GNSO Council Teleconference Minutes

Proposed agenda and documents

List of attendees:
Philip Sheppard - Commercial & Business Users C - absent, apologies
Mike Rodenbaugh - Commercial & Business Users C.
Greg Ruth - ISCPC
Antonio Harris - ISCPC
Tony Holmes - ISCPC - absent, apologies
Thomas Keller- Registrars
Tim Ruiz - Registrars
Adrian Kinderis - Registrars - absent, apologies
Chuck Gomes - gTLD registries
Edmon Chung - gTLD registries
Jordi Iparraguirre - gTLD registries - absent, apologies
Kristina Rosette - Intellectual Property Interests C
Ute Decker - Intellectual Property Interests C - absent
Cyril Chua - Intellectual Property Interests - absent
Robin Gross - NCUC
Norbert Klein - NCUC - absent, apologies
Carlos Souza - NCUC - absent, apologies
Olga Cavalli- Nominating Committee appointee
Jon Bing - Nominating Committee appointee
Avri Doria - Nominating Committee appointee

12 Council Members
(16 Votes - quorum)

ICANN Staff

Denise Michel - Vice President, Policy Development
Robert Hoggarth - Senior Policy Director
Liz Gasster - Senior Policy Officer
Olof Nordling - Director Services Relations
Kurt Pritz - Senior Vice President Services
Marika Konings - Policy Director
Craig Schwartz - Chief gTLD Registry Liaison
Penelope Wrenn - Policy Communications Director
Patrick Jones - Registry Liaison Manager
Glen de Saint G�ry - GNSO Secretariat

GNSO Council Liaisons
Suzanne Sene - GAC Liaison - absent
Alan Greenberg - ALAC Liaison

Rita Rodin - ICANN Board member
Bruce Tonkin - ICANN Board member - absent apologies

MP3 Recording

Avri Doria chaired the meeting.

Roll Call.
The Secretariat informed Council that Bilal Beiram had resigned from the CBUC and the Council as from 30 July 2008, and the CBUC constituency hoped to complete its election procedure by mid August 2008 and fill the vacancy on the Council.
Avri Doria asked how many votes would constitute quorum if there was one less Councillor holding one vote.

Item 1: Update any Statements of Interest
No statements of interest were updated.

Item 2: Review/amend the agenda
- Added Item 5.9: Update on new gTLD process
- Move Item 3: Approval of the GNSO Council minutes of 17 July 2008 until quorum

Avri Doria proposed that updates relating to agenda items should be held over until the agenda item was discussed.

Item 3: Update from Denise Michel on Board activities

Denise Michel highlighted the issues addressed at the ICANN Board meeting on 31 July 2008.

The Board approved a motion on the ASN Global Policy for Autonomous System Numbers and received an update on new gTLDs and Single-Letter Second-Level Registry Service Requests . On the topic of registry/registrar cross ownership in the Registry Agreements .AERO and .POST decisions would be delayed pending the resolution of the new gTLD process.
Theresa Swinehart provided an update on the ICANN response to the UN Letter on "Enhanced Cooperation on Public Policy Issues Pertaining to the Internet" The Board approved the appointment of Professor Jan Gruntorád as the research and academia candidate to the 2009 Nominating Committee.
The President's Strategy Committee public comment process was discussed and then the Board went into executive session.

A comment was made that headings, following the agenda items, would enhance the presentation and readability of the preliminary report.

Item 4: Status Updates
4.1 Fast Flux PDP WG Update
Mike Rodenbaugh reported that the group had met 4 or 5 times, meeting and mailing list discussion was active, focused on brain storming, preliminary responses and factual information and the group was on schedule.

4.2 Whois Hypotheses Group update
Chuck Gomes reported that the group had developed hypotheses for seven out of the eight areas, the GAC areas of study were still being considered. The hypotheses would be sent to those who proposed the studies for comment.

Council agreed to extending the timeline for the final report of the WHOIS hypotheses study group to 28 August 2008.

4.3 IRTP Denial Reasons PDP - Comment Period ended
Olof Nordling reported that the public comment period ended on 18 July 2008 and one comment was submitted from the Intellectual Property Constituency, suggesting alternative wording for the two denial reasons addressed. These suggestions add further details to the provisions and were originally brought forward in the IPC Constituency Statement for this PDP. The suggestions were considered in the PDP and discussed in the drafting group, and no support was achieved for that level of detail in the provisions. In May 2008, Tim Ruiz explained that the proposal went further than merely clarifying the provisions. The wording in denial Reason 9, came straight from the IPC proposal.

