At Tuesday's ALAC meeting, Evan presented a statement on closed generic word domains that gave the two opposing positions that had been expressed by various ALAC and At-Large people. I suggested that the ALAC not vote for or against that statement, but each member say with side they supported. As the discussion evolved, there was some discomfort about simply giving a tally of the two sides, and moreover, that it ignored a third option that allowed some parts of both sides to be supported. I volunteered to work with Evan to create a new version. I did create such a 3rd "in between" option. As we were reviewing it, and partially guided by a message from Roberto Gaetano, Evan suggested that this in-between option, with some enhancements, could be a single statement that most or all of the ALAC could support. What you see here is an evolution of that statement. Thanks to Olivier and Rinalia who identified a number of problems with earlier versions. The comment period closes on March 7th, so a vote will need to be completed by March 6th. I believe that Olivier would like to start a vote relatively quickly, so if you have any problems with what you see here, please speak up quickly. This new statement is also posted on the wiki - https://community.icann.org/x/Z4JwAg. Alan ================================= On the whole, the ALAC does not believe that closed generics provide public benefit and would prefer that TLDs -- especially for strings representing categories -- were not allocated in a way that would lock out broad access to sub-domains. Some members of At-Large believe, on principle, that all closed generics are harmful to the public good. Others believe that, while not necessarily being beneficial to end users, closed gTLDs should be allowed as simply being consistent with existing practise for lower-level domains. However, in developing this response to the Board's request, the ALAC found the issue to be far more nuanced than the above hard positions would suggest. We can foresee innovative business models that might allow a closed TLD to be in the public interest. An example might be a registry that makes 2nd level names available at no cost to anyone, but retains legal control over them. This is similar to the model used by Facebook and many blog hosting sites. Allowance should be made for applicants interested in widespread sub-domain distribution that do not require domain-name sales as a source of revenue, or for other forms of sub-domain allocation. Whether a generic-word string is used with its generic meaning or in some other context may also be relevant. The fictitious but famous computer manufacturer, Orange Computers Inc. using the TLD ".orange" might be acceptable, while the same string used as a closed TLD by a California Orange Growers Cooperative (and not allowing access to orange producers from Florida or Mediterranean and South American countries) might well be considered unacceptable. Allowing this nuanced approach would likely involve a case by case review of how a TLD will be used and how its sub-domains will be allocated. Moreover, it would require a contractual commitment to not change that model once the TLD is delegated. In summary, the ALAC believes that completely uncontrolled use of generic words as TLDs is not something that ICANN should be supporting. However, some instances of generic word TLDs could be both reasonable and have very strong benefits of just the sort that ICANN was seeking when the TLD space was opened. Such uses should not be excluded.