The last ICANN (1) meeting took place during the week of July 13. 59 GAC Members and 4 Observers met in Durban, South Africa to take stock of the new gTLDs, discuss the evolution of the whois and the relations between ICANN and governments.
The GAC, which is the Governmental Advisory Committee of the ICANN, has just published its Communiqué (2) to make recommendations to the ICANN Board on some specific disputed applications:
- The GAC officially objects to .amazon (also in Chinese and Japanese) and to .thai because of the potentials conflicts due to their geographical meaning.
- The GAC advises the ICANN Board not to proceed beyond initial evaluation until the agreements between the relevant parties are reached for the applications for .spa, .yun, .guangzhou and .shenzhen.
- The GAC allows the two strings .vin and .wine and, due to the complexity of the matter, to take 30 additional days to conclude on the matter.
- The GAC does not object to the .date and to the .persiangolf while some though that those strings would be problematic.
Then, the GAC reaffirms its previous advice from the Toronto and Beijing meetings that Inter-Governmental Organizations acronyms warrant special protection by ICANN. The same applies for Red Cross and Red Crescent Committees and Federations acronyms’ protection. A discussion between members of the GAC and NGPC (New gTLD Program Committee) and Inter-Governmental Organizations representatives is under way to find an adequate protection to these acronyms.
Finally, the GAC reiterates its advice to promote Community applications.
The next meeting of the GAC will happen during the 48th ICANN meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
(1) Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(2) http://durban47.icann.org/meetings/durban2013/presentation-gac-communique-18jul13-en.pdf