GNSO Council Teleconference Minutes

16 June 2004.

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 - absent,
Tony Holmes - ISCPC - absent, apologies, proxy to Greg Ruth
Thomas Keller- Registrars
Ross Rader - Registrars
Bruce Tonkin - Registrars
Ken Stubbs - gTLD registries
Philip Colebrook - gTLD registries
Cary Karp - gTLD registries
Lucy Nichols - Intellectual Property Interests C - absent - apologies, proxy to Niklas Lagergren
Niklas Lagergren - Intellectual Property Interests C
Kiyoshi Tsuru - Intellectual Property Interests C. - absent
Jisuk Woo - Non Commercial users C.
Marc Schneiders - Non Commercial users C.
Carlos Afonso - Non Commercial users C. - absent, apologies, proxy to Marc Schneiders
Alick Wilson - absent, apologies
Demi Getschko - joined call after roll call
Amadeu Abril I Abril - absent, apologies proxy to Alick Wilson/Bruce Tonkin

14 Council Members

Kurt Pritz - Vice President, Business Operations
Paul Verhoef - Vice President, Policy Development Support
Barbara Roseman - ICANN Staff Manager

Thomas Roessler - ALAC Liaison
Suzanne Sene - GAC Liaison
Christopher Wilkinson - GAC Secretariat
Young Eum Lee - ccTLD Liaison

The WHOIS Task Force Chairs were asked to join the call.

Jeff Neuman - WHOIS Task Force 1 Chair absent - apologies
Jordyn Buchanan - Whois Task Force 2
Brian Darville - WHOIS Task Force 3 Chair


Glen de Saint G�ry - GNSO Secretariat

MP 3 Recording
Quorum present at 12:10 UTC,

Bruce Tonkin chaired this teleconference.

Item 1: Approval of Agenda

Agenda approved

Item 2: Approval of the April 1, 2004 minutes
and the May 6, 2004 Minutes

Ken Stubbs seconded by Philip Sheppard moved the adoption of the April 1, 2004 minutes.

The motion carried unanimously

Decision 1: The April 1, 2004 minutes were adopted

Bruce Tonkin reported that following the May 6, 2004 meeting, Kurt Pritz and Paul Verhoef had provided some clarification and that accordingly, the minutes of the May 6 meeting had been simplified and revised .
On the topic of GNSO Staff support, Paul Verhoef stated that in agreement with the GNSO Council there were 3 positions being published on overall policy development support :
1. GNSO Staff Manager's position, that should become a staff position (rather than a consultant as is currently the case)
2. additional support for the GNSO, partly shared with the other supporting organizations
3. a policy analyst position, to follow the isues in the ccNSO and the ASO.
When the job descriptions are complete and as soon as the budget is approved the successful candidates would be offered contracts.

In summary, the current situation is:
Paul Verhoef Vice President, Policy Development Support
Barbara Roseman, consultant and acting as ICANN's GNSO Staff Manager
Glen de Saint Géry, GNSO Secretariat

In addition to the GNSO Staff Manager position, publish 2 additional positions,
1. Policy analyst to follow both ASO and ccNSO
2. Additional support mostly for the GNSO as well as coordination between all supporting organizations.

The descriptions for the two positions would be submitted to the GNSO Chair and council members for a round of comments. Furthermore, Paul Verhoef informed the Council that the exact roles of the positions would, among other things, depend on the skills and experience of the recruited candidates. No salary range had yet been discussed.

Paul Verhoef commented that it was important for the Council to agree on the role of staff in the GNSO policy development in practise as the staff often finds it difficult to combine the Council's wish for staff to play a pro-active role in the processes while on the other hand not be seen to determine policy.
Bruce Tonkin commented that it would be useful to have role descriptions with guidelines and rules of procedure for the task force chairs, task force members and ICANN staff as well as understanding what ICANN means.
Kurt Pritz proposed forming a small committee of Council and staff members to write such a framework which could be reviewed and commented on by the whole Council once the job descriptions were published
Bruce Tonkin reported that he had spoken to Paul Twomey regarding interaction with different staff roles, how to protect the staff and deal with conflicting views of individual task force members and concluded that ultimately everyone was responsible for reaching consensus. Given that conflicts are difficult to resolve at the Board or the Council level they should ideally be resolved by task force members during the task force process.
Timelines and actions:

