Hello Stéphane,
How about joint SO/AC initiatives (there was a lot of talk on this after the sessions held in Mexico, but as they were after our dinner with the board, there wasn't much opportunity to discuss with the board)?
With respect to two of the topics suggested by Avri related to new gTLDs - ie the IRT and geographic names, it would be useful to think about how to work more effectively together with ALAC and GAC in particular. On geographic names - the Board sees various letters exchanged between the GAC, GNSO and the Board on the topic - and geographic names have received attention at several of the recent Board meetings and workshops. The topic is moving forward - but perhaps it is time to have some smaller joint working groups to review the issue further and see what new compromises can be reached - particularly at the second level. On geographic names the main positions seem to be: - GAC wants a list of names protected where the Government gets to approve (or provide a letter of non-objection) registration of a domain name - the GNSO suggests are more general dispute resolution process - although nothing has been proposed at the second level as far as I know other than UDRP At the top level there does seem to be agreement with respect to names on an ISO country list, at the second level there are many more concerns as country names are routinely used within existing TLDs (gTLDs and ccTLDs). With respect to new TLDs there seems to be many quite reasonable uses of country names (e.g countryname.brand for country specific websites, or countryname.sport, or countryname.news etc). It could be a burden on Governments themselves if they need to approve use of these names. On the other hand countries maybe concerned about sites like countryname.war, or countryname.hate etc. Maybe where a top level domain string has a likelihood to give rise to concerns around morality and public order when combined with a countryname that the GAC could require an approval process for registration of that second level domain. So further work on this topic may be best handled by a smaller group that considers a range of appropriate and inappropriate uses, and seeks to achieve a reasonable compromise between protecting against mis-use and encouraging new uses of the DNS. Regards, Bruce Tonkin