Dear LD PDP WG,

CONGRATULATIONS! We have finished the TBD items in the spreadsheet and will have no meetings for the next two weeks to allow time for the WG to review the preliminary recommendations document (to be sent in the next few days). Please see below the Outcomes, Action Items, and Notes from Meeting #18 on Wednesday, 27 August 2025:

Meeting #18 Slides

[OUTCOMES]

1. 7.4 and 7.5 Decision to proceed in accordance with the outcome of the Board decision on EPDP-IDNs to be reviewed when Board makes a decision
2. Filled in Spreadsheet of relevant TBD recommendations and wrote the consensus in the decision tab

[ACTION ITEMS]

• The WG members need to review the Preliminary Recommendation language by 14 September 

[NOTES]

1. Welcome and SOIs
2. Recap of Meeting #17

• Agreement on pricing for no fees recommended and follow cost recovery principle via implementation as guided by AGB
• Ariel from ICANN org for recommendations 7.4 and 7.5 Board is still in process deliberating these recommendations, they have not been formally adopted yet. ICANN finance has to conduct analysis and understand their impact. Without that, the Board cannot take action. There is some discussion on this recently, so there will hopefully be movement, but that is the reason why these have not been adopted yet. 7.4 is complicated for analysis and 7.5 is less complicated. Once that is received the WG will be updated

3. Charter Question 3 

• EPDP-IDNs P2 TBD items

i.Filled in worksheet

• 7.4 Four possibilities to decide: 1. Proceed in accordance with the outcome of the Board decision. 2. Same as a single TLD 3. Treat as separate TLDs 4. Should not be more than 2 separate TLDs (less than)
• Broad discussion of options with some consensus emerging with that EPDP IDNs has been the consensus so far around number 1
• Solution 1 Vote: 5, Solution 2 Vote: 1; Solution 3 Vote 0; Solution 4 Vote: 3 
• Voted for 1 for wisdom of EPDP IDNs should be the rule for this. 
• Steve Chan, ICANN org, In terms of drafting, maybe we could just retrofit 7.4 and 7.5 and add a clause that says, unless determined differently. Path forward could be we want to pursue 7.4 and 7.5 unless the Board determines differently for these recommendations acknowledging there is uncertainty.
• No precedent set here since it was in name collisions so agreement was reached to go with option 1, but should the Board adoption happen prior to that, then we can follow up when that decision is made
• 7.5 registry level transaction fee. Follow same principle as 7.4 for same outcome of EPDP-IDNs
• Single contract between ICANN and registries containing more than 1 TLD suggestion is to have the same calculation for registry level transaction fees
• Implementation Guidance 2: number of variants activated to the same registrant. Restrict manually activated variants, and automatically activated. There is not a suggestion to have a hard coded number here, but registries should set some upper limit for this
• Registries normally set that to 4 or 5 and almost none that have more than 1-2. Should be limited to 4-5 and beyond that only gaming is possible in real terms. There is some kind of confusion among registrants. 
• Second level, there could be Arabic script at 2nd level together with Latin TLDs then in that case the same variant rules that exist for EPDP-IDNs. 
• Underlying concern here is clear that there should not be too many instances of variants. Capping the maximum and the automatic activation. Instinct to go with EPDP-IDNs as it would likely be a bigger problem there than here
• Want to not allocate too many domain names to the same entity as not all are variants but some are based on the diacritic groupings
• In variant case it would be a maximum of 5 with IDNs and 5 with diacritics. It would make sense to have a corresponding version here with adjusted wording.

4. Preliminary Recommendations

• Back to Slides: Charter questions Summary and Tracking overview
• Saewon Lee introduced the layout of draft preliminary recommendations from the Slides. Simply each relevant recommendation was mapped out advised by ICANN legal leading to 54 preliminary recommendations and implementation guidance. 
• The draft recommendations for “certain TLD types” refers to not limiting boundaries to “real words” geoTLDs and BrandTLDs and the style will talk about applications for existing TLDs applied for and new applications. 
• No Meetings for the following 2 weeks to complete homework on reviewing the preliminary recommendations

Thank you,

John R. Emery, Ph.D.

Policy Development Support Senior Specialist

Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO)

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

www.icann.org