).  A central element of the discussion focused on re-visiting ICANN's Mission and Core Values to ensure that the deliberations on the Terms of Reference were tightly constrained.  The substantive discussion over the three-day meeting also included discussion on whether to introduce new top-level domains (http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-council/msg00027.html) and potential selection criteria which could be used in a new round of top-level domain applications (http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-council/msg00026.html). 

 

8.      Analysis of the lessons learned from previous TLD rounds was included in the broader discussions held in Washington DC (http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-council/msg00030.html).  In addition to discussing general selection criteria, detailed discussion of technical requirements also took place (http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-council/msg00028.html).   Following the Washington meetings, it was clear that further information about technical criteria was necessary to inform the Committee's work.  On 15 March 2006 a formal call was made for additional information on technical criteria (found at http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/tech-criteria-15mar06.htm).  No responses were received to that specific call but, in the resulting recommendations, particular attention has been paid to addressing relevant technical standards across the full range of registry operations, including those that relate to Internationalised Domain Names.

 

9.      In response to the Committee's work and to discussions at the March 2006 Wellington meeting, the Board indicated its intention to facilitate the implementation of new top-level domains (found at http://www.icann.org/minutes/minutes-31mar06.htm.)

 

10. The new TLDs Committee met in Brussels between 11 and 13 May 2006 to discuss, in further detail, the work that had been undertaken on refining the selection criteria and allocation methods.  In addition, a full day was spent on discussing policies for contractual conditions with a special presentation from ICANN's Deputy General Counsel.  The Committee has archived, on 18 May 2006, records of the Brussels discussion and output from the meeting can be found at http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-council/msg00133.html

 

11. At the Brussels meeting, a revised work plan was devised (found at http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-council/msg00130.html) which include a high level commitment to producing an Initial Report in time for discussion at ICANN's June 2006 Marrakech meeting.

 

12. A draft Initial Report was released on 15 June 2006 (found at http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/issues-report-15jun06.pdf) and further discussion took place on the Committee's mailing list prior to the Marrakech meeting.

 

13. The ICANN Board meeting of 30 June 2006 showed, again, the Board's interest in facilitating the policy development process on new top-level domains, particularly in encouraging ongoing discussions with the GAC.  (found at http://www.icann.org/minutes/resolutions-30jun06.htm).  After inputs from the Marrakech meeting a final version of the Initial Report was released on 28 July 2006 (found at http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/newgtlds-issues-report-01-28jul06.htm). 

 

14. The Committee conducted another set of face-to-face consultations in Amsterdam between 29 and 31 August 2006 to further refine the Committee's findings and to develop a set of draft Recommendations.  Prior to the Amsterdam meeting, a comprehensive public comment period was conducted.  These public comments (found at http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-council/msg00189.html) were used as working materials for the Committee to consider, in addition to Constituency Statements, the previous set of Expert Papers and comprehensive commentary for a wide variety of observers to the meetings.

 

15. The Committee met with the GAC on four occasions during the course of the consultations – in Wellington, Marrakech, Sao Paolo and San Juan – where progress on the Committee's work was shared with GAC members.  In addition, at the San Juan meeting, GAC members were given a presentation about how the GAC's Public Policy Principles had been incorporated directly into the Committee's principles, recommendations and implementation guidelines.

 

16. Considering all the materials derived from the face-to-face meetings, discussions on email lists, expert materials and expert papers, on 14 September 2006 a set of draft Recommendations was released by the Committee for broader consideration (found at http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/recom-summary-14sep06.htm). 

17. Between 14 September and 5 October 2006 email discussion took place that improved and clarified the language of the Recommendations and ensured that Constituencies had sufficient time to rework their recommendations where necessary.

18. On 5 October 2006, the Committee conducted a two-hour teleconference to discuss the draft Recommendations (the MP3 recording can be found at http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-council/msg00224.html)/.  The purpose of the meeting was to confirm that the Recommendations reflected the intentions of the Committee and to conduct further work on refining elements of the Recommendations, particularly with respect to the selection criteria and allocation methods to resolve contention between string applications.

 

19. On 11 October 2006, the GNSO Committee Chairman and GNSO Chair, Dr Bruce Tonkin, sent formal correspondence to the Chair of the Governmental Advisory Committee and the Chair of GAC Working Group I, requesting the GAC's assistance with the public policy impacts of the introduction of new TLDs (found at http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg02891.html).

20. Based on the substantive nature of the Committee's email traffic on the draft Recommendations, a further update was released to the Committee on 18 October 2006 (found at http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-council/msg00234.html) for consideration whilst the drafting of the Final Report takes place.

21.  The Committee met again at ICANN's Sao Paulo meeting in December 2006 and continued their work with the release of an updated version of the Final Report (found at http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/GNSO-PDP-Dec05-FR13-FEB07.htm).

22. From February 2007 until May 2007 a series of working groups continued with separate streams of work. The Internationalised Domain Names Working Group (IDN-WG) released its Final Report  on 22 March 2007 (found online here http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/idn-wg-fr-22mar07.htm).  The Reserved Names Working Group (RN-WG) released its first report on 16 March 2007 (found online here http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/rn-wg-fr19mar07.pdf ) and its Final Report on 23 May 2007 (found online here http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/final-report-rn-wg-23may07.htm).  The Protecting the Rights of Others Working Group (PRO-WG) completed its Final Report on 1 June 2007 (found online here http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/GNSO-PRO-WG-final-01Jun07.pdf).

23. After the June 2007 San Juan meeting, the Committee continued to meet on a weekly basis with small sub-groups working on, in particular, Recommendation 6 and 20 and more detailed implementation guideline

24. The updated version of the draft Final Report:  Part A was released on 30 July for a Committee "last call" on the package of recommendations.

25. The following timetable was released in conjunction with the updated draft to enable the completion of the Committee's work prior to the ICANN Board meeting on 2 November 2007.

                                                              i.      Committee comment 30 July to 6 August

                                                            ii.      Committee meeting 6 August

                                                          iii.      Public comment period begins 9 August

                                                           iv.      Public comment period ends 29 August

                                                             v.      Synopsis of public comments released to Committee for consideration

                                                           vi.      GNSO Council vote on recommendations

26. After the GNSO Council's vote, the Board Report can be prepared.