ICANN will hold its 48th International Public Meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina between November 17-21, 2013. The event will be attended by representatives of governments and nonprofit organizations working on the Internet development, as well as experts from domain name market companies.

The main topics to be discussed at the ICANN meeting in Buenos Aires are advancing the multistakeholder model for Internet governance and the New gTLD program introducing a number of new top-level domains.

Notably, one of the topics during the sessions of ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) will be the possibility of using non-standard launch plans for geographic TLDs like .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА. Currently, registry operators of such TLDs are required by default to give the highest priority during the launch phase to the holders of trademarks included to the ICANN’s Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). Applicants for geoTLDs believe that this doesn’t make sense, since their TLDs are targeted at the residents of specific regions and it would be more reasonable to give the highest priority to local businesses for which using the TMCH might be unfeasible (because it might be too expensive or they might be interested in registering a name in only a particular geographic TLD). Additionally, applicants for geoTLDs ask to give priority in registering a number of domain names to the governments of cities and regions for which these top-level domains are to be implemented. For example, such priority is required for names like police.berlin or metro.london.

Representatives of the Foundation for Assistance for Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development (FAITID) will attend the ICANN meeting in Buenos Aires. During the sessions of the GeoTLDs group and the New TLD Applicant Group (NTAG), FAITID representatives will talk about their experience in working with ICANN during the current phase of .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА introduction.