GNSO Council Meeting Minutes 3 February 2011 | Generic Names Supporting Organization

Date

03 February 2011

The meeting started at 11:04 UTC.

List of attendees:

NCA – Non Voting - Carlos Dionisio Aguirre

Contracted Parties House
Registrar Stakeholder Group: Stéphane van Gelder, Tim Ruiz, Adrian Kinderis absent apologies - proxy vote to Tim Ruiz
gTLD Registries Stakeholder Group: Jeff Neuman, Ching Chiao, Jonathan Robinson
Nominating Committee Appointee (NCA): Andrei Kolesnikov

Non-Contracted Parties House
Commercial Stakeholder Group (CSG): Jaime Wagner, Wolf-Ulrich Knoben, John Berard, Zahid Jamil; Paul McGrady and Brian Winterfeldt alternate temporaries for Kristina Rosette, David Taylor - absent apologies
Non Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG): William Drake, Debra Hughes, Wendy Seltzer, Mary Wong, Rosemary Sinclair, Rafik Dammak
Nominating Committee Appointee (NCA): Olga Cavalli

GNSO Council Liaisons/Observers
Alan Greenberg – ALAC Liaison
Han Chuan Lee – ccNSO Observer - absent apologies

ICANN Staff

David Olive - Vice President, Policy Development
Liz Gasster - Senior Policy Counselor
Julie Hedlund - Policy Director
Rob Hoggarth - Senior Policy Director
Margie Milam - Senior Policy Counselor
Marika Konings - Senior Policy Director
Glen de Saint Géry - GNSO Secretariat

Guest:
Philip Sheppard - OSC work team chair

For a recording of the meeting, please refer to:

MP3 Recording

Item 1: Administrative Items

1.1 Roll call of Council members and polling for Disclosures of Interest

Per the GNSO Operating Procedures, Section 5.4, Councilors were polled regarding
disclosures of interest regarding the following meeting topics:
The main issues for this meeting are:
GNSO Project Decision Making
GNSO Improvements
Registration Abuse Policies
New gTLD Applicant Guidebook

1.2 Statements of Interest
Statements of Interest were received from the temporary alternates

1 3 Review/amend the agenda

1.4.The GNSO Council 13 January 2011 minutes were approved on 31 January 2011.

Item 2: Pending Projects – Post-Expiration Domain Name Recovery (PEDNR)

Alan Greenberg, chair of the Post-Expiration Domain Name Recovery Working Group, provided an update on the progress of the Working Group.
http://gnso.icann.org/correspondence/pednrwg-update-to-council-03feb11-en.pdf

Next Steps
Alan Greenberg confirmed that most but not all of the recommendations will impact policy and that by the San Francisco meeting the group will come to some level of closure or make a recommendation to Council to disband the working group.

Item 3: Operations Steering Committee (OSC) and Policy Process Steering Committee (PPSC) and new Standing Committee

3.1 Establish Drafting Team (DT) for new Standing Committee
Some councillors expressed the view that people who had been intimately involved in the PPSC and the OSC should make way for new blood on the Standing Committee and while councillors, because of Council's management role in policy, should be encouraged to volunteer, others should not be excluded.

Taking into account that the OSC and PPSC have completed most of the tasks they set to do, Council may want to look at the Standing committee in a different light, particularly with regard to resources and the amount of time the GNSO improvements have taken.
Should the standing committee be proactive or reactive?

Mary Wong proposed Wolf-Ulrich Knoben who accepted, as the interim chair for the Standing Committee drafting team.

Action Item:
Wolf-Ulrich Knoben to schedule a teleconference for the Standing Committee drafting team and choose a permanent chair for the drafting team.

