In this webinar, Markmonitor’s Global Industry Relations team members provide updates and news from ICANN82, ICANN’s Community Forum Meeting held in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. in March 2025, to help make Internet and domain industry policy more accessible.

Topics discussed in this webinar include:

  • The ICANN82 Meeting At-A-Glance
  • The Subsequent Procedures Implementation Review Team (SubPro IRT)
  • News From the Brand Registry Group for dotBrand gTLD Registries and Those Considering Applying for a dotBrand gTLD
  • Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) Updates and Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) Developments
  • New Developments Within ICANN’s Registration Data Request Service, RDRS, and Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP)
  • Policy Development Process (PDP) Updates: Transfer PDP and Latin Script Diacritic PDP
  • Geopolitical Updates -Standing Committee on Continuous Improvement (SCCI) News
  • ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) Communiqué -How to Get Involved With ICANN and Policy Work

Editor’s Note: This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Making Policy Understandable: Updates From ICANN82 Webinar

Webinar Presenters: Policy Updates and News From ICANN82

Speaking: Natalie Brownell, Marketing Manager

Hello, and thank you for joining us to learn about policy updates and news at ICANN82. Today, we have members of Markmonitor’s Global Industry Relations team with us: Prudence Malinki, Head of Global Industry Relations; Chris Niemi, Manager of Strategic Initiatives; Heidi Zhang, Head of our Markmonitor China Registrar; and Shane Layman, Manager of Global Industry Relations.

With that, I will pass it off to the team so they can take you through the presentation.

Webinar Agenda: ICANN82 News and Updates

Speaking: Shane Layman, Manager, Global Industry Relations

Thank you everyone for being here.

I’d like to start with the agenda — we will go through the ICANN82 meeting-at-a-glance, the SubPro IRT, provide updates on the Brand Registry Group, and then a ccNSO update along with ccTLD developments, and touch on the Registration Data Request Service (RDRS) and new developments there. We’ll discuss the Latin script Diacritic PDP, Transfer PDP, provide geopolitical updates, and talk about SCCI news. And finally, Heidi will discuss the GAC Communiqué. Now, I’ll turn it over to Prudence Malinki.

ICANN82 Meeting-At-A-Glance

Speaking: Prudence Malinki, Head, Global Industry Relations

Hello and welcome from the sunny UK. I’ll talk you through the ICANN82 meeting at a glance.

ICANN82 was a community meeting or community forum meeting, which means that all of the various constituency groups and elements of the ICANN community came together to get work done, collaborate, talk to one another, progress, and move that needle forward. 

The community forum lasted six days. It was held for the first time in Seattle, and we saw fantastic familiar faces from the past and the present, as well as members of the future who were there to engage and participate in all things ICANN. There were some notable absences but also exciting new affiliations, and there were some real surprises and developments at that community meeting.

Now, as you can see from the slide, the sessions of interest were, of course, the SubPro and all things Next Round, but there’s an ongoing discussion at ICANN about how we meet. During that session, Sally held a really important session, engaging with the community to talk about alternative ways to host ICANN meetings, making them more accessible but also more cost-efficient and effective. In addition to talking about how we meet, we also had the GAC. They have really important things to say, and as you know, the decisions of the GAC, that’s the Governmental Advisory Committee, will impact, influence, and can shape the policy outcomes. Now, Heidi on the team who was shown in our previous slide, she’ll be talking about the GAC Communiqué and giving you all an update later on all things relating to what the GAC thinks, how the GAC feels, and what the GAC wants to happen.

I’m going to hand the torch over to Chris, who will discuss all things Subsequent Procedures Implementation Review Team (SubPro IRT).

ICANN82: SubPro IRT Updates

Speaking: Chris Niemi, Manager, Strategic Initiatives

Seattle’s ICANN82 meeting was interesting for me because I grew up in the Seattle area, so I had a nice return to my stomps. Seattle definitely looks different than I recall, but after living in Idaho for 20 years, change was bound to happen.  With that said, the word of the day this meeting was “Next Round,” and that was displayed throughout the many different Subsequent Procedures Implementation Review Team sessions.

