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The final draft version to be voted upon by the ALAC will be placed here before the vote is to begin.

FIRST DRAFT SUBMITTED

The first draft submitted will be placed here before the call for comments begins.ALAC supports the intent of much of what is requested in the Safeguards on New gTLDs within the GAC Communiqué issued during the ICANN meeting in Beijing.

The ALAC regrets that many of these safeguards were not included as a matter of course during the design of the New gTLD program, and barring that, that the GAC had not requested such safeguards much earlier. Either would have demonstrated ICANN’s concern for the public interest far better than the position that we now find ourselves in and allowed ICANN and TLD applicants to move forward with certainty.

On the specific safeguards, the ALAC offers the following comments:

Safeguards Applicable to all New gTLDs.

The ALAC supports all of the safeguards in principle, but is concerned that their introduction at this point and with the full onus on the new registries may place an unreasonable burden on these new registries, and may additionally add unreasonable legal and financial liabilities on these registries. Both impacts may serve to jeopardize the success of these new enterprises and create a significantly uneven playing field between them and the legacy gTLDs.

ICANN should do whatever possible to lessen these impacts and liabilities, both contractually, and to the extent possible, assuming some of these responsibilities within ICANN. Moreover, terms such as “statistically significant” will need to be carefully defined so as to set clear expectations and eliminate misunderstandings.

Consumer Protection, Sensitive Strings, and Regulated Markets:

Safeguards 1-4 are reasonable and the ALAC supports them fully. Safeguard 5, to provide abuse point-of-contact and contact details for regulatory bodies appears to be excessive, particularly for many of the classes of TLDs cited.

Moreover, the ALAC finds that the list of included TLDs is somewhat over-reaching. The references to “non-exhaustive” imply that at some undefined point in the future, new TLDs may be added, again decreasing certainty for gTLD applicants or later operating registries.

Safeguards 6-8 on credential validation although theoretically attractive would seem to place an unreasonable burden on many of the TLD registries. Moreover, the identification of which TLDs this advice would apply to is far too vague to be directly implementable. The ALAC recommends that this be clarified.

On the requirement for Exclusive Access strings, the requirement that “exclusive registry access should serve a public interest goal” is admirable but sadly lacking in any degree of specificity or enforceability.