ICANN: Buenos Aires

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is holding its 48th public meeting in Buenos Aires from November 17 to 21, and FairWinds Partners will be on the ground gathering intelligence.

A lot has happened in the world of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) since ICANN’s last meeting in July. Most significantly, ICANN has signed contracts with applicants for 115 new gTLDs. Twenty-three among that group have moved forward to launch sunrise periods, during which trademark owners may register second-level domains that match their marks. The internationalized domain name شبكة. which means .WEB in Arabic and is known as DotShabaka in English, was the first to launch its sunrise period and, therefore, likely will be the first new gTLD to launch publicly in the first days of 2014.

Despite the progress in rolling out new gTLDs, ICANN is still mulling a number of difficult decisions related to the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) Advice issued at ICANN’s April meeting in Beijing. Members of the ICANN community and brand owners will be anticipating developments if not resolutions to these thorny issues.

• Chief among the outstanding issues is the GAC’s “safeguard advice” pertaining to gTLDs that represent sensitive subjects or regulated businesses, such as .BANK or .CHARITY. ICANN has agreed that these gTLDs will be subject to additional constraints but has provided little guidance on what those constraints might be, so Buenos Aires attendees will be eager for some news.

• ICANN has moved faster on the GAC Advice relating to generic strings. Its New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC) has added language to the Applicant Guidebook that essentially prohibits closed generic gTLDs. Still to be resolved, however, is whether applicants for closed generic strings must open registration to the public or to a more limited cross section and the timing of when they must open their gTLDs.

• A third area about which attendees will be anticipating some development involves geographic identifiers in new gTLDs, such as Mexico.Google or China.Walmart. Geographic identifiers must be approved by the GAC representative from the relevant country, but no process is in place for timely approval. FairWinds has been working to help create an orderly process by talking to GAC members about the need for a plan.

• Finally, ICANN is still in discussions with brand owners about potential changes to the base contract to account for their brand specific needs. Although several issues, such as rights upon termination and transfer of a brand gTLD, are still under discussion, a number of brands have signed the contract as is, undercutting the bargaining power of all brands.

For on-the-scene FairWinds reports from the meeting, check our blog and Twitter feeds.