The recent ICANN meeting held in Brussels was judged a success by
Minds + Machines' Antony Van Couvering, whose company is likely to be
behind applications for several new generic Top Level Domains when ICANN
eventually begins taking applications.
Van Couvering writes that the recent meeting "may become known as the
meeting where the dust finally began to settle. Long-standing issues
were settled, compromises were reached, no-one complained too much about
the latest version of the Applicant Guidebook, and the Board stood by
its project plan dates, even scheduling a Board retreat to solve
remaining issues. Finally, there were no surprise "gotcha!" delays that
gTLD applicants have been used to seeing at ICANN meeting. With one
possible exception..."
He writes of the proposed September board retreat, .XXX decision,
decisions on intellectual property and the Vertical Integration Policy
Development Process as all good news.
The only sticking point from Van Couvering's point of view was MOPO (aka
MAPA or Morality and Public Order). This was quite a strange discussion
with the Government Advisory Committee saying ICANN's approach to
declaring which new proposed gTLDs were acceptable "was not acceptable
and must be changed."
Van Couvering concludes that "the final shape of the applicant guidebook
is becoming clear. With the possible exception of the MOPO issue,
solutions to the remaining problems are visible in outline and in many
cases in great detail. There are several efforts underway, including the
Board retreat and various hurry-up working groups, to get the new gTLD
program to the finish line. There's always a chance that the timing will
slip, but I would say not by much -- we're sticking to our timeline:
most indications are that ICANN's next meeting, in early December 2010
in Cartagena, Colombia, will finally produce a starting date for new
gTLDs."
To read this posting by Antony Van Couvering on the Minds + Machines
blog in full, see:
www.mindsandmachines.com/2010/07/what-the-icann-brussels-meeting-means-for-new-gtlds/
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