Dec 4, 2005 : Next Steps on Proposed .com Settlement

On 24 October 2005, ICANN announced proposed settlement terms betweenICANN and VeriSign, including a proposed new .COM agreement. Since then,ICANN has been conducting extensive public consultations on the proposedsettlement. At its 24th International Public Meeting in Vancouver this week,the ICANN Board has been engaged in consultations with the ICANN community onthis topic, among others.

Today at its Board meeting, ICANN Chairman, Vint Cerf, announced:

"The Board has listened long and hard this week to allconstituencies and internet users who participated with regard to the .COMagreements and the settlement proposals."

"We are deeply grateful to the efforts made by all of those whocontributed positively to respond to the Board's invitation to organizecomments on the proposals and to provide, where possible, concretesuggestions for improving them.

"We are also very grateful for the time each constituency spentgoing over with the Board their ideas and reactions.

"We ask the staff to accept any further written comments untilDecember 7 and to produce for the community a public report summarizing,analyzing and organizing the feedback provided on the .com and settlementagreements by December 11.

"We recommend that staff approach VeriSign with the results of thereport on the proposed contract and settlement. We remind all parties thatthe Board has not yet agreed to the terms of the contract and settlement.

"We also note the existence of a policy development process on newgTLDs and strongly believe that this policy development process should beinformed by the results of the comments received on the proposed contract for.com and settlement with VeriSign."