please submit comments on new gtld Applicant Guidebook - 15 December for English and 7 January for non-English comments

[Robin Gross]

Opportunity to submit comments on ICANN's Applicant Guidebook on the  
introduction of new gTLDS extended until 15 December (for English  
comments).  See ICANN release below for details.

More Time and Additional Materials Posted for Applicant Guidebook
3 December 2008

ICANN is extending the New gTLDs Applicant Guidebook public comment  
deadline until December 15. The new deadline applies to the English  
posting only. For the remaining languages the deadline is still  
January 7. (The extension is in line with recent community discussion  
that time during ICANN meetings (i.e., the recent Cairo meeting)  
should not toll comment periods.) ICANN urges the Internet community  
to continue providing feedback. This consultative process is key to  
assist the organization to further improve the New gTLDs program.

Since the posting on 23 October 2008 of the draft Applicant Guidebook  
for new generic top-level domains, ICANN has been receiving valuable  
comments from the Internet community. Several of the comments and  
questions have been focused on the proposed gTLD base agreement.

Considering the growing interest and on-going inquiries on this  
topic, ICANN is posting today additional background information about  
the proposed base agreement. The additional materials are intended to  
further clarify the explanatory memorandum entitled "Summary Changes  
to Base Agreement" posted on October 23 2008 along with the draft  
applicant guidebook. This posting does not signal an intention to  
"hold fast" to the current draft – but rather the opposite: changes  
to the draft are already planned and additional information will  
facilitate public discussion regarding the content of those changes.

There are two documents being posted at this time:

(1) "Expanded Summary of Changes to Base Agreement for New  
gTLDs" [PDF, 246K], which is a more comprehensive version of the  
initially posted memo entitled "Summary Changes to Base Agreement"  
posted with the draft Applicant Guidebook in October

(2) "Comparison between gTLD Agreements from 2005-2007 and Draft Base  
Registry Agreement for New gTLDs" [PDF, 191K], which is an annotated  
"blackline" comparison that attempts to show every difference between  
the 2005-2007 gTLD agreements and the proposed new base agreement. It  
includes 56 detailed footnotes explaining most of the additions,  
deletions, and modifications to the language.

As indicated previously, it is important to note that the proposed  
draft agreement is not final and has not yet been approved by ICANN's  
Board of Directors. It has been set out for review and community  
discussion purposes, and we encourage comments and suggestions for  
improvement. The current draft base agreement as well as other  
aspects of the New gTLD Program are subject to changes based on  
community feedback and other considerations.

ICANN is looking forward to a continuing robust dialog with the  
Internet community and will make all efforts to provider  
clarifications as needed.

To submit comments on the draft registry agreement and the rest of  
the draft Applicant Guidebook, please continue to visit http:// 
www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/comments-en.htm.




IP JUSTICE
Robin Gross, Executive Director
1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA  94117  USA
p: +1-415-553-6261    f: +1-415-462-6451
w: http://www.ipjustice.org     e: robin at ipjustice.org



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