GNSO Council Teleconference Minutes

14 March 2006

Proposed agenda and related documents

List of attendees:
Philip Sheppard - Commercial & Business Users C.
Marilyn Cade - Commercial & Business Users C.
Grant Forsyth - Commercial & Business Users C
Greg Ruth - ISCPC
Antonio Harris - ISCPC
Tony Holmes - ISCPC
Thomas Keller- Registrars
Ross Rader - Registrars
Bruce Tonkin - Registrars
Ken Stubbs - gTLD registries
June Seo - gTLD registries - absent - apologies
Cary Karp - gTLD registries
Lucy Nichols - Intellectual Property Interests C
Ute Decker - Intellectual Property Interests C
Kiyoshi Tsuru - Intellectual Property Interests C. - absent
Robin Gross - NCUC.
Norbert Klein - NCUC. - absent - apologies
Mawaki Chango - NCUC
Sophia Bekele - Nominating Committee appointee
Maureen Cubberley - Nominating Committee appointee
Avri Doria - Nominating Committee appointee

17 Council Members

ICANN Staff
Dan Halloran - Deputy General Counsel
Kurt Pritz - Vice President, Business Operations
Olof Nordling - Manager, Policy Development Coordination
Maria Farrell - ICANN GNSO Policy Support Officer
Liz Williams - Senior Policy Counselor
Glen de Saint G�ry - GNSO Secretariat


GNSO Council Liaisons
Suzanne Sene - GAC Liaison
Bret Fausett - ALAC Liaison - absent - apologies

Invited guest:
Jordyn Buchanan - WHOIS task force chair

Michael Palage - ICANN Board member

Quorum present at 19:08 UTC.

MP3 Recording

Bruce Tonkin and Philip Sheppard chaired this teleconference.

Approval of agenda

Item 1: Update on WHOIS PDP

Jordyn Buchanan reported that the Whois task force's Preliminary task force report on the purpose of Whois and of the WHOIS contacts
http://gnso.icann.org/issues/whois-privacy/prelim-tf-rpt-18jan06.htm
had been published for public comments, the comments were summarised by the staff and the task force intended to present the 2 formulations, to Council for a decision, as the WHOIS task force's further work depended on establishing a definition of the purpose of WHOIS. It would be difficult to conclude the remaining terms of reference relating to:
- the definition of the various contacts in WHOIS,
- determining what data collected should be available for public access
- improving the accuracy of WHOIS data
without such a definition as guidance

Jordyn Buchanan requested Council's guidance on the issues related to task forces in general:
1. voting in the task force . The PDP called for reports to the Council to include whether a supermajority vote was achieved but there was no clear insight who votes, were votes counted by constituency or by representative, whether the ALAC representative had a vote, how many votes there should be, whether there was weighted voting, if proxies are allowed,
2. summarising comments, if Council could provide some expectations on summarising public comments.

No WHOIS task force meeting was foreseen during the Wellington meetings.

Marilyn Cade commented that dialogue between the GNSO Council and the GAC on policy issues should be supported, and suggested that there be a WHOIS informational update during the GAC/GNSO Council meeting in Wellington.

Maureen Cubberley raised the question whether task force issues should be an ICANN bylaws issue, or an internal GNSO working procedure issue.

Item 2. Next steps for PDP-Dec05 - new gTLDs

Liz Williams referred to the GNSO PDP Dec 05: New TLDs Proposed Work Plan that had been circulated to the Council see: http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg02181.html and reported that the proposed agenda for the Wellington meeting would concentrate on the selection criteria and possibly the allocation methods discussion for new gTLDs.
The initial report with the call for technical criteria would be released shortly.

A question arose about the public comment period for the draft initial report on new gTLDs.
http://icann.org/topics/gnso-initial-rpt-new-gtlds-19feb06.pdf
There would be more public comment periods and a final initial report proposing a policy (or policy options) would solicit substantial public comment.

Item 3: Update on PDP-Feb06 - gTLD policies around key commercial terms for gTLD agreements
3.1 Next Steps

Marilyn Cade, seconded by Ken Stubbs proposed a procedural motion:
that both the public comment period and the deadline for the submission of constituency statements for the policy development process on policies for contractual conditions for existing gTLDs - PDP-Feb06 be extended to 30 April 2006.

The motion carried unanimously by voice vote
Absent: Kiyoshi Tsuru, absent and excused: Norbert Klein, June Seo
There were 18 Council members on the call.

Decision 1: that both the public comment period and the deadline for the submission of constituency statements for the policy development process on policies for contractual conditions for existing gTLDs - PDP-Feb06 be extended to 30 April 2006.

Liz Williams referred to the posting GNSO PDP Feb06: PCC Existing TLDs Proposed Work Plan setting out a proposed timetable (http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg02182.html)

Grant Forsyth asked when work would progress on the PDP-Feb06.
Bruce Tonkin proposed that the task force be convened in Wellington to commence the work.

Item 4: Update on Issues Report on IDNs

Bruce Tonkin reported that the topic of IDNs should be the principle discussion point, based on a staff report, for the GNSO council/ICANN Board dinner scheduled on Sunday 26 March 2006 in Wellington.
Bruce Tonkin commented that it was necessary to separate policy level decisions from technical level decisions.

Tina Dam updated the Council on:

- the Working group working on revising IDN guidelines met once a month and had produced an IDN update version 2 ( http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-27feb06.htm)

- the Presidents advisory committee was discussing the revision of the IANA repository for IDN TLD practices, as well as adding better functionality and display options for the IANA repository tables.
- technical test for IDNs labels in the root. The technical community would be testing how the different methods in applying IDN top levels in the DNS would work. The Presidents Advisory committee was working on the project which would be posted shortly for comment.

Tina Dam proposed a session with the GNSO Council in Wellington to provide a better understanding of IDN issues and regular updates at the GNSO Council meetings.

Ross Rader asked Council to a request greater transparency into the IDN process, observe the proceedings as they unfold, such as having access to the mailing list archives, hearing MP3 recording of the meetings.

Cary Karp commented that there was a GNSO Council representative on the President's Advisory Committee on IDNs.
Avri Doria commented that there was no reasonable way to clearly separate the policy from the technology and supported full transparency. Policy was implicit in any technical decision, there were policy implications in what technology should be used.

Kurt Pritz referred to the IDN updates on the ICANN website. and added that a process for public consultation and consultation with the Supporting Organisations had been put in place for the testing plan.

Item 5 Statements of Interest Policy and GNSO rules of procedure

Bruce Tonkin proposed revising the GNSO Rules of Procedure, including a section on Statement of Interest policy, requesting advice from the General Counsel's office and providing a first draft for the Wellington meeting aiming for a proposal to forward to the ICANN Board for the Marrakech meetings in June 2006.
Philip Sheppard referred to the 3 areas in the WHOIS task force, mentioned in Item 1, that required clarity and it was suggested that the Chairs of the most recent task forces be involved in the group that would undertake the revision.

Item 6: Agenda for GNSO Public Forum in Wellington

6.1 WHOISPDP
Bruce Tonkin commented that it was important that the Council gave guidance to the WHOIS task force on the purpose of WHOIS and it should sign off on a statement of purpose as an interim step.

6.2 PDP-Dec05

6.3 PDP-Feb06

Liz Williams proposed adding the GNSO Review to the Public Forum agenda.

Bruce Tonkin declared the GNSO meeting closed and thanked everybody for participating.

The meeting ended: 22:10 CET.

• Next GNSO Council meeting in Wellington Convention Centre, 29 March 2006 at 10:00 local time.
  see: Calendar