The Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet of the US Congress has called a hearing into ICANN's new gTLD program for Wednesday May 4, 2011.

Considering who has initiated this, no-one will be surprised to see much of the proceedings centre around trademark protection.

What may be more surprising to some is that representing ICANN in front of the US congressmen attending the hearing will be Kurt Pritz. Although Pritz is ICANN's Senior Vice President of Stakeholder Relations and the man in charge of the new gTLD program, most would probably have expected Rod Beckstrom, the organisation's CEO, to take centre stage.

Instead, it appears that Beckstrom will not even make an appearance. Many will no doubt be surprised by this as when ICANN was heard by the House of Representatives in June 2009, then-CEO Paul Twomey went to Washington in person.

The reason for Beckstrom deciding not to go may be due to his past links to the US administration (he was US cybersecurity tsar in 2008) and a desire not to see those colour this hearing…

It had been promised for April 15… It's out on April 15th!

The new DAG (Draft Applicant Guidebook) is out. This shows both the incredible amount of work ICANN Staff is putting into getting this program finished and that the June 20th date for green-lighting the new gTLD program is one that ICANN really wants to keep to.

Read the new DAG here.

Following final approval at last March's San Francisco ICANN meeting, the newest Internet domain's roll-out has started.

Dot XXX registry ICM had already announced details of the adult entertainment domain's sunrise periods and launch program.

Now comes the news that the domain has been activated at the root and is therefore fully functional, as evidenced by ICM's new website address.

As of today, there are 22 active generic Top Level Domains on the Internet.