All, following last week's call, please find below the draft response to the Board that I have been working on with Jonathan. Your comments / feedback is most welcome. Remember the deadline is approaching rapidly, so we should receive your feedback by the end of the week. Kind regards, Thomas Dear Steve, At the 26 November 2012 meeting, the ICANN Board requested that the ICANN GNSO Council advise the Board by no later than 28 February 2013 if it is aware of any concerns, such as with the global public interest or the security or stability of the DNS, that the Board should take into account in making its decision about whether to include second level protections for certain IGO names and acronyms by inclusion on a Reserved Names List in section 2.2.1.2.3 of the Applicant Guidebook, applicable in all new gTLD registries approved in the first round of the New gTLD Program. With this letter, the GNSO Council would like to respond to that request. With respect to the temporary protections for the International Olympic Committee and the International Committee of the Red Cross / Red Crescent, a directly comparable request was made to the GNSO Council and the Board asked for a response by the end of January. In the light of the 20 December 2012 GNSO Council decision on temporary protections, we understand that the Board deemed the question of concerns with the global public interest or the security or stability of the DNS sufficiently answered. Although we note that the GNSO has not yet completed its PDP on potential protections for the organizations in question. The GNSO Council believes that the question as to whether or not there are concerns with respect the global public interest and security or stability of the DNS can only be properly and fully answered upon the completion of the thorough work associated with a PDP. In this regard, please be aware that GNSO Working Group working on this issue (IGO / INGO WG) has deliberated on this specific point and concerns have been voiced that provisional protections for IGO names can be dealt with in the same way as the IOC / RCRC designations via the use of temporary protections. Therefore the question of the presence or absence of such concerns could only be answered upon the conclusion of the PDP. [Conclusion of the 14 February telco] - Minority positions have been advanced within the Working Group that the Public Interest may be harmed by temporary protections?? Rest assured that the Working Group is working on this extremely complicated matter with the focus and urgency you would expect and that the GNSO Council is willing to provide a comprehensive update on the progress that has been made with this policy matter at the earliest convenience of the Board.