The meeting started at 15:04 UTC.
Jeff Neuman GNSO Council vice chair, chaired the meeting in the absence of Stéphane van Gelder.
List of attendees:
NCA – Non Voting - Carlos Dionisio Aguirre
Contracted Parties House
Registrar Stakeholder Group: Tim Ruiz, Stéphane van Gelder, absent apologies, proxy vote to Tim Ruiz, Mason Cole temporary alternate for Adrian Kinderis- absent apologies
gTLD Registries Stakeholder Group: Jeff Neuman, Jonathan Robinson, Ching Chiao
Nominating Committee Appointee (NCA): Andrei Kolesnikov
Non-Contracted Parties House
Commercial Stakeholder Group (CSG): , Jaime Wagner, Zahid Jamil, Wolf-Ulrich Knoben, John Berard - absent, apologies - proxy vote to Zahid Jamil, Brian Winterfeldt temporary alternate for Kristina Rosette -absent apologies, David Taylor absent apologies, proxy vote to Brian Winterfeldt.
Non Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG): Debra Hughes, Mary Wong, Wendy Seltzer, Rafik Dammak, Bill Drake, Rosemary Sinclair, absent, apologies - proxy vote to Debbie Hughes.
Nominating Committee Appointee (NCA): Olga Cavalli
GNSO Council Liaisons/Observers
Alan Greenberg – ALAC Liaison
Han Chuan Lee – ccNSO Observer - absent
ICANN Staff
Liz Gasster - Senior Policy Counselor
Julie Hedlund - Policy Director
Rob Hoggarth - Senior Policy Director
Margie Milam - Senior Policy Counselor
Marika Konings - Senior Policy Director
Alexander Kulik - System Administrator
David Closson - Director of IT Operations
David Prangnell - Systems Engineer
Glen de Saint Géry - GNSO Secretariat
For a recording of the meeting, please refer to:
Item 1: Administrative Items
1.1 Roll call of Council members and update of Statements of Interest
Updated statement of interest received from Bill Drake and John Berard
1 2 Review/amend the agenda
1.3.The GNSO Council 28 April minutes will be approved on 20 May 2011.
Item 2: Pending Projects – GNSO Constituency reconfirmations and review of Stakeholder Group (SG) charters
Rob Hoggarth provided Council with an update noted that it was for the Council to decide whether the item should remain on the GNSO's Pending Projects.
list. The GNSO Constituency reconfirmations and review of Stakeholder Group (SG) charters is one of the progeny of the GNSO improvements efforts that is still outstanding but nearing completion.
In July 2009 the ICANN Board approved four stakeholder group charters, two on the Contract Party House side for the Registrar and Registry stakeholder groups and two on the Non-contract Party House side for the Commercial stakeholder group (CSG) and the Non-commercial stakeholder group (NCSG). The difference being, that the CSG and NCSG charters were approved as temporary/transitional charters and the ICANN Board requested the two communities to establish permanent charters. The CSG charter was ratified, submitted for public comment and is currently ready for Board approval. The NCSG charter has been ratified and is currently open for community review and comments through June 5, 2011.
A Board resolution regarding the charters is possible at the meeting in Singapore in June 2011.
The original Board timetable in July 2009 was to resolve stakeholder group charters, reconfirm constituency charters and restructure the GNSO Council. However, the Board adopted a different timetable and approved stakeholder group charters in July 2009 and the new GNSO Council was seated in October 2009, while constituency reconfirmations were deferred.
The Structural Improvements Committee changed leadership after the Annual General Meeting in 2009 and looked at different aspects of the GNSO improvements. Another aspect of the GNSO improvements effort was to encourage new constituencies. Procedures were developed and five different communities have formally requested Board approval. The Structural Improvements Committee is looking to develop objective criteria for reviewing and analyzing new constituencies before reconfirming the existing constituencies.
In parallel with the new GNSO Council structure, new GNSO procedures have been developed by work teams and the new standing committee on improvement implementation will be responsible for reviewing and assessing the effective functioning of recommendations provided by these work teams.
This work has required constituencies and stakeholder groups to review their procedures, make modifications and update charters even though the timetable for reconfirming constituencies is still not clearly determined.
There are currently two new constituency proposals pending; the Consumers Constituency, and the Not for Profit Operational Concerns Constituency.
