New gGTLDS from ICANN

October 2010

ICANN continues to move forward in the implementation of the new gTLD Program while balancing and addressing community concerns on specific aspects of the program. The public comment period on the second version of the applicant guidebook recently closed and work continues to proceed regarding the discussion of overarching issues.

In order to continue progress and the community discussion, ICANN will:

Publish an analysis of comments similar to that published after the fist version of the Guidebook,
Conduct consultations and fora at the Sydney meeting and afterward to develop solutions to the overarching issues,
Publish the third version of the Guidebook after the Sydney meeting when solutions to the overarching issues can be included.

With that in mind, it is anticipated that applications for new top-level domains will be accepted starting in the first quarter of 2010.

Guidebook Analysis

As with the first version of the Guidebook, ICANN will organize and report a synopsis of all the comment made in the ICANN comment forum as well as at the ICANN meeting in Mexico City. The report will analyse comment by category and balance different proposals made. The goals of the report are to:

analyse the comment in order to develop amendments to the Guidebook that are consonant with the meaningful input of the community, and
demonstrate that the comment is taken seriously and carefully considered.

ICANN will not be producing a third version of the Applicant Guidebook for new generic top-level domains before its upcoming June meeting in Sydney, Australia. This is because the discussion of overarching issues will continue through the meeting and beyond (as was expected). Publication of a new Guidebook version without addressing these issues might signal that they are not considered important.

In order to provide specifics and point up discussion, the Comment Analysis will be accompanied by several excerpted redlined sections of the Guidebook so that potential changes can be discussed. These excerpted sections are being developed in response to the recently closed public comment forum and will be published in time for discussion in the Sydney meeting.