The SubPro IRT assists the ICANN organization in implementing the policy recommendations from the final report on the gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process. The main point to remember is that this will lead to the Applicant Guidebook, which is the final, codified rules and requirements of the next round for someone who wants to apply for a new gTLD. Areas of note throughout the week were the discussion of the Registry Agreement, which is the contract that a registry operator will sign with ICANN for 10 years once they become responsible for a gTLD. The RYSG, our Registry Stakeholders Group, had a small team that was negotiating with ICANN on this process, and they’ll work through some of that, which will result in public comment in May and September.

Throughout the bulk of the other sessions, there were many comments. Currently, there are a number of proceedings for the proposed language for draft sections of the next round. There have been four, and the fourth one ends on April 2nd, 2025. However, some of the things listed on the slide are from the second and third proceedings. The community provided commentary on sections of the proposed guidebook that had been released by the SubPro IRT. As part of the sessions, the ICANN org provided responses to the various requests. Sometimes, they would agree and allow small edits or clarifications to make the wording clear. And then, in other cases, if they did disagree that the request in question was outside the scope of the recommendations, they would say so. 

One slight change in ICANN processes regards string similarity. This is the idea that two applied for TLD strings might be considered confusing to the internet user, and then it would result in them ending in a contention set that used to be called string similarity review. This was shortened to SSR. However, SSR is already taken within the ICANN acronym space, so they renamed it to stream similarity evaluations or SSE.

Aside from the commentary review, there were a number of updates on the Applicant Support Program, the Registry Provider Evaluation Program, outreach communications, and some language work.

Applicant Support Program and Registry Service Provider Evaluation Program

Two pillars of the next round for 2026 are, again, the Applicant Support Program, which is the notion that applicants from underserved regions or undeveloped geographies across the world could get assistance with discounts on application fees, as well as non-financial support – things like pro bono services . That, as you can see, is represented by the blue bar. So that window is continuing to remain open through November of this year. The red bars refer to the Registry Service Provider Evaluation Program. In the last round, RSPs, the entities that run the back end of a registry, had to answer questions on every application in order to make things more efficient. Now, they’re being evaluated before the application window opens to make efficiencies and improvements on everybody’s time. So the current pre-evaluation window goes until May of this year, and then it will be closed.

Regarding the RSP processes, an entity needs to submit its organizational information and then follow that by submitting an application that describes its technical capabilities, means, and know-how, its usage of various RFCs, and other technical matters.

As you can see on the left, 44 organizations are in some semblance of an application status. On the right, you can see that 11 applications have been drafted and are starting to move through the process.

Regarding the Applicant Support Program, this is for the idea that the applicant as an entity is applying. They’re not providing any actual information about the streams they want to apply for, instead, they’re simply applying for assistance as an organization. On the left, you can see that so far there are 35 applications in different states from drafting, initiation, and submission.

ICANN is not providing granular information about who the applicants are so far; that’ll be revealed at a later date, but they’re providing aggregate numbers around the geographical regions that the applicants are from. On the right, you can see that APAC and North America appear to be the current leaders.

ICANN is making a concerted effort to reach out to different parties across the globe. As you can see on the left, in February alone, there were 39 outreach activities led by different regions. Latin America and the Caribbean are the primary ones where outreach has been happening most of late. ICANN is expanding the areas that they usually go into, they’re starting to go into bigger and different event types, so there were a number of activities in February they attended, and there’s a list of upcoming events that they’re going to do to try and continue their outreach. ICANN’s Communications Group will complete three integrated global awareness campaigns targeting different geographies, end users, and entities. They’re working on that process. 

Most interestingly, ICANN has expanded its language services, creating a “new gTLD program in your language.” They’re using AI tools to turn some of the marketing materials and collateral into languages outside of ICANN’s usual six, which are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. I believe they’re going to utilize up to another 12 different languages to try to get the word out. The interesting part of this is that because they’re doing this ad hoc, they’re utilizing the broader ICANN community to crowdsource the review of these translations to make sure they’re done correctly.

