Minds + Machines

A group of people met at the ICANN meeting in Seoul and called themselves the Expressions of Interest Working Group — EOI-WG in ICANNese.

We were trying to come up with a way to get the ball rolling on new gTLDs, and we thought that if we could just get a list of the new TLDs and the people who were going to apply for them — well, then we would know a lot.

We’d replace the theorizing with practical knowledge, with many benefits.

• We’d know how many new TLDs there would be, so we could stop seeing the phrase: “…a potentially unlimited number of names.” We’d also be able to address root scaling issues on an empirical basis.
• We’d know which new TLDs would eventually be applied for, and who would be applying for them, giving lots of time for brand owners and governments and others with jealous privileges to prepare their objections, and relieve us from the theoretical evils that today are forecast with ease and assurance.
• ICANN would know enough to assign resources in response to actual data, which would result in a cheaper, faster, and clearer process.
• Applicants would know if they were the only ones, or if they needed to prepare for an auction or a settlement. Clarity, which has been a rare element so far in the process, would be theirs.

So the Working Group continued on from Seoul to hold several meetings and produce several drafts, and the Report of the Expressions of Interest Working Group has now been submitted to ICANN.

Here’s the cover letter I wrote when I submitted the Report, to give you a flavor of the contents.

On behalf of the Expressions of Interest Working Group (EOI-WG), I am pleased
to submit our final report to ICANN, attached here as a PDF file. In
addition, I have attached the EOI-WG charter, which sets our composition and
our remit.

The EOI-WG makes a series of specific recommendations about the EOI process, as
well as providing point-by-point answers to the questions asked by ICANN staff
for this comment period. In each case, our recommendations are accompanied by
the reasons for them. Where applicable, the level of consensus is also noted
(e.g., “unanimous consensus” or “strong consensus”).

Our report also contains discussion of suggestions that we did not make as
recommendations, and the reasons why they were not adopted as consensus
recommendations.

The Working Group met first during the ICANN meeting in Seoul and then, with
expanded ranks, by telephone call. We also set up a mailing list for our
discussions. The Working Group was comprised of a diverse group of people,
acting on their on behalf and not as representatives of any stakeholder group
or constituency. Our goal was to see if we could come up with recommendations
to help ICANN implement an Expressions of Interest process for new gTLDs as
called for by the resolution of ICANN’s Board of Directors on October 29, 2009
at their meeting in Seoul. Although ICANN did offer to provide us with
resources, we decided to privately fund the entire effort in order to avoid
squabbles about whether we were official or not. We’re not official — we’re
just some people who got together to make some recommendations.

In brief, our report recommends the following:

1. An Expressions of Interest procedure is desirable and should be implemented
as soon as possible
2. The Expressions of Interest procedure should be mandatory for anyone seeking
to apply for a new generic top-level domain
3. A $55,000 fee must accompany the submission of an Expression of Interest for
each string sought, refundable only in very limited circumstances
4. At the close of the Expressions of Interest submission window, ICANN should
publish at least the name of the submitter and the string submitted
5. ICANN should publicize the Expressions of Interest procedure in a manner
sufficient to assure fairness to those who may as yet be unaware of the new
gTLD program, but this communications period should be as short as possible
within this constraint

Questions about the EOI-WG and its recommendations will be answered by reading
the attached report and charter, as well as by reviewing our deliberations.
The archives of our mailing list may be found at
http://lists.pra.im/pipermail/eoi-wg/. The archives also contain links to MP3
recordings of our two phone calls, held on Nov. 9 2009 and on Nov. 13 2009, as
well as the various drafts that we considered, in clean and redlined versions.
The EOI-WG members are listed in both the report and our charter.

We hope and expect that our work will be helpful to ICANN, to the ICANN
community, and to the new gTLD process.

Respectfully,

Antony Van Couvering
EOI-WG co-ordinator

I urge everyone who wants new top-level domains to read the report, and to make your voice heard on the ICANN Expressions of Interest comments site.