Dear all,

further to discussions about the Public Interest, please be so kind to find a response from the Chair of the ICANN Board to the Chair of the GNSO concerning a query about Exclusive Registry Access for gTLD Strings Representing Generic Terms.
As a reminder, when the ALAC discussed the Public Interest with the ICANN Board at the Marrakech meeting, Bruce Tonkin, Board member, responded with a vision of the Public Interest mission of ICANN that was purely technical in terms of making sure Domain Names resolved to the proper IP addresses. During the ALT meeting with the ICANN Board Chair, the ICANN Board Chair responded that this was not quite correct and provided some language that broadened the use of the term "The Public Interest" which was more aligned to the ALAC's view that all actions that ICANN took needed to take into account the Public Interest. (I'll have to read the transcripts back for the exact wording)

In the attached letter, the Chair of the ICANN Board quotes Paragraph 3 of the Articles of Incorporation - so that's a very technical baseline. He then explains the current status of information collection from the ICANN research on the global public interest framework. But nothing more so far.

I would like to take this up with the Public Interest working group - but would appreciate your feedback first.

Kindest regards,

Olivier

-------- Forwarded Message --------

Subject:	[council] Updated [Correspondence] Steve Crocker to James Bladel re:GNSO Query on Public Interest and Exclusive Registry Access for gTLDs
Date:	Tue, 12 Apr 2016 23:16:08 +0000
From:	Glen de Saint Géry <Glen@icann.org>
To:	GNSO Council List (council@gnso.icann.org) <council@gnso.icann.org>

Dear Councillors,

Please find the updated correspondence Steve Crocker to James Bladel re: GNSO Query on Public Interest and Exclusive Registry Access for gTLDs.

This updated version has one very minor edit in the last sentence.

Apologies for the inconvenience of double posting.

Thank you.

Kind regards,

Glen