ICANN Brussels
ICANN Public Forum
Thursday, 24 June 2010


>> Ladies and gentlemen, we'll be beginning our public forum in just
one minute.  If you can become settled and take your seats, we would
appreciate it very much.

Thank you.

>> Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome chairman, board of ICANN,
Peter Dengate Thrush.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Nancy.  Welcome, everybody, to
the forum.  I hope like us, you're appreciating the time shift.  It's
amazing how much more relaxed we are to be doing this at this time of
the day.  Look forward to a very healthy interaction with our
community on the issues mostly derived from the board's agenda
tomorrow.

Another slight departure to make life easier for the presenters.
We're going to begin the forum with our hosts from the Colombian
meeting.  I wonder if you could come and tell us all you have in store
for us for Cartagena in December.

>>NICOLAI BEZSONOFF:  Peter, thank you so much for that nice
introduction.  And thank you, ICANN, for giving the republic of
Colombia the opportunity to share our country, culture, and
hospitality with all of you as the host of the 39th global ICANN
meeting in beautiful, historic Cartagena, Colombia, the city where I
was born.  My name is Nicolai Bezsonoff.  I'm the chief operating
officer of .CO Internet and I couldn't be more excited to be here
today, along with my colleagues, Eduardo Santoyo, our ccTLD manager,
and Lori Anne Wardi, our director of marketing for .CO Internet.

And we would like to extend this invitation to all of you to join us
for the next ICANN meeting in Cartagena in December.

While holding the next ICANN meeting in Cartagena certainly makes me
feel proud, the significance of hosting the next ICANN meeting goes
far beyond my own nationalistic pride.

Let me tell you a little bit more why I'm so proud of my country,
Colombia.

Colombia today is very different than the Colombia of ten years ago.

Colombia has emerged and moved up to become the 28th largest economy
in the world, third largest in Latin America, thanks to international
trade, innovation, and a strong democratic relationship.  Colombia as
a country has also improved its safety dramatically, which resulted in
significant increase in foreign direct investment, innovation, and
cooperation in trade and commerce.

Along that, Colombia has introduced major new information and
technology policies over the last 24 months which have resulted in
significant increase in the telecommunications and I.T. industries
growth and investment.

Also, the government has invested significant resources in e-
government initiatives, which have resulted in recognition by the
United Nations of Colombia being the most innovative E-government in
Latin America in recent years.

And, finally, Internet access has improved significantly in Colombia.
We have recently reached 48% penetration, Internet, with two million
broadband connections.  For our company, as recently designated ccTLD
manager for the .CO domain, we both recognize and embrace our
responsibility to be -- to serve as trustees of the .CO domain, and a
mandate given by the government of Colombia, ICANN, and the
international community at large.

And we are committed to make .CO available to the world in a
responsible and secure manner.

Hosting you in Cartagena is a way for us to demonstrate that
commitment, and it reflects that .CO is open for the world.

So I leave you with this video, which shows you a little bit more
about the heart and spirit of Colombia, the Colombian people, and I'm
sure it will leave you feeling as excited as I am about Colombia and
all that it has to offer.

Thank you.

[ Applause ]

[ Video. ]

>> If the heart of a Colombian were able to speak out, it would tell
us many things.  It would say that it is pleased to live in this
country, because people here never stop smiling and living
passionately.  It would whisper in our ears that it loves to come to
that seashore where it once came and of which it is almost impossible
to forget.  It would sing aloud a chant, or it would read once and
again the books written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

It would become speechless by discovering that in this country, there
are many good-hearted and working people, and it would sigh just by
seeing any of our lovely women passing by.  If the heart of a
Colombian could fly, it would run around all of our natural reserve
parks in just one day, and it would oxygenate itself with the beauty.

It would spin around in the air to the rhythm of our sound.  It would
climb up to any of our snow-capped mountains and cool a delicious out
meal drink.  Then this heart would land in the more than 300 festivals
we hold, and it would enjoy them deep down F the heart of a Colombian
could make -- it would be inspired by the tunes produced by the over
2,000 species of birds making their homes in our mountains.  And it
would make an orchestra for the songs of the hunch backed whales from
the Pacific Ocean and the pink-colored dolphins from the Amazon.

If the heart of a Colombian were able to touch, it would passionately
hug the mountain ranges going through the middle of our country, and
then it would make a costume to the moon out of the yarns and fibers
of our cloths, flowers, and land.

If the heart of a Colombian could see, it would choose the colors of
the works by artists and paint a fairy tale to the world.  It would
look upon the sea from the snow-capped mountains, and when closing its
eyes, it would dream of eagerly exploring the regions from a glider.

It would become a lens to take pictures of all of our museums, and it
would make an album with the exceptional handcrafts.