1. End of June for the job descriptions to be complete
2. Week 21 - 25 June a teleconference between senior ICANN staff such as Paul Verhoef, Kurt Pritz, Paul Twomey, John Jeffrey and a small group of Council members that have actively chaired various task forces and committees over the past few years within the DNSO Names Council/GNSO Council.
The aim would be to agree on a set of shared expectations for:
- the types of tasks to be assigned to the ICANN staff
- the respective role of task force members and chairs
- procedures for allocating tasks to ICANN staff in an environment where there are often several policy development processes operating in parallel and hence the chance for contention in the use of resources
which could be used during interviews.

Topics arising from the minutes of May 6, 2004.

1. Establishing contact with the ccNSO regarding an International Domain Names (IDN) workshop. In the meantime ICANN has scheduled a whole day workshop and there is a program committee so that if individual council members wished to have topics included, they should contact Tina Dam or Dan Halloran at ICANN or Bruce Tonkin.

2. The GNSO Council members and the ccNSO would meet and discuss the best way to liaise between the two groups.
Bruce Tonkin proposed that at physical meetings there would be a breakfast or lunch between the two groups and that as with the GAC and the ALAC, one or two people could be appointed from the ccNSO Council to attend GNSO Council meetings and likewise the GNSO Council could appoint representatives to attend ccNSO meetings.
Preliminary discussions have been proposed on Monday, 19 July at 5:00 PM in the Grand Ballroom of the Shangri La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

3. Christopher Wilkinson reported that the GAC and the GNSO would not be having a full bilateral session as happened in Rome.
Suzanne Sene reported that some time would be found for the members of the GAC GNSO working group and interested GNSO Council members to discuss issues arising from possible Whois recommendations.

Item 3: Update on WHOIS task forces
Receive an update from the WHOIS task force chairs, Jeff Neuman, Jordyn Buchanan, Brian Darville
- status of public comment process
- next steps
- review timetable for completing final reports

Jordyn Buchanan on behalf of all 3 task force chairs requested :
First, that after the close of the public comment period the Task Forces be allowed to revisit their initial reports so that they may be updated in response to public comment as well as additional feedback from constituencies.
Second, some areas of overlap between Task Forces 1 and 2, have been identified and requests may be made of Council to approve procedures designed to resolve any conflict between the two Task Forces' recommendations. Procedures to move forward should still be established.
Finally, depending on the level of response seen in the public comment period, the option of extending the length of the public comment period.

Suzanne Sene reminded Council that the GAC would not speak to a preliminary report and that it could only take positions at GAC plenary sessions. Any available information from the task forces should be submitted to the GNSO GAC working group which will be meeting on Saturday 17 July in Kuala Lumpur.

Marilyn Cade commented on the value, in past task force work, of open teleconferences to provide an opportunity for parties to ask questions of the task force and offer input as part of the public comment process.

Bruce Tonkin reminded all task force members that in addition to their advocacy role on behalf of their constituencies, they were also responsible for working cooperatively with other task force members to attempt to reach an ideal consensus position on the policy. Consensus may be defined as a 2/3 minimum vote, but the ideal would be as close to 100% as possible for full community support.
Task forces 1 and 2 should also attempt to coordinate their work so that their recommendations are consistent.
Task forces should identify where further implementation analysis is necessary for some recommendations before they can be finally voted on by Council

Bruce Tonkin seconded by Ken Stubbs proposed a procedural motion that Council approves:
- extending the public comment period to Monday 5 July 2004
- reports be updated by Monday 12 July 2004
- task forces are encouraged to initiate public teleconferences to stimulate public comment during the public comment period
- that task forces are encouraged to work internally towards a complete consensus position