New gTLD Program: Next Round Timeline

Here is the timeline showing where we’re at on the bottom stretch. It also shows the anticipated timeframes for the Applicant Guidebook. That’s the main gating activity on the critical path to the timeline for the New gTLD Program that should be completed by the end of December 2025 so that the ICANN board can approve it, as the next round is tied to a four-month window once it opens. If we continue to stay on this timeline, that gets us to the April 2026 application window. There are also a few more public comments as we discussed earlier. Right now, the RST, that is the registry services testing, which is part of the RSP program, is slightly behind but still on pace to make the timeframe. If anything changes, we’ll let you know.

One other issue that was really important this week, related to the timelines but more about the next round in general, was that the Nova Link registry announced that it will be applying for 200 or more top-level domains in the next round. That’s very interesting on a number of levels. Nova appears to be one of these registry operators who’s taking into account this notion of a Web2 and Web3 crossover, utilizing the existing DNS to then combine the best of both worlds doing activities for the Web3 space with wallets and other activities. That was a very big announcement and had everybody abuzz.

It’s interesting to take into account, as well as recent announcements by D3 and Unstoppable Domains, that the Web3 space is very much hopping and will potentially have a major impact on the next round. We’ll continue to watch that and let you know what happens.

Brand Registry Group and dotBrand gTLDs

Another thing that had people buzzing this week, and Prudence will discuss it more in-depth, is the Brand Registry Group (BRG). It’s an association of dotBrand top-level domain owners and people who are interested in applying. They get together and discuss matters related to dotBrand best practices, advocacy for the dotBrand space, developing internal policies, understanding ICANN policy, and create a variety of different resources so that dotBrand registry operators can maximize the large investment they made in owning their own top-level domains, especially use cases and developing implementation plans.

There was a session the BRG ran where Amazon gave some information about their processes and policies — how they implemented dotBrands, how they worked through utilizing dotBrands within their own internal organizations. As part of that, they discussed a few sample use cases including partyrock.aws, which is an AI app generating service that Amazon has. They also are utilizing pharmacyservices.amazon, registry.amazon, and sidewalk.amazon, which I believe is tied to some public showing of different movies. Amazon is finding ways to implement their own dotBrands, and that session was very well received — it was standing room only. The community is definitely eager to learn more. So, Prudence has an interesting question to ask…

Brand Registry Group News 

Speaking: Prudence Malinki

Thanks, Chris.

Now, why are we focusing on the BRG, the Brand Registry Group? Why are we talking about this? What does it mean? Today’s series is us trying to demystify policy and make it more accessible — and the BRG is where you can potentially end up and a way to get involved with policy that affects you.

The next round of new gTLDs is coming. When we talk about dotBrand, what we mean is your potential TLD. You have the opportunity to be a dotBrand owner. You have the opportunity to become a registry. Now, all of this information that we’re providing to you is to help you understand where we are in that stage of everything going live so you can engage with that application process. If owning a dotBrand is something you want to engage in, reach out to your account manager or Domain Portfolio Advisor at Markmonitor for additional information.

Once you have your dotBrand out there in the universe, or if you’re interested in applying for your own dotBrand gTLD, the BRG is the next logical step for you where you can engage with other dotBrand owners and discuss things such as how to navigate internal discussions, use cases, figure out what works, what doesn’t work, and get you integrated into a framework to support you. The end game is for your dotBrand to have longevity, to succeed and thrive.

Now,  as we’ve mentioned, the BRG is a group of some of the biggest brands and companies on the planet, and if you like the sound of what the BRG does then you have a unique opportunity.  Do you want to run the BRG? Do you want to be the voice that helps shepherd the next generation of dotBrand owners? Do you want to help shape how they do policy? The BRG sits within the RYSG, which is the Registry Stakeholder Group, a constituency group, consisting of registries all around the world — and dotBrands are exactly that, registries.

If you’re interested, you can be the next executive director of the BRG.

If you like a big challenge, this opportunity could be the next thing for you. You need to have good written and oral presentation skills, a history of being a self-starter, and the ability to travel and be versed in diplomacy. If you have leadership skills and are able to do a bit of marketing and PR, you could be the next executive director of the BRG.

If you’re interested, visit the Brand Registry Group’s LinkedIn profile. (We’re not actively promoting this, it’s just exciting, so we have to share.)

 Let’s move on to the ccNSO because we care about the entire community. I’m going to hand it over to Shane for the ccNSO and ccTLD updates.

ccNSO, ccTLDs, and WISIS+20 Updates

Speaking: Shane Layman

Thank you, Prudence.

