The GAC issued Its Advice from the ICANN meeting in Beijing and its a long one.
The very long list effecting hundreds of applications which is going to push back the program for some time and may shut the door on all closed generic applications unless the company can show issuing the close generic to one company is in the “public good”.
GAC does in fact have an issue with plural’s and singular strings as we long ago pointed out as being a problem, and is asking that those new gTLD applications be combined into contention sets.
The GAC wants all regulated fields including financial, professional, corporate identifiers, medical and health, education to provide safeguards which will restrict access to new gTLD’s,
For Example only a licensed attorney could register a .attorney or .law domain, or only a company that is actually incorporated could register a domain like domain.inc or domain.llc
I think its important for everyone to know the reasoning behind the GAC positions so I’m including the entire statement which on the new gTLD’s
The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) met in Beijing during the week of 4 April 2013.
Sixty-one (61) GAC Members participated in the meetings and (8) Observers.
The GAC has reached consensus on GAC Objection Advice according to Module 3.1 part I of the Applicant Guidebook on the following applications:
The application for .africa (Application number 1-1165-42560)
The application for .gcc (application number: 1-1936-2101)
The GAC recognizes that Religious terms are sensitive issues.
Some GAC members have raised sensitivities on the applications that relate to Islamic terms, specifically .islam and .halal.
The GAC members concerned have noted that the applications for .islam and .halal lack community involvement and support. It is the view of these GAC members that these applications should not proceed.
Safeguard Advice for New gTLDs
To reinforce existing processes for raising and addressing concerns the GAC is providing safeguard advice to apply to broad categories of strings:
Category 1
Consumer Protection, Sensitive Strings, and Regulated Markets:
The GAC Advises the ICANN Board:
Strings that are linked to regulated or professional sectors should operate in a way that is consistent with applicable laws.
These strings are likely to invoke a level of implied trust from consumers, and carry higher levels of risk associated with consumer harm.
The following safeguards should apply to strings that are related to these sectors:
Registry operators will include in its acceptable use policy that registrants comply with all applicable laws, including those that relate to privacy, data collection, consumer protection (including in relation to misleading and deceptive conduct), fair lending, debt collection, organic farming, disclosure of data, and financial disclosures.…