If the heart of a Colombian were able to taste, it would not be able
to decide what to have, whether the coconut rice of our coastline
region or the soup, or the juice of the more than 500 fruits that
naturally grow here.

If the heart of a Colombian could decide what to be, it would decide
to be the heart of a Colombian again.  Because it is the only one who
enjoys the passion with which we Colombians do everything.  It is the
one who knows that the heartbeat of a Colombian is much stronger and
more passionate than any other.  And it is the only one who knows that
when somebody comes to see our country, they will be received with all
our hearts.

Come to Colombia, and enjoy the 42 million passionate and dreaming
hearts of its people, and the 1,141,748 square kilometers of the world
that you have to meet.  Colombia is all about being Colombian.  And
that is why Colombia is passion.

[ Applause ]

>>LORI ANNE WARDI:   Thank you very much.  My name is Lori Anne Wardi.
And I am the director of marketing of .CO Internet.  Unlike Nicolai
and Eduardo, my colleagues, I was not born in Colombia or,
specifically, Cartagena.  In fact, I was born in Brooklyn, New York.
And the first time that I went to Colombia was a couple of years ago.
And you would think, you know, being from New York, I would be a
pretty tough cookie, but I actually had some concerns, believe it or
not, as I decided to take that trip.  And the reason I'm mentioning
this is because I suspect there may be one or two of you in the
audience here that might have a concern or two about making that trip.
And I wanted to just let you all know that I've made the trip many,
many times since then, and I can say with complete and total
confidence that this is not a trip you will want to miss.  This is a
trip that will -- you will want to go back for many, many times.

Whatever stereotypes and misconceptions there are about the country of
Colombia and about travel to Colombia, I ask that you take this
opportunity to give Colombia a chance to make a great impression on
you.

So the video you just saw a moment ago really portrays the heart and
soul of what Colombia is all about.  Colombia is an extraordinarily
passionate country.  The people are really always smiling.  It's
fantastic.  Friendly, warm, passionate, hard-working men and women who
are proud of their country, whose spirit and soul will totally
surprise and inspire you.  And the energy of the community is just
incredible.

And that is particularly true as it relates to Cartagena.  Cartagena
is the jewel of Colombia.  And, really, throughout Latin America, is
considered a fantastic vacation destination and more and more becoming
a fantastic place for business to convene and for groups like this to
get together and conduct business.

It's a spectacular Spanish colonial city, and it opens up the southern
Caribbean right before your eyes.

So it's been declared a world heritage site by UNESCO.  It's a city of
international culture that really does not forget about the importance
of the local culture and just celebrates the local culture.

And within Cartagena, there is really a melding of history, of music,
of rhythm, of the sea.  You'll see it's a melding of palm trees and
sunlight on beautiful, pristine beaches, really fantastic beaches.
It's a city of art, and architecture, of -- and, really, you get to
celebrate and enjoy the mysteries of ages gone by.  At the very heart
of Cartagena, it's about the flavor of the city.  And the locals
really welcome you with open arms, and, most importantly, with the
world's most delicious coffee.

Within Cartagena, you can stroll beautiful beaches, colonial villages,
take in all sorts of fun night life, fantastic night life, actually,
and enjoy the tastes and smells of delicious local cuisine.

And there's accommodations there really across the board for every
taste and budget.  So you'll find things from luxury hotels in
stunning old mansions and cloisters to small and unique hotels that
are located right next to lush jungle and seaside.

So regarding the weather, on top of this, you really can't get any
better than Cartagena, because it's located near the equator, it has
just amazing tropical weather, and it's consistent around the year.

And, actually, just timing-wise, I know this does not really ever
factor into your decision about whether or not to attend an ICANN
meeting, but for those of you, you know, in the cold climates, I
suspect that in December, you'll be really excited to be in Cartagena
for that couple of days.

So for your information, the ICANN Web site about Cartagena will be
live at the end of today.  And I encourage all of you to take a visit,
look around the site, and make sure you book your reservations early,
because they will fill quickly.

And we look forward to seeing you all there.  And just to remind you,
the only risk that you have in visiting Cartagena is that you'll want
to stay.

Thanks.

[ Applause ]

>>EDUARDO SANTOYO:   Thank you, Lori Anne.

I will speak in Spanish.

(No translation to scribes) I always wanted to be here for having
selected Colombia, and more specifically, Cartagena, as the next city
where the -- ICANN's meeting will take place in December this year.

We are very proud of this opportunity, and we are working very hard to
give you the possibility of -- of being there, and, of course, to
offer you the best of our cities, so the meeting will be very
successful.

