[council] Feb 28 deadline on IGO protections - draft letter

[Thomas Rickert <rickert@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

All,
following last week's call, please find below the draft response to the Board 
that I have been working on with Jonathan.

Your comments / feedback is most welcome. Remember the deadline is approaching 
rapidly, so we should receive your feedback by the end of the week.

Kind regards,
Thomas

Dear Steve,

At the 26 November 2012 meeting, the ICANN Board requested that the ICANN
GNSO Council advise the Board by no later than 28 February 2013 if it is
aware of any concerns, such as with the global public interest or the
security or stability of the DNS, that the Board should take into account in
making its decision about whether to include second level protections for
certain IGO names and acronyms by inclusion on a Reserved Names List in
section 2.2.1.2.3 of the Applicant Guidebook, applicable in all new gTLD
registries approved in the first round of the New gTLD Program.

With this letter, the GNSO Council would like to respond to that request. 

With respect to the temporary protections for the International Olympic
Committee and the International Committee of the Red Cross / Red Crescent, a
directly comparable request was made to the GNSO Council and the Board asked
for a response by the end of January. In the light of the 20 December 2012
GNSO Council decision on temporary protections, we understand that the Board
deemed the question of concerns with the global public interest or the
security or stability of the DNS sufficiently answered.  Although we note
that the GNSO has not yet completed its PDP on potential protections for the
organizations in question. 

The GNSO Council believes that the question as to whether or not there are
concerns  with respect the global public interest and security or stability
of the DNS can only be properly and fully answered upon the completion of
the thorough work associated with a PDP. 

In this regard, please be aware that GNSO Working Group working on this
issue (IGO / INGO WG) has deliberated on this specific point and concerns
have been voiced that provisional protections for IGO names can be dealt
with in the same way as the IOC / RCRC designations via the use of temporary
protections.  Therefore the question of the presence or absence of such
concerns could only be answered upon the conclusion of the PDP.

[Conclusion of the 14 February telco] - Minority positions have been
advanced within the Working Group that the Public Interest may be harmed by
temporary protections??

Rest assured that the Working Group is working on this extremely complicated
matter with the focus and urgency you would expect and that the GNSO Council
is willing to provide a comprehensive update on the progress that has been
made with this policy matter at the earliest convenience of the Board.