[soac-newgtldapsup-wg] 2nd draft of cover letter

[Avri Doria <avri@xxxxxxx>]

Second draft.  

Had a brief conversation with some board members last night and it became 
apparent that we need to include our reasoning for why adding support for this 
round is important.  I have added 2 reasons to this note.  Hopefully the 
revised version of the paper that resulted from yesterday's meeting will be 
available soon so that I can send it in.  We have little leeway with being 
late, but very little.  Unfortunately I did not have time to listen to the 
recoding myself and do the update myself.

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To:      The ICANN Board and the Chartering Organizations: ALAC and the GNSO 
Council
From: Co-chairs of the Joint SO/AC Working Group on New gTLD Applicant Support


The Working Group has made a great deal of progress since the Brussels meeting 
and is well along in the process of finding the consensus point on the 
recommendations.  the group have put a great deal of time into analyzing the 
community comments and into reviewing the initial recommendations as defined in 
the snapshot in the light of those comments.  While we near the end of this 
process, we have not yet completed the process.

The enclosed document is an excerpt from the final output document of the WG 
covering the WG objectives and its recommendations.  For the most part, the 
items in this document have consensus.  In the few cases where there is still 
an ongoing debate, the options are listed either in [bracketed text], or in one 
case in an expanded section listing 2 options.

We hope that this second snapshot will be useful in your discussions on the New 
gTLD Program.  We would appreciate any feedback you might have on our 
discussions.  It has been a goal of this group to make sure we were able to 
present recommendations in time for the upcoming round of new gTLD 
applications.  The participant in tis group believe that being able to provides 
assistance now and not or some possible future round is critical for various 
reasons, include:

 - The pent up demand for new gTLDs especially IDN gTLD is so great that there 
is an expectation for many applications.  There is a concern that without some 
sort of assistance program all of the most obvious names, including IDN gTLDs, 
will be grabbed by wealthy investors, leaving little opportunity, especially in 
developing regions, for local institutions and entrepreneurs.

- While there is every plan for a second round and most of us believe that such 
a round will occur, its timetable is at best uncertain.  The round of 2002 was 
supposed to followed by new rounds, and though it now appears that it will be, 
it took a decade for that to happen.  Since it is impossible to give guarantees 
of there being a future round, making those who cannot afford the elevated 
ICANN prices wait for an uncertain future is not seen as fair.

Finally, we apologize for the delay in delivering this by the document deadline 
and hope that you will receive and consider this document nonetheless.

Thank you

Avri Doria and Evan Leibovitch
Co-chairs, Joint SO/AC Working Group on New gTLD Applicant Support 


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