GNSO Council Minutes 7 October 2010

Agenda and documents

The meeting started at 15:03 UTC.

List of attendees:

Andrei Kolesnikov NCA – Non Voting

Contracted Parties House
Registrar Stakeholder Group: Stéphane van Gelder, Tim Ruiz, Adrian Kinderis
gTLD Registries Stakeholder Group: Chuck Gomes, Caroline Greer, Edmon Chung
Nominating Committee Appointee (NCA): Terry Davis - absent apologies

Non-Contracted Parties House
Commercial Stakeholder Group (CSG): , Jaime Wagner, Wolf-Ulrich Knoben, Kristina Rosette, David Taylor; Mike Rodenbaugh, Zahid Jamil
Non Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG): Rafik Dammak, Mary Wong, William Drake, Rosemary Sinclair; Debra Hughes, Wendy Seltzer
Nominating Committee Appointee (NCA): Olga Cavalli

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

ICANN Staff
Dan Halloran - Deputy General Counsel
David Olive - Vice President, Policy Development
Kurt Pritz - Senior Vice President, Services
Liz Gasster - Senior Policy Counselor
Julie Hedlund - Policy Director
Rob Hoggarth - Senior Policy Director
Glen de Saint Géry - GNSO Secretariat
Margie Milam - Senior Policy Counselor
Marika Konings - Policy Director
Craig Schwartz - Chief gTLD Registry Liaison
David Closson - Director of IT Operations
Alexander Kulik - System Administrator

For a recording of the meeting, please refer to:

• MP 3 Recording
  The meeting was audiocast

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:

    ◦New gTLDs Recommendation 6 Community WG Report to the Board
    ◦Excerpt from Draft Final Report -­ New gTLD Applicant Support
    ◦New gTLD Board Resolutions from Board Retreat
    ◦GNSO Comments regarding both of the above
    ◦GNSO Prioritization

1.2 Update any Statements of Interest
Updates of Interest statements were received from:

• Tim Ruiz
• Adrian Kinderis

1 3 Review/amend the agenda

1.4. Note the status of minutes for the previous Council meeting per the GNSO Operating Procedures

• 8 September 2010 meeting minutes – Approved on 30 September 2010.

Item 2: New gTLD Board Resolutions from Board Retreat

Highlights from Kurt Pritz's review of the Board Resolutions:

• A Board meeting was convened at the end of the September, 2010 Board Retreat in Trondheim, Norway and resolutions were passed to give direction and guidance for the next version of the Applicant Guidebook.
• The Board approved the new gTLD budget.
• New gTLD applicant support $300,000 was included in the deployment and operations budget for new GTLDs for outreach, education and training.
  •  
    • Any direct financial support must come from sources outside ICANN and a list of these organisations will be published.
    • Providing direct financial support to applicants will require development of i criteria by which financial support could be awarded and the sources of support. The Working Group is encouraged to continue developing criteria for awarding support and finding sources of support.
• Vertical Integration, the Board wants some degree of certainty from the GNSO that consensus is not going to be reached on this issue in the near term before making a statement on the model that should be included in the next version of the Applicant Guidebook.
• Recommendation 6 Cross Community Working Group on Morality and Public Order - the report was completed and submitted to the Board a few days before the Board Retreat making it difficult to do an in-depth review of the report. However there were indications that if the recommendations were in keeping with the goals of the proposed process, namely; mitigating risk to ICANN and the new GTLD process and providing a straight forward, clear transparent predictable path for applicants, they would be considered. Staff is requested to frame the issues and make recommendations.
  • Noteworthy is that the Recommendation 6 Working Group was an example of a cross community working group model, demonstrating Supporting Organisations and Advisory Committees could work together productively in a bottom-up, multi-stakeholder model.
• Before the next Board meeting on 28 October 2010, additional information and background material on the Board retreat resolutions is likely to be provided.
• Additional policy work is required to establish the rules by which similar strings could be dedicated,
• Regarding the ISO 3166-2 list of sub regional names no more translations will be added to the list.
• Following a request from the Arab Region for protection, one more official UN list of protected names, five in all, has been added to the regional and continental names.
• On variant management the Board directed staff to provide an Issues Paper combining the work of the JIG, the IDN PDP other groups working on IDNs, for the next Board meeting.

In the interest of time Councillors were encouraged to submit questions on the Council mailing list.

Chuck Gomes proposed a motion to Respond to the ICANN Board on Vertical Integration and Adrian Kinderis seconded the motion.

Whereas, on 28 January 2010, the GNSO Council approved a policy development process (PDP) on the topic of vertical integration between registries and registrars;

Whereas, in Section 2.11 (Vertical Integration) of the 25 September 2010 Adopted Board Resolutions (http://www.icann.org/en/minutes/resolutions-25sep10-en.htm) the ICANN Board inquired whether the GNSO has achieved a consensus position on the topic of vertical integration with regard to New gTLDs;

Whereas the VI Working Group discussed many different issues, reviewed many different models and produced its Revised Initial Report, the VI Working Group has not yet produced recommendations that are supported by the consensus of its members;

Whereas, on 29 September 2010, the GNSO Council Chair received notice from the VI PDP WG stating “to date the Working Group has not reached a consensus view on vertical integration”;

Whereas, the GNSO Council desires to respond to the Board’s inquiry;

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT:

RESOLVED, that the GNSO Council acknowledges that the VI Working Group is unable to achieve a consensus by the Board requested date of 8 October 2010;

RESOLVED FURTHER, that the GNSO Council hereby approves the draft response copied below to the ICANN Board and directs Staff to forward the response to the ICANN Secretary.

