GNSO Council Teleconference Minutes

21 February 2004.

Please note: The date refers to the publication of the minutes and not to the meeting.

Meeting date: 19 February 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 - absent,
Antonio Harris - ISCPC
Tony Holmes - ISCPC
Thomas Keller- Registrars
Ross Rader - Registrars
Bruce Tonkin - Registrars
Ken Stubbs - gTLD registries
Jordyn Buchanan - gTLD registries
Cary Karp - gTLD registries
Lucy Nichols - Intellectual Property Interests C
Niklas Lagergren - Intellectual Property Interests C
Kiyoshi Tsuru - Intellectual Property Interests C.
Jisuk Woo - Non Commercial users C. - absent, apologies, proxy to Marc Schneiders
Marc Schneiders - Non Commercial users C.
Carlos Afonso - Non Commercial users C. - absent, apologies, proxy to Marc Schneiders
Alick Wilson
Demi Getschko
Amadeu Abril I Abril - absent, apologies, proxy to Demi Getschko

17 Council Members

Barbara Roseman - ICANN Staff Manager
Kurt Pritz - ICANN Vice President, Business Operations

Christopher Wilkinson - GAC Liaison
Thomas Roessler - ALAC Liaison


The WHOIS Task Force Chairs were asked to join the call.
Jeff Neuman - WHOIS Task Force 1 Chair
Brian Darville - WHOIS Task Force 3 Chair

Alejandro Pisanty - ICANN Board member seat # 13

Glen de Saint G�ry - GNSO Secretariat

MP 3 recording
Quorum present at 19:09 UTC,

Bruce Tonkin and Philip Sheppard chaired this teleconference.

Ken Stubbs proposed that since there was a quorum of 16, Philip Sheppard chair the meeting while waiting for Bruce Tonkin.
Unanimous approval

Item 2: Summary of the minutes January 22:

Ken Stubbs, seconded by Demi Getschko moved the adoption of the January 22 minutes.
The motion was carried.

Decision 1: Minutes of the January 22 meeting adopted.

Item 5: Planning for ICANN meeting in Rome
- proposed four PDP workshops
- Council breakfast and invitation to Board
- Council meeting and invitation to Board
- WSIS presentation

The GNSO Secretariat reported that on:
Monday March 1, at 18:30 to 19:00 there was a prep meeting for the 3 Whois task force participants, followed by a prep meeting of the GNSO Council committee for the "Approval Process for gTLD Service Changes". The meeting room would be confirmed.
Tuesday March 2, there is the GNSO Council informal breakfast meeting in the "La Sughereta Restaurant" close to the main lobby of the meeting venue, Hotel Meli� Roma Aurelia Antica, at 7:30 to 9:00. Invitations have been sent to the GNSO Council and a formal reminder sent to the ICANN President and Board members.
Constituencies would meet all day.
The Government Advisory Committee (GAC) and the GNSO Council would meet in the late afternoon in the Murillo room.
Christopher Wilkinson requested that it be earlier than 17:30. so 16:30 was agreed upon.
Wednesday March 3, GNSO PDP Workshops
Workshop on the GNSO PDP: Approval Process for gTLD Service Changes (08:00 - 09:30) (Goya)
Workshop on the GNSO PDP: Whois Task Force 1 -- Restricting Access (09:45 - 11:15) (Goya)
Workshop on the GNSO PDP: Whois Task Force 2 -- Review of Data Collected and Displayed (11:30 - 13:00) (Goya)
Workshop on the GNSO PDP: Whois Task Force 3 -- Improving Accuracy of Collected Data (13:15 - 14:45) (Goya)
GNSO Council Meeting (16:00 - 18:00) (Goya)

Bruce Tonkin joined the meeting and took the chair from Philip Sheppard

Thursday morning March 4 a proposed meeting for drafting an initial Approval Process for gTLD Service Changes that could form the Initial report prior to public comment.
Marilyn Cade suggested starting at 8:30 going to 10:30. to accommodate the WSIS Open Session planned from 11:00 - 13:00 in the Goya room.
Thursday morning March 4, Marilyn Cade reported that there was a WSIS Open Session planned from 11:00 - 13:00 in the Goya room to which all the constituency chairs and the community had been invited.
An informal meeting with ICANN staff and the GNSO Council members was proposed for a time to be determined by Kurt Pritz and the GNSO Secretariat.

