An Open Letter to the ICANN Community: Not the Community Priority Evaluation We Intended
This post was originally published on CircleID by Kathy Kleiman To the ICANN Community, Today, I share a warning about serious changes to the Community Priority Evaluation (CPE) of the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook. They are not driven by public comment, but by a few voices within the SubPro Implementation Review Team—and they are very likely to lead to disastrous misappropriation of well-known community names, including those of Tribes, Indigenous Peoples and NGOs around the world. The reason why is that we (the ICANN Community) envisioned.CHEROKEE for the Cherokee Nation and other tribes, peoples and NGOs, not a group that loves their Grand Cherokee and Jeep Cherokee cars and jeeps. But the policy written by the SubPro PDP Working Group (2016-2020) and accepted by the GNSO Council and ICANN Board recently was deeply changed—and replaced with a scoring system that eliminates the ability of well-known communities to stop unrelated groups, or a fraction of their community, or a group completely opposed to them from using the same name as a new gTLD, provided the applicant has some semblance of internal organization and activity. This change will result in the misappropriation of well-known community names and great harm that we never intended when we wrote the policy. The Subsequent Procedures PDP Working Group (meeting 2016-2020) was fairly balanced in its recommendations for both the applicant and communities that might oppose the CPE application. I share some of the language showing the independence of the Community Experts on the CPE panel to research and other communities and tribes to send comments and letters of opposition and raise concerns—all to be taken into account in the CPE evaluation. Final Report, 2020. Unfortunately and very recently, a few members of the SubPro Implementation Review Team (“IRT”), a group charged with implementing policy, not rewriting it, made change after change to the language, terms and scoring of the Community Priority Evaluation (“CPE”) rules. In April, they stripped out carefully negotiated policies and balances to create an unfair advance for applicants—including by new rules telling the CPE Panelists to greatly limit the use their expertise and independent research skills and not to weigh heavily external opposition and comments they may receive. The changes are buried in Module 4: Contention Set Resolution, 4.4 Community Priority Evaluation, pages 133-150, of the final draft of the Applicant Guidebook now out for public comment. If you look at the new CPE scoring system—called Community Priority Evaluation Criteria (Section 4.4.7, p.139 in draft AGB)—in the edited versions (“redlines” that I share from the IRT on April 14, 2025, and April 30, 2025, and a special redline combining both sets of edits that I created), you will see the hands of the CPE Panelists are newly “tied” and they cannot engage in the research and application of their knowledge that the adopted policy requires. Sadly, under the new changes: And these are just a few examples. Under this new language—newly shared with the community and not arising from public comment—self-identified communities will win CPE. What a prize for the applicant (no auction) and what a tragedy for the peoples, tribes and NGOs of the same name and for far longer than the applicant! Overall, if these rules are adopted, we can predict that letters and comments of heartfelt opposition against CPE applicants will pour into ICANN, only to be systematically ignored by the Panel because of these recent changes to scoring and evaluation criteria. As shared above, this April editing came not from accepted policy, but from a few strong voices on the SubPro IRT. I fear disastrous misappropriation of the well-known names of peoples, tribes and communities if recent changes to CEP text and scoring are not reversed, and the original language is not restored. If you agree, I ask you to write a small set of comments—and share you how to do it below—as it will make a different. Thank you for reading and caring, Kathy Kleiman, Co-Founder ICANN’s Noncommercial Users Constituency To Submit a Comment in ICANN’s Open Proceeding on the Final Draft of the Applicant Guidebook, due July 23rd. Thank you! Footnotes
