GNSO Public Forum ICANN Meeting San Juan, Puerto Rico 27 June 2007 >>AVRI DORIA: Good morning. We should probably get started, even though it's very early but we're five minutes into our earliness. I've put the -- this is the GNSO public forum agenda. We basically have three different reports, and then open discussions on the agenda. The first one is on the policies for contractual conditions for existing registrations. It's the final report and a discussion, a staff presentation of the final report. Then we'll have an open discussion on that. Then there's the staff presentation on the domain tasting issues report, and then we'll have an open discussion on that. And then there's the staff presentation on dispute handling for International Intergovernmental Organization, IGO, names and abbreviations issues report. And then we'll have an open discussion on that. And then in the council meeting that follows the open forum, these will be gone into, and we will hopefully have votes on the -- or at least discussions leading up to possible votes on the two issue reports. So I guess we should start. So Liz? >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Thanks. >>AVRI DORIA: Liz Williams is going to do the staff presentation on policies for contractual conditions. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Thanks very much, Avri. No slides. Relief. First of all, does everybody have the report in front of them? There are masses of copies at the front door if you don't have your paper copy. And they're also in the binder for the -- in the GNSO room. >>TONY HARRIS: Over by the door. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Yeah. So let's start off with the first thing, does everybody have copies of the report? Because you'll need it in front of you. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: I'll get it. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Yeah. Whilst that's happening, the policies for the contractual conditions just for the benefit of the people that are in the room had been running since February of 2006. Norbert, you can't hear? >>NORBERT KLEIN: No. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Is the microphone working? >>CHUCK GOMES: You have to get close. >>AVRI DORIA: Senator you really have to swallow it. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Okay. The policies for contractual conditions PDP has been returning since February of 2006. The final report of the task force posted on the 20th of April, after a very long series of conference calls and face-to-face meetings. There is a recommendations summary that -- beg your pardon? >>AVRI DORIA: We don't have that yet, so maybe we should -- I'm sorry. Probably give the transcription time. I apologize. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: We'll just have a little pause. We're starting slowly this morning. >>AVRI DORIA: I should have probably made sure that we had the transcription showing before. It's one of those mornings. We might as well continue and then it will show up when it does. Hopefully that's okay with the people that are here. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Okay. Sorry about the delay, everybody. And everyone now has the report in front of them. Please turn to page 7, which is the recommendations summary, and that shows you the recommendations that have majority support from the members of the task force. This report has been posted now for quite a long time. Prior to the posting of the final report, a public comment period was run and all of that is contained in the procedural parts of the document at the back. At the last GNSO Council meeting, a request was made for an implementation impact statement to be prepared. That is being done. It is not completed yet, but it's on its way. But the committee has not yet had a chance to -- the council has not yet had a chance to discuss in detail the status of the recommendations. So it's not an opportunity to reopen the debate, but it's certainly an opportunity to seek more information and Dan Halloran, our deputy general counsel is here, to provide us with assistance if we need it. But if you -- if you like, Avri, I'm sure that -- would you like just a quick run-through on each of those recommendations? >>AVRI DORIA: Yes, I think it would be good for -- >>LIZ WILLIAMS: The audience? Okay. >>AVRI DORIA: -- for anyone that may not have read it or may not have read it recently. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Just also for anyone in -- sure -- anyone in the audience, there is also a copy of the report in the main vestibule of the room. On page 7, the proposed recommendations are -- the majority supported recommendations are set out. The way in which we characterized support for recommendations was that the idea had the support of four or more constituencies, with some Nominating Committee member support, so the table on page 70 sets out where there was majority support for the recommendations and on page 8 it goes over the two pages. The recommendations relate to the six terms of reference that the task force had to deal with. The first relates to that there should be a policy guiding registry agreement renewal; that the initial term of registry agreement should be for a commercially reasonable length but what that length was not determined. There was a majority support for the concept of a rebid of registry contracts but there were differing opinions as to the conditions under which rebids would occur. The present limitations on consensus policies -- and for people that are in the audience, the definition of "consensus policy" is found in the ICANN contracts that relate to registries -- and the limitations for those existing consensus policies were deemed appropriate and should continue. The second one -- the next one in that part of term of reference 2 relates to the nature of delegation of policy-making responsibility for sponsored TLD operators, and again that's an existing term and condition to existing registry operators and no change was proposed to that recommendation. With respect to term of reference 4, it talked about budgeting and accountability, and the recommendation was that, two, we improve ICANN accountability and effective business planning by registries, ICANN staff should immediately implement a system that avoids individual negotiations of ICANN fees and provides consistency unless there's an established justification for disparate treatment. I'd be interested to hear some further discussions from the committee, particularly with respect to the way in which the strategic planning -- the strategic plan and the operational plan are developed, and the way in which the budget are put together. To my mind, the way in which that is now currently done, because this material actually now quite old, has made significant improvements to the way in which the bulletin is constructed and how those things are actually dealt with. Term of reference 5 related to the collection of registry data, and I'm not going to read out this recommendation because it's very long, but it's on page 7 and goes across page 8. And I'd like to -- there's a recommendation there that an independent study is taken -- takes place, and I'd appreciate discussion from the council about a possibility of a statement of work for that work being undertaken or whether it -- to determine whether it's actually necessary at all. Term of reference 6 was about investments in development and infrastructure, and the task force agreed that there would not be a binding policy on the development of infrastructure -- sorry, there would not be a policy guiding investment in development of infrastructure. And the final one, with respect to term of reference 6, was a discussion about baseline requirements for stability and security of registries. The SSAC were -- the Security and Stability Advisory Committee were asked for advice about that particular element, and I'd appreciate it if the committee -- the council could just determine whether there is any more discussion that they would like to take place in their -- in -- with respect to term of reference 6. I'm happy to take questions on any elements of it. Many of the people sitting on the -- at the table here were part of that task force, but others are new to the council and did not take part, so I'm happy to answer questions and I'm also happy to answer questions from members of the audience. But Avri, if that's sufficient for you, I'd like to turn it over to the rest of the group for further discussion, if you're happy with that. >>AVRI DORIA: Well, this -- okay. Yeah. Thank you. I think at this point, it's less time for the council to be talking than for anyone who's sitting here to basically bring up any issues they may have with this report. So I'd like to open the line for public discussion on the contractual conditions at this point. So there's -- there's no one that wishes to make comments? Is there anyone at this table that wishes to make comments at this point on this report? I mean, we'll come back to that, to this in discussions at the council meeting later, but -- >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Avri, if I may, Adrian Kinderis. Just being new, I just would like to ask Liz for clarification, if I could. On recommended -- recommendation 4 -- sorry, 5, the long one, when we say "traffic data," can I get just a little bit of an explanation or elaboration upon "traffic data" or data, who are included? >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Adrian, if it makes you feel any better, there was a lot of discussion about this particular recommendation and the definitions for what registry data was including "traffic data", and I'm actually looking for Jeff Neuman, if he's in the audience, because he provided a definition that you'll know upset. Jeff, if you wouldn't mind -- don't do it, if you don't wish to, but there was a -- a lot of discussion. If you'd like, I can take that question off line and point you to the definition and give you the explanation -- >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Sure. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: -- but I don't have it, right on the top of my head. I can just find it quickly in the report for you, too. Avri, if I'd just take that off line, I'll come back and give Adrian the answer and then share the answer with the rest of the group. >>AVRI DORIA: Jeff, did you want to comment? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Hi. This is Jeff Neuman. I don't -- there is a definition that we put into the report, but the main clarification is that "traffic data" did not include anything about WHOIS data. It wasn't -- there was a definite discussion about making sure that there was not a confusion about that, and that -- that's in the report. It should be in the report as well. But basically, "traffic data" was meant to cover queries into the name servers and responses from the name servers at the TLD level. So that was essentially what "traffic data" was meant to cover. And so, you know, there was a lot of work done by the task force to clarify that, don't confuse task data with end-user data or personal data. So it doesn't cover any data that most would consider personal. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Does that include null WHOIS data as well, if I did a WHOIS search on a name that came back unavailable? Does that include that data? >>JEFF NEUMAN: That discussion was -- I don't -- we never got that detailed into the discussion, and that's one of -- one of the comments by the gTLD registries was that more work needed to be done on defining "traffic data" and whether that included queries to the WHOIS servers. It was my impression that it was not meant to cover queries to the WHOIS servers, but that was not specifically answered in the report. