The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced during their meeting in Tunisia, the launching of a broad strategic initiative to enable new generic top-level domains (gTLDs).
The strategic initiative included a two-stage approach to move to the full globalization of the market for top-level domains.
ICANN’s review process calls for the following as part of a comprehensive evaluation:
- A full assessment of technical standards to support multilingual TLD’s by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
- An assessment of the introduction of competition into the TLD market and other similar markets, allocation mechanisms and possible appropriate business models for the TLD manager-ICANN relationship to be provided by an international economics organization
- A review and report on intellectual property issues involved in the introduction of a new TLD shall be requested from the World Intellectual Property Organization
- Reports regarding the technical stability issues related to the introduction of new TLDs including contingency planning to ensure continuity of registry services from the IAB and ICANN’s Security and Stability Committee (SECSAC)
- An independent review of consumer protection issues from a consumer protection body will be requested