Hi all, While I share many of Kathy's concerns about the process, methinks that the ramifications of these (IMO clear) errors of process are being overblown somewhat. The use of terms such as "great harm", "tragedy" and "disastrous" suggest that the lack of one's community's own TLD -- when it was never needed before -- suddenly represents existential threat. Domains that have not already been sought over multiple previous rounds of opportunity are now advanced as critical assets, even though they do not yet exist and may never actually be desired by those we deem deserving. To use Kathy's own hypothetical: If the Cherokee Nation or its members ever wanted the .CHEROKEE gTLD they have never acted upon it; I can't find any records of interest, let alone application. No current interest exists that I can discern; cherokee.org seems to work fine and may well be sufficient. So if Stellantis, Piper Aircraft, Cherokee Workwear or the town of Cherokee, North Carolina can themselves identify a use sufficient to justify the non-trivial expense of maintaining a TLD ... what's the problem? As need for memorable domain names declines, going forward TLD applications will be for the scraps that weren't interesting or valuable enough for previous rounds (save, perhaps, for some newly-trendy names). This seems an odd time to be redefining the sacred, such that even if the entitled (as ICANN elitists judge) user of a name doesn't want it, nobody else may have it. On Wed, Jul 23, 2025 at 7:53 PM Glenn McKnight via NA-Discuss < na-discuss@icann.org> wrote:

https://circleid.com/posts/an-open-letter-to-the-icann-community-not-the-com... An Open Letter to the ICANN Community: Not the Community Priority Evaluation We Intended <https://circleid.com/posts/an-open-letter-to-the-icann-community-not-the-com...>

Glenn McKnight, MA Virtual School of Internet Governance Chief Information Officer www.virtualsig.org *YOUR SOURCE FOR INTERNET GOVERNANCE EDUCATION * *Mobile 437-237-4655*

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