Avri Doria proposed voting on the new text proposals for Denial Reasons #8 and #9.as set out in the final report from the drafting group at the next Council meeting on 4 September 2008.

Olof Nordling was requested to remind the constituencies of the drafting group outcome in preparation for the vote.

4.4 IRTP PDP June 08
Mike Rodenbaugh, Council liaison to the working group, reported that the group had met once, Paul Diaz, a registrar, was elected chair, and two constituencies, the ISPCPC and the NCUC lacked representation.

Avri Doria encouraged participants from the 2 unrepresented constituencies to join the working group.

The GNSO Council unanimously confirmed the appointment of Paul Diaz as chair for the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Set A PDP working group.

4.5 Informational Update on Single-Letter Second-Level Registry Service Requests
Liz Gasster reported that ICANN has completed the comment period on the single-character, second-level domain allocation framework document and the Board had been updated. The proposed contract changes for dot coop and dot mobi will be considered by the Board after the public comment period which ends on 22 August, 2008.

Denise Michel stated that the Board was aware of the funnel request submitted by Verisign and Kurt Pritz had, in the July 31 2008 meeting, clarified that the proposal would be publicly posted when it was ready.

4.6 Absentee Voting update
Liz Gasster reported that there had been a delay and that work was still in progress.

4.7 Domain Tasting Consensus Policy Implementation Update
Craig Schwartz reported that the cross-functional team at ICANN, comprised of registry and registrar liaisons, policy, compliance, finance and legal are working on the implementation plan. It is expected that the draft implementation plan will be posted for public comment prior to the ICANN meeting in Cairo then a timeline for registry compliance with the new consensus policy will be set.

4.8 Geographic regions
Rob Hoggarth reported that the ICANN geographic regions drafting group was formed, and the first meeting was scheduled on 11 August 2008.

Avri Doria suggested that the absolute deadline for the Council response would be coming out of the Cairo meeting in November. Council could however choose to complete a report prior to the Cairo meeting.

4.9 New gTLD update
Kurt Pritz reported that since the Paris meeting, staff has undertaken implementation efforts towards steps on the critical path for concluding agreements with third parties, specifically with providers of dispute resolution procedures and evaluation criteria. The drafting of the RFP in modular format was underway, as well as the base agreement and applicant criteria that will be available with the draft release of information for the solicitation process.
SWORD has provided ICANN with a beta version of the string confusion algorithm for scoring among strings in three scripts, Latin, Cyrillic and Greek, and they will expand their proposal on the time and expense associated with developing an algorithm in three other scripts, Arabic, Devanagari, and Chinese-Japanese-Korean.
Deloitte provided draft business criteria, demonstrating both the operational and technical competence of the applicants.
A company has been engaged to review the criteria and explore the methodology, to ensure that it is in keeping with the GNSO policy recommendations and the expectations.
ICANN has concluded an agreement with Software Systems Services International to provide the customer application interface to measure string application.
ICANN has received a proposed auction model from a third party auction firm for resolving contention among competing identical or similar strings.
A separate budget will be published for the new gTLD process.

Updates to the new gTLD implementation program will be published on the ICANN website.

Responses to questions provided additional information. The application fee was not determined and there was ongoing work on risk assessment. The Paris timeline was still effective.
Kurt stated that within a couple of weeks there would be draft report of the international economic study about the structural and organizational separation between registries and registrars that have been enforced in ICANN agreements, and whether that separation should be maintained in the face of apparent interest of registries and registrars to apply for a new gTLD.
Kurt confirmed that the standards for dispute resolution referred to the measurable criteria that the independent dispute providers would use in making their decisions.
The budget will deal with how the funds from auctions should be treated.

Item 5: Approve GNSO Council minutes of 17 July 2008

Tom Keller, seconded by Chuck Gomes moved the adoption of the GNSO Council minutes of 17 July 2008.

Motion passed unanimously.
Decision 1: The Council approved the GNSO Council minutes of 17 July 2008.


Item 6: Discussion of IDNC Report and GNSO Response

Edmon Chung provided a detailed overview of the GNSO Council Comments on IDNC WG Final Report and noted that a paragraph was added
to revise a view point in a previous statement in response to strong objection by the Indian delegate during the GNSO meeting with the GAC in Paris. The paragraph was specifically tagged for Council review because it is a revision of a statement put out earlier and the particular point was discussed at length.

