Notes from 28 August 2018 APAC Space Web Conference

APAC Space web conference was attended by 48 participants including at-large community, governments, registries, and registrars.

In summary, the web conference focused on the Initial Report of the New gTLD (generic Top-Level Domains) Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process (PDP) Working Group. The PDP WG Initial Report is available for public comments until 26 September 2018. PDP WG co-chair Cheryl Langdon-Orr introduced the topic. Michael Flemming led discussions as the APAC Space community facilitator.

Key action points following the meeting are:

Provide comments to the preliminary recommendations, options and questions of Initial Report before 26 September 2018 at https://www.icann.org/public-comments/gtld-subsequent-procedures-initial-2018-07-03-en.
Check out the summary of the Initial Report, and reference Annex C of the report, which consists of a table consolidating the preliminary recommendations, options and questions for comments.

Links to the meeting recording and presentation slides can be found at the APAC Space Community Wiki webpage here: https://icann-community.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/GSEAPAC/pages/114296860/APAC+Space.

Details of the session as follows:

Welcome Remarks

Jia-Rong Low, VP of Stakeholder Engagement and Managing Director - Asia Pacific, ICANN, gave his welcome remarks and introduced APAC Space as a space to facilitate discussion amongst the APAC community on ICANN policy-related matters. He invited participants to subscribe to the APAC Space mailing list by emailing subscribe@apacspace.asia.

Introduction to Initial Report of New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP WG

Cheryl introduced the New gTLD Program. Prior to the launch in 2012, policy recommendations to execute the New gTLD Program were drafted in 2007. The New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP was formed in 2016 (charter available here) to review what changes, if any, should be made to the 2007 recommendations. These changes would be implemented in subsequent New gTLD application rounds.

The WG published its Initial Report in July 2018 seeking community input on preliminary recommendations and questions for more than 40 topics related to the New gTLD program. The WG will review all comments in its final recommendations and aims to publish its Final Report by ICANN64 Kobe.

The Initial Report covers the output of four PDP Work Tracks as follows:

Work Track 1: Overall process, support and outreach
Work Track 2: Legal and regulatory issues
Work Track 3: String contention, objections and disputes
Work Track 4: Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and technical and operational issues

As Work Track 5 on geographic TLDs was convened at a later stage, output from this work track will be published in a separate report.

Community Discussion

In response to a query on whether there was any social or economic impact from the 2012 round of New gTLD applications, Michael referred to the results of the Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice Review (CCT).
On the public comment process and whether the comments would be published, Michael responded that community comments will be collated into a report and published. Cheryl added that the questions asked in the Initial Report were highlights of what the WG was looking for input on. This process can be tracked at https://www.icann.org/public-comments/gtld-subsequent-procedures-initial-2018-07-03-en.
In response to a community member’s question on whether there will be specific applicant support for IDN New gTLDs, Michael said that the topic of applicant support was covered in PDP Work Track 1 (overall process, support and outreach), while IDNs were covered in Work Track 4 (IDNs and technical and operational issues). Work Track 1 reviewed the necessity for various types of support such as mentoring and financial support. Cheryl added that the Initial Report had identified the community’s desire for support beyond simply financial support. The WG is seeking community’s confirmation on this and invited community to elaborate on what kind of support should be provided through the public comments. Unfortunately, the applicant support programme for the 2012 application round had mainly provided financial support despite their goal to go beyond that, and assistance was provided by other entities in the community instead. An example was back-end registry service providers offering technical assistance, and other members providing legal frameworks and reporting requirement assistance. Cheryl further noted that to qualify for application support, applicants would need to demonstrate that their gTLD would be serving an underserved community.
On whether the application fee can be reduced in the next round, Michael replied he was unable to comment as the WG adopts a policy perspective rather than an implementation perspective. However, the WG welcomed feedback on whether the fees should be lowered for subsequent rounds.
Regarding whether the Initial Report identified barriers such as (high) fees or a lack of awareness, and challenges faced during the application for new gTLDs, Cheryl answered that lack of awareness was indeed an important barrier, and some parts of the world were limited in exposure to outreach efforts. Michael agreed that outreach efforts needed to be scaled up and suggestions for outreach strategies were welcome as comments. He also mentioned that:
- There was a question in the Initial Report on whether there should be an appeals mechanism, which stemmed from feedback gathered from the previous application round.
- Comments received on the challenges of the application process, such as the application process being too complicated and not well-communicated, are being looked at to improve subsequent application rounds.
On the expected timeline for the next round of new gTLDs, Michael said that the WG aimed to provide final recommendations by ICANN64 Kobe followed by a GNSO Council vote by mid-2019. However, he was unable to provide an estimate on when the next round of applications might open. Cheryl added that in addition to the completion of WG processes, other preparations for the next application round would need to be completed as well.
A comment was made on the need for more transparency to the valuation proceedings for name collisions. Michael answered that they welcomed comments on the name collision reviews in the Initial Report.
In response to whether the WG had so far received comments not to have another round of applications, Michael answered that there were such comments but noted there were more comments in support of another application round.