Bret/Marilyn: I believe these are both valid questions to ask, where they rank up on the council's priority list is something that the council will have to decide. I am encouraged Marilyn that you are raising the topic of single letter domains. I know there are a number of large corporations that have been inquiring about the availability of these domain names. I have in fact been the recipient of at least one such inquiry. My response was that any such request should be made through the GNSO Council via one of the constituencies. It is unclear from your note if this recommendation is coming to the council at the request of the Business Constituency, or if this is something you are raising sua sponte. By way of example, within the registrar constituency there was a discussion about how it was best to raise the issue of amending the bylaws to the Board via the Council. I believe it is prudent if recommendations come to the council through the constituencies as this is consistent with the spirit of the bottoms-up process upon which ICANN is founded. I will be interested in listening to this discussion during the next council meeting. I would hope that your discussion actually involve a two-part analysis. Part One, would ICANN release these reserved names. Part Two, how do the registries allocate them. Bret with regard to your single letter TLD question. I believe this is also a timely issue given the current efforts that Olof is undertaking in connection with new TLDs. I know that you had previously worked on behalf of a registry applicant in 2000 that had proposed a (.I) TLD which was altered amended to (.III) to meet the guidelines imposed at the time. It is unfortunate, that this application was removed from the ICANN Board "shopping basket" at the last minute. I would be interested if that applicant from 2000 was still interested in obtaining a TLD. The reason I believe the answer to this question would be valuable, is that it would go to show that there is still interest among non-selected 2000 applicants. I think this data point may prove useful to staff in their current efforts. So in summary, good questions and I look forward to further discussion at the Council level. Best regards, Michael -----Original Message----- From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org]On Behalf Of Bret Fausett Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2005 5:45 PM To: Marilyn Cade Cc: Bruce.Tonkin@melbourneit.com.au; council@gnso.icann.org; Gnso. Secretariat; John Jeffrey; Kurt Pritz; Olof Nordling; Maria Farrell Subject: Re: [council] request for ICANN action on single letter domain names (now reserved names) Could we broaden that request to ask how to proceed for single-letter TLDs also?

2) Request for an issues report from gNSO staff addressing how to proceed to make single letter domain names, now on reserve status, available for registration at the second level in the generic TLD space. I would like to present a short statement describing the issue under AOB on the agenda list. I have posted a letter to Kurt Pritz and John Jeffrey advising them that I will be requesting to have this topic on the Council agenda and I did discuss the topic with both of them yesterday at the request of an interested party.

Regards, Marilyn Cade

In 2000, ICANN wrote: "Under current practice of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, one-letter codes are reserved from assignment to allow for future DNS extensibility." (see, FAQ #47 http://www.icann.org/tlds/tld-faqs.htm). This is the same reason ICANN provided for now allowing second-level single letters, which is why I suggested bundling the issues for GNSO policy purposes. Bret Marilyn Cade wrote:

Dear Bret, I think that the process would be different. I think the single letter gTLDs would be in the process of any new gTLDs. Does that make sense? By the way, do you know of any technical issue related to single letter gTLDs?