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.

The meeting was called in an attempt to resolve the remaining issues of contention between ICANN's decision-making body and the representatives of the world's governments on the subject of the new gTLD program. ICANN's bylaws state that if the GAC gives advice and if the Board, after having listened to that advice, is not ready to follow it, a formal consultation must take place in order to air the differences.

Brussels was not that meeting. It was a first step in the bylaws process. The consultation meeting has been scheduled for March 17, the day before the Board meeting that will bring ICANN San Francisco, the first of 2011's three International ICANN Meetings, to a close.

In the run-up to an upcoming meeting between the GAC and its Board, ICANN has published a set of briefing papers. The page used for this also includes a proposed set of dates listed as ICANN's expected path forward.

Of special interest is the April 14 date listed as the date for publication of the AG. This is tentative and does depend on the outcome of the two GAC/Board meetings that will happen in Brussels next week and then in San Francisco on March 17.

But it also sets a clear target date for the start of the new gTLD program.

According to an open LinkedIn group focused on new gTLDs, the man behind .GAY is planning a .FLORIDA.

Alexander Schubert is fast becoming one of the major players in the new gTLD space and has acknowledged plans for a .FLORIDA project to be announced this January.

A website is already up, although Schubert describes it as still a "mock-up". The website indicates that the company behind .FLORIDA is currently being created. It will be called dotFlorida LLC.

It's obviously early days for the project, as the following caveat on the website confirms: "It should be noted that discussions with the state of Florida are pending. .FLORIDA will not be created without the permission of the Florida State government."

Wise words of caution, as under ICANN's new gTLD rules, no geographic TLD can be created without the all clear from the corresponding local government.

The ICANN Board and the GAC have apparently set a date for their joint meeting early next year. GAC representatives have been told to plan for a 2-day meeting to be held in Geneva on February 28 and March 1.

The meeting is an attempt to resolve the final issues standing in the way of ICANN's approval of the new gTLD program. It is not yet known whether this will be a closed meeting. ICANN's thrice yearly international meetings are open to anyone and attendance is free, but this specific get-together between GAC and Board members may be seen as requiring a little more intimacy.

So in all the excitement about the Board decision on vertical Integration of registries and registrars, it seems the next version of the new gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook has been forgotten.

According to a timeline put together by ICANN and agreed to by the Board, it was supposed to be published yesterday (Nov 9).

Well it hasn't, but the latest is it should be out by the end of the week, maybe even late today...

The launch timeline for new gTLDs that was approved by the ICANN Board at its last meeting (October 28) shows November 9 as the publication date for the latest version of the DAG.

That timeline itself is a significant document, as it provides for clear dates all the way up to the actual launch of the first round of new gTLD applications.

Key dates would be:

• December 10, 2010, when the Board would approve this latest version of the DAG as final,


• January 11, 2011, when ICANN would start its global communications campaign, and,


• May 30, 2011, when the first round would be launched.

So today we get to see if this timeline is to be believed. At the time of writing, still morning in Europe so middle of the night in the US, it's a little early for anything to have been released. But if the DAGv5 does indeed appear today, the Board would then be in a position to approve the AG at its Cartagena meeting, following the mandatory minimum one-month comment period.

If DAGv5 is even a single day late, that could delay the process.

I guess we'll know in a few hours' time...

So to coin a famous English TV catch phrase: "until then, keep 'em peeled!"

When will the next version of ICANN's new gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook come out, and will it be the last? Whether you are pro, or against, new gTLDs, those two questions have to be foremost in your mind as we move ever closer to the last ICANN meeting of the year, in Cartagena this December.

This is when the final AG is supposed to be released. But will it happen like that?

On the one hand, ICANN Staff clearly think the DAG is almost done. Briefings given to the GNSO Council by ICANN's new gTLD boss Kurt Pritz point to limited changes between the current DAG (version 4) and the next one. Expect parts of the guidebook to be changed, à la DAGv2 to DAGv3, but not a fully revised version.

The new material will be published in November. A comment period will then be initiated leading up to the Cartagena meeting. But Staff will shy away from calling this the final guidebook because only the ICANN Board can do that.

Will they? From private conversations I've had, it's pretty clear that some Board members feel there is no more to say and the guidebook should now be finalised. I'm also hearing that ICANN Staff is gearing up for an official launch to the new gTLD program sooner rather than later. So if the Board does say "yes" in Cartagena, they will be ready.

