Friday, July 16, 2010

Last Opportunity to Comment on New TLDs DAG May End Next Week

ICANN’s public comment forum for version four of the Draft Applicant Guidebook for new TLDs closes next week on July 21st and that date may prove to be the last opportunity for interested parties to memorialize and publicize any questions or concerns they may have with regard to the introduction of new top-level domains.

Tony Kirsch of AusRegistry has written a blog post, “A DeLorean, 88 Miles an Hour and a Fully Charged Flux Capacitor,” which is a fun read looking at the world of domain names from five years out into the future. Although the predictions may be understandably optimistic, coming from a provider of domain name registry services, the notion that we could see “approval of the final version of the Applicant Guidebook at ICANN 39 in Cartagena” as well as a “45 day registration period in early 2011,” does not appear to be overly optimistic at all.

Antony Van Couvering of Minds + Machines wrote a nice roundup of the recent ICANN meeting in Brussels called, “What the ICANN Brussels Meeting Means for New gTLDs.” At the meeting in Brussels, the ICANN Board of Directors scheduled a retreat to hash out the remaining issues in connection with the implementation of new TLDs and the piece concludes with “most indications are that ICANN’s next meeting, in early December 2010 in Cartagena, Colombia, will finally produce a starting date for new gTLDs.”

Interested parties may want to submit their comments next week, because it may be that we see a final draft later this year at the next ICANN meeting in Cartagena.