Item 3: Approve timelines for WHOIS task forces
Receive an update from the WHOIS task force chairs: Brian Darville, Jeff Neuman, Jordyn Buchanan

Bruce Tonkin reported on the second joint meeting held with the Whois task force chairs.
Approved timelines for:
- March 19, 2004 Submission of constituency statements
- April 9, 2004 prepare the preliminary report
- April 29, 2004 Public comment period closes
- May 20, 2004 Final report
- June the GNSO Council could consider the report and the ICANN Board could consider the report at the Kuala Lumpur meeting
Bruce Tonkin proposed that the GNSO Council members endorse the dates as agreed upon by the task force chairs.
All in favour of endorsing the dates

Decision 2: Timelines approved for the 3 Whois task forces policy development process.

Receive an update from the WHOIS task force chairs:
Jeff Neuman - Task force 1: Restricting access to WHOIS data for marketing purposes
Jordyn Buchanan - Task force 2: Review of data collected and displayed
Brian Darville - Task Force 3: Improving Accuracy of collected data - chair - Brian Darville Brian Darville, Jeff Neuman, Jordyn Buchanan

Jeff Neuman, task force 1 chair, on restricting access, reported that the questionnaire had been distributed and 5 or 6 good responses had been received. He urged the constituencies to take a look at the survey and gather as many responses as possible and prepare constituency position statements. With the information, it would be possible for the task force to discuss issues regarding restricting access, and port 43 access to Whois information.
The task force was in the process of compiling a needs and justifications chart, a milestone in the terms of reference, which would set out all the needs and justifications that the different organizations had for Whois data. This would be presented as an interim report at the Rome workshops. The task force was making good progress.

Brian Darville, task force 3 chair, on data accuracy, reported that the Registrars survey was complete. The ccTLD survey by CENTR and the ccNSO distribution had not yet been responded to while the survey to other industries had been distributed and responses were trickling in. The task force would circulate a draft report by Wednesday 25.
Bruce Tonkin requested council members to contact their relevant ccTLD managers and encourage them to respond to the survey.
He undertook to contact the the .au manager in this connection, while Jeff Neuman committed himself to doing it for .us.
Christopher Wilkinson expressed the opinion that the ccTLDs would go back to their national authorities for responses.

Jordyn Buchanan, task force 2 chair, on data collection and display, reported questionnaires had been distributed to each of the GNSO constituencies, ccTLDs through the ccNSO, and CENTR and to the GAC. The return date for the responses had been extended. Some data had been received which would be compiled into a readable format over the next month. Three sub groups in the task force had been identified to develop a methodology as well as templates for the data analysis which would be reported on at the Rome workshops.
Bruce Tonkin urged the GNSO Constituencies to start drafting constituency statements in their various fora in Rome so that the statements would be prepared for submission on March 19.
In addition all GNSO Council members were requested to solicit as many responses as possible to the questionnaires in their constituencies and their circles of contact.
Christopher Wilkinson reported that the GAC had received the surveys and would be discussing the matter but that it could not be predicted how countries would respond. In terms of European legislation one reply should be forthcoming from all the countries under the European Parliament Directive.

Item 4: Discuss constituency statements on the Procedure for use by ICANN in considering requests for consent and related contractual amendments to allow changes in the architecture or operation of a gTLD registry

Bruce Tonkin referred to Barbara Roseman's summary
All of the statements submitted agreed that the development of a defined, transparent, predictable process for the consideration of changes to gTLD registry services is within ICANN's purview, and will be beneficial for the community.
Areas of agreement about the process specified by two or more constituencies:
Timeliness: the process should not hinder innovations from being introduced
"Quick-Look," or "Fast-Track": the process would benefit from having a two-track or multi-track review that would allow certain types of changes to be implemented without difficulty
Transparency: the process should be transparent, and that there should also be mechanisms for preserving proprietary information Predictability: the process should be defined and predictable with clear criteria of evaluation
Definitions and Criteria:
defining terms and criteria for evaluation is essential to producing a useful process 3rd Party
Review: self-assessment by a Registry is insufficient to determine the scope of technical or competition harm
Review Process Reporting: the process should include reporting mechanisms that show the reasoning and rationale for a given decision Remedies: the Registry should be given concrete recommendations on remedies to offset identified technical and/or competition harm
Specific Timeline: there should be a defined a timeline for the review process
Appeals: there should be an appeals process for decisions regarding approval
Community Participation: where appropriate, the ICANN community should be participants in the review process

For all of the above areas of agreement, there are still some considerable differences between the constituencies on the specifics of the issues involved. While all may agree that the process should be timely, most have different views on what that means. Also, there were some issues raised by a single constituency and not addressed at all by others, such as how much it will cost to implement a new process (CBUC), what recourse will exist for ICANN and the community if an evaluation fails to accurately assess harm (ISPCP), and whether the process should be different for dominant/non-dominant TLDs (NCUC).

