Summary

  • 94 of 97 counted ccNSO votes supported the recommendation in 2024; the ICANN Board made its separate decision on 22 October 2026.
  • The Board adopted the policy while excluding the uppercase-only Risk Treatment Appraisal route and its cross-references.

The ccNSO vote was emphatic, and it was not the last word. Ninety-four of 97 counted votes supported the policy recommendation in April 2024; 56% of 174 emissaries voted. On 22 October 2026, the ICANN Board adopted the policy except for Section 7.8, Risk Treatment Appraisal, and four references to it. Those are different decisions by different bodies, two years apart.

The policy governs the life of internationalized country-code top-level domains: choosing and validating strings and variants, then delegating, transferring, revoking or retiring them. Section 7.8 dealt with a narrow corner. If a string looked confusingly similar only when written in uppercase, a requester could offer mitigation measures and ask an independent panel appointed by ICANN to appraise the plan. The manager and, where needed, a public authority would commit to carrying out the measures.

The Board’s objection is operational. A mitigation plan could require a separate, independent TLD manager to coordinate registrations with the applicant, perhaps through bundling and other technical and administrative arrangements. That is a real dependency: one manager would be asked to bind its registry operation to another’s mitigation design. The Board judged the security and stability risk too high and pointed to a replacement string as the available route around the collision.

That choice draws a boundary around the kind of risk the policy is willing to manage. The proposal let a name survive a difficult similarity finding if people and institutions could make the residual risk manageable. The Board chose a cleaner control: change the name, and avoid asking separate managers to share a complicated operating obligation. A domain string is short; the agreement behind it may not be.

The rest of ccPDP4 now moves into implementation, but the resolution makes that work conditional on prioritization, an ICANN org feasibility assessment and further operational, technical, legal, security and resource considerations. Some recommendations need Bylaws amendments. The Board cannot promise that the Empowered Community will support them. The headline approval therefore starts another set of decisions; it does not finish the implementation plan.

The immediate institutional test is the Board Statement. The Board directed the President and CEO to send it to the ccNSO Council. Under the process described in the resolution, Council can consider whether to affirm or modify its recommendation; a supplemental recommendation could return to the Board. The 2024 vote remains a strong mandate inside the ccNSO. The Board’s 2026 resolution shows where that mandate meets the authority to adopt policy.

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