Beijing will host the 46th International Public ICANN Meeting April 7-11, 2013. This event will be attended by more than 1,000 representatives of companies, organizations and government authorities that deal with Internet governance and addressing issues.

The main topic of the Meeting will be the New gTLD Program, according to which a number of new top-level domains will be introduced. The participants will discuss the launch of the Trademark Clearinghouse, which will be required for use by the new gTLD registries during the Sunrise period. In addition, during a special session the information on the new gTLD pre-delegation testing process will be presented.

The experts are also expected to discuss the revised New gTLD Registry Agreement and the new Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA). ICANN insists that it should be able to unilaterally amend the agreements (without consulting other parties) on the basis of the ICANN Board’s approval. Registrars and registries disagree with this proposal.

Another controversial subject is the requirement for the registrars to sign the new version of the RAA in order to get accredited in the new gTLDs. Currently, registrars are working under the RAA in its previous versions and are entitled not to sign the revised version of the agreement until the RAA they have with ICANN expires. So, ICANN is basically forcing registrars to sign the new agreement (which has a lot of amendments significantly influencing the registrar business) before they can get access to the new gTLDs.
 
The participants of the event will also discuss ICANN’s decision-making process. The discussion will be held to define which issues ICANN deals with relate to the policy development and which should be considered as the policy implementation ones. This debate was caused by the fact that within the New gTLD program ICANN submitted a number of proposals that were prepared without consulting the ICANN community and were subsequently criticized by its members.
 
Representatives of the Foundation for Assistance for Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development (FAITID) will attend the ICANN Meeting in Beijing. During the event the Foundation experts will participate in the groups' sessions FAITID is a member of: New TLD Applicant Group (NTAG) and the group of applicants for geographic top-level domains (GeoTLDs).

At the event the .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА TLDs will be represented, also FAITID staff will conduct negotiations with the leading registrars on their accreditation in these top-level domains.