The Government Advisory Counsel (GAC) just issued a summary of what it did during the ICANN meeting in Durban and issued what now appears to be a trend for ICANN meetings by issuing a “Communique”  in this case forever to be known as the Durban Communique in which it addressed a few new gTLD applications but left the elephant in the room as Pink as ever.

Going into the meetings the BIG question was what further advice would the GAC issue regarding Closed Generic applications as well as hundreds of new gTLD applications caught up in its “safe guard” advice from Beijing.

The answer is nothing.

While recommending that some applications like Amazon’s application for .Amazon (and IDN apps) be killed off, asking ICANN to follow the advice in the SSAC report on Dotless Domains (which the SSAC said should not be allowed) and some other IDN strings, the GAC said nothing about the Safeguard advice effecting hundreds of new gTLD’s those with the highest number of applications and arguably the most valuable strings with the best chance of success.

Spending a week in Durban only to conclude that the GAC will continue to “dialogue” on the issue and we will see you in Argentina, has to make those who came a very long way to make headway on the new gTLD program leaving feeling pretty unfulfilled with only a very long flight back home for most of the attendees.