On June 27, ICANN's 44th conference has concluded in Prague, Czech Republic. The results of the conference include changes to the new gTLD program, an answer to the Olympic Committee's plead for special protection, as well as no further information on batching processes. The Coordination Center's representatives along with those of the Technical Center of Internet have attended the conference.
The major news from ICANN meeting was the end to the digital archery procedure. Earlier this week, the process has been suspended, and as of the end of the conference, ICANN has confirmed killing its digital archery completely.
ICANN has also refused the Olympic Committee's special protection. The IOC has been trying to have special protection not only in the top-level, but in the second-level domains as well. Meanwhile, lots of businesses use "olympic" as a part of the corporate name, e.g. olympic-grill.com or olympiclandscapes.com. Cherine Chalaby, a member of ICANN's board, pointed out that there will be no special protection for the Olympic Committee's names.
Batching was one of the topical themes as well. With the end of digital archery it is yet unclear how the batching will take place, while 1930 applications wait their turn at ICANN. The corporation has an agreement not to exceed the limit of 1000 new top-level domains per year to protect the stability of the root zone. Some experts think that no more than 1000 domains a year will go live, however, as there are just above 1400 domains to evaluate, and each application still has to undergo evaluation processes which will differ for each domain.
ICANN has not yet devised a way to solve the problem, but it promised to create a roadmap in about three weeks.
