FairWinds Partners — April 17, 2012
Last night, ICANN published a new announcement about the ongoing process to fix the glitch that had exposed certain applicants’ user names and file names to other TAS users.
The message was somewhat mixed: while ICANN believes it has fixed the problem, it needs to continue testing it to be sure. The organization is still in the process of gathering information to inform applicants of whether or not their data was affected. As a result, the TAS will not reopen tonight as ICANN had predicted last Thursday.
Instead, ICANN has promised to provide an update about when the TAS will reopen no later than Friday, April 20 at 23:59 UTC (7:59 PM EDT).
To clarify, this does not mean that the TAS will reopen at that time – it means that sometime between now and Friday, ICANN will be letting applicants know more about when that reopening will occur. Given that the organization is tasked with sifting through three months of data from a total of nearly 900 applicants, it seems wise to err on the side of caution and not promise applicants a deadline that it may not be able to meet.
While in its announcement on Sunday, ICANN noted that it is still striving to meet the planned April 30 date to reveal the list of applicants and applied-for gTLDs, this latest announcement made no reference to “Reveal Day.” We predict that if ICANN does not announce the reopening of the TAS before Friday, it will become extremely likely that the Reveal Day will be pushed back beyond April 30.
Update, April 18, 2012
Late on Tuesday, April 17, ICANN posted another TAS announcement, this time acknowledging that it will provide an update on the target date for “Reveal Day” in its forthcoming announcement about the TAS reopening. As a reminder, ICANN has promised to provide that update no later than Friday, April 20 at 23:59 UTC (7:59 PM EDT).