GNSO Council Teleconference Minutes
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28 September 2006 Proposed agenda and meeting documents List of attendees: 13 Council Members Philip Sheppard chaired this meeting Motion approved. It was noted that status reports were required on work items in both sets of minutes. Philip Sheppard proposed deferring the substance of the letter to the next meeting as some Council members had not seen the correspondence, but outlined the General Counsels response. Philip Sheppard referred to Bruce Tonkin's recommendation There was general support for the PDP-Feb06 task force to continue its work and appoint an interim chair. Given the present situation,additional staffing support was required and that council should lend support to senior staff to examine providing additional resources, including support for a face to face meeting. Ken Stubbs commented that the Registry constituency had strong feelings about delaying decisions on changes to the existing gTLD agreements, and was not in agreement with the delay. The discussion was strongly in favour of the ICANN Board hearing the public discussion during and the transparency that the ICANN meetings in Sao Paulo would provide to critical issues that related to consensus policy. The GNSO Council would assist the PDPFeb06 task force to prioritize issues. a) To instruct the PDPFeb06 task force to continue its work, to appoint Philip Sheppard, seconded by Ross Rader proposed: The GNSO Council resolves: To request the Board to delay any decision on the .biz .info and .org agreements until the ICANN Board meeting after the Sao Paolo ICANN meetings 2006 and to take into account the current outcome of the PDPFeb06 task force at that time. Avri Doria's friendly amendment was accepted: Roll call vote. The motion passed. 6 votes against, (Kiyoshi Tsuru dropped off the call at the time of the vote) Decision 2: a) To instruct the PDPFeb06 task force to continue its work, to appoint Decision 3: To request the Board to delay any decision on the .biz .info and .org agreements until the ICANN Board meeting after the Sao Paolo ICANN meetings 2006 and to take into account the current outcome of the PDPFeb06 task force at that time. Item 4: Proposed bylaws amendment to improve transparency with respect to contract approvals Philip Sheppard outlined the background to item 4 that related to an August 2005 request from the Council to the ICANN Board that the GNSO should have notification when there were changes in contract provisions made by ICANN agreements. Notice and comment on gTLD agreement approvals Dan Halloran commented that the goal, in preparing this language, was to attempt to meet the GNSO's needs, while not (inadvertently) requiring the ICANN Board to post every consulting contract or grammar correction to a registry agreement. The original text from Jon Nevett suggested putting 'contract approvals' in section 6 which covers how ICANN treats proposed new policies that could affect third parties and in some cases parties that have agreed to comply with policies, but have not specifically agreed to follow a particular policy. In this case, proven bi-lateral agreements between ICANN and a contracted party which are recognised to have an impact on third parties. This clarified exactly which contracts would be subject, particularly any gTLD registry or registrar agreement with material provisions that substantially differed from past ICANN agreements. The question arose whether 'substantially' would be the appropriate word as the circumstances related to contractual conditions that would result in some policy changes. A substantial change to a TLD might not necessarily be a substantial difference from other TLDs. For example, changing dot aero from a restricted TLD for the airline transport industry to an open restricted TLD would be a substantial difference for dot aero but it would be the same as other ICANN contracts. This point should be caught in revised language. Philip Sheppard noted that Council agreed in principle with a new section 7 but the issue was the precise wording. Philip Sheppard outlined that Council had agreed on a separate policy development process (PDP) on IDNs acknowledging the current PDP on new Top level domains as well. There was general agreement on the IDN terms of reference, Philip Sheppard proposed two work items: Olof Nordling was requested to prepare for the next Council meeting on 19 October 2006, Item 7: Motion proposed by Philip Sheppard Article X section 6 of the bylaws states: “Initially, the policy-development procedures to be followed by the GNSO shall be as stated in Annex A to these Bylaws”. Annex A of the bylaws contains procedures for the GNSO policy development process; Experience has shown that the procedures of Annex A are inappropriate for the work of the GNSO; Recommendation 5 of the 2004 GNSO Council review recommended changing the procedures; The ICANN by-laws are not the place for such procedures which may need to be re-visited frequently. The GNSO Council resolves: b) To request ICANN staff to submit those new procedures to Council for approval; c) To request ICANN staff to then inform the Board that the Council has adopted new procedures; d) and that therefore the Council requests the Board: - In the event that the Council reached a Supermajority Vote, the Board shall adopt the policy according to the Council Supermajority Vote recommendation unless by a vote of more than sixty-six (66%) percent of the Board determines that such policy is not in the best interests of the ICANN community or ICANN. - In the event that the Board determines not to act in accordance with the Council Supermajority Vote recommendation, the Board shall (i) articulate the reasons for its determination in a report to the Council (the "Board Statement"); and (ii) submit the Board Statement to the Council. The GNSO Council resolves Passed by acclaim On Tuesday, 3 October, 2006, at 12:00 UTC, a teleconference is scheduled with a short powerpoint presentation from Prof. Patrick Dunleavy followed by a question and answer session for Council and constituency members and other interested parties. In reaction to the joint working groups it was clarified that the Supporting Organisations made up ICANN as opposed to the ICANN Board dictating to the supporting organisations. The Secretariat posted a skeleton schedule to the Council list and councillors were requested to comment. Philip Sheppard formally closed the meeting and thanked everybody for participating.
Summary of Work Items arising from the minutes: a) To instruct the PDPFeb06 task force to continue its work, to appoint 4. Decision 3: To request the Board to delay any decision on the .biz .info and .org agreements until the ICANN Board meeting after the Sao Paolo ICANN meetings 2006 and to take into account the current outcome of the PDPFeb06 task force at that time.
7. Decision 4. |