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[council] GAC Communiqué on new gTLDs



>From GAC Communiqué:


The GAC provided ICANN with extensive comments on the DAG version 2 in its 
letter to the Board dated 18th August. The GAC appreciates the reply provided 
by the Chairman of the Board on 22nd September. Following discussions in Seoul 
however, both between GAC members and with other stakeholders, the GAC feels 
that many of its concerns remain outstanding, related in particular to:

-       the need to take full account of the security, stability and resiliency 
issues including those identified in the recent root scaling reports. These 
concerned the potential cumulative effects of changes resulting from the 
introduction and implementation of DNSSEC, IDNs, new gTLDs and IPv6; 

-       the importance of  further economic studies to improve  the community's 
understanding of all the costs, benefits and market impacts; 

-       the need for more effective protection of intellectual property rights; 
 
-       the ongoing discussions within the community regarding structural 
separation between registries and registrars, price caps and the potential 
impacts on competition in the DNS market;

-       the need to explore track differentiation between categories;

-       the need to respect national public interests and sovereign rights 
regarding strings with geographical meaning;

-       the need to assist developing countries which would otherwise be 
constrained by their limited access to financial and technical resources.

In the expectation that a new draft of the Applicant Guidebook will be issued, 
the GAC does not intend to comment at this stage in detail on version 3.  
 
The GAC therefore intends to provide more comprehensive comments to the Board 
before the next meeting in Nairobi.