ICANN 49 meeting in Singapore: Internet Governance, New gTLDs, Privacy & Proxy Services

ICANN 49 meeting in Singapore is underway (March 23 – 27) and these are 3 of the subjects in this meeting that I am interested in:

Internet Governance – IANA transition
This will be the main topic of the ccNSO meeting in Singapore. The latest version of the ccNSO agenda reflects the recent events and has introduced 3 sessions that will zoom in from different angles on the NTIA announcement. While the ccNSO plans to discuss the underlying principles of the transition process, the more detailed and concrete proposals that are already being discusses within the different ICANN communities and in fora such as 1Net might force the discussions to a more practical level.

New gTLD updates
On Monday 24 March at 12.00pm Christine Willet (gTLD Operations) will provide an update on the status and progress of the new gTLD program (auction implementation, name collision, community priority evaluation, implementation of GAC advice). Related to new gTLDs, however also IDN ccTLDs will be a session on the same day regarding TLD Universal Acceptance. The GNSO also are hoping to discuss (at their weekend sessions) the subsequent application rounds for new gTLDs and how they should prepare for them.

Privacy & Proxy Services Accreditation Issues
As the topic of privacy and proxy registrations was not addressed in the 2013 RAA negotiations, there is now a group discussing the related policy issues with a view to developing an accreditation program for the services.  Privacy and Proxy registrations in broad terms relates to the masking of certain aspects of contact data of a domain name holder in the Whois database.

Thanks to CENTR for the Guide to ICANN49 (Singapore) meeting that is now available and covers the week ahead for the ccNSO, GAC and GNSO.