Alan Greenberg, ALAC member from the North American Regional At-Large Organization (NARALO) ALAC Executive Committee member, and ALAC Liaison to the GNSO composed an initial draft of this Statement [PDF, 564 KB] after discussion of the topic within At-Large and on the Mailing Lists.
On 22 October 2013, this Statement was posted on the At-Large Draft Final Report on Protection of IGO and INGO Identifiers in All gTLDs Workspace.
On that same day, Olivier Crépin-Leblond, Chair of the ALAC, requested ICANN Policy Staff in support of the ALAC to send a Call for Comments on the draft Statement to all At-Large members via the ALAC Announce Mailing List.
A version incorporating the comments received was later posted to the aforementioned website.
On 25 October 2013, the Chair of the ALAC requested that ICANN Policy Staff in support of the ALAC open a ratification vote on the Statement.
On 1 November 2013, Staff confirmed that the online vote resulted in the ALAC endorsing the Statement with 11 votes in favor, 0 votes against, and 0 abstentions. You may review the result independently under: http://www.bigpulse.com/pollresults?code=3523YywLLHnipIr75kzmqTty
Summary
- The ALAC is particularly concerned that granting blocking-level protections may prohibit other reasonable uses of the same strings and the ALAC is not satisfied that the exception procedures outlined in the report would be effective.
- This being the case, it may be important to consider the principles that guided the ALAC, in our participation in the activities that led to this report, and that the ALAC believes should guide ICANN in considering any special protections.
- ICANN should grant special protection to organizations that further the public interest and in particular, those with a strong track record of humanitarian activities. However, such protections should only be granted where there is a history or reasonable expectation that the lack of protections would lead to the misrepresentation of the organizations, fraud, deliberate confusion, or other malfeasance.
- Such protections, when granted, should not unreasonably impinge on the ability of others with a valid right to use the protected string, from registering such names for uses which do not negatively impact the protected organization nor use to the protected name with the intent to deceive users. Formal trademarks should not be necessary to demonstrate such a right.
- The procedures used to grant the protection exceptions identified in number 2 must be both inexpensive and fast.
- No top level protections are necessary. Existing or new objection processes are sufficient.