Philip Sheppard, the Operations Steering Committee (OSC) Chair, provided an update to the Council on the three outstanding OSC work items:

The shortened and revised statements of interest document will be transmitted to council shortly with the OSC recommendation for council adoption.
The global outreach program has been divided into two parts: one part discusses global outreach strategy focused on increased participation by new members of the public in the ICANN world and proposes setting up a standing global outreach task force and the second part entitled "Development and global outreach program" focuses on guidance for self formation of new constituencies.
The report will be with Council imminently for approval. 3. The current procedures for absentee voting and proxies are being revisited particularly in light of information provided by the Non-commercial stakeholder group that the current procedures do not gel with their own internal procedures.
Proxy voting procedures are still awaiting input from each stakeholder group on a questionnaire.

Stéphane Van Gelder encouraged councillors to review the recommendations attentively when they are submitted to the Council.

Jeff Neuman, the Policy Process Steering Committee (PPSC) Chair, reported that the PPSC is comprised of two work teams, the Working Group (WG) and the Policy Development Process (PDP) work teams. The Working Group work team has submitted its final report to the council and is currently open for public comment until 8 February 2011.

The PDP work team's Draft Final Report is scheduled to meet the document deadline, 21 February 2011, for the San Francisco meetings where a presentation will be given. The plan is to have a Final Report by April 30, 2011.

There was no update from Bill Drake on the OSC Recommendation for Proxies in the GNSO Operating Procedures.

Action Item:
Wolf-Ulrich Knoben to schedule a teleconference for the Standing Committee drafting team and confirm a permanent chair for the drafting team.

Item 4: Joint Applicant Support Working Group

Alan Greenberg, ALAC Liaison, reported that although not definitive, the ALAC has decided that it will not accept the GNSO Joint Applicant Support for new gTLDs (JAS) charter in lieu of the one the ALAC passed. The intent is to come up with a new version of the ALAC approved charter which will include the IDN issue and which can be segmented, that is, to identify the GNSO parts and the non-GNSO parts with a level of recommendation so that the GNSO can act on the recommendations that fall within its charter and not have to deal with the other ones. However the wording of the revised version of the charter is not yet complete.

Discussion highlighted the following points:

The example of the JAS working group should not be taken as a precedent for other working groups.
There was a strong feeling in the Council that with the tight deadlines the Board set, the working group should move forward and not get bogged down in administrative problems.
Further discussion is needed in the GNSO and the Council on the process and rules for community working groups.
Council should consider whether it would be willing to accept a report with various recommendations targeted at the GNSO or whether the report should solely address the GNSO charter.
Council should be prudent in predetermining what recommendations it will comment on before the work is completed however concern was expressed if the GNSO commented on issues outside of the JAS charter the GNSO adopted.
The GNSO message to the JAS working group is that items should be clearly delineated, rather than that the report should not contain items outside of the GNSO approved charter.
The group should not be referred to a Cross Community working group since it is working on different charters.

Item 5: Cartagena Board Resolution on Consumer Choice, Competition and Innovation

Rosemary Sinclair reported that she had consulted with Bruce Tonkin who suggested that more time was needed for the Council to determine which projects it could conclude within a reasonable time frame. June, rather than March should be the considered time line for the work, because the Board GAC interaction will possibly dominate the March meeting in San Francisco.
Rosemary further advised the Council against writing to the Board saying the GNSO does not have the resources to undertake this work, or that the current work plan does not allow for an extra project because it would be excluding itself from space that ICANN considers strategically important which would be filled by another body.

The ALAC has expressed interest in the issue particularly in the context of the ICANN GAC relationship, consumer confidence and consumer trust.

Action Item:

Rosemary Sinclair, Stéphane van Gelder and Bruce Tonkin continue dialogue with the staff and report back at the next Council meeting on 24 February 2011.

Item 6: Recommendations re. Registration Abuse Policy (RAP)

A motion was made by Tim Ruiz and seconded by Jeff Neuman and amended by Zahid Jamil. Tim Ruiz withdrew his motion before the meeting. ICANN's General Counsel's interpretation was that if another councillor proposed the motion it could still stand. Tim Ruiz disagreed with the interpretation. Zahid Jamil volunteered to propose the motion Tim withdrew and Jeff Neuman seconded it.
Tim Ruiz proposed to maintain the motion if the request for an issues report on best practices and the UDRP were removed.
Council agreed to vote on each resolution separately.