"Finally, the GNSO Council would like to take the opportunity to update a previous statement in the GNSO Comments in Response to the ccNSO-GAC Issues Report on IDN Issues to the following: There should be only one IDN ccTLD string per ISO 3166-1 entry per relevant script per relevant language. The change reflects the IDNC group's understanding and respect for territories where multiple languages share a single script, such as in India."

There should be only one IDN ccTLD string per ISO 3166-1 entry per relevant script per relevant language.

Council agreed that the language in the above paragraph of the GNSO Council Comments on IDNC WG Final Report should be clarified on the Council list, and a paragraph added about the cost impact on ICANN's budget.

Edmon Chung agreed to produce a final version, incorporating all the suggestions provided on the Council mailing list, by Monday 11 August 2008.

Avri Doria proposed the usual 48 hour turn around for any objections and in the case of no objections, the revised response would be submitted so as to meet the 15 August 2008 deadline for comments.

Chuck Gomes and Avri Doria, on behalf of the Council, acknowledged with appreciation Edmon Chung's hard work on producing the final report.

Item 7: GNSO Improvements

7.1 Update from GNSO Structure Consensus WG

Rob Hoggarth reported that the Council restructuring group provided the Board with a snap-shot report of its efforts identifying areas of consensus, and areas that they discussed where there was no consensus.The report also included supplemental statements from all the working group members. The report has been circulated through the GNSO community and the group has agreed to make its deliberations publicly available
The universe of those materials include 500 emails, mp 3 recordings from seven conference calls, and six meeting summary reports.
Avri Doria reiterated the working group's appreciation for Rob Hoggarth's work.

7.2 Update on Board action related to GNSO Structure Plan
Denise Michel remarked that because of the tight time frame, neither the staff nor the Board had analyzed the proposal and that work was on-going. The Board discussion touched on a number of issues involved in the working group proposal including the role of the NomCom appointees; the selection of Board seats; whether At Large or individual users would be participating in the GNSO; how the voting structure in the two houses and the seat allocation in the respective houses would work; the Board’s role in making decisions about seats in each house as well as the connection to the Nominating Committee review recommendations.
The Board resolved to accept the report of the Working Group on GNSO Council Restructuring, on areas of consensus that it achieved during its month-long deliberations and instructed Staff to perform an analysis of the potential consequences and implementation issues presented by the proposals in the report, and to report one week before the August Board meeting with the recommended steps that can be adopted during the August Board Meeting.

Denise Michel referred to the email sent to the Council, and the constituencies alerting them of the action and outlining initial issues and questions the staff was investigating.

7.3 Review comments on Top Level Plan
Rob Hoggarth noted that the public comment period ended on July 18, 2008 and the one comment submitted by the registrar constituency maintained that it was procedurally premature for the Council to consider the GNSO Top Level Plan in light of the GNSO Council restructuring and recommended postponing discussion until the GNSO Council structure had been decided.

7.3 Next Steps/Decision
Deferred until next Council meeting

Item 8: Early Planning for Cairo Meeting
Item 8.1 Joint Meetings: GAC, CCNSO, ALAC, Board

Avri Doria stated that the Council would be running open meetings on Saturday 1 November and Sunday 2 November 2008 and suggested topics for discussion included:
- Working group face to face meetings
- Discussion of fast Flux working group report
- GNSO Improvements
- New gTLD implementation

There was general agreement that the ICANN Board/GNSO Council/Staff dinner produced an important information flow, fostered understanding, creative ideas and collaboration and should be continued with specific topics for discussion each time.
There was also general agreement that face to face meetings with the ccNSO and the ALAC served an important purpose and should be continued

Item 9: Action Items

Avri Doria clarified that the action items were discussed with staff in a pre-council meeting and encouraged councilors to comment on the list or during the meeting.

Suggested items for future meetings:

- the SSAC Report relating to WHOIS
http://www.icann.org/en/committees/security/sac027.pdf

- IDNs as related to WHOIS

- DoC Comments on Draft Proposed Changes to Registrar Accreditation Agreement
http://forum.icann.org/lists/raa-consultation/msg00061.html

- Discussion with Patrick Sharry on the ALAC Review
http://www.icann.org/en/reviews/alac/alac-independent-review-final-25jul08-en.pdf

Avri Doria adjourned the GNSO Council meeting and thanked everyone for their participation.

The meeting ended at 14:00 UTC.