The GNSO and sub-groups have been quite active in the last month, and there will be a Council meeting on Thursday, October 11 addressing several issues.

The major one from the ALAC's perspective is the Domain tasting issue which was undertaken at our request. A working group has been looking at what next steps should be taken and a report has been made to the GNSO Council ( http://www.gnso.icann.org/drafts/gnso-domain-tasting-adhoc-outcomes-report-final.pdf ). My hope (and expectation) is that the Council will decide to start a Policy Development Process (PDP) to address Domain Tasting with a relatively short time-line (reporting back prior to the New Delhi meeting in February 2008).

In late September, ICANN Staff on a Draft IGO Domain Name Dispute Resolution Procedure (IGO = International Governmental Organizations) -  http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/gnso-igo-drp-report-v2-28sep07.pdf. This is primarily aimed at how to handle disputed related related to new gTLDs which will be approved over the next years. For background on the IGO issue, see http://www.gnso.icann.org/issues/igo-names/issues-report-igo-drp-15jun07.pdf .

In September the GNOS decided to form a short-term planning group to analyse and prioritize the policy issues raised in the report "Communication to GNSO on Policy Issues Arising from Transfer Review" before the Council further considers a PDP on any of the work discussed in the report. Council will decide how to proceed. For background on this, see the GNSO Review of Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy section of http://www.icann.org/transfers/. Since this is an issue relevant to domain registrants, and particularly to individual users, it will bear careful watching. Note that working group predates the RegisterFly problems.

Alan