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Next new TLD guidebook due early November

Kevin Murphy, October 19, 2010, Domain Registries

The next version of ICANN’s Applicant Guidebook for wannabe new top-level domain registries could be published as early as the first week of November, and it could be proposed as the “final” draft.
In a note to the GNSO Council’s mailing list yesterday, ICANN senior vice president Kurt Pritz wrote:

There is a Board meeting on the 28th with new gTLDs as an agenda item, and right around that time, maybe a week later, the work on the Guidebook will be wrapped. Those two events will indicate both a Board and staff intent on whether to propose the Guidebook version as final.

In order for a 30-day public comment period to be completed prior to the start of ICANN’s meeting in Cartagena, Colombia, the Guidebook would have to be published before November 5.
That said, version four of the DAG had a 60-day comment period (and ICANN staff have yet to publish a summary and analysis of those comments three months after it closed).
As I’ve previously blogged, outstanding issues include humdingers such as the cross-ownership of registrar/registry functions, and the objections procedure formerly known as “morality and public order”.