Let’s move on to some Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) updates. Many sessions were held at ICANN82, and some of the highlights from Seattle were around the policy gap analysis, where the ccNSO set a priority for what gaps they have found in their current policy.

The IANA public records, which are most important, were mentioned — ensuring records are kept up to date and those records display contacts at a ccTLD, whether that’s the manager or the registry backend provider. Disaster recovery was mentioned, and how to ensure that ccTLDs can maintain function during a time of crisis was discussed, which is clearly very important with some of the things happening in the world right now. The next steps for the ccNSO are for the council to decide whether one or two study groups are needed to investigate the gaps in current policy and then to prepare work charters for this to continue.

Let’s move on to the priorities for the leadership panel, those priorities are around internet governance and WSIS+20.

WSIS+20 has a written input and participation draft circulated amongst the ccTLD community where various members of the community are actioning and adding their inputs to the draft for recommendations. The next priority is funding for future Internet Governance Forums and the continuance of Internet Governance Forums (IGFs) in various regions. There’s also a call for increased participation at regional IGFs. As everybody knows, the more people involved, the better things go, and the next IGF in 2025 is set for Oslo, Norway.  The Internet Governance Liaison Committee’s action plan is set around the future of Internet governance, hence the name.

The resilience of ccTLDs and the research into artificial intelligence and how it can benefit a ccTLD was also discussed, so stay tuned, some exciting stuff is happening there in the world of artificial intelligence. 

Last but not least is the DNS Abuse Subcommittee Review, which was a recommendation by a review team to the ccNSO Council to continue the DNS Abuse Standing Committee or Subcommittee (DASC), which had overwhelming support from all respondents to the review. However, it is noted that the DASC could explore new goals such as addressing broader threats or expanding outreach to diverse communities. The DASC should develop a clear and more flexible description to improve stakeholder understanding with data validation being one of the most important topics for the 2025 work plan.

So, in some C-C-T-L-D news, .us, the ccTLD for the United States, led a demonstration on their RTMS, or Registry Threat Mitigation Services, which is an early warning abuse notification and actionable measures for the registrar system. It is a two-pronged approach, both from prevention before the abuse happens and a remediation and mitigation side after potential abuse has occurred. This is one of the better systems set up by ccTLDs in terms of how to navigate DNS abuse. From there, the APTLD or Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Association, shared their research into how smart contracts and blockchains can assist ccTLDs in verifying ownership and issuing NFT certificates to be bought and sold on a marketplace, opening up a new avenue of revenue for some ccTLDs. An example given was Uzbekistan or .uz — it is maintaining a private blockchain network for issuing NFT certificates on demand. The .uz ccTLD will issue certificates to show ownership of a ccTLD or a website. 

Lastly, let’s briefly discuss the ccNSO Council nominations and decisions. It is worth noting that chairs must be from all different regions, so no chair and vice chairs can be from the same ICANN geographical region. And with that being said, Alejandra Reynoso from Latin America and the Caribbean region was nominated and accepted as the ccNSO Chair for the next 12 months. The Vice Chairs are Adebiyi Oladipo from Africa and Jordan Carter from the APAC region. Congratulations to you all. Now I’d like to turn it back to Prudence.

RDRS Updates

Speaking: Prudence Malinki

Thank you so much, Shane. Whilst we are congratulating people, I have to take a little moment to congratulate Greg DiBiase of Amazon to his fantastic board seat position and winning the election process for board seat 13. Congratulations, Greg. And also my congratulations to Reg Levy for a valiant and amazing effort. We’re excited to see what happens, moving forward at the board seats.

Let’s discuss the RDRS, which is the Registration Data Request Service. RDRS is a pilot following the SSAD, System for Standardized Access/Disclosure. This is a private service, to standardize the access request for registrant data.

The purpose of this pilot is to collect  data to determine what the official standard access disclosure should look like. There’s been a fantastic standing committee, which met and convened during ICANN82 to discuss where they’re at. This committee is going to release a report a few months down the line, which should outline the impacts, what they think, and what they’ve concluded.