Bruce Tonkin called for comments.
Comments indicated that more detail was required before any significant work could go forward.
Marilyn Cade commented further that it was important to understand what was needed to advance the work in terms of deliverables and dates, to which Bruce Tonkin commented that there was no documented process as to the interaction with the ICANN staff support and the task force chairs.
Bruce Tonkin proposed the following plan for the Rome workshop:
- State the problem, outline the purpose of the policy development process, summary of the issues
-Summary of constituency input
- invite public comments form the floor
Formal workshop proceedings: draft the process based on contributions, put up decisions, criteria for decisions, and if no convergence is reached to carry on the process on Thursday morning

Item 6: Expectations on ICANN staff manager for GNSO policy support
- guidelines for producing issues report
- preliminary reports
- timelines for deliverables
- reporting structure Item

Philip Sheppard commented that some guidance was given in the ICANN bylaws on the policy development process but that the expectations in the content were missing and referred to the following set of guidelines he had drawn up and welcomed by ICANN General Counsel:

Proposed guidelines for the ICANN staff manager's issue report -

Background The staff manager's issue report is the precursor to the GNSO policy development process (PDP). The PDP is relatively new and there has been a high degree of variation in the quality, length and usefulness of the issues reports so far. This is not surprising since Council and staff are still developing procedures. Therefore, Council proposes guidelines to provide structure for future staff manager issue reports. The goal is to ensure that the materials are directly useful to the work of the Council.

Objective
An issue report has three objectives:
- Relevance: to confirm an issue is within ICANN's mission,
- Description: to explain what the issue is, who it affects, what support there is to address the issue,
- Recommendation: to recommend whether or not the GNSO should start a PDP.

The by-laws lay down a structure as to how the above objectives may be met. http://www.icann.org/general/bylaws.htm#AnnexA

What SHOULD NOT be in the issues report
The report has a short time frame (15 calendar days). This tells us that it is NOT intended to contain:
- options for solutions,
- options for how the Council may proceed,
- responses to a formal consultation of constituencies (this comes later if the PDP goes ahead),
- nor should it be necessary to supplement it with documents such as FAQs.
What SHOULD the issues report look like? It should be the primary document needed for the Council to make a decision whether to proceed or not with a PDP. It should include links to existing documents that provide directly relevant background.

The report must be clear in its recommendation to Council. Past reports have not had this clarity and the GNSO chairman has been obliged to draft terms of reference for a Council WG in an attempt to provide such clarity. It would be more appropriate if the report itself proposed such terms of reference (recognising that Council may choose to modify them). Therefore all future issues reports should contain:
- proposed terms of reference for a Council working group drafted in a practical and manageable way and reflecting a possible priority of sub-issues.
The length of an issues report will be guided by the topic. Some issues reports may be very short; others may be lengthier but none need be long.
Summary of guidelines
The issue report should:
1. Describe an issue but NOT explore options.
2. Provide directly relevant background and links.
3. Recommend whether to proceed or not.
4. Propose terms of reference for a Council WG.
5. Be provided to Council within the 15 day time frame laid out in the by-laws.

Bruce Tonkin commented that the object of the issues report was to identify the issues and establish the terms of reference. As far as the constituency statements were concerned, it was a question of having the right amount of detail for the Staff to work on.
Barbara Roseman welcomed having guidelines on the issues report and made the distinction between an issues report requested from the Board and one requested from the GNSO Council. The concern was to not to over summarize for fear of being misinterpreted.
Marilyn Cade mentioned that there were tools available for making summaries and that the importance of ICANN staff in the process was the neutrality aspect in providing structural support. In addition she urged that the GNSO secretariat and Barbara Roseman document the timelines. In addition there should be cognition that some of the deliverables may not be achievable as there is no base of extensive knowledge to work from.
Grant Forsyth proposed:
- a diagram of each process,
- the time frames each constituency proposed for each process
- where the decision point would be in each process

Bruce Tonkin dropped off the call momentarily.
Alejandro Pisanty joined the call at 8:55

Philip Sheppard took over the chair in the absence of Bruce Tonkin.