The Board, within the new constituency recognition process has been looking at new objective criteria as part of the process for the review and evaluation of all stakeholder groups and constituencies charters.
The Structural Improvements Committee has indicated that the next GNSO Review should develop objective criteria that can be used by the independent reviewers, and members of the ICANN community to evaluate the structure and operations of the stakeholder groups and constituencies in the GNSO.
From a practical standpoint there is little impact on the existence of, or the continuing operations of current constituencies.
Questions and discussion highlighted:
- In the development of objective criteria for constituency review there will be an opportunity for the community to review and comment on the existing charters prior to the Board making any reconfirmation decision.
- There are two schools of thought on the timing of reviews, one is that there is a time table and the other is that another review cycle should not be started until the previous one is finished.
- The NCSG charter has taken a long time to develop because the NCSG leadership and the Structural Improvements Committee have been challenged in designing a charter that accommodates potential new constituencies.
It was concluded that this is no longer an issue for the Council, and councillors are encouraged to review the Pending Projects list.
Item 3: Joint SO/AC WG on New gTLD Applicant Support (JAS)
Jonathan Robinson, on behalf of the Registries stakeholder group, requested that the motion be deferred to the next Council meeting on 9 June 2011.
The Registry stakeholder group has received the responses to their questions from the JAS working group, but the narrow timeframe did not allow for adequate deliberation among the members. Councilors are encouraged to study the report, the group has done significant work and there are real proposals and algorithms in the content of the report. The Council is urged to move forward on the issue so that the proposals can be incorporated in a timely manner into the New gTLD Applicant Guide book. Councillors are encouraged to discuss the various aspects of the report on the Council mailing list.
Considerable discussion has appeared on the Council mailing list about two versions of a proposed letter to be sent to the ICANN Board regarding the JAS Issues and Recommendations Draft Second Milestone Report. The Council is split on the actual wording, but there is an overwhelming majority, (one person against) in favour of sending a message to the Board.
Highlights of the discussion
- The Council needs to send a factual message to the ICANN Board
- Much time has been spent on the topic and it would not be appropriate to drop the topic and do nothing
- Stéphane van Gelder in his role of GNSO Council chair should send the message to the Board
- The Board should be informed that the Council tabled the JAS motion and that it has been moved to the next Council meeting on 9 June 2011.
Item 4: Registration Abuse (RAP) outstanding recommendations
Marika Konings gave a brief overview of the Registration Abuse (RAP) outstanding recommendations.
There are four categories of recommendations:
1. Those recommendations that the Council has acted upon such as the request for the UDRP Issue Report (Cybersquatting Recommendation #1) and the Best Practices discussion paper to help registrars and registries address the malicious use of domain names (Malicious Use of Domain Names Recommendation #1). The discussion paper is being prepared by the staff and a preliminary version is expected to be published in time for the ICANN meeting in Singapore. In addition to a public comment forum, a workshop is being planned in Singapore to solicit community input prior to finalizing the Best Practices discussion paper for submission to the Council.
2. Those recommendations that the Council has started acting on by requesting input from ICANN Compliance Staff (Whois Access Recommendation #2 and Fake Renewal Notices Recommendation #1). The feedback received was discussed in San Francisco with the compliance staff. The Council has not considered or decided what, if any, next steps need to be taken with regard to these two recommendations on the basis of the feedback provided.
3. A group of recommendations that the Council has not considered at all, some of which did not receive the consensus of the Registration Abuse Policies working group.
4 One recommendation where the Registration Abuse Policies working group recommends that no further action is required (Gripe Sites; Deceptive and/or Offensive Domain Names Recommendation #1) and presumably no further Council action is needed.
It was noted that during the weekend GNSO working session, Councillors might want to discuss the remaining items in the report and decide what do with areas that did not have full or unanimous consensus but only rough consensus as these are on the pending projects list and at some point Council needs to consider the next steps in relation to these issues.
Item 5: Whois Update
Liz Gasster provided the Council with a brief update on the four Whois studies.
1.
a. The Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA, has currently begun work on the WHOIS Misuse Study.
b. On 28 April 2011 the Council approved two more studies, the WHOIS Proxy and Privacy "Abuse" Study and the pre-study survey on the WHOIS Proxy and Privacy "Relay and Reveal" . The contracts and the statements of work are being finalised and when this is completed the work will begin on these studies.
c. The WHOIS Registrant Identification Study's Terms of Reference are being revised, by a volunteer group, along the lines of a non-hypothesis based data gathering study. Councillors are encouraged to review the revised statement of work with their constituencies and Stakeholder Groups when it becomes available. It is anticipated that the study will be ready for the Council to vote on at its meeting in June 2011.