This pilot has been interesting. To give you a little bit of context, it is a non-mandatory pilot. What that means is that not all registrars are required to engage in the pilot. That said, the registrars who have participated constitute quite a high volume of domains under management. So we do have quite a large array of domains that are impacted, but not all of them. One of the things that has been suggested and is continually discussed is whether or not the pilot should be made mandatory so that more information can be gathered to make sure that we’re getting as much data as possible. It wasn’t agreed to make it mandatory; the reasoning given is that there is sufficient data coming in from those who are participating in the pilot.

During the ICANN82 session, many valid points were brought up, one of them in relation to the idea of registrant disclosure (which isn’t the same as registrant data). It concerns the disclosure of registrant information when it’s obscured, which has been another thing that’s reared its head with regard to this pilot. So much so that there are alternative pilots and projects that are out there and that were also being communicated and discussed during this ICANN meeting. I’m going to very quickly mention Project Jake, a system that’s being discussed at this moment relating to registrant data and access.

There are a lot of developments happening with regard to registrant data access at this moment in time, but know that the RDRS pilot is still ongoing, so there will still be data collection and registrar participation. However, prior to ICANN82 there was a noteworthy withdrawal from one large service provider for various different reasons. While it’s worth noting, rest assured that it hasn’t led to a mass exodus from the pilot — that is ongoing and collecting data.

What happens next with RDRS is still unknown. We don’t know what the new version of SSAD will look like, but we’re hopeful that the RDRS will be able to provide some really useful information about how that should be designed.

WHOIS and RDAP Updates

So, WHOIS is dead. Long live WHOIS. The WHOIS protocol is no longer the primary source of registrant information. We have now moved over to the RDAP, which stands for the Registration Data Access Protocol, which will outline the fields of data and things of that nature. It will take effect later this year in August.

There are still salient discussions being had with all of the different constituency groups and different parts of the ICANN ecosystem relating to the billing contact and what should be done. Is it mandatory to collect it? Is it not mandatory to collect it? Is this information supposed to be disregarded or not? How should these things be communicated? There are a lot of discussions happening about that at this moment in time.

Ultimately, although WHOIS is no more, there are still elements that quite like the name and continue to refer to RDAP as WHOIS, so I want to make sure that you’re aware of that. 

Policy Development Process Updates

Now, I want to segue into some PDP updates. PDPs essentially are all of the things that make policy work. It’s a policy development program or policy development process. Essentially, we have a new PDP to discuss and we have one to update you on that’s been pushed through the system.

Those of you who have sat in on our webinars before know that we always give a chance for a Transfer PDP update. Why? Because transfers are things that affect you and transfers are fundamentals.

The good news is that during ICANN82, the Transfer PDP was approved and moved through the council with all 47 final recommendations going through. A huge congratulations is in order for Roger Carney and every single member of the Transfer PDP — it was one of the most collaborative PDPs and I think it was one of the most productive PDPs. This PDP has now moved to the board, where the board will hopefully push that through.

The Transfer PDP had some very specific updates and amendments and the most salient ones I’ve outlined for you here.

The authorization code is no longer called an auth code. It’s now called a TAC and that stands for Transfer Authorization Code. Whenever you hear anyone referring to a TAC this is what they’re referring to — all things authorization code or transfer password or transfer secret. These updates mean that you have to send a notification related to a TAC issuance within 10 minutes. Also, we are creating something called a transfer confirmation, and that’s essentially a losing registrar’s confirmation that the received the transfer request. The domain name holder also has to confirm the transfer request via a standardized FOA (Form of Authorization).

Now, there are reduced lock times and lock periods when domains are transferred. So, the 60-day post-transfer lock is now reduced to 30 days. We’ve tried to standardize that where we could to make things as expeditious and efficient as possible. Another thing done was the creation of an opt-out for change of registrant data notices. Why did we do this? In cases where there’s an internal move or where you are doing a change of registrant, but it’s already known, so it’s one business to another business and they’re all held by the same entity, or they’re all interrelated, you may not need those registrant data notices, so now you have an opt-out facility. That is now built into the process flow. This is a very exciting development.

Latin Script Diacritics PDP Updates

 I would be remiss if I didn’t explain about ICANN’s latest PDP and that is the Latin Script Diacritics — it’s exciting and I’ll explain why.