Zahid Jamil, seconded by Jeff Neuman, amended by Tim Ruiz and further amended by Zahid Jamil proposed a motion in response to the Registration Abuse Policies Working Group (RAP WG) final report.

Council agreed to vote on each resolution separately

Whereas the Registration Abuse Policies Working Group submitted its report to the GNSO Council on 29 May 2010 (see http://gnso.icann.org/issues/rap/rap-wg-final-report-29may10-en.pdf),? and

Whereas the GNSO Council reviewed the report and its recommendations and decided to form an implementation drafting team to draft a proposed? approach with regard to the recommendations contained in the Registration Abuse Policies Working Group Final Report, and

Whereas the Registration Abuse Policies Implementation Drafting Team submitted its proposed response to the GNSO Council on 15 November 2010? (see http://gnso.icann.org/correspondence/rap-idt-to-gnso-council-15nov10-en.pdf),

and

Whereas the GNSO Council considered the proposed approached at its Working Session at the ICANN meeting in Cartagena.

RESOLVED #1, the GNSO Council instructs ICANN Policy Staff to forward the two issues identified by the RAP IDT as having low resource ?requirements, WHOIS Access recommendation #2 and Fake Renewal Notices recommendation #1, to ICANN Compliance Staff for resolution. ICANN? Compliance Staff is requested to provide the GNSO Council with its feedback on the two recommendations and proposed implementation in a timely manner.

The motion carried unanimously by voice vote.

RESOLVED #2, the GNSO Council requests an Issues Report on the current state of the UDRP. This effort should consider:

How the UDRP has addressed the problem of cybersquatting to date, and any insufficiencies/inequalities associated with the process.?
Whether the definition of cybersquatting inherent within the existing UDRP language needs to be reviewed or updated.? The Issue Report should include suggestions for how a possible PDP on this issue might be managed.

The motion carried unanimously by voice vote.

RESOLVED #3, the GNSO Council requests a discussion paper on the creation of non-binding best practices to help registrars and registries address the abusive registrations of domain names in accordance with the Registration Abuse Policies Working Group Final Report.

This effort should consider (but not be limited the following subjects:

Practices for identifying stolen credentials
Practices for identifying and investigating common forms of malicious use (such as malware and phishing)
Creating anti-abuse terms of service for possible inclusion in Registrar-Registrant agreements by registrars who adopt them, and for use by TLD operators who adopt them.
Identifying compromised/hacked domains versus domain registered by abusers
Practices for suspending domain names
Account access security management
Security resources of use or interest to registrars and registries
Survey registrars and registries to determine practices being used, and their adoption rates.

The motion carried unanimously by voice vote.

RESOLVED #4 (As proposed by Zahid Jamil): Resolved, the GNSO Council instructs ICANN Policy Staff to add the remaining RAP Recommendations to the GNSO Project List so that the GNSO Council can keep track of the remaining recommendations and address these as appropriate. These remaining RAP Recommendations are:

