2026-05-13 Latin Script Diacritics - Meeting #35

PROPOSED AGENDA

1. Welcome and SOI Updates

2. Recap of Meeting #34

• Key Outcomes and Action Items

3. Review of LD PDP Initial Report Public Comment

4. Next Steps

5. AOB

BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS

Open

PARTICIPATION

Apologies: Tapani Tarvainen, Christian Dawson, Alan Barrett, Prudence Malinki

Open

RECORDINGS

Audio Recording

Zoom Recording (including audio, visual, rough transcript and chat)

GNSO transcripts are located on the GNSO Calendar

Notes/ Action Items

 [OUTCOMES]

• Meeting moved from 13:15 to 13:00 UTC for the remainder of May meetings

• The group majority was in favor of retaining PR18 and PR19 concerning fees.

[ACTION ITEMS]

• LD PDP WG to continuously review the Public Comment Review Tool [docs.google.com] and the proposed draft after each WG Meeting and provide input, if any. 

• Staff and Leadership to propose language from Amadeau’s proposal to not have ASCII and LD gTLDs to not coexist independently.

[NOTES]

1. Welcome and SOI Updates

2. Recap of Meeting #34

a.                  Key Outcomes and Action Items

• Reviewed the slides [icann-community.atlassian.net] for action items

• Proposal to move the meeting from 13:15 UTC to 13:00 UTC.

3. Review of LD PDP Initial Report Public Comment

• Reviewed the slides [icann-community.atlassian.net] to discuss PR18-19 for the registry fees and Alan’s query to the Board

• Board input was divided with some believing that the recommendations are aligned with EPDP-IDNs with others unsure of financial impact and one objection given that EPDP-IDNs should not set a precedent, then it is a precedent

• Discussed paths forward considering Board’s comment. Some WG members advocated for keeping PR18-19. This would help the adoption of this exception, but the Chair noted that this is not the mandate for the WG. Charter is to make it possible not to promote it. 

• Query about possible financial impact to make an informed decision. It is a vague recommendation because pricing is not policy that is ICANN org’s decision

• Steve Chan added some input on the pricing aspect. Ambiguity of the impact as it is unknown is part of the rationale for the Board only adopting the IDNs recommendation for unknown impact and this is typically not something that policy development recommends.

• Ariel Liang, agreed with the ambiguity as to why the Board had the caveat of EPDP-IDNs, there will be more information with the next round. For this LD PDP recommendations there are some differences. The financial analysis this more for ICANN org to do later when the recommendations are adopted by GNSO Council. Then org will provide an analysis.

• Majority of WG was in favor of retaining PR18 and PR19

• Steve Chan stressed that at the Council level there is a push for Board Readiness and if the WG is aware at the Board level it should be considered. If there is Board resistance it sets up a lengthy process and extra work throughout the process. 

• Discussion of fees and the idea that there is uncertainty and the probable number of applications for LD PDP vs EPDP-IDNs

• PR29 suggestion from Edmon for a high-risk scenario in the slides [icann-community.atlassian.net] and outlined the options

• Reviewed the overall conservatism scale of the WG recommendations

• Looking at high-risk scenarios through the slides [icann-community.atlassian.net].

• PR 7 addition discussed for a justification for application submission

• The high-risk scenarios discussed by the WG, likely there will not be user confusion as that the SSE Panel would likely not allow it to move forward

• Risk of confusion could increase so the SSE should take into consideration the users so as a principle other diacritics should not be allowed from other registries

• Suggestion that even though it is likely that the SSE panel would find them visually confusingly similar. There should be a recommendation to take this into account for the next AGB

• Sarmad: The cafe and cäfe example scenario is theoretically possible and it happens precisely because arbitrarily cafe and café are put together. It depends on the SSE panel, and we cannot determine the panel’s outcome. 

• WG disagreed with Sarmad’s concern on the theoretical possibility

• Two questions to resolve: do we need to introduce a special high-risk scenario into our recommendations or add some additional precaution on slide 18 for 7.5 for PR7 to avoid potential issues.

• Sarmad’s suggestion is to not specifically require any criteria here but give the implementation team the possibility to create some criteria that would take care of potential end user confusion here. 

• High-Risk scenario from Edmon perhaps not needed given the other ways in which conservatism is established with fees and PR7. 

• Suggestion to have a recommendation requiring the SSE panel to not have any ASCII and LD TLDs to move forward independently, only as a LD set. String sim check has to prohibit this. 

• WG seemed intrigued by Option 3 for Amadeau’s proposal and the LT and staff will come up with language for it.

4. Next Steps

5. AOB