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Thank you, Jeff. Just to help everybody out, I've just turned to the right page in the report, which is page 21. If you need any more information on that, Adrian, I'm happy to provide it for you. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Thank you. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Actually, I did have another comment, when -- to get in the queue. >>AVRI DORIA: Please. You're in the queue. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Okay. This is -- the gTLD registries , since the very beginning -- and it's in the report, it's reflected -- have objected to the scope of the entire task force and of course the outcome of the report. If -- to go back into history for people that aren't familiar, maybe new to the council, or just out here in the audience, the issue is that when the PDP was first created, it was initially targeted at one TLD. It was initially targeted at dot com. In -- and I'm going to mix up the dates but it was probably -- I guess it was in February '06, at that meeting -- and that's the reason why the task force is called the Feb '06 PDP, the general counsel was on a council call, and was asked whether the PDP was in scope and the general counsel replied that the -- that one of the reasons the PDP was not in scope was because that it was targeted at one specific TLD and that was not appropriate for a PDP. The council, rather than taking the general counsel's advice, coming up with a new scope of reference or terms of reference -- I might be using the wrong term -- the council just said, "Okay, well, we'll make it applicable across the board to all the existing TLDs" without ever resubmitting that terms of reference to the general counsel. That, to my -- in my mind and in the gTLD registry constituencies' mind is a fundamental flaw of the PDP. We are of the opinion that the entire PDP -- or many of the items in the PDP was beyond the scope of what a PDP could go into, and was also beyond the scope of what the existing contracts allowed. There was never a point in time in which the council actually referred the PDP back to the general counsel to ask the general counsel whether it was in scope. And it's my recommendation that the council now send the report to the general counsel before it takes any action to find out whether this PDP was in scope. It would be highly embarrassing to forward the entire document to the board, only to find out that it was out of scope. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Jeff, just on that last point about sending the report to the general counsel, that's actually being done and the implementation impact statement is under preparation now. It's not completed. And I will be able to provide that work later on. So that's -- that piece of it is done and it's in preparation. >>AVRI DORIA: So if I can understand, so the sending it to the general counsel has happened, but the response -- >>LIZ WILLIAMS: -- has not been completed yet, yes. >>AVRI DORIA: -- has not, and we certainly shouldn't vote, then, probably -- >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Exactly. >>AVRI DORIA: -- until we've had that but we will have discussions before that. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Right. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Right. And I will make the recommendation to the council that this process was a little bit backwards. I think, you know, a lot of people spent a lot of time, hard work, on this project, and if -- if the general counsel comes back as we, the gTLD registry constituency, believes the general counsel comes back, and says that a bunch of the work was out of scope, then a lot of people wasted a lot of good and valuable time. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Thanks, Jeff. >>AVRI DORIA: One thing I'd like to clarify, and I wasn't -- certainly at the beginning of this whole process, wasn't paying as close attention to it as I paid later in the process, but a question was: There were various points at which the task force sent questions back to the council, asking about the continuation of the PDP, got responses from the council that they should continue on the terms of reference. Was the counsel -- legal counsel consulted at that point? Is there any -- >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Yes. >>AVRI DORIA: And so the legal counsel was consulted at the point at which the task force asked the GNSO Council for confirmation about continuing? >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Yep. And that's referred to in the procedural part of the paper, and it was with respect to the conversation that Maureen Cubberley -- wait a minute, Jeff -- that Maureen Cubberley had with -- Bruce Tonkin in-and the general counsel, so that was certainly taken into account. >>AVRI DORIA: Please. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Correct. And that was taken back to the council, but the appropriate place to take that was to the -- well, I mean it was appropriate for the task force to send it to the council. What the GNSO Council should have done was immediately take that to the general counsel of the organization to get their input, rather than the council making its own decision as to whether it was in scope, because it was a gTLD registry constituency's view that it's not the council's job to determine what is in scope within the registry agreements, and so, yes, the council -- the GNSO Council -- said that it was -- they believed it was in scope, but to the registries who live by these contracts and who operate by these contracts and that's what makes ICANN what it is is basically, you know, ruled by contracts. You know, those kinds of questions need to go to the general counsel. >>AVRI DORIA: No, I understand, and I think I perhaps spoke ambiguously when I asked counsel and council and the question I'd asked lists so perhaps I should ask it again to make sure that I got the right answer was: At the time that the task force sent the issue to the GNSO Council, did the GNSO Council consult with the general counsel. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Yes. >>AVRI DORIA: And the answer was yes. So that's -- that's what I was trying to clarify, that the GNSO Council did go to general counsel counsel at that same -- at the same time. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: And Avri, just to help you out, Dan and I worked very closely on this PDP throughout the whole conduct of it, and I'm satisfied that that was actually done correctly. >>AVRI DORIA: By the same token, I do agree that before the GNSO Council votes on it, we should see the -- and, you know, later during the meeting, when we discuss that, you know, check and see if that's also the -- the general feeling among the rest of the council members that we should wait for a vote until we've seen the report of the general counsel. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Avri, and I'll be working with Dan to get that completed as quickly as possible. Not surprisingly, we've been rather busy on a lot of things. >>AVRI DORIA: Yes, I understand. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Just a resource limit, yeah. >>AVRI DORIA: Are there any other comments, questions, open discussion on this particular final report at this point? I see absolutely no movement so I guess we can move on to the next topic. Thank you, lists, and Maria Farrell will be doing the next report. >>MARIA FARRELL: Hi. I'm Maria Farrell. I'm the GNSO policy officer with the ICANN staff, and I'm going to bring you through the issues report that we prepared on staff on domain tasting. Okay. Sorry. Can everyone hear me now? Yes. Nods. Okay. Thank you. Okay. The issues report on domain tasting, just briefly for those who don't understand quite what an issues report is, it is a formal part of the GNSO -- precursor to the GNSO policy development process, which is a formal part of the bylaws of ICANN. And the issues report in this instance was, in fact, requested formally by the At-Large Advisory Committee to ICANN and, in fact, by Alan Greenberg, who is the At-Large Advisory Committee liaison to the GNSO Council. The At-Large Advisory Committee was, in fact, supported in this by the business constituency and the intellectual property constituency of the GNSO and, indeed, the registry constituency itself also supported further fact-finding and research on the issue of domain tasting. Under the auspices of the At-Large Advisory Committee, there was, in fact, a tutorial on domain tasting several days ago here in San Juan to further just elucidate and explain the issues around domain tasting, particularly to try and at least ensure that definitions of domain tasting and understanding of domain tasting, what it is and what it isn't, are mutually shared and unambiguously shared. So briefly, an issues report is something that staff puts together. In this case, it was the services department, and particularly Karen Lentz and Patrick Jones who worked very hard to put this issues report together in 15 days. The report includes a section on who has raised the issue and why have they raised the issue. In this instance, the At-Large Advisory Committee. And they, in fact, pointed out many issues that they have about user experience in the Internet, and other issues, including security. The real question that an issues report is expected to solve, having laid out the information and background, is: Should a PDP be launched? Can it be launched first of all, and we're going back to the vexed question of the previous topic, which is: Is the issue in scope in ICANN's policy scope, and then also a positive recommendation from the staff as to whether a PDP should, in fact, be launched. Just briefly, for those again who aren't too familiar with this, the add grace period is really what's at question contractually, when we talk about domain tasting. The add grace period is a five-day period following the initial registration of a domain name. When the registrar may council that domain name and go ahead a credit for the registration fee from the registry. So money isn't actually changing hands but there can be a credit, in that the registrar is not actually charged -- for example, if the name is dropped before the end of the five-day grace period. The add grace period is a contractual term, in gTLD registry agreements. Specifically, in those for dot businesses, dot com, dot info, dot name, net, org, and pro. The add grace period did not arise as part of a consensus policy of ICANN. It, in fact, was instituted by the registries with the agreement of registrars. And the reasoning behind that was -- was very much to -- as a -- I suppose a consumer protection issue. At the time, it was -- it was certainly an occasional, if not common, occurrence that somebody might mistype a domain name when they were registering it, and so it was decided that it would be useful to have a period, five days grace period, when the name could be changed or -- and without a -- or deleted, in fact, but without a fee being charged. Later on, although we found it difficult to actually document this, I think some of the rationale behind maintaining the grace period was based around the idea of credit card charge-backs in the U.S., and to avoid -- to avoid