Good evening: As I understand it there will be an important meeting early next week in Brussels which may influence what ICANN does with the new gTLD process. For those of you who will be present, I would recommend the following line: 1. To disaggregate the process. First, to give priority to the IDN applications. Secondly to separate the public interest, linguistic/ cultural and geographical/city proposals from all the rest. Thirdly to address the <.brand> issues as an entirely distinct process where, with WIPO, the related competition and trademark issues can be considered; i.e. postpone. Fourth, to address the <.generic> proposals: these may be supported provided that they are associated with a rigorous registration policy, subject to public consultation. i.e. not to postpone, but they will take longer. 2. Regarding Vertical Integration, I have seen nothing which would lead me to amend the posting which I made last August, and which for some reason has not been cited in any of the ICANN Briefing Papers: http://forum.icann.org/lists/vi-pdp-initial-report/pdfFZQIl7H2Er.pdf In short, the attempt last year within GNSO to associate the new gTLD process with backward integration between Registrars and Registries has (a) caused a breakdown in the bottom-up consensus process (b) been a cause of further delay and (c) flies in the face of ICANN's mandate as the custodian of competition policy in the DNS. No. I shall post this message to the Lists with which I am associated: At Large, Governance, ISOC. With regards to you all, CW