Decision 2:
The public comment period be extended to Monday 5 July 2004
- reports be updated by Monday 12 July 2004
- task forces are encouraged to initiate public teleconferences to stimulate public comment during the public comment period
- that task forces are encouraged to work internally towards a complete consensus position


Item 3: Update on PDP for approval process for gtld registry changes
- set a target date for a preliminary report

Bruce Tonkin reported that there had been a meeting on May 17/18 and agreement reached on a general framework. The criteria should be organized under two broad categories, competition and stability then request whether Council considers a third category should be added. The aim would be for a preliminary report by 12 July 2004, thus starting the public comment period a week before the Kuala Lumpur ICANN meeting

Item 5: Re-assignment of .net
Receive an update from the .net Council subcommittee

Philip Sheppard, .net Council subcommittee chair, reported that since the .net sub committee had started in mid April 2004, there had been 4 conference calls resulting in a preliminary report which made a set of recommendations divided into two categories:

Absolute criteria thresholds that would be expected to be met, related to:
Targeting
Continuity
Policy Compliance
Stability, security, technical and financial competence
Relative criteria, to be used a basis of comparison for the applications, related to:
Promotion of competition
Stability, security, technical and financial competence
Existing registry services

The report was fully supported by all sub committee members, published for the first 20-day Public Comment Period on 28 May 2004 until 18 June 2004. One comment had been received to date. To meet the timetable, the aim was to publish a revised report for final public comment from June 25 to July 15 and have a Final report for the Council to vote on during the Council meeting in Kuala Lumpur on July 20, 2004.

Item 6: Any Other Business

Marilyn Cade raised the topic of new gTLDs and Bruce Tonkin reported that according to the MOU:

"Define and implement a predictable strategy for selecting new TLDs using straightforward, transparent, and objective procedures that preserve the stability of the Internet (strategy development to be completed by September 30, 2004 and implementation to commence by December 31, 2004). "

It was suggested at the GNSO Council meeting of April 1, 2004 that ICANN staff Manager draw up an Issues report for the Kuala Lumpur GNSO Council meeting.

Paul Verhoef reported from the ICANN staff perspective that a strategy had to be developed by September 30 and commence implementation of the strategy by December 31, 2004. Currently expert advice was being sought regarding economic, competition, trademark, intellectual property issues. Several organizations such as: the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (which has promised to try and declassify their document before the Kuala Lumpur meeting), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (ssac) were expected to provide expert advice by September 30, 2004. It was expected that the strategy, based on the staffs' initial assessment of the expert advice as to which questions should be asked and the process of answering them, including the GNSO policy development process, would be in place by December 30, 2004. It was not clear what questions ICANN should be asking themselves, nor was it clear how it could be determined exactly what level of competition was useful or not.
Marilyn Cade expressed concern about timeframes, deadlines, that Council seemed to be too far away from the process and that a policy development process should evolve in a timely manner.
Paul Verhoef was of the opinion that at the time of drafting the MOU the assumption was that there would be new gTLDs in the traditional sense which was not necessarily a given any more in view of different possibilities of gTLDs such as traditional gTLD's, sTLD's, IDN's, etc and possibly the predictable strategy should be interpreted in a slightly wider sense than it was originally foreseen.
The answer to Bruce Tonkin's enquiry whether this would be subject to dialogue between ICANN and the Department of Commerce (DOC) was that there would have to be agreement on the part of DOC as the deadlines and the mandate are also part of the MoU.
Kurt Pritz presented the scenario where, as a result of studies, the strategy that would be adopted, or recognized might be that, part of new TLD strategy would be the implementation of full International Domain Names (IDN). That implementation would require policy questions to be answered by the GNSO, technical questions to be answered by other supporting committees so that implementation would have to figure out policy questions.
The Kuala Lumpur IDN workshop agenda will be published on the ICANN website.

Bruce Tonkin declared GNSO meeting closed and thanked everybody for participating.
The meeting ended: 14:00 UTC

• Next GNSO Council teleconference tbd

• Next GNSO Council meeting will be held in the Grand Ballroom at the Shangri-La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur at 14:00 local time, 06:00 UTC
  see: Calendar