To be clear, many are still opposed to new gTLDs. Good intentions often stand in the way of good ideas. "Why now?", "It's too soon!", "Work on it some more!" or "You haven't thought this out properly…" are phrases that have often been thrown ICANN's way by the perpetual naysayers who would rather things never changed and this program be shelved.

But their arguments may at last be loosing traction. Even though the next guidebook will not be called final when it is published by ICANN in the next few weeks, there is a good chance that it will become so soon after. It's about time! Time to stop being afraid of the future and instead, to make sure the Internet remains the most innovate, fast-moving medium in human history.

A special Board retreat held in Trondheim, Norway, over the weekend led to a set of resolutions on the new gTLD program.

The resolutions mean to give ICANN Staff directions on how to edit the next version of the Draft Applicant Guidebook. Those looking for concrete answers to such outstanding issues as Vertical Integration (VI) of registrars and registries will have to wait a little longer. On this issue for example, the Board will request that the GNSO provide it with a clear statement on the current state of the work being done by the community and whether consensus has been reached. This statement should be sent to the Board by October 8th.

Other resolutions cover Morality and Public Order objections, Geographic Names or Trademark Protection.

There are also a couple of resolutions that aren't linked to the new gTLD program, including one naming San Francisco as the venue for the first ICANN meeting of 2011, from March 13 to 18 2011.

It should hardly come as a surprise. As the planned date for the release of the final version of ICANN's new gTLD Applicant Guidebook draws near (it is expected in advance of ICANN's Cartagena meeting in December), the calls for yet more delays can once again be heard.

The International Trademark Association (INTA) sent ICANN Chairman of the Board Peter Dengate Thrush and ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom a letter a few days ago requesting that yet another study be done before new gTLDs are rolled out!

The study should, they say, "assess the harms associated with intellectual property abuse and related forms of consumer fraud in the domain name system".

Thankfully, both Dengate Thrush and Beckstrom have lately made it quite clear that after several years of consultation and development of the new gTLD program, they feel that there has been ample opportunity for people such as INTA to get involved and have their say.

The Board has actually planned to concentrate solely on getting through as many of the remaining new gTLD issues as it can during its upcoming Retreat, on September 24 and 25.

Personally, I wonder whom INTA is really speaking for here. I know of several major corporations that are keen to get their hands on their own TLD and are growing very tired of the program's endless delays. And then obviously there are all the other entrepreneurs who have started on a TLD project and are loosing more and more money as delays stretch…

The comment period for the 4th version of ICANN's Draft Applicant Guidebook for the new gTLD program closed yesterday (July 21).

Although as it stands, the DAG is nearly finished, a couple of grey areas remain. One is the issue of morality and public order (MAPO), and who should judge, according to what criteria. The other is about separation between registrars and registries.

It is INDOM's view that the strict separation requirements introduced in the DAGv4 are both unfair and anti-competitive. We said as much in the comment we sent to ICANN a few days ago. We are encouraged to see others (here and here for example) picking up on our comments and agreeing with them.

The final version of the guidebook is scheduled to be released before the next ICANN meeting (Cartagena in December). It is our hope that it will not contain rules that prohibit ICANN-accredited registrars from being involved, in any way whatsoever, in a TLD.

As we wrote in our comment to ICANN: "With the Guidebook as it is currently written, those with in-depth domain name expertise are excluded, except existing registries.  Entities without this expertise would be accepted.  This is akin to giving a license to provide medical services to anyone except doctors."

We posted our comments on the latest draft of the Applicant Guidebook for new gTLDs yesterday.

They can be read here.  For those who don't have time to go to the ICANN website to read them, here's an excerpt giving the general gist of what we said:

"We feel the forced exclusion of ICANN-accredited registrars from the new gTLD program is unfounded, detrimental to consumer and applicant choice and would lead incumbents in the registry market to enjoy unfair protectionism. It must not be implemented in the Final Guidebook."

In his presentation to ICANN's GAC (Government Advisory Committee), ICANN Senior Vice President Kurt Pritz indicated that root scaling and economic study issues were the main ones remaining to be solved before a final Applicant Guidebook could be published.

His presentation was made today in Brussels, in the run-up to ICANN's 38th international meeting which starts on Monday June 21. The GAC and the GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organisation – the policy-making body for gTLDs) traditionally hold working sessions during the weekend before an ICANN meeting.

Pritz went on to say that if the aforementioned issues can be resolved in the coming months, the Board could be in a position to approve the final guidebook in December. Presumably, that would require the final guidebook to be published several weeks before the December ICANN meeting in Cartagena so that there would be time for public comment before the Board came to vote on it.