The Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN) on Friday decided against implementing the Expression of Interest
(EOI). This was the announcement done during the ICANN board meeting
(still ongoing as of press time) in Nairobi, Kenya.
The proposal for an EOI was raised by the Internet community through
ICANN"s public participation program. During its meeting in Seoul last
October, the Board instructed the ICANN Staff to study the EOI proposal,
get more input from the community, and present the findings on the 37th
ICANN Meeting, which is now being concluded in Nairobi, Kenya.
After much discussion before and during the ICANN sessions in Nairobi,
it was generally agreed that the EOI process will be helpful for ICANN
to determine the number of applicants and the list of gTLD strings that
will apply for consideration. However, it can potentially further delay
the launch of the application process for new gTLDs because it will
take too much of the ICANN Staff"s time to create a separate policy
and guideline for the EOI. Hence, the ICANN Board voted against the
implementation of the EOI, and instead resolved to focus all the resources
of ICANN to making sure that the application process would start soon.
In a related news, the fourth version of the guidebook for the new
gTLD will be released in Brussels, Belgium in June, but the ICANN cannot
tell for sure if that would be the final version. Kurt Pritz, VP ICANN
Services, only said that it may be the final version depending on feedbacks
before and during the 38th ICANN Meeting to be held in Brussels.
Meanwhile, in a separate resolution, the Board has resolved to ensure
that there will be a “strict separation of entities offering registry
services and those acting as registrars. No co-ownership will be allowed.”
ICANN Board Member George Sadowsky, also clarified that, if a policy
becomes available from the GNSO and approved by the board prior to the
launch of the new gTLD program, that policy will be considered by the
board for adoption as part of the new gTLD program. This means that
the GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organization) is tasked to come up
with a policy that will provide a guideline regarding registrars acting
as registries in the post-delegation process for the new gTLD. Without
additional policies from GNSO before the launch of the application process,
registrars may not be alllowed to apply to become registries.
As part of the previous discussions in ICANN meetings, one of the solutions
for the registrars is that, they will be allowed to apply for a gTLD
string. However, they will not be allowed to sell it. In other words,
no registry can be a registrar at the same time. However, the GNSO does
not have a clearly developed policy for this case yet. This will be
one of the main issues to be resolved before the new gTLD application
round now that the EOI is a closed issue.
