In its Beijing Communiqué, the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) issued advice to the ICANN Board of Directors regarding New gTLD applications. The Safeguards on New gTLDs: Category 2, Section 2 of the Communiqué states: "For strings representing generic terms, exclusive registry access should serve a public interest goal" and includes a list of strings that the GAC "considers to be generic terms, where the applicant [was, at the time,] proposing to provide exclusive registry access." On 19 August 2013, ICANN inquired as to whether the applicants for the strings identified plan to operate the applied-for TLDs as exclusive access registries. For more information, view the announcement.
The majority of applicants indicated that they did not intend to operate the applied-for TLDs as exclusive access registries. For the 12 applicants that indicated that their applied-for TLDs would be operated as exclusive access registries, ICANN asked applicants to provide an explanation of how exclusive registry access for the applied-for TLD will serve a public interest goal.
Eleven applicants responded to ICANN's request. These responses have been published and will be provided to the New gTLD Program Committee of the ICANN Board (NGPC) for its consideration during the ongoing discussions regarding the implementation of Category 2 Safeguard Advice. View the responses here.