2. The International Registration Data Working Group (IRD-WG) has produced an interim report proposing four models. Comments received on the interim report are being reviewed and a draft final report is being developed. The internationalization of contact data is also a relevant issue for the Whois Service Requirements.
3. The Whois Service Requirements Report
During the Council meeting on 28 April, 2011, (http://gnso.icann.org/meetings/minutes-council-28apr11-en.htm) Avri Doria participated as a guest and discussed some possible next steps that she and Chuck Gomes have suggested for the Whois service requirements report, namely forming a drafting team to develop a survey to estimate the level of agreement that the conclusions and assumptions in the report actually have in the broader community.
Resources for the drafting team will depend on what the drafting team proposes and over what period of time. An estimate of staff time is four or five hours for every hour that the drafting team actually works or meets.
Council agreed that a call for expertise for a drafting team to Develop a Whois Service Requirements Survey should be launched and that the chair of the IRD WG should be invited to join the group. the announcement should specify the skills and expertise needed and the participants do not necessarily have to be Councillors.
Item 6: Community Working Groups CWG
Jeff Neuman referred to the high level draft principles for cross SO/AC working groups and stated the need to formalise a possible Council position on community working groups (CWGs).and noted that a group had been formed and a mailing list created for discussions on this topic.
Jonathan Robinson volunteered to stimulate discussions in the group with the aim of providing a set of draft principles and procedures which can be circulated to the other Supporting Organisations and Advisory Committees for comments in the hope of reaching some commonalities across the different groups.
It was noted that there are a number of other topics such as the new gTLDs needing attention at this time and silence should not be taken as disinterest in the group's work.
Item 7. Global Outreach Recommendations
Council instructed staff to proceed with the Global Outreach recommendation and form a Charter Drafting Team for the Outreach Task Force described in the recommendations as follows:
"The GNSO Council should manage the development of the OTF [Outreach Task Force] through the creation of a Drafting Team to develop the OTF's [Outreach Task Force] Charter. The Charter shall include procedures for member recruitment, application, selection, terms and term limits. The Charter should also set goals for the completion of the membership selection process, establishment of a meeting schedule, and participation guidelines. The Charter should establish an initial term for the OTF [Outreach Task Force] of two years. After this period a review should be conducted to review the success of the OTF's [Outreach Task Force] initiatives and, if deemed successful, the OTF's charter could be extended annually."
Action Item:
Extend an invitation to all members of the GNSO Community who may be interested in participating in the drafting team.
Olga Cavalli volunteered to lead the discussions in the drafting team.
Item 8. UDRP
Jeff Neuman congratulated Margie Milam on the success of the UDRP webinar on 10 May 2011.
Margie Milam reported that all the UDRP providers who were approached have responded and the responses are being collated together with the content of the webinar as input for the Issues Report which is on schedule for the end of May 2011.
A different approach is being followed for the Issues Report; namely a preliminary Issues report will be produced followed by a 45 day public comment period after which the Final Issues Report will be published toward the end of July 2011.
The UDRP drafting team is currently identifying speakers for the UDRP two-hour session in Singapore on Wednesday, 22 June 2011 from 8:30 to 10:30.
Item 9: Proposed GNSO Council teleconference schedule change
Jeff Neuman noted that a change in schedule for GNSO Council meetings from a three to four week cycle will only be an issue in September 2011 and up until that date the current schedule will be followed.
Item 10. Any Other Business
The Secretariat reported that the GAC/GNSO meeting had been moved from Sunday afternoon to Wednesday, 22 June from 11:00 to 12:30 due to a Board GAC meeting which will take place on Sunday afternoon and will most probably be an open meeting.
Councillors are encouraged to reflect on GNSO -selected Board, ccNSO and GAC topics and send these to the mailing list.
Jeff Neuman adjourned the GNSO Council meeting and thanked everyone for their participation.
The meeting was adjourned at 16:48 UTC.
Next GNSO Council teleconference will be on Thursday, 9 June 2011 at 20:00 UTC.
See: Calendar