Letter

October 7, 2010
To:

Mr. Peter Dengate-Thrush
Chair - ICANN Board

Re: Vertical Integration Recommendations for the New gTLD Program

Dear Peter,

This is in response to Section 2.11 (Vertical Integration) of the 25 September 2010 Adopted Board Resolutions (http://www.icann.org/en/minutes/resolutions-25sep10-en.htm) in which the ICANN Board inquired whether the GNSO has achieved a consensus position on the topic of vertical integration with regard to New gTLDs.

Please be advised that the GNSO Council was notified by the Vertical Integration PDP Working Group (VI WG) that it was unable to reach a consensus position on the issue of vertical integration. Although the WG has been diligently evaluating this issue for several months, it is unable to deliver recommendations that are supported by a consensus of its members by the ICANN Board’s deadline of 8 October 2010.

Sincerely,

Chuck Gomes
Chair
GNSO Council

The motion carried unanimously by voice vote of all those on the call.
Absent: Terry Davis

• Request from the ALAC

Referring to message from Cheryl Langdon-Orr on a request from the ALAC to request information on the rationale for the Board decisions and access to briefing materials available at the Board Retreat, the Council agreed upon the following action items:

Action Items:

• The following Councillors volunteered to 1) develop a list of material from the retreat that the GNSO requests be publicly and 2) submit the list to the Council mailing list for review.
  Volunteers: Rafik Dammak, Bill Drake, Olga Cavalli, Alan Greenberg and Zahid Jamil.
  The Chair will submit the list to the Board.
  
• Chuck Gomes will communicate with Cheryl Langdon Orr that the GNSO will request the Board material independently and that it may be more effective if it comes independently from the different Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees.

Item 3: New gTLD Recommendation 6 Community WG

Margie Milam provided Council with a brief report of the working group recommendations.

Councillors are encouraged to submit comments to the public comment forum either individually or as Stakeholder Groups or /Constituencies.

Action Item:

The process of cross community working groups was suggested as a topic for the Cartagena meetings with the ALAC, ccNSO, GAC and GNSO.

Item 4: Excerpt from Draft Final Report -­ New gTLD Applicant Support (JAS) WG

Rafik Dammak provided a brief summary of Report.

Stakeholder Groups and Constituencies as well as individual Councillors are encouraged to submit comments to the public comment forum.

Item 5: GNSO Project Prioritization

Deferred to the next Council meeting on 28 October 2010

Item 6: Selections for the Affirmation of Commitments Review Teams (AoC RTs)

Council was informed that the following candidates, subject to their statements of interest, were selected to serve on the:

• Security, Stability and Resiliency of the DNS Review Team : Jeff Brueggeman, David Cake, Ken Silva.
• Whois Review Team : Susan Kawaguchi, Kim G. Von Arx, James Bladel, Kathy Kleiman.

The GNSO Council endorsed Carlos Affonso Pereira de Souza as a replacement for Willie Currie on the AoC A&T Review Team.
Chuck Gomes will convey the decision to Heather Dryden and Rod Beckstrom

Item 7: Suggested Improvements for GNSO Public Council meetings

Wendy Seltzer provided a brief update of the recommendations developed by the discussion group including these highlights:

• Afternoon meeting preferable to the morning ;if that is not possible, starting the Council meeting at least one hour later would help.
• Motion editing and preparation should be done during the weekend working sessions.
• Affiliations should be added to name tags.
• Advertise the meeting to the public.

Comments emphasized that no conflicting meetings should be planned at the same time and it is important to have the main conference room for the meeting as the goal was to improve participation.

Item 8: Status of Continued Action Items

8.1 Drafting team for draft DNS-CERT/SSR WG charter

Chuck Gomes reported that Drafting Team for the DNS-CERT/SSR WG was currently providing comments on a strawman draft charter for the Working Group.

8.2 Standing committee to monitor GNSO Improvements implementation

It was suggested that the Steering committee continue its role until all the Work Teams have completed their work. In particular, the GNSO Council Operations (GCOT) Work Team should continue to examine the Declaration of Interest rules and other issues causing concern to the GNSO and encourage the two new members, Tatyana Khramtsova and Rudi Vansnick, who volunteered for the Standing Committee to join one or both of the steering committees.

Further discussion of this item was deferred to the next Council meeting on 28 October 2010.

8.3 High Level Progress of House/Stakeholder Group Elections

Chuck Gomes reported that the Registries Stakeholder Group had elected two new Council members to replace Chuck Gomes and Edmon Chung whose terms expire at the 2010 Cartagena meeting.

Councillors are encouraged to discuss elections in their Stakeholder Groups /Constituencies as this will affect the chair and vice chair issues as well as the Nominating Committee Appointee assignments which need to be revisited again before the Cartagena meeting..

Target date : first week in November 2010.

8.4 Whois Studies

Liz Gasster commented that the Proxy/Privacy Reveal Study Number 4, RFP was posted on 29 September and the deadline for responses is 30 November 2010 after which Staff will provide the Council with an analysis.

Councillors are encouraged to review the analysis of the WHOIS Privacy and Proxy Abuse studies and provide comments to the Council mailing list in preparation for discussion at the next Council meeting on 28 October 2010.

Item 9: Other Business

9.1 Status update on efforts to hire a new Director of Compliance and additional Compliance personnel necessary to bring current staff levels back up to 100%

David Olive reported that he had consulted with the Human Resource Department and the selection process for three positions is on going.

There was no further business.

Chuck Gomes adjourned the GNSO Council meeting and thanked everyone for their participation.
The meeting was adjourned at 17:07 UTC.

Next GNSO Council teleconference will be on Thursday, 28 October 2010 at 20:00 UTC.
See: Calendar