The ICANN working group of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) has published its draft final report on the new gTLD subsequent procedures policy development process. The work is truly titanic: it took over 4.5 years. Working group participants studied the experience of the first stage of the new gTLD program and reviewed a huge number of proposals and comments from domain community members.
The procedures set out in the document are aimed at standardizing all stages of domain name delegation and making them transparent, from communication with ICANN while submitting an application, to reviewing appeals in the case an application was denied. Special attention is being paid to the most debatable issues of the first stage, including the application cost, the possibility of using common words as dot brands (closed generic TLDs), the use of singular and plural forms of a word as various domain names, and others.
The working group has put out its draft final report for public comment, which will last until September 30. For readers’ convenience, the draft report has an annex that shows which topics have changed significantly as compared to the initial version of the document that was published on July 3, 2018. Following the comment period, the final recommendations will be developed and submitted to the GNSO Council. After approving the document, the Council will send it to the ICANN management.
