[alac] New gTLDs on GNSO Council

[Wendy Seltzer <wendy@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The GNSO Council will convene by conference call tomorrow (5 a.m.
Pacific time!).  Thomas and I will be there as ALAC liaisons (I
limited to the gTLDs issues).

The Council intends to finalize its report to the Board in response
to the question of structuring the namespace, and there is still some
disagreement over whether the answer will be a narrow response or a
more extended discussion of objectives and criteria.
See messages from Bruce Tonkin, GNSO chair,
<http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/council/Arc12/msg00279.html>
and Philip Shepard, gTLDs committee chair,
<http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/council/Arc12/msg00280.html>

I will reiterate our position, expressed in our statement to the Committee
  The ALAC supports the latest draft's conclusion that "expansion of
  the gTLD namespace should be a bottom-up approach with names proposed
  by the interested parties to ICANN"; that "there should be no
  pre-determined list of new names that putative registries would bid
  for"; and that "expansion should be demand-driven".
<http://alac.icann.org/gtld/comment-gnso-16may03.htm>

I will also recommend that if the report summarizes other Committee
discussions, it clearly distinguish open debates from consensus
positions.

--Wendy
--
--
Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@xxxxxxxxxxx || wendy@xxxxxxx
Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html