ICANN ICANN Email List Archives

[eoi-new-gtlds]


<<< Chronological Index >>>    <<< Thread Index >>>

Report of the Expressions of Interest Working Group (formatted)

  • To: eoi-new-gtlds@xxxxxxxxx
  • Subject: Report of the Expressions of Interest Working Group (formatted)
  • From: Antony Van Couvering <avc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:48:33 -0500

On behalf of the Expressions of Interest Working Group (EOI-WG), I am pleased 
to submit our final report to ICANN, attached here as a PDF file.   In 
addition, I have attached the EOI-WG charter, which sets our composition and 
our remit.

The EOI-WG makes a series of specific recommendations about the EOI process, as 
well as providing point-by-point answers to the questions asked by ICANN staff 
for this comment period. In each case, our recommendations are accompanied by 
the reasons for them.  Where applicable, the level of consensus is also noted 
(e.g., "unanimous consensus" or "strong consensus"). 

Our report also contains discussion of suggestions that we did not make as 
recommendations, and the reasons why they were not adopted as consensus 
recommendations.

The Working Group met first during the ICANN meeting in Seoul and then, with 
expanded ranks, by telephone call.   We also set up a mailing list for our 
discussions.   The Working Group was comprised of a diverse group of people, 
acting on their on behalf and not as representatives of any stakeholder group 
or constituency.   Our goal was to see if we could come up with recommendations 
to help ICANN implement an Expressions of Interest process for new gTLDs as 
called for by the resolution of ICANN's Board of Directors on October 29, 2009 
at their meeting in Seoul.   Although ICANN did offer to provide us with 
resources, we decided to privately fund the entire effort in order to avoid 
squabbles about whether we were official or not.   We're not official -- we're 
just some people who got together to make some recommendations.  

In brief, our report recommends the following:

1. An Expressions of Interest procedure is desirable and should be implemented 
as soon as possible
2. The Expressions of Interest procedure should be mandatory for anyone seeking 
to apply for a new generic top-level domain
3. A $55,000 fee must accompany the submission of an Expression of Interest for 
each string sought, refundable only in very limited circumstances
4. At the close of the Expressions of Interest submission window, ICANN should 
publish at least the name of the submitter and the string submitted
5. ICANN should publicize the Expressions of Interest procedure in a manner 
sufficient to assure fairness to those who may as yet be unaware of the new 
gTLD program, but this communications period should be as short as possible 
within this constraint

Questions about the EOI-WG and its recommendations will be answered by reading 
the attached report and charter, as well as by reviewing our deliberations.   
The archives of our mailing list may be found at 
http://lists.pra.im/pipermail/eoi-wg/.   The archives also contain links to MP3 
recordings of our two phone calls, held on Nov. 9 2009 and on Nov. 13 2009, as 
well as the various drafts that we considered, in clean and redlined versions.  
 The EOI-WG members are listed in both the report and our charter. 

We hope and expect that our work will be helpful to ICANN, to the ICANN 
community, and to the new gTLD process. 

Respectfully,

Antony Van Couvering
EOI-WG co-ordinator

Attachment: Expressions of Interest Working Group_final.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document


Attachment: Expressions of Interest Working Group Charter_final.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document


   



<<< Chronological Index >>>    <<< Thread Index >>>

Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Cookies Policy