registrars losing out when people were charging back -- refusing charges on their credit cards. After the -- after the registrar would -- would themselves have been charged by the registry. So -- but that is some information around this process, but we have -- it actually isn't part of the written record. In any case, the add grace period was and has remained part of the gTLD contracts since -- since 2000, when it was instituted for the first -- or in 1999/2000, for the first time. That's a bit of background around the issue. The question which the issues report must ask is, is a PDP within scope. Basically, is it within scope of ICANN's mission statement, and is it broadly applicable to multiple situations or organizations? Again, that was an issue that came up in the previous topic we discussed. Will it have lasting value or applicability? Will it establish a guide or framework for future decision-making? And does it implicate or affect an existing ICANN policy? So these are the questions that the ICANN staff and general counsel do look at to try to determine what is the answer to the yes-no question of is this within scope or not. Well, when we looked at those issues, we made the determination that yes, indeed, domain tasting with explicit reference to the add grace period is within scope of the ICANN policy process and it is within scope of the GNSO. Further, we made a positive recommendation that, in fact, the council should begin a policy development process including further fact-finding and research and also the consideration of other mechanisms to address the issue. Further, we said that staff resources would be made available to support these research activities and objectives and that to assist the community with doing this fact-finding and research, staff would particularly appreciate some guidance and on specific directions for that research and fact finding. So if you like, we look at this issue -- we looked it at the issue of whether to launch a PDP, said, yes, it should be launched but most certainly in the context of doing some more information and fact finding. Further to that, we did also identify some other mechanisms which are non-PDP, non-GNSO policy development process mechanisms to look at the issue of domain tasting. Those other mechanisms -- and they assume the community wishes to act because, of course, it is not the role of staff to determine whether an issue is a problem per se but there are mechanisms which include the ICANN budget process. Two things there really. There were two possible mechanisms. First of all, it is possible to look at the add fee that registrars are charged for transactions with the registry rather than simply charging them for only the ads that remain at the end of the five-day grace period. It is possible within the budget process to, in fact, make a charge of all transactions of that type including those within the add grace period. That would certainly provide something of a disincentive to the large volumes of tasting that we see today during that period. Secondly, there is -- depending on the registrar size and activity, there is forgiveness of the standard per registrar variable fee that is envisioned and indeed applied in 2007-2008 budget. Some tweaking of the criteria for eligibility for that forgiveness could act as a disincentive to certain types of activity. So those are two of the possibilities of within the ICANN budgeting process. Now, yesterday, Doug Brent, the senior vice president of services on the ICANN staff, was addressing the cross-constituency meeting and he gave them to understand that, in fact, although we do have a firm cut-off point for public comments on tasting, it is, nonetheless, the case that the ICANN board does take input regarding specific budget activities through the year. That said, the traditional and most commonly understood method of providing input to the budget is indeed through the public comment process. That closes toward the end of this week. There is really another main way to look at domain tasting in a non-PDP way and that is by looking at the -- something that is a consensus policy. It is a procedure created as a consensus policy and that's the RSEP or the registry services evaluation panel and process. That is a procedure that allows a registry to come to ICANN, propose a new registry service and have that evaluated. There is an initial evaluation by the ICANN staff and then following that depending on what the issues are, there may be further consideration and ultimately a board decision may occur as to whether a new registry service should be permitted within the contracts. And so that is also a possible mechanism through which domain tasting can be addressed. There is some precedent for this. The PIR registry last year made a proposal under the RSEP process and that was agreed in November 2006 and implemented quite recently after some implementation work with the staff, and that proposal involved changing the fees for -- in relation to the add grace period. At our workshop, our tutorial on Sunday evening, David Maher of PIR did present on that and showed the steps they took had more or less eliminated domain tasting for that particular registry which is the dot org registry. There are several mechanisms as well as a PDP which can be used to deal with this issue. So, broadly, I suppose, to sum up, staff has made a recommendation that it certainly is possible, perhaps desirable, to launch a PDP. We have made it, I suppose, a proviso that further fact finding would be a very, very useful thing to do. I know there are more detailed figures coming from VeriSign with regard to registry activities in the dot com registry as of this -- the end of this month. So that is, perhaps, something that would also be a source of further information. That may, in fact, throw some more light on how to deal with this issue. In closing, I suppose it's worth pointing out that in some respects, domain tasting is something that has arisen as an unintended consequence of a contractual provision, whether you regard that as a good or bad thing is entirely up to you. But I think in dealing with this issue, if the community chooses to do so, it would be advisable to think about it long and hard to look at the incentives, to look at the information and facts that we can hopefully put before you and to decide in a course of action that does not itself create any further unintended consequences. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Avoid the law of unintended consequences is always a challenge. I would like to open the floor for discussion. Microphone is open. Please remember to introduce yourself and speak slowly. >>STEVE DELBIANCO: Steve Delbianco with NetChoice. I am a member of the business constituency but speaking on this only topic just in my own capacity. I would like to encourage council to turn toward the PDP as a way to eliminate the notion of free tasting through the add grace period. I realize the budget process or, perhaps, some persuasion for a RSEP could work but they could also have unintended consequences as well. I feel if you're certain that the add grace period policy fits within the picket fence of policies that you can change on an existing contract and, therefore, it would be compelling that existing registry contracts would have to accommodate anything that came out of a PDP with respect to this, let's use that confidence, move ahead with it and let a PDP process go through. We talked a lot about reform, making our processes work. Let's use the tools we have and see whether we are starting to get better at conducting PDPs in a shorter time frame and they have, in fact, the force of changing existing contracts. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Does anyone want to respond? >>RAY FASSETT: Ray Fassett. I'm with the registry constituency. Just to follow up on Steve's point there, when staff reviewed the opinion of whether to launch a PDP on this, I don't think it examined the picket-fence concept as part of this. This is just a clarifying question. >>AVRI DORIA: Maria. >>MARIA FARRELL: Ray, that's correct. We didn't specifically look at the picket fence but we did see something this as something within scope for the GNSO PDP. >>RAY FASSETT: With the logic of that be you can't really examine whether it is within or without -- outside the picket fence until the recommendations actually come back? Is that the logic? >>MARIA FARRELL: In this instance, we didn't consider it to be particularly relevant, but I would have to defer to the general counsel to answer any more detail on that. >>RAY FASSETT: Thank you. >>JEFF NEUMAN: This is Jeff Neuman again. On this issue, someone made an analogy the other day -- and I want the council or whoever is working on this to kind of consider what is the difference between a party taking advantage of the five-day add grace period or a registry offering domain names for free? Do we not have the same problems? Is the problem the add grace period? Or is the problem actually giving away domain names for free? I see the problem existing in both situations. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Jeff, I would just say that the difference that I see on that -- one of the differences is that if you're giving away for free, at least they're registered. They exist beyond the five days. They can be dealt with as such. Whereas, with a grace period we see constantly registrations churning over and over again without WHOIS being populated, for example. >>JEFF NEUMAN: I think that's a good distinction. That's not one when you were at the domain tasting presentation the other day the problems of domain tasting were all related to names that were continually registered. If I use the examples that were pointed out, I think there was a Jon Benet Ramsey, there were a bunch of other Web sites -- sorry, domain names that were mentioned but those were actually registered domain names, not ones that were actually being tasted. >>AVRI DORIA: Please. >>STEVE METALITZ: Steve Metalitz. I had a question about something that was raised in the issues report. First, I want to thank the staff for preparing the report very promptly and for laying out not only the PDP route but the other routes. But I had a question about one of those and that's the budget route. It's just not clear to me -- certainly if there were a change in the registrar fees to reflect that registrars, for example, had to pay fees for every registration, even if it was dropped within five days, which is one of the possibilities, I guess, that would be reflected in the budget but it is just not clear to me how that decision would be made. For example, would it be appropriate for the council to recommend to the board that this change be made and would that be all that was necessary to at least get that issue on the agenda? I'm just not clear about what the process would be and even recognizing that it's too late for -- it may be too late for this year's budget document. I just think it might be helpful to have a little more detail about how we would take that path, if we decide that's the path that we want to take. