Draft: Revision 3
WHEREAS
- The At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) supports the introduction of new genertic Top-level Domains (gTLDs);
- Most of the problems identified by the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) Community in its Mexico City Summit declaration of February 2009 related to the new-gTLD program remain to be addressed;
- Persistent Insistent concerns expressed both by ICANN stakeholders and outside organizations indicate that law enforcement and public-protection measures in the current design of the gTLD program remain to be satisfactorally addressed;
- The ICANN Board has rejected the Joint Applicant Support Working Group (JAS) recommendations to reduce costs of new gTLD in developing economies independent of any fixed fund;
- The rejected JAS recommendation was actively supported by ICANN's three main public-interest communities (GAC, ALAC and NCSG) and had no active opposition from any single defined component of the ICANN multi-stakeholder community
- The absence of a staggered release schedule or a fixed timetable for future rounds severely inhibits ICANN's ability to correct errors and assess unintended consequences in the proposed application round;
- ICANN has still not convincingly demonstrated the end-user need or benefit of a simultaneous launch of hundreds of new TLDs;
- The history of ICANN's compliance regime gives serious doubt regarding its capacity to protect the interests of Internet end-users as it scales to cope with a massive expansion in the namespace;
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- The ALAC conveys to the ICANN Board and community a deep concern about the possible harmful effect on Internet end-users of a single massive expansion of gTLDs;
- In the affirmation of the multi-stakeholder model and the community-driven process, the ALAC urges the ICANN Board to
- Adopt the recommendations expressed in the ALAC Statement on the Preliminary Support Implementation Program published December 21 2011
- Phase-in the introduction of new gTLDs gradually, releasing no more than 25 every three months and that each such release be comprised of at least 30% community, support-eligible, "geo-region" or IDN TLDs
- Enable development of a community-devised process to monitor the progress of the releases;
- Commit publicly to contain with due haste any and all elements of the application process demonstrated to cause or allow harm or confusion to registrants, Internet end-users or content/service providers
- that the Board discuss with the ALAC any of the advice
Engage with ALAC to discuss of the above advice considered unacceptable, and to produce a formal reply on the outcome of any such engagementwhich it finds it can't accept and requests a formal reply from the Board on the outcome of any such
discussions.
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Notes:
- Items marked in bold may be considered arbitrary values which are subject to review and consensus.
- The Summit declaration is available at http://www.atlarge.icann.org/files/atlarge/correspondence-05mar09-en.pdf
- The Preliminary Support Implementation Program published December 21 2011 is not yet listed on the ICANN correspondence page; a link will be provided as soon as it is available. Until then the document is available here
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