ICANN officially issues the GAC Advice on New gTLDs and gives applicant response deadline: 10-May-2013

Last week I wrote about Governmental Advisory Committee’s (GAC) advice to the ICANN Board that threatens to derail the whole new gTLD program. Please see the entirety of the GAC Beijing Communiqué [PDF, 156 KB] for the full list of advice on individual strings, categories of strings, and strings that may warrant further GAC consideration.

This announcement serves as the official notification to applicants of publication of GAC Advice and begins the applicant response period per the Applicant Guidebook Module 3.1.  Applicants have 21 calendar days from this publication date to submit a response to the ICANN Board. Applicant responses to the ICANN Board should be submitted no later than 23:59:59 UTC on 10-May-2013. ICANN will publish applicant responses and provide them to the Board.

I am not sure what responses ICANN expects from this. The GAC has an objection or comment on almost all new gTLD applications except for the brand gTLDs and the geographic gTLDs that have support from their respective region. And how can anyone reply to such broad and sketchy advice?