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Yeah, I think that that's -- there have been a number of issues that have come up where people felt we need more information so I think indeed that is a really good question, and I don't know if anyone else wanted to comment. Yes, Chuck. >>CHUCK GOMES: I also think it is a good question, Steve, and one that we should answer if we pursue that direction. But with regard to the budget, I would think that it's -- what that would result in is an increase in revenue that's a little bit easier to change in terms of budget rather than an expense. [ Laughter ] >>AVRI DORIA: Oh, dear, what do we do with the extra money? Anyone else? >>IZUMI AIZU: Hello, my name is Izumi Aizu. I am a member of the At-Large Advisory Committee from the Asia-Pacific region or AP RALO. I would like to -- not on behalf but as one member of the ALAC, I would like to thank the GNSO and also the staff who accepted and worked hard to produce this issues report upon our request. It was our -- I think ALAC's first request to initiate any issues report and I think we feel like with the support of the other constituencies, we feel like we're doing some substantive policy work on top of the region helping the organization, but that we are tasked to at least convey the voices of the Internet users or individual users. I think this is pretty much a concern or related to the individual Internet users' interests. So given that, we note that the issues report further requests the data gathering or fact finding but, also, it is suggested to form a PDP. I also -- we are also wondering whether as already suggested to consider the -- for ICANN to put these fees on the domain names deleted, which it is not the case now -- so it may not be the final solution. It could be just a partial solution. But, certainly, say, for some economic principles, that those who receive the benefit will bear some cost. It can be applied if this is implemented so those who want to do the domain tasting will pay some cost, which to me personally seems reasonable. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Response? >> ADRIAN KINDERIS: I would like to echo those sentiments from a registrar point of view, I guess you just want to make sure in trying to, if you would like, penalize or at least making those accountable that are earning the money off the tasting that you don't impact the registrars that are out there doing the right thing. I think it is careful going into potentially a PDP that you are ensuring that you get the input to ensure those registrars out there doing the right thing aren't penalized or put back, that do use an add grace period in, I guess, the intended way, if I can use those inverted comments. Thank you. >> PHILIP CORWIN: Good morning. Philip Corwin, counsel to the Internet Commerce Association, representing commercial investors and developers of domain name portfolios. I just wanted to commend the GNSO for addressing this issue. We did file a comment letter supporting PIR's approach to this, and we were pleased to learn at this meeting that that has been effective in dealing with abusive tasting on dot org and I do not have guidance from my board as to which particular method, whether budget or PDP or otherwise we would prefer ICANN pursue on the broader question for all the top-level domains but we certainly support further action to avoid intentional abuse of the add grace period and would encourage the GNSO and the board to gather whatever additional data they feel is necessary before taking action and then if there is a PDP, we would intend to constructively engage with that process. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Comments from anyone? Is there any more discussion on this particular issues report? >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Avri, just one comment following up on Philip's comment there. I have immense respect for David Maher and PIR for trying to deal with this problem. I want to make it clear, though, that he was quite clear that he had two registrars engaged in this activity before they implemented the policy. And he believes that the policy implementation made those two registrars go away and that very well may be true. But I would just suggest that, perhaps, the wider community of tasters would like us all to believe that really solved the problem when, in fact, it is not likely to solve the problem across that or any other top-level domains on a permanent basis. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Any other discussion, comments from the council? Okay, thank you. The next issue is the GNSO issues report on dispute handling for IGO names and abbreviations and Olof Nordling will be giving the report. Olof? >>OLOF NORDLING: Thank you, chair. Good morning to everybody. My name is Olof Nordling. And the topic right now is the protection or rather the dispute handling for IGO names and abbreviations in the domain name context for which ICANN staff has produced an issues report and with Maria giving her introduction on the purposes and rules around issues report, I think I can go straight to the subject matter and talk a little bit about the issues and considerations and the recommendations that staff has come up with. Well, starting with, perhaps, the obvious, but, anyway, what is an IGO? Well, it is an abbreviation as such for International Intergovernmental Organization. Examples of those are the World Trade Organization, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and World Intellectual Property Organizations, and there are around about 129 such. They are registered and notified in line with something called the Paris Convention for protection against use as trademarks. And WIPO, World Intellectual Property Organization, accessor repository for those names and abbreviations that have been notified according to this convention. And that's really the defined set of IGO names and abbreviations that defines what we're talking about right now. Well, the issues then. There are two types of issues involved. First of all, there is a fraudulent use by others than the IGOs themselves than IGOs names and abbreviations and domain names and that ranges from -- well, you could call it simple cybersquatting to direct -- what is probably the most harmful effect, phishing attempts that are being made based on using IGO names and abbreviations. For example, phishing e-mail invitations to alleged international meetings and conventions where using them -- an IGO name fraudulently in order to give it credibility, and the respondents are then requested, even if everything is paid, once you get there, to come up with a deposit. A bit like the Nigerian letters, if you are aware of those. And also bogus tsunami relief Web sites where IGO names were used in order to also add credibility to -- and soliciting contributions for human aid, which, of course, it wasn't used for that purpose. Another aspect is that the IGOs, due to their particular status cannot use the UDRP. They do not register the names or abbreviations as trademarks. They're not in a commercial business at all, and their immunity, which they have since they're treaty organizations, calls for a specific appeals procedure since they cannot subject themselves to national courts just like that. There is a pretty lengthy background around this -- within ICANN because the WIPO-2 recommendations which are much wider but they have been around for now around about five years and those were addressed with extensive work within ICANN, so-called joint working group, that worked for a year and a half without reaching any consensus solution really on how to address the matter. But since then, there has been continued dialogue between ICANN and WIPO and also with the U.N. legal advisers and the Government Advisory Committee, and it has been identified as a subset of the WIPO-2 recommendation. That's the protection of ideal names and abbreviations that has recognized international legal basis. This topic of protection of ideal names and abbreviations was brought up within the context of the GNSO and new gTLD PDP at a fairly early stage and subject to discussions within the council and eventually recommendation coming up from the IPC constituency requesting that the council would decide for requesting an issues report. It was also included in the GAC principles for new gTLDs that such protection should be introduced for all new gTLDs. So following all this, the GNSO Council requested an issues report from staff on the 24th of May and we submitted it on the 16th of June. So -- actually, a one-week delay if you look at the formal requests and timelines that we're supposed to follow. But we had the council's blessing in doing so, I might add. There is something wrong with my little keys here. Here we go. Sorry for the hiccup. The considerations that we took into account, a few of them are rather important, that we realized a separate dispute resolution procedure would probably be preferred modifying the existing UDRP. That's the sense of -- well, what we get from most of the constituencies. And a dispute resolution for this purpose will also be needed in timely fashion for the new gTLD process, along with other dispute resolution procedures that we would need to develop. Then it's a different matter when we talk about applying such a dispute resolution procedure to existing gTLDs where there's already sort of incumbent use of IGO names and abbreviations. Some of it bona fide; some of it not. That would -- well, at least at the first glance at it -- require a PDP. There may be alternative solutions to it but, well, that's our take of it as of now. And, indeed, dispute resolution procedure can be developed as part of the new gTLD implementation phase or as a part of a PDP for the existing gTLDs. And, recently, due to the current workload within the council, with everything that's going on, there have been also concerns expressed within the GNSO Council about the shared capacity or taking on a new PDP at this point in time. With those considerations, we came to the following recommendation, that we develop a separate dispute resolution procedure as part of the new gTLD implementation phase based on already-existing preparatory work, of which there is quite a lot. And to develop this procedure concurrently with the other dispute resolution procedures that will nevertheless be needed for the new gTLD process. In that way we can get it in a timely conclusion or more. And, also, the GNSO Council, once the dispute resolution procedure is developed, will consider launching a PDP regarding its application to the existing gTLDs. Whilst, the report is available at the entrance -- main entrance and also available on the Web. I would say that's it, folks. Thank you for your attention. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you, Olof. The microphone is open for discussion comments, questions? Recommendations? Anyone on the council have anything they would like to add at this point? >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Olof, just a question to you. You have been following this issue very closely now. What is the level of concern being expressed by IGOs via WIPO and supported by members of GAC on this? Is this something that is of high concern? Of medium concern? Of low concern? How would you characterize it? >>OLOF NORDLING: Quite simply, we do legal advices jointly, a written letter about -- over a year, actually, to ICANN, and I think it's unprecedented in its tone about the necessity of doing something quite rapidly about this. So the level of concern seen from the IGOs, and seen from the governments, as expressed by the Government Advisory Committee, is high, even though it may be regarded as 128 -- or how many there were -- IGO -- IGOs across the world. This may be considered a small matter. But the level of concern is high, and it's fairly high on the political agenda, and that should raise some concerns for ICANN, I believe, if we can't get it off the political agenda. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Any other discussion? No? Okay. Then at this point, I'd like to -- thank you, Olof, and thank you for all of the reports. I'd like to basically open up the microphone to any discussion on any of the issues that the GNSO Council is dealing with, any comments, questions, recommendations, et cetera, from anyone attending. Is anybody monitoring the outside channels to see if there is anything there? And then there's nothing on-line? Any comments from -- ah. Thank you. >>MARILYN CADE: I want to be brave and encourage everybody else to line up behind me. >>AVRI DORIA: Introduce yourself, please. >>MARILYN CADE: Thank you. My name is Marilyn Cade. My comment for the council is: As a member of the gTLD council of the whole that has been focused on new gTLD policy, and it is not really a question but something that I just want to encourage all of us to think about, and that is examining, as we go forward on the implementation of the introduction of new gTLDs, how we constructively and pragmatically and positively ensure that we don't encounter a land rush that is unfairly benefiting those who have been able to watch ICANN and participate in ICANN, doing the policy development process, or who are English speaking or who are from the developed world. And my comment is only that it's not so much our challenge as the task force, or your challenge as the council, but your input to the board and to the community, I think, is important. And that is, continuing to recognize, as you have been doing, the importance of ensuring that the resources, the translation, the mentoring FAQs, et cetera, whatever is needed to help encourage awareness beyond the normal boundaries of those who know about ICANN and ensure the ability to at least examine whether or not a registry applicant or aspirant in a -- another country is able to fairly examine the process and put together the resources to participate in it. And the communications that are provided, broadly, are going to be key to that. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Yeah. Thank you. I think it's -- it is a very good point. I think, though, it's one of those things that the staff is certainly aware of and as you say, the council and the committee-of-the-whole have been paying attention to in terms of IDNs. One of the issues that we run up on -- against is the amount of time that one takes to make sure that everyone on the outside has as much information as someone who has been following it, and that that time doesn't push the opening of that first round through -- there's also the hope that the land rush, I think, can be slightly obviated by an understanding from the beginning that there will be more than one time to do this; that it is -- that there will be a second round and there will be future rounds, and hopefully that can also help to stem the land rush to a certain extent. Does anyone at the table wish to comment further? I've got Adrian and then -- >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Yeah. I was interested during the budgetary discussions during the last couple of days and the funds allocated to the new gTLD process, I just wonder whether there's some allocation in there from ICANN's point of view for out-and-out marketing and advertising of this new TLD process, and, you know, whether it's education out in the -- in the greater market or specific through, you know, PR releases and everything, up unto the point of, you know, not necessarily when the application is open and here, you know, today this is open but prior, leading up to that and I see Kurt coming to the stand. >>AVRI DORIA: Yes, I was looking for you. >>KURT PRITZ: I've been waiting all week for question I could answer. Yes, certainly part of the project plan for the implementation of new gTLDs and rolling out that process by the council request, I think, is a four-month window that is strictly for communications, so there's been time allocated and then -- I'm not going to be able to answer the part about how much money, but there's a significant communications budget for advertising, trade journals, using the ICANN networks in regional outreach and, you know, I won't be able to give you a comprehensive list here, but it's certainly within our contemplation, and one of the major goals of the project is to measure how effectively we're communicating before the round is launched, and then afterwards, after applications are received, to ensure that there's complete communication about the strings that are applied for. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: And and I think that that's -- yeah, that's great and also with ICANN's ever-growing footprint, I certainly think if makes it easier to do that and it's probably one of the advantages of ICANN having the offices that are set up now, that it makes that a lot easier. >>KURT PRITZ: Yes. Okay. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Mawaki. >>MAWAKI CHANGO: Yes. Thanks to Marilyn for bringing this up. I just heard Kurt talking about communication, but I would like to highlight that, in fact, in my other role I raised an issue about translation, and as far as I can remember, the CEO, Paul Twomey, agreed on the principle of translating the application materials, so that the non-English speaking people can also understand the processes and, if possible, try to apply, so Kurt talked about communication, but I would like to highlight that translation is also important. Not just communication in the one -- one language. It's really -- it's crucial to start translating in translating into other languages, and the sooner we start, the better, because I know it might be daunting. I know it requires money, but we really need to start opening up these processes for non-English speaking people. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. >>DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: Yeah. Regarding -- Dirk Krischenowski from dot Berlin, by the way. Some -- regarding communications, some four weeks ago, Paul Twomey announced me on the ICANN Web site and that was mentioned also by "Business Week" and other major magazines, which also were then announced that a new round is coming up and who are the participants and that there's a contention period, but four weeks ago, Paul Twomey announced that new TLD applicants will be able to drop their application the first quarter of 2008 and that new TLDs will be on-line in July or August, 2008, and following the last days, I have a question, and this is: Is this really the time line we are going to follow or is there a delay? That's an announcement four weeks ago and I can't imagine that there is a shift now in this time line, so a question to the GNSO Council. How do you see the time line for new TLDs exactly? Is it what Paul Twomey said four weeks ago, or is it completely different? >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. I -- first of all -- must confess to not having read the Paul Twomey announcements on the date, so I can't address that. I can address what I -- we have said that this council will be doing in terms of making sure that the board has our recommendations by the L.A. meeting, and we've tracked everything back. That means us finishing in September. Someone from the staff -- I don't know if someone from the staff wants to get up and talk about the schedule some. I don't have a clear view of the schedule past us handing it off to the board and -- and ICANN processes at the moment. And I don't know if there's anyone here from the staff that does want to answer your question in more detail. >>KURT PRITZ: So there's actually two questions on the floor, Madam Chair. One is to Mawaki, to say that part of our -- one of the changes that was made in the ICANN budget as a result of community feedback was that we significantly increase the amount of funds for translation. 200 and some thousand dollars. And a portion of that is to go to the communications of new TLDs. So while we can argue whether that's sufficient or not, certainly it was a change based on comments by you and others after we published the budget. So I'm going to try to attempt to clarify the differences between Paul's statement and the time line for this project. The time line for this project, the internal project plan, as it is now, based on a policy development completion in September, as Avri said, would be to launch the application process about a year from now, at the end of the next fiscal year. Paul's statement, I believe, went to discussions he's been having with the ccTLDs, ccNSO, and the GAC about potentially releasing some ccTLD IDNs on a limited basis for countries. So that would be a carve-out and a different allocation. That would be strictly -- strictly for the -- the country code TLDs. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: So -- sorry. If I may. >>AVRI DORIA: Please. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Could I just a clarity on that? So you're saying that Paul's comment was with reference to ccTLDs, whereas the new TLD -- as in gTLD -- process, you're envisaging a year off. >>KURT PRITZ: Right. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Thank you. >>CHUCK GOMES: And actually, with what Kurt just said, if applications were submitted in June of next year, and there were some that went through the process very quickly, as we envision t it wouldn't be too far off from -- from Paul's prediction, it seems to me. It may be a little bit later, but close. >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. Please. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Sorry. I have to lower this. I actually -- I don't know if there's any other questions on new TLDs. I was going to just ask a question on unrelated topic, so -- >>AVRI DORIA: Right. It's open and if somebody wants to come back with new gTLDs later, there shouldn't be a problem with them doing it. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Okay. I wanted to stimulate discussion on another area, and I -- and it's related -- I know Susan is going to speak a little bit to it, and it's on the working group on the Board Governance Committee, the working group of the Board Governance Committee and suggested changes to the structure of the GNSO. I just wanted to make a comment on the format of this particular meeting, and for a while, just to go back historically, the GNSO did not have a public forum. They did initially. Then they stopped having it for about a year or two, and then they started having it again, and I think that -- that was a good development that they started having it again. But what I do want to say is I'm a little bit disappointed at this particular meeting and at the public forums from the GNSO that I've seen the past several times. You know, there's -- there's a lot of talk about the GNSO not being a legislative body, but one of the things I'm very disappointed in is that we out here have no indication as to what the GNSO Council is going to do in its meeting. We've had a couple of questions from a couple of individual members on a couple topics, but I guarantee you when you meet in half an hour or an hour or whenever it starts, that there's going to be a whole range of opinions that we've never heard. And that disappoints me because you guys are not up there to -- this should be a give-and-take session. It should not be a surprise to any one of us what you do in the next hour at your next meeting, but I have no clue and maybe I'm -- I don't think I'm the only one -- have no clue as to what you guys are going to discuss. I mean, I know the topics that you're going to discuss, because that's on the agenda, but I have no clue as to the opinions that are going to be expressed, and I don't -- and the problem is that because we have no clue, we can't really effectively comment on what you guys are going to do. So I would suggest that in your future meetings, that -- in your future public fora, that this become more a give-and-take session, that none of us should be surprised as to what you do in the next half hour or the next hour, because I guarantee you that every one of us will be surprised with what happens. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. I'd actually like to talk a little bit more on that because in the past, I know there's sort of been a feeling that this was a time to listen and not to necessarily having everybody up here going with opinions, and are you saying that that's the wrong format? That it really should be a -- everyone here, not only asking questions and trying to understand what everyone else wants to get said, but that people should express opinions, or that there should be some other vehicle other than open lists where whatever discussions have happened are available? I mean, I'm really looking for more of a clue of -- of what would -- what would satisfy. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Well, it would be a give-and-take, right? In the past, you know, I -- I agree with the notion of that you should listen to what's out here but people could more effectively comment out here if we knew what you, as a whole, were going to do, because right now, it's just this open, here's the issues report on IGOs or here's an issues report on domain tasting and that's valuable to hear our input, but I mean I don't think I'm the only one. I have no clue what you guys are -- are going to do, what your options are as to what your -- I mean, I know what your options are as presented in the issues report, but, you know, this should -- this is the policy-making body of the ICANN, you know, of the ICANN with respect to generic names. And, you know, the board has its meeting and the board listens to input and it's one of the criticisms I've had of the board as well, is that, you know, there's meetings that we just don't know what happens in those meetings, and ther! e's very little give and take. It's getting better, but here -- I mean, there's a lot of people sitting up there, a lot of people on their computers. I'm hoping that you're following the transcription, but I'm not going to bet on it. [Laughter] >>JEFF NEUMAN: But there should be give and take. We should not be surprised with what happens in the next hour. >>AVRI DORIA: Well, certainly -- and then I'll see who else wants to comment. Certainly with regard to, for example, the contractual conditions with the final report, perhaps there may be some questions, but there's been so much talk and so much going on on that, that you probably do have a better idea than perhaps you would have on initiating PDPs, where I think you're right, we haven't even spoken about it yet, so I don't think we even know what -- what everyone is planning on that. And that's the discussions, but -- >>JEFF NEUMAN: Right. Because once your council meeting starts, there's no input from the -- the public, so -- >>AVRI DORIA: I understand. >>JEFF NEUMAN: -- it would be easier to comment if we heard your comments and not yes -- not just questions, but your comments. >>AVRI DORIA: I understand. Any comments? Yes, there's -- there's Mawaki -- >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Jeff, I think your comments are very well taken. As a long-standing member of council, I'd just like to say that your surprise, perhaps, in the public forum of decisions is certainly matched by my own surprise of changes in decisions and changes in views that take place going into a council meeting and even during the occurrency of council meeting. One way, of course, in the -- some of the decisions that different constituencies will be making in terms of any voting intentions, of course, have been subject to discussions either on lists with their members, and in particular with some things coming up during constituency meetings, of course, which took place yesterday. Now, one of the interesting issues there is of course that we all have our constituency meetings simultaneously, so it's a little bit difficult to send spies around to every one constituency meeting to listen in carefully to know how they're going to vote. But I take your vote very well, actually. I think it would be very healthy, indeed, if we were clearer, I think, in terms of certain particular voting intentions going in. I think perhaps the way to do that would be a closer mapping, a closer tying in of agendas of the forum, and -- and the -- the agenda of the council meeting itself. >>AVRI DORIA: Mawaki? >>MAWAKI CHANGO: Yes. I was not sure to understand really clearly the idea behind this. Because probably there is an idea behind this. I don't know. But my perception is Jeff's approach is like having this public forum as a live version of public comments or something like that, because other than the agenda, the topics on the agenda, we -- ourself we don't necessarily know in advance what our colleagues think about the issue we are going to discuss the next -- in the next meeting, so I'm not sure. >>AVRI DORIA: Chuck? >>CHUCK GOMES: Sure. Thank you, Avri. I agree that Jeff's concerns are very valid, and I think there are quite a few ways that we can -- we can improve in that area. Certainly some of the GNSO improvements that I'm sure will happen, like Web site improvement, should help in that regard. That's not the only solution. It's quite hard on the GNSO Web site to find things, and unless you know that looking at the master calendar and particular meetings in advance, to find the agenda, it's kind of hard to find for a novice. So I think Web site improvements are coming. That will help. I think we also need to push out more information with enough time in advance of our meetings including the GNSO public forums that -- that that's an avenue as well. And then thirdly, I think it's incumbent upon us, within constituencies and advisory groups that have representation on the council, to keep the communication going within our own groups. And, at a minimum, we should be doing that so that our fellow constituency members are aware of what things are going on, and each of us, including myself, have a responsibility in that regard. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thank you. >>PHILIP CORWIN: Good morning again. Phil Corwin, and I want to raise two other issues. One primarily. You know, following what ICANN is doing is sometimes like drinking from a fire hose and perhaps we missed notice that this concept of a new forum for IGO disputes was being considered, but we first really became aware of it a few days ago at this meeting, and it raises a whole host of questions. Is the fact that the IGOs want a new forum for domain name disputes separate from the UDRP process? Has this already been decided or will the community have a -- the full community have a chance to comment on whether that's a good idea? If, in fact, that's going to go forward, what -- who will be the decision-makers in that forum? Will its standards be uniform with the UDRP or will there be different standards biased in favor of IGOs? Will the disputes there just relate to the full name of IGOs or all the -- if we start getting into acronyms, that raises a whole world of other issues. And if there's not going to be -- if the reason for creating it is that there's no possibility of appeal by an aggrieved registrant to a national court, then what appeals process, if any, will be available, to an aggrieved registrant in this new process? And those are just the questions that immediately leap to mind, and I don't know if you have the answers. And then the other issue I want to raise -- not as big a concern to my constituency, but, a personal concern of mine -- is that certainly the GAC appears to be exerting more and more influence on what's going on within ICANN. They certainly had a -- played a large role in the dot xxx debate and I think created a terrible contract which we were happy to see go down because of the contractor trying to respond to all the concerns they had raised, but one can't help but notice that when you look at the schedule here, every meeting of the GAC and its working groups is closed, and the simple question is: How is -- how are closed meetings at one of the key constituencies with ICANN, one that has growing influence, how can all these closed meetings be consistent with a commitment to transparency and operation. What do they have to like? It isn't like the U.N. general assembly holding all its meetings in private, so -- I don't know if you're the right body to address that questi! on to, but this is a public forum and it's a good place to raise T. >>AVRI DORIA: Right. >>PHILIP CORWIN: But I would hope in any response you'd address my first concern about the IGO forum. >>AVRI DORIA: Right. >>PHILIP CORWIN: Because that's new to us and we'd like to know how far along that is -- >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. >>PHILIP CORWIN: -- and whether we're going to have an opportunity to raise all of these key questions that address the rights of people who have registered domain names that may be at issue in that forum. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thank you. I'll address, first of all, your second one and say you're right: That's not really something that we have much of anything to say about, but I'm sure there are board members and such in the room that have heard it. On the second, we're just at the beginning. Basically the issue was raised, the staff did an issues report, and now we're just at the point of sort of saying, okay, do we continue with this, and how do we continue with this, and I think all the questions you have and more are questions that get added. Would you -- no. So -- you know, and basically if after the group decides that, yes, there is something to do and a PDP is started, then there's a whole terms of reference and charter and issues and public comments and -- and everything that needs to occur. So we're just at the beginning. On that issue. You wanted to add something. >>OLOF NORDLING: Yes. >>AVRI DORIA: Olof. >>OLOF NORDLING: Yes. If I can at least answer one of your questions and get the numbers straight. We're talking about 289 abbreviations currently. That may change to 291 in two months or so, so -- but it is changing, but, the numbers are thereabouts. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Any other comments? Bruce? >>BRUCE TONKIN: My name is Bruce Tonkin, and I'm a former council member, and new board director. I think Jeff's comments, I would say, equally apply to the board meeting this week, in that I've looked at the agenda and it's kind of a list of headings and it's not clear to me, even as a board director, you know, what is for decision, what's for discussion, what are the documents for decision and so forth. And then I -- I reviewed the council agenda, now not being on the council, and then sort of thought, yeah, I can see the same sort of criticism could be applied there. I just want to make some suggestions, as opposed to questions. Some time ago, we used to ask for a report in the public forums from each of the constituencies, to report on what they discussed in that day. And I think that was -- and we know the GAC certainly formally communicates to the community, you know, what it decided or what it discussed during its meeting, and it's a formal written document. So I think that's always use to read that communique to get a feel for what the GAC did, in fact, discuss. So in terms of perhaps formatting for the meeting, I think what would help for the council to do is when you've got a topic -- let's say it's looking at this IGO document -- that a council member at least propose a motion that might decide -- you know, might be a motion to approve the report or it might be a motion to create a PDP, whatever that motion is, and it's a written motion seven days before the meeting, and then when the constituencies meet on -- on the day before the council meeting, the constituencies should formally discuss that, and then perhaps at the end of the day, say at the end of yesterday for an hour or so, maybe not even that long, a half an hour, you could get a -- the chair of each of the constituencies just to spend 10 minutes to say, "We discussed the topics on the council agenda, and this was the view in that constituency on each of those topics." So that means there's a lead-in to this public forum, we're clear on what the council -- what the motions are for decision. We're clear on what the constituency views are. And now we're sort of coming together and getting a bit more input from the wider community, and we're -- as Jeff says, we have more of a sense as to what the council is going to be deciding on, and which way it might go, and have some ability to influence the outcome. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. So if I understand the suggestion there would basically be at the end of constituency day a public meeting of an hour or two where each constituency basically got up and gave this report you mentioned? >>BRUCE TONKIN: I don't think it needs to be that long. >>AVRI DORIA: Ten minutes each, it is at least an hour. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Yeah, an hour I think, yeah. >>SLOAN GAON: Good morning, Sloan Gaon. I wanted to come back to earlier point about the introduction of new gTLDs. It was mentioned earlier that when Paul Twomey came out with announcement on May 10th, it was discussing in particular IDNs. It is actually not the case when looking over the press release press release clearly states that the introduction of new TLDs, the policy review process would be completed at the end of 2007, with the introduction in, quote-unquote, early 2008. I just wanted to make sure that there is some consistency not just with the GNSO and the great work that you guys are doing but also can the GAC, the board and Paul Twomey and ensuring that the message going out is a correct one and accurate one. If Paul, as CEO and president of ICANN, is coming out with a statement, people should work towards that unless something comes up which would arguably delay that process. But clearly there should be some consistency in the message and what comes after that. >>AVRI DORIA: And I think -- >>SLOAN GAON: Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Perhaps I will let Chuck point out what Chuck was pointing out earlier. >>CHUCK GOMES: I was going to add to something I said before, Sloan, and to others. I really believe you will find the council pushing back on dates that are extending out too far in this process. And I'm speaking for myself right now because we have not made a decision on that, but based on what I understand of people's motivations on the council and their constituencies that they represent, some of us were surprised as well by some of the latest dates that were targeted. And I personally have talked to some people in that regard and saying, be ready, I think you are going to find us pushing back and seeing if we can't move those dates in further, so -- it has been very clear by several comments in several fora this week, that that's a high priority. Like Avri said, we really are going to try to wrap up our work so we can approve a final board report hopefully in early September, which then would be put out and start the process that takes off after we finish the PDP. There is a lot of work to do between now and then, but we're going to make it happen. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Avri, if I may. Chuck, with response to that, I guess, everybody in this room gets to hear your response, which is obviously positive. The downside of that is Paul puts out a press release to say one thing and there is no one there saying, by the way, the GNSO is going to push hard to make those time lines come true. So to pick up on Sloan's point, I think it's fair enough that we need some sort of level of consistency because it only leads to -- I forget the gentleman's name who spoke earlier -- to confusion out in the marketplace, if you have one statement made on one day and then actions that sort of go against that. I guess I am pushing for consistency at least in the statement that is come from ICANN, because we can do what we can do but if there is not that consistent message going out to the public, that's where issues are created and frustration is introduced. Thanks. >>SUSAN CRAWFORD: Good morning, Susan Crawford, ICANN board member, wearing three different communication hats for this particular comment. One, I personally was unaware of the Paul Twomey press release, I have to say. I am concerned about the level of imprecision we seem to be introducing into the new gTLDs timing process or stated differently, it would be good to have consistent statements and this is something that I am personally very interested in so the clarity of the message the board gets from the GNSO about its schedule and its hopes for the process moving forward will be very helpful to us. And I, on my part, will try to ensure that we can move forward at the board level. That's one communication hat. The next is I am a member of the working group set up by the Board Governance Committee with respect to GNSO review. And we held a public forum on Monday afternoon. The public notice for that forum may have been short and the paper was long. I want to very earnestly ask for your feedback in written form if you were unable to attend the public forum. We have an e-mail address set up for individuals, constituencies, anybody who is getting back to us. I want to assure you that we're really working hard on this and that what you saw was a draft report of the working group. We have some distance to go. We'd appreciate comments by July 19th, if we can do it, if you can do it. And if you can ask your constituencies to respond, that would be of great assistance to us. The e-mail address is GNSO-improvements@ICANN.org. So that's my second communications hat. The third hat is that I am the chair of the meetings committee inside the board, and, again, very earnestly soliciting input on how we can improve ICANN meetings. If you need more time to report back to each other about how the constituency meetings went, if you'd like a different structure for the constituency meetings themselves, you know, anything that would help these meetings be more effective and efficient for all of you. We're very interested many those comments. Please grab me personally or any member of the meetings committee. Paul Levins, the communications director and executive vice president of ICANN, has taken on the meetings function within ICANN and is very interested in working with us to improve things. So I'm happy to respond to questions, but really this is just my chance to ask you for help in these three areas. Thanks. >>AVRI DORIA: One quick question on the meetings and requests, for example. I mean, certainly the council needs to talk about Bruce's suggestion, but when would such a request for another tight meeting need to be in to the meetings group? >>SUSAN CRAWFORD: As soon as you can do it. >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. >>SUSAN CRAWFORD: We're hoping to effect a cultural change at ICANN where things really do get set in blocks of time that are uniform, so we all take breaks together, things like that, during the day where agendas are set as far in advance as we can do it. So part of agenda setting is meeting time settings. So at least a month out we want to try to set things. This is ambitious. So as soon as you can get the information to us, we will take it into account. We are trying to avoid the ad hoc, last-minute changes that create conflicts. There was a lot of that this meeting. It is unavoidable. We may need to learn how to work in parallel, in ways that we don't right now. So as soon as possible is my answer to that. Thank you. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Avri, if I may. The registrar constituency meeting yesterday, we had the ICANN board come in and, I think, had some very good discussion over how it could better interact as groups. There was speed dating and some other topics that were brought up. Whereby potentially across the constituencies, we would be able to have one or two board members throughout the day rather than just coming in and visiting for a quick 20-minutes to try to throw everything we could at the board. And I think that was very well received by the board. As the registrar constituency, we are going to work very hard to try to get better interaction. But in doing that, have to interact with all the other constituencies to ensure -- and the board and the meetings committee, to ensure that there is that constituency across. >>SUSAN CRAWFORD: Just to amplify very briefly on this. Our idea that we might experiment with at the next meeting is that you would get a dedicated couple of board members for an entire morning rather than having the whole board troop in for just an hour. So spend realtime with the constituency. Then we'd have an obligation to report back to ourselves. This won't be easy. There are no perfect solutions here, but with Adrian and the registrar group we talked about that. I would love to get additional comments from other constituencies about that so I can work this through the committee and, in turn, the board. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: From our point of view, it was about giving board members much more of a flavor of the constituency rather than coming in for a very brief slither of time and to give them a flavor of what's going on across all the issues. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Just a couple of comments on two of those issues that you raise there. I might take in terms of the gTLD critical path is that the real component there is staff implementation. I mean, the GNSO work is basically almost complete. We've got a few little issues just to solve, but a lot of that is wordsmithing which, I think, is more illusory than practical at the moment. So the critical path on the big pictures staff implementation and, therefore, strikes me that Paul Twomey in terms of the ultimate allocation of resources, et cetera, within staff is the source to go to get commitment and clarity. That's my take out of that. A slight take-out of that, perhaps in brackets, is implementation of the IDN component of that. I think we are all enthusiastic in terms of that happening in parallel simultaneously, but the critical path of that, I think, is now wrapped up in ccNSO discussions and GAC. On the second point you made in terms of eliciting responses certainly on the government's proposals, just to make it clear, we certainly agreed in our constituency meeting yesterday in the B.C. we will be making some written responses to that. So we're happy to do so. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: If I may respond to that. I think what Kurt spoke about with respect -- I think Kurt mentioned an internal project plan and I guess that's the critical path we are talking about here, is ultimately once -- so long as we deliver on time as a GNSO and our recommendations that from then it is on that project plan. So, I guess, the availability of that -- whether it is internal or public, I'm not sure. That project plan, I guess that's what you got to refer to here as the critical path. >>MAWAKI CHANGO: I just wanted to make a suggestion about the risk of inconsistency in communication to the public. Maybe the GNSO could take its responsibility to a date earlier, to say by dates that by L.A. will get the report out to the board and the board chairperson can say to the community as soon as we get the report from the GNSO Council, we need six months, 12 months to finish our work and then present -- the organization could then make a calculation, and also the public itself could make the calculation and ask the CEO for confirmation to make sure that each body and authority takes its own responsibility. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. >>DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: So that's a good idea, Mawaki. But I think the IDNs then as Sloan mentioned, IDN ccTLDs should also know there is an upcoming opportunity beginning next year to go for the IDN ccTLD or IDN gTLD as mentioned. So there should be a very clear differentiation, where can which applicant apply? IDN gTLD? IDN ccTLD? IDN gTLD applicants? As long as a statement from May 10 is out there, people think it is for gTLDs and the timeline is starting for the application next year. It might be a good idea to have it within this meeting a new announcement from the board regarding these IDN gTLD and so on timelines. Thanks. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. >>KHALED FATTAL: Hi, Khaled Fattal here, MINC chairman and CEO of Multilingual Translator. You probably have known me for a long time where at times I am very critical and at times I wish to let people know where credit is due. I first want to give my full support to some of the statements that have been made already. Jeff Neuman at the beginning highlighted the issues that he raised. Bruce, I think, the issue of transparency in what is being debated and decided goes hand in hand in what you guys are talking to and, Susan, as well she is still here. All of these come to bear in a lot of the issues that we need to actually move forward on and give greater representation to the international community and to the ICANN community of what's being done. I will give you a simple scenario of, for example, what Jeff was talking about that I think would really be practical. I think from our side, just listening in and watching, and from also the international community's point of view, it would be very helpful if we knew what the position of each member is on specific issues. It doesn't have to be long winded but at least to know where do you stand, what do you believe? I think that's part of the leadership that I think would be exceptionally helpful. I actually add more since now Bruce is behind me, now you are on the board -- ICANN board, I actually call on the same thing for the ICANN board to show its leadership position collectively and individually so that they really live up to the role they are meant to do, which is leadership positions. Let the people know what you believe in your own opinion. Now -- and at least that will give the indication of where you stand, what you think would be the challenges. You will get a lot more support, and I think there will be a lot more transparency being shown into the process. So, again, I fully support the last three speakers. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, thank you. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Bruce Tonkin again. I just wanted to follow up, probably the most frequently asked question I've heard probably in the last year is when can I apply and how much? And you can ask that question in as many forums as you'd like. There is no answer to either of those two questions today. And I think we need to be very clear between what is a goal versus what is fact. And I think Paul might -- maybe we need to think a bit more carefully about how ICANN as an organization communicates. But I think it is reasonable for a CEO to say, "Our goal based on the information I have before me today is that we hope to release new gTLDs in, let's say, the second half or first half of 2008" at a broad level. I think the council at any point in time can say, "Our goal is to achieve something by a certain date." We are using the term "goal" here because you can't give a date because you haven't even finished the policy, you haven't voted on it, you haven't given it to the board. The details of the implementation are not yet known in detail nor do we know yet the cost. But we can say there is a goal, and the goal, I think, Kurt has expressed a number of times, the goal is to keep the cost of application to reflect the cost of managing the process. So that's a goal or a principle, if you'd like. But it's pointless asking Kurt to give a number at this stage, and I think it is pointless asking the CEO or the board or the chair of the GNSO to give a date for the introduction of new gTLDs. All we can do is set a goal, and I think it is important to set a goal because if you don't set a goal and you just keep on letting discussion go on forever, we can talk about IDNs and gTLDs for kingdom come. But what we should be doing is -- out goal is to achieve it by a certain date. We should be putting the resources in to achieve that goal and work towards that goal. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. >>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: Good morning, I'm Bertrand de La Chapelle, I'm the GAC representative for France, and I just wanted to make an input on the discussions that we had yesterday within the GAC, precisely on IDNs and ccTLDs. As you know, there's a joint GAC ccNSO working group on IDN ccTLDs. The group has produced an issues paper that mass been endorsed almost right as I speak and will be released in its final version. But the main discussion yesterday in the GAC was about the following question: Should we wait until there is full agreement on all the various dimensions, of all the issues that are addressed in the issues before we start implementing in the IDN ccTLD space or do we suggest or support the notion of a dual-track approach whereby the policy discussion on the general framework continues and some initial testing starts regarding IDN ccTLDs? And it is very likely that this is the second approach that is going to be taken, so there will be an ongoing discussion on the general policy framework and at the same time a great likelihood that there's -- there will be a request to the different governance or the different actors overseeing ccTLDs to interact and produce strings that would allow tests. So I just wanted to give this feedback in terms of timeline in order to have both the full process and an early test. Second quick comment, completely unrelated, I've participated and listened with great interest to the forum regarding the reform of the GNSO and the processes and the reform of moving towards working groups and so on. And it was a fascinating discussion. I just wanted to say that as seen from the general picture, a lot of reviews are going on at the moment within ICANN which is very, very good, and I see a common thread emerging which is actually the evolution in the future of the policy development processes and how they're harmonized in one way or another and how the different Supporting Organization and Advisory Committees come into play in the early stages, in the mid stages and in final stages of policy development processes. Just wanted to know if there is any discussion already going on that I've missed in the general timeline about reform of the policy development process or evolution of the policy development process and if that's an issue that could be unifying all the different stakeholders in ICANN? >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, thank you. Certainly not within the GNSO. Perhaps -- we have not been talking about the reform of the process itself, at least not recently. I mean, we did ask for certain timeline control in certain parts of the bylaws to be sort of given to the GNSO so that we'd have more control over our own processes. But I think it is more for the other working group. I don't know if anyone else has any comment on that. I do want to say at this point, the open microphone is closed since the meeting is supposed to end in a couple of minutes. But I don't know if anyone else had a final comment at this point. Yes, Chuck? >>CHUCK GOMES: Just wanted to follow up on two topics that were discussed today. One of them, communication of the new TLD process to as broad an outreach as possible. And I absolutely support what is already planned with regard to that in the four-month period and ICANN I know is planning for lots of outreach there. But I would just like to point out that it's incumbent upon each of us in the various Internet communities that we're apart of to also get the word out on that. We're all part of ICANN, and each of us come from different places so I certainly encourage everyone to get the word out on that and I know you can't give them the dates that you would like right now, but it's coming and get the word out and tell them to watch. Secondly -- and this is somewhat in follow-up to some comments that Philip made with regard to implementation -- you heard me say earlier that I personally am going to push as part of the council to move the dates in if we can do it, but I think it's only fair to recognize that we as a new gTLD committee have given staff some very challenging tasks that are going to take a lot of time. So please keep that in mind. We're going to push them, but we also need to respect that we've given them some difficult things to work on and it will take time. And they have done, in my opinion, a very commendable job in trying to stay up with us in terms of working on implementation as much as they can, but ultimately they are dependent on us finalizing a few things before they can complete some of their tasks. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thank you. At this point -- >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Sorry, if I might just add to Chuck's comments. I think it's exactly right. I think the danger of all of us going out and telling the message that we get inconsistent messaging and I would like to say the ultimate source of the message is ICANN and ICANN needs to get the message right. And if Bruce is saying it's a goal, then tell us it is a goal and not a set deadline. So when we are going out and telling our constituencies, we don't come back with egg on our face. I would like to stress ultimately we look to ICANN for guidance and we would like to see consistency within the ICANN messaging both within the press releases and with what the staff are saying in order for us to get the message right. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, thank you. At this point I would like to thank everyone for the open forum. I'm going to close the open forum now. We will shortly begin the council meeting. We will take care of some technical difficulties we're having over there before we start, and so there will be an at least ten to 15-minute break before we start again. Thank you.