WHOIS Access – Recommendation #1: The GNSO should determine what additional research and processes may be needed to ensure that WHOIS data is accessible in an appropriately reliable, enforceable, and consistent fashion.
The GNSO Council should consider how such might be related to other WHOIS efforts, such as the upcoming review of WHOIS policy and implementation required by ICANN's new Affirmation of Commitments.
Uniformity of Contracts:
View A: The RAPWG recommends the creation of an Issues Report to evaluate whether a minimum baseline of registration abuse provisions should be created for all in-scope ICANN agreements, and if created, how such language would be structured to address the most common forms of registration abuse.
View B: Opposed to the recommendation for an Issues Report as expressed in view A
Gripe Sites; Deceptive and/or Offensive Domain Names – Recommendation #1:
Rough Consensus: Make no recommendation. The majority of RAPWG members expressed that gripe site and offensive domain names that use trademarks should be addressed in the context of cybersquatting and the UDRP for purposes of establishing consistent registration abuse policies in this area, and that creating special procedures for special classes of domains, such as offensive domain names, may present problems.
Alternate view: The URDP should be revisited to determine what substantive policy changes, if any, would be necessary to address any inconsistencies relating to decisions on “gripe” names and to provide for fast track substantive and procedural mechanisms in the event of the registration of deceptive domain names that mislead adults or children to objectionable sites.
Cybersquatting – Recommendation #2:
View A: The RAPWG recommends the initiation of a Policy Development Process by requesting an Issues Report to investigate the appropriateness and effectiveness of how any Rights Protection Mechanisms that are developed elsewhere in the community (e.g. the New gTLD program) can be applied to the problem of cybersquatting in the current gTLD space.
View B: The initiation of such a process is premature; the effectiveness and consequences of the Rights Protection Mechanisms proposed for the new TLDs is unknown. Discussion of RPMs should continue via the New TLD program. Experience with them should be gained before considering their appropriate relation (if any) to the existing TLD space.
Fake Renewal Notices – Recommendation #2 – conditional on #1: The following recommendation is conditional. The WG would like to learn the ICANN Compliance Department's opinions regarding Recommendation #1 above, and the WG will further discuss Recommendation 2 looking forward to the WG's Final Report.
The RAPWG recommends the initiation of a Policy Development Process by requesting an Issues Report to investigate fake renewal notices.
Meta Issue: Collection and Dissemination of Best Practices: The RAPWG recommends that the GNSO, and the larger ICANN community in general, create and support structured, funded mechanisms for the collection and maintenance of best practices.
Cross-TLD Registration Scam: The RAPWG recommends the GNSO monitor for Cross-TLD registration scam abuse in the gTLD space and co-ordinate research with the community to determine the nature and extent of the problem. The WG believes this issue warrants review but notes there is not enough data at this time to warrant an Issues Report or PDP.
Meta Issue - Uniformity of Reporting: The RAPWG recommends that the GNSO, and the larger ICANN community in general, create and support uniform reporting processes.
Gripe Sites; Deceptive and/or Offensive Domain Names – Recommendation #2:
View A: Turn down a proposed recommendation that registries develop best practices to restrict the registration of offensive strings.
View B: Registries should consider developing internal best practice policies that would restrict the registration of offensive strings in order to mitigate the potential harm to consumers and children.
Domain Kiting / Tasting: It is unclear to what extent domain kiting happens, and the RAPWG does not recommend policy development at this time. The RAPWG suggests that the Council monitor the issue (in conjunction with ongoing reviews of domain-tasting), and consider next steps if conditions warrant.

The motion carried unanimously by voice vote.

Item 7: Status of Stakeholder Group and Constituency statements on Recommendation 6

Deferred to next Council meeting on 24 February 2011.

Item 8: Any Other Business

8.1 Update from Staff on goals, expected outcomes and organization of GAC/Board February meeting in Brussels (Staff).
Staff committed to provide the Council, via the Council mailing list, an update on the goals, expected outcomes, and organisation of the GAC/Board meeting in Brussels.

8.2 Status of San Francisco planning (Olga Cavalli).
Deferred to the next Council meeting on 24 February 2011

8.3 CSG vice chair election results (Olga Cavalli)

Stéphane van Gelder thanked Olga Cavalli as the interim vice chair and welcomed Mary Wong as the Non Contracted Parties House vice chair.

8.4 Joint DNS security and stability analysis working group (DSSA-WG)
Deferred to the next Council meeting on 24 February 2011.

Stéphane van Gelder adjourned the GNSO Council meeting and thanked everyone for their participation.
The meeting was adjourned at 13:07 COT.

Next GNSO Council teleconference will be on Thursday, 24 February 2011 at 15:00 UTC.
See: Calendar