Summary

  • On 22 October, ICANN's Board adopted the IDN country-code selection policy while rejecting its proposed Risk Treatment Appraisal for strings confusingly similar only in uppercase.
  • The Board said a mitigation plan could tie an applicant to another, independent top-level-domain manager. Its decision sends that narrow disagreement back to the ccNSO Council.

A capital letter rarely gets a board meeting to itself. At ICANN this week, it got three resolutions. The 22 October Board decision approves the broad policy for choosing and retiring internationalised country-code top-level domains, including variants. Then it removes section 7.8, the proposed way to rescue a string judged confusingly similar to an existing name only when rendered in uppercase.

The ccNSO's Board Report gave a requester a path to offer risk-mitigation measures to an independent appraisal panel. That was a concrete process: the requester would put forward a plan, the panel would test it, and the result could validate or reject the string. The Board has declined to make that process part of the adopted policy.

Its reason is more interesting than typography. ICANN says a workable mitigation might require the manager of an existing, separate top-level domain to coordinate registrations with the newcomer, perhaps through bundling. That is no longer a single applicant promising to behave. It is a continuing operating bargain between two independent managers. The Board judged the complexity a potential DNS security and stability risk. A requester can instead propose another string under the policy's adopted provisions.

So the Board approved the main door and closed one side entrance. It ordered a formal statement of reasons to the ccNSO Council; the two sides can seek a mutually acceptable answer, and the Council may affirm or change its recommendation. Meanwhile ICANN may plan implementation of the adopted parts, subject to prioritisation. Some provisions still need future Bylaws amendments and the Empowered Community's support.

For a prospective country-code applicant, the immediate consequence is plain: a clever mitigation package for an uppercase-only collision has no approved panel to receive it. For other domain managers, the Board has declined to make cross-registry coordination the price of that exception. The next useful document is the promised Board Statement and the Council's response. The alphabet has had its hearing; the governance argument now belongs to the people who must run the zone.