Dear Justine and IRT Members,
Thank you for the discussion on Thursday and for highlighting these various considerations. Some follow-up responses/thoughts below:
Guidelines
As a reminder, this is the relevant SubPro recommendation:
Recommendation 34.16: All Community Priority Evaluation procedures (including any supplemental dispute provider rules) must be developed
and published before the opening of the application submission period [emphasis added] and must be readily and publicly available.
We understand the importance of ensuring that an applicant has all the relevant information, and we discussed reviewing the CPE guidelines alongside the draft criteria, as these things go together. We can commit
to reviewing the guidelines and noting potential required changes to these based on any updates to the criteria. It should be noted that, as per the recs and IG, we do plan to make updates to the criteria based on the guidelines, so in some cases a review
of the guidelines will be inherent to/covered by the review of the criteria.
Community Commitment Review vs. CPE
As Justine notes, some IRT members understood from the recent Board adoption of a
framework for RVCs that CPE is now required for all community applicants
regardless of contention status. For your reference, the language in question from the framework is as follows:
D. Community gTLD Commitments
a. Applicants who elect to designate themselves as a “community” applicant must propose community-specific commitments in their applications for the proposed string, including possible
restrictions on use and content, as in the 2012 round.
i. Unlike in the 2012 round,
these community-specific commitments will be evaluated regardless of whether or not the applicant proceeds to community priority evaluation as a result of string contention
[emphasis added].
ii. These commitments would be subject to the same evaluation framework as the Registry Voluntary Commitments set out in Section B above.
b. The community-specific commitments will be evaluated and must be agreed between the applicant and ICANN before any Community Priority Evaluation occurs.
c.
If the proposed community gTLD commitment does not pass the evaluation, it would not be counted for scoring as part of the Community Priority Evaluation
[emphasis added] and could not be included in the Registry Agreement if the application proceeds to delegation.
d. If the commitment passes the evaluation, as-is or with modifications agreed between the applicant and ICANN during the evaluation process, the commitment will be included in Specification
12 of the relevant Registry Agreement.
e. Any future additions or modifications to the community gTLD commitments included in the Registry Agreement must be implemented via an amendment to the applicable Registry Agreement,
per the Procedure for Community gTLD Change Requests
Based on this language, and as Justine alludes to, while a community commitment review is required for all community applicants, this has no bearing on CPE, as this is an optional, contention resolution mechanism.
The commitment review and CPE are separate evaluations.
In addition, please see Affirmation 34.1, which states:
Affirmation with Modification 34.1: The Working Group affirms the continued prioritization of applications in contention sets that have passed Community Priority Evaluation (CPE). The
Working Group further affirms Implementation Guideline H* from the 2007 policy, with one small modification: “Where an applicant lays any claim that the TLD is intended to support a particular community such as a sponsored TLD, or any other TLD intended
for a specified community, that claim will be taken on trust with the following exceptions: (i) the claim relates to a string that is also subject to another application and the claim to support a community is being used to gain priority for the application;
[emphasis added] and (ii) a formal objection process is initiated. Under exception (ii), an expert panel will apply the process, guidelines, and definitions set forth in IG P.” This modified text removes the following sentence under (ii) in order to be
consistent with 2012 implementation: “Under these exceptions, Staff Evaluators will devise criteria and procedures to investigate the claim.”
Considering this, I reiterate the point that CPE is NOT required for all community applicants.
I also agree with Justine’s comments regarding the fact that community applicants will likely need to understand their commitments at the time of application and that this should be reflected in the application
questions. I will pass these comments along to the relevant team members.
Thank you again for the discussion. Please let us know of any further questions or comments.
Thank you,
Jared
--
Jared Erwin
Director, New gTLD Program
Global Domains & Strategy
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
From: Justine Chew <justine.chew.icann@gmail.com>
Date: Thursday, August 29, 2024 at 2:48 PM
To: Jared Erwin <jared.erwin@icann.org>
Cc: "subpro-irt@icann.org" <subpro-irt@icann.org>
Subject: [Ext] Re: [SubPro-IRT] SubPro IRT Meeting #66 | 29 August 2024, 19:00-20:00 UTC
Hello Jared,
During this call, we discussed the need for the CPE Evaluation Guidelines to be made available ahead of the Next Round application window opening, even if it was by way of an annexure to the AGB (and not incorporated in the AGB). Several IRT members, including
myself, made reference to the CPE criteria being applicable regardless of whether a Community-based TLD applicant is caught in a contention set and opts for CPE as the means to be prioritized ahead of other applications in that contention set (i.e. if it prevails
in CPE).
To be clear, I am correcting/clarifying my remark made in chat about the need for such guidelines to be made available "by" the opening of the Next Round application window to mean "well before" the opening of the Next Round application window.
1. As part of the Board's decision on the approach to handling RVCs that restrict and/or usage of gTLDs in the Next Round, it is understood that any community-specific commitments (RVCs) offered by a Community-based TLD applicant will be evaluated regardless
of whether or not the applicant opts for and proceeds to CPE to get out of a contention set - so you are correct in this respect.
However, we cannot assume that RVCs will be offered subsequent to the submission of an application. The contrary is more likely - that Community-based TLD applicants must have an expectation that their RVCs form part of their application at the time of submission,
for possible inclusion into their RA Specification 12 (should their application succeed). This should be evident through the gTLD application submission form questions for Community-based TLDs.
2. Since Community-based TLD applicants are expected to submit their applications in the prescribed application window (without any extra dispensation) they need to have a full understanding of how CPE will be conducted in order to be able to adequately address
the requirements under CPE within their applications.
In the 2012 round, the CPE Evaluation Guidelines came out after the application window had closed and applicants were not able to amend their applications. Thus, in addition to wanting the avoidance of this situation for the Next Round, we must offer applicants
ample time to prepare their applications including RVCs; which is why the CPE Evaluation Guidelines (even if manifested as an annexure to the AGB) have to be published well before the application window opens, if not at the same time as the AGB.
Thanks,
Justine
On Fri, 28 Jun 2024 at 22:25, Next Round Policy Implementation <NextRound_PolicyImplementation@icann.org> wrote:
Dear All,
Meeting #66 of the SubPro IRT will be held on 29 August 2024 at 19:00-20:00 UTC [local time [tinyurl.com]]. The agenda can be consulted here.
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