Public Interest Commitments

Public Interest Commitments (PICs) as related to new gTLD applicants and the Registry Agreement they are to sign, is a term and creation directly from ICANN, first suggested on February 5th, 2013, in ICANN's revised new registry agreement that it opened for public comments.

PICs are voluntary amendments that applicants can create, sign, and undertake along with the general registry agreement in order to hold their registry operations to certain standards. They seem to originally have been developed as a way to allow applicants to appease GAC members that may be concerned about how their application stands as is, or how ICANN will be able to ensure a potential registry remains compliant with its aspirations and mandate as it defined in its summary of its proposed operations in the TLD application. As is, prior to PICs, there was no clear way of defining operating procedures when moving from the long form essays in the TLD application to the Registry Agreement.

For example, if an applicant expresses a desire to restrict registration to a certain group of professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, etc., the applicant can create a PIC to underline this and hold their future registry to that standard. If the applicant did not originally intend to create such restrictions as defined in its TLD application, but it has received communication from the GAC that the supporting organization intends to oppose their application to the ICANN Board without such language, then the PIC can be added as an appeal to those governments.

Timeline

It is a controversial topic that many applicants think was created quickly, with no outside input, and is presented in such a way that they feel compelled to make a decision without fully understanding the proposal. It seems to apply to a small subset of applicants, as only 145 of 1,409 strings were flagged by GAC Early Warnings, the primary target for PICs. The dispute resolution procedure, the Public Interest Commitment Dispute Resolution Process or PICDRP, has yet to be defined. Applicants were given one month, until March 5th, to submit their PICs. It seemed to conflict with other deadlines, such as the end of objection filling just a week later, so, "potential objectors would have to decide whether to file their objections based on PICs that have been published for just one week and that could be amended post-deadline."

ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé noted around the imminent closing of the PIC submission date that this issue has the potential for pushing back the receipt of GAC advice and therefore the entire TLD implementation schedule, which is tightly fixed and aiming to recommend the first TLDs for delegation by April 23rd. ICANN will not recommend TLDs for implementation without the GAC's final advice, and the GAC seems to be placing a great import on the submission of PICs, to which the applicants remain wary.

Stakeholder Reactions

ICANN's Registry Stakeholder Group is very much opposed to the PICs and the rest of the proposed Registry Agreement, which includes provisions to only allow new registries to work with registrars that are party to their own new registrar accreditation agreement, which has yet to be settled upon. TLD applicants have argued that they are being used as a "wedge" to force registrars into signing a still non-existent agreement. The RySg has said, the Registry Agreement “contains so many serious and fundamental flaws that it should be withdrawn in its entirety." The U.S. Governement's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, from which ICANN is given its mandate and oversight, has encouraged all applicants to submit PICs that related to verification of registration, the validity of Whois data, and help protect the "creative sector", a reference to content producers that are often subject to piracy on the Internet.

PICs Submitted

The following link out directly to the downloads for the respective PICs submitted:

1. .airforce - Demand Media, PIC
2. .app - Famous Four Media, PIC
3. .army - Demand Media, PIC
4. .bar - Demand Media, PIC
5. .bargains - Donuts, PIC
6. .baseball - Donuts, PIC
7. .basketball - Famous Four Media, PIC
8. .beauty - Donuts, PIC
9. .bet - Famous Four Media, PIC
10. .bet - Donuts, PIC
11. .bike - Donuts, PIC
12. .bingo - Famous Four Media, PIC
13. .book - Famous Four Media, PIC
14. .book - Donuts, PIC
15. .bradesco - Banco Bradesco S.A., PIC
16. .buzz - dotStrategy, PIC
17. .cam - Demand Media, PIC
18. .career - dotCareer LLC, PIC
19. .casino - Famous Four Media, PIC
20. .casino - dotBeauty LLC, PIC
21. .charity - Donuts, PIC
22. .charity - Famous Four Media, PIC
23. .cheap - Donuts, PIC
24. .city - Donuts, PIC
25. .claims - Donuts, PIC
26. .cleaning - Donuts, PIC
27. .clinic - Donuts, PIC
28. .clothing - Donuts, PIC
29. .cloud - Donuts, PIC
30. .club - Donuts, PIC
31. .coffee - Donuts, PIC
32. .college - Donuts, PIC
33. .community, Donuts, PIC
34. .company - Donuts, PIC
35. .computer - Donuts, PIC
36. .condos - Donuts, PIC
37. .consulting - Donuts, PIC
38. .contractors - Donuts, PIC
39. .cool - Donuts, PIC
40. .corp - Donuts, PIC
41. .construction - Donuts, PIC
42. .coupons - Donuts, PIC
43. .cpa - Donuts, PIC
44. .credit - Donuts, PIC
45. .creditcard - Donuts, PIC
46. .creditunion - CUNA, PIC
47. .cricket - Donuts, PIC
48. .cruise - Cruise Lines International Association Inc., PIC
49. .cruises - Donuts, PIC
50. .dance - Demand Media, PIC