Michael Boland is the chair of this PDP. The Latin Script Diacritics PDP looks at specific instances where the ASCII, or Latin script, TLDs and the diacritic version of the same gTLD can coexistand both resolve.

The PDP is looking to answer questions like, “Can this happen, and when can it happen?” and “In what instances can this happen?” It’s hopefully going to create rules that will help everyone navigate when these two things can overlap or work together and exist in the same way. The next slide has some practical examples of diacritics and existing ASCII TLDs, and where they could crash and when they can coexist.

Let’s have a look at the timelines. This PDP is hopefully going to be completed with the council and members’ final report by October 2026. I’m very confident that we’re going to hit these deadlines. I say this because I am the GNSO Council liaison for this PDP, so I’ll hopefully be making sure that this goes through as smoothly as the transfer PDP went through. I’ll keep you posted. This is a very exciting, brand-new update.

Now, it’s time for Shane to share a geopolitical update.

ICANN82 Geopolitical Updates

Speaking: Shane Layman

Thank you, Prudence. 

Let’s get into geopolitical updates. The European Union has been leading targeted consultations on internet governance, as you can see within the ccTLD community and the various regions. Internet governance and the continuation of internet governance as it stands is a hot topic.

So, the European Union held target consultations on internet governance to develop guiding principles for the governance of virtual works and Web4. I know we’ve been talking Web2 and Web3, and now there is a Web4 that’s been announced, which would be the next iteration of the Internet after Web3.

The European Union also gave an update on the NIS2 directive. To summarize the salient details of Article 28, member states shall require TLD name registries and entities providing domain name registration services to collect and maintain accurate and complete domain name registration data in a dedicated database. Now, the directive is much longer than that, but to give you a snapshot of where NIS2 is, 10 member states of the European Union have fully or partially transposed this directive, and there’s a call for more ccTLDs to implement NIS2.

Moving on to the Intergovernmental Organizations (IGO) and political update, the International Telecommunications Union held a council working group on internet open consultation for the next period. Their goal is to ensure meaningful connectivity to the internet for “landlocked” or developing countries, as well as contributors wanting a strengthened multi-stakeholder model and better outlined legal framework for WSIS+20.  

It wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t mention that an article had been posted and a question posed to the board during the ICANN public forum with regards to .su, the ccTLD for the former Soviet Union, and the retirement of that ccTLD. The emphatic answer from ICANN’s new CEO was that there has not been a formal removal letter sent to the ccTLD nor has the timeline been set. So stay tuned for more information regarding the .su ccTLD. Now I will turn it back to you, Prudence, to give us an update on SCCI.

Standing Committee on Continuous Improvement (SCCI) Updates

Speaking: Prudence Malinki

Thanks for that, Shane. That was one of the most exciting things that happened because that news was dropped on socials during the meeting, and the real-time updates were shared during the session. We’ll keep you posted with regards .su as it is going to be quite interesting, especially in light of political climate.

Let’s talk about all things SCCI. Why are we talking about SCCI? Because it’s about policy. The SCCI is the Standing Committee on Continuous Improvement and the purpose of the committee is to  improve, streamline, and revise the policy development process or the PDP process. This is a brand new committee that’s comprised of members and representatives across various different stakeholder groups and various different elements of the overarching community. It started originally as the CCOICI, which was comprised primarily of council members, and you weren’t allowed to participate if you weren’t on a council. So this is the first time the entire community gets to help shape the next stages and help improve structural procedural process — improvements that will essentially impact the whole Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) community. It’s quite important and quite profound. The SCCI has the potential to impact and influence task force formation. To give you visibility into what type of work they’re going to do, let’s move to the next slide and have a look.

The SCCI will be looking at the continuous improvement plan and are going to have a look at the PDP process snake and potentially shaking things up. This is very exciting. What’s not quite shown on the slide is that there’s a group of councilors who are working on board readiness to make sure that decisions are ready for the board to implement or ready for the board to say “Yes” to before they’re actually done. This is going to be integrated into SCCI work at some point. We’ll keep you posted on the developments of the SCCI because, again, it’s going to impact the entire GNSO community.

Now, I’ll hand it over to Heidi who will take us home with all things GAC Communiqué.

Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) Communiqué

Speaking: Heidi Zhang, Head, Markmonitor China Registrar

Hi, let’s go to the GAC world and take a look at the latest news. 

75 GAC members and eight observers attended ICANN82, with Monaco as a new member and the African Parliamentary Network on Internet Governance (APNIG) as an observer. By the end of ICANN82, we saw the outgoing chair and vice chairs and the incoming new leadership. The new GAC leadership should now be in their positions and have started their work. 

During this GAC session, the members proposed some changes to election timing along with changes to the tenure of the chair and the vice chair. There were seven proposals for the changes and the GAC members voted to decide if they should change the election time to the second ICANN meeting of every calendar year. That would be so that the new leadership can transition and dive into the work during the last ICANN meeting of every year. Regarding the tenure and terms of the chair and the vice chair, the voted motion was for the chair to have three consecutive terms of two years, so six years altogether. For the vice chair, it was to have two consecutive terms of two years, so altogether four years for each vice chair. This voted motion will sit for 60 days and the final decision will be made at the next ICANN meeting in Prague. 

The GAC conducted outreach sessions with the ICANN board, ALAC, SSAC, GNSO, and ccNSO to talk and hear about important topics like the next round of new GTLDs, data disclosure, data accuracy, and WSIS+20.

Two things that the GAC is most concerned about is the next round of new gTLDs and the RDRS.

The Applicant Support Program has the GAC’s attention. It was very surprised to see the low number of applicants to the ASP right now. The GAC requested to see data about the applicants from specific countries to know who is actually applying for this program so that they can work with ICANN to conduct outreach efforts and improve equal participation in the next round of new gTLDs, especially for members in underserved geographic regions.

Concerning the application fee and refund, the GAC suggests that if the application is withdrawn early in the process, no matter the reason, the refund should be higher than 65% of the application fee.

Another update is about language, the language of the New gTLD Program materials. Chris covered this a little bit earlier in the webinar. In addition to ICANN’s standard six languages, the GAC suggests that ICANN provide the New gTLD Program materials in as many different languages as possible.

Let’s discuss the RDRS a little more, although Prudence has already touched on it. This is a pilot program that has been going on for almost two years, and we’re at the point where it should be completed by the end of this year. This pilot has fostered a lot of discussions and I heard some strong words used like “disappointment” and questions about whether or not the pilot should be made mandatory. In the final Communiqué, the GAC members support improving the pilot system and recommend making it compulsory for all gTLDs. They also suggest that ICANN incorporate APIs into the RDRS pilot to improve the user experience to get more useful data and results from the pilot. 

That’s all from the GAC. I’ll give the stage back to Chris.

Get Involved in Policy

Speaking: Chris Niemi

Thanks for that update, Heidi.

As we’ve mentioned, Markmonitor is deep in the policy space. It’s an arena in which we advocate and serve our customers, but as always, we want to bring folks along. We want them to engage and take part if they are motivated to do so.

If you are deeply in love with or have knowledge and experience around the intellectual property world, consider joining the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC). Or you can join the BC, the Business Constituency — it represents the commercial users of the internet. If you want to talk about business needs and business use cases and all those sorts of things, the BC might be for you. And as we discussed earlier in the meeting, if you are an applicant or a party who already owns a dotBrand top-level domain, then the Brand Registry Group (BRG) is for you.

Upcoming ICANN Meetings

Speaking: Prudence Malinki

Policy controls and governs your work regarding domains and the Internet. So, you should want to understand what’s happening and how that will impact you. We will happily guide you through that process, and we would love to help you engage in an ICANN meeting and through that journey.

The next ICANN policy meeting has been announced. It will be in June in Prague. If you are conversant in policy, please consider coming to the ICANN meeting and letting us know that you’ll be there. Stu Homan, Head of Markmonitor, and the Global Industry Relations team, myself included, will be there representing Markmonitor — and more importantly — representing you and your needs, your wants, and your future. 

For those of you who cannot physically be there, please do join our ICANN recap webinars and tell your friends. We will always give you the highs, the lows about what’s been going on at ICANN meetings and make it as accessible as we can. 

With that, I’ll close out our ICANN82 recap webinar. Thank you so much for joining us to talk about all things ICANN policy!