Dear IRT members, I’m following up on our discussion regarding Community Registration Policies, Registry Commitment Evaluation (RCE), and Community Priority Evaluation (CPE). Please see attached emails for some background on this discussion as well as the recording of our call (from 23 Jan 2025) here: https://community.icann.org/x/HQDTGg. During our discussion on 23 January, ICANN heard divergent views on how it should evaluate the registration policies of an applicant applying for a community TLD and opting to participate in CPE. On the one hand, there seemed to be a call for ICANN to award more points for registration policies that would potentially limit content, which ICANN could not enforce per the Bylaws. On the other hand, there seemed to be a call to remove registration policies altogether as a sub-criterion because they may in some way relate to content. ICANN agrees that there may be policies that a community applicant wishes to have in place that would not or could not go into the RA and that these may be used to garner support for a community TLD. However, if these are not in Specification 12 of the Registry Agreement, or do not pass RCE, then they could not be enforced by ICANN and these would be between the applicant and the community or any other third party. As noted in the proposed AGB language on PICs/RVCs<https://community.icann.org/display/SPIR/1.+Working+Documents?preview=/31549...> (pdf<https://community.icann.org/download/attachments/315490346/Proposed%20AGB%20...>): “ICANN will only evaluate community registration policies that are proposed by applicants for inclusion in the applicable RA. Registry operators may implement any other community registration policies outside of the RA which are desired, so long as the policies otherwise comply with the applicable ICANN agreements and policies. Community registration policies that are not evaluated and approved for inclusion in the RA are not subject to ICANN contractual compliance oversight because they are not included in the applicable RA” ICANN would also like to remind the IRT that CPE is an optional evaluation used for resolving contention. For that reason, CPE sets a high bar, which would include Community Registration Policies that are enforceable by ICANN. As noted in the proposed AGB language for CPE<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JEnYgVuRwXR_x8I59hpe8MNLBmjsgOK3hivz-1KZ...> (pdf<https://community.icann.org/download/attachments/315490346/CLEAN_EXT_Topic%2...>): “It should be noted that a qualified community application receives priority over all directly contending applications. This is a fundamental reason for very stringent requirements for qualification of a community-based application, as embodied in the criteria below. Accordingly, a finding by the panel that an application does not meet the scoring threshold to prevail in a community priority evaluation is not an indication the community itself is in some way inadequate, invalid, or does not exist, but rather that it does not qualify to receive priority over all other applications in the contention set.” As Lars noted in his email to the IRT yesterday (3 February 2025), at this stage, we are looking to identify issues where proposed language does not align with wording or intent of the recommendations. Given this array of input and based on previous discussions regarding CPE and RCE more generally, ICANN has not identified any changes to the language that should be made at this time related to Community Registration Policies and CPE prior to moving to public comment. ICANN can commit to revisiting this issue further after we have received public comments on these topics (PICs/RVCs and Community Applications). Please note, I plan to send out the updated proposed AGB language for CPE by Thursday, 6 February. Thank you again for your time and dedication to these topics. Best Jared -- Jared Erwin Director, New gTLD Program Global Domains & Strategy Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) jared.erwin@icann.org<mailto:jared.erwin@icann.org>