Philip Sheppard moved for the adoption of the Proposed guidelines for the ICANN staff manager's issue report, seconded by Ross Rader.

Resolution carried unanimously, 26/27 votes, 1 absent.

Bruce Tonkin re-joined the call and resumed the chair.

Decision 3: Adoption of the Proposed guidelines for the ICANN staff manager's issue report
Grant Forsyth suggested that if there were to be a revision of the staff manager's summary report, the following categories would be useful:
- Timelines - multiple if necessary
- Decision type - tree to reflect the process
- Side by side comparison of the key components

Bruce Tonkin commented that when discussing the timelines with the ICANN Board at the informal breakfast meeting, he would emphasize that data collection was an important phase.

Item 5: Election process for ICANN Board seat #13
- review nominations received - confirm timeline for voting
Bruce Tonkin referred to the timely reminder for the ICANN Board election, seat #13 and the 2 week nomination period ending 19 February which he had announced to the GNSO Council.
ICANN General Counsel confirmed that Alejandro Pisanty was eligible for re-election.
Bruce Tonkin notified Council that nominations were open until 19 February.
There was one nomination for Alejandro Pisanty by Cary Karp, seconded by Amadeu Abril l Abril during the period ending 19/20 February.
The GNSO Council members approved the 14 day period for nominations and accepted the one nomination.
Alejandro Pisanty was invited to join the GNSO Council teleconference and made the following statement:
He had been waiting for formal approval of the process and thanked the GNSO Council for the invitation to make a statement. It was his intention to continue for one more period as an ICANN board Director after which the bylaws made it impossible to stay longer so assuring the necessary rotation and refreshing the population on the Board. He committed himself to strengthen ICANN, make it receptive and put it more in contact with other organizations that were vying for roles in the future ICANN, He is one of the most insistent Board members keeping ICANN to its set mission and avoiding temptations to step out of its mission. There has been pressure from the World Summit Information Society (WSIS) to enter discussions with other organizations all over the world. This presents an extraordinary challenge for ICANN. The way ICANN is working should serve as an example of what the ICANN community, that embraces among other, the At large and non commercial communities, can do.
There are other organizations like the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and governments that try to bring a more governmental approach to ICANN. A long term strategy is needed.
There is room for a number of improvements internally:
Going forward with the full incorporation of ICANN, with the full inclusion of the RIRs and the start of operation of the ccNSO.
Changing the ICANN constitution to be more actively involved in the Regional Internet Registries (RIR)
Improving the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) operations. He felt that the GNSO was the most active and thoroughly constituted supporting organization which acted as a barometer for improvements.
Areas to be worked and which needed a lot of communication and information included the gTLDs and the international domain names.
Bruce Tonkin commented from a registrar's point of view that in some of the processes within ICANN, it was doing well in liaising with adhoc bodies such as the ccTLDs and the ITU. It would be useful to have metrics and performance guidelines in response to implementing policies created by the GNSO Council.
Alejandro Pisanty expressed the desire to work closely on a one to one base with Bruce Tonkin and other Council members on these issues starting as soon as possible.
The nomination came from a GNSO Council member, the period was officially closed and Bruce Tonkin proposed moving to the vote seconded by Philip Sheppard. Ken Stubbs called the question.

Alejando Pisanty left the call.

The GNSO Council voted on the motion.

The motion carried unanimously, 26 votes, one absent

Alejandro Pisanty fills the ICANN Board seat #13 for one term.
Alejandro Pisanty was re-elected for this third and final term in accordance with the ICANN bylaws, and this term is to run through 6 months following the ICANN annual meeting in 2006.

Decision 4 : Alejandro Pisanty fills the ICANN Board seat #13 for one term. Alejandro Pisanty was re-elected for this third and final term in accordance with the ICANN bylaws, and this term is to run through 6 months following the ICANN annual meeting in 2006.

Any Other Business:

Christopher Wilkinson commented that the GAC would spend increasing time with high priority on policies for new gTLDs.

Bruce Tonkin declared GNSO meeting closed, thanked Philip Sheppard for chairing in his absence and everybody for attending.
The meeting ended: 20:25 UTC

• Next GNSO Council meeting in Rome on March 3, 2004, at 16:00 local time
  see: Calendar