In Colombia, there is a huge team who is working, for instance, the
ministry for commerce, industry, the ministry of technology and
communications, local authorities of the city of Cartagena de Indias.
So a group has been tapped to carry out this huge effort together with
ICANN so we can make the most of the city and to offer you the best of
our city.

Now I would like to seize this opportunity to invite you all to our
city.

And, of course, we want to have a presence of our friends from Latin
America, because we want to improve our participation in Internet
government forums at global level, and in order to assume bigger
responsibility in developing these forums.  And then, of course, we
will keep working in identifying the best ways for Internet to help
our communities to develop, and, of course, taking into account the
education opportunities.  And, of course, our main goal is to improve
life conditions of our inhabitants.

So thank you very much, all of you.  Thank you very much to the
ICANN's board for giving me the opportunity, for giving us the
excellent opportunity of holding the next meeting in Cartagena.  You
are very welcome to our city.

Thank you very much, indeed.

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Eduardo, Lori, and Nicolai.  Thank
you for that.  I'm looking forward with huge enthusiasm to coming to
Colombia, so much so, I can tell you, I'm bringing my children.  We're
going to make it a really big event.  Thank you for that.

Moving on to the next items, first of all some discussion about the
arrangements.  I wonder if you can put up the slide, please, that we
begin the session which deals with ICANN's expected standards of
behavior for public meetings of this sort.  You have seen this before,
most of you, but just a reminder.  We encourage participants to
communicate with respect, to listen carefully to others.  You have to
take responsibility for your own words and actions.  Please keep your
criticisms constructive.  Criticism is welcomed provided it's done in
that sense.  Please do respect the diversity of others and the
tolerance of the differences in the views.  That's part of the
strength of ICANN.  And please adhere to the expected standards of
behavior as published.

So thank you for that.  And now, if I could just call on Rob Hoggarth
to explain some of the mechanics and processes that we'll be applying
in terms of remote participation for this session.  As you know, we
strive to make ICANN a model of remote participation for discussions
such as this.

Now, I can't see Rob, so I am just going to ask -- call into the dark,
Rob, are you there?

>>ROB HOGGARTH:   Yes, Peter, I am.

Thank you.

[ Laughter ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Oh, my goodness.

>>ROB HOGGARTH:   Currently we have 38 remote participants
participating in our Adobe Connect room.  I see some of them actually
here in the hall.  We'd like to think that the Adobe Connect
experience also makes the in-person experience better, so we invite
you to participate through Adobe Connect.

What we intend to do, and the underlying purpose of remote
participation, is to equalize the experience for those who aren't here
to be equal to those of you here.  As a result, as Peter goes through
the various topics, he will occasionally ask me if we have comments
from the remote participants.

The format that we use for submitting comments and questions remotely
in a public forum like this is to utilize our Wufoo form system.  The
links for those forms are on our schedule page for this session on the
Brussels meeting page.

So feel free, if you aren't particularly comfortable standing up in
front of 400 people, to make use of those forms and we will make every
effort to get the written and submitted comments shared, as well as
the ones that are made at the microphones here in the room.

For those of you who may be concerned, as many pros of the public
forum are aware, although we have close to five hours of public
comment today, there's always a group of folks at the microphone at
the end.  You can also take advantage of the forum system to submit
your comments or questions.  They will be a part of the permanent
record of the session, and we will answer all questions that are made
and asked in those sessions, and we'll make sure the appropriate
staffer takes on that responsibility.

Thank you, Peter.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Rob.

Let's move, then, to the first item of substantive business, and
that's the further review by the board of ICM, an applicant for top-
level domain.  They applied for the top-level domain of XXX some time
ago.  The board, as many of you know, decided in a split vote to
decline that application.  And ICM then used the appeal mechanism, if
you like, in the bylaws, the application for an independent review of
the board's decision to determine whether the board had lived by its
bylaws.  And as many of you well know, the decision came down two to
one that, no, the board had not lived according to its bylaws and
should not have taken a particular step in its reconsideration of that
application.

The particular step that was most mentioned in the decision is the
decision to review whether or not the applicant meant the sponsorship
criteria, and the panelists found that we should not have gone back
and opened that up.  So we then have to decide what to do about that
recommendation.

What we did do at the Nairobi meeting was published for the first time
the kind of decision tree of the various options that we thought were
available to the board just to share with the community what our kind
of thinking processes were and what the various options might be in
terms of dealing with this.

We then had an extraordinary flood of public submissions in response
to our request for comment on that, and we come to this meeting now
hoping to try and make sense of the public comment and see whether we
can chart a way forward.

And I thought it might be helpful to call on General Counsel who has
been assisting us in this process just to explain the sort of trends
and the direction we're moving in.

I know John doesn't need me to say this kind of thing, and he'll say
the same, but this is clearly without prejudice.  The board is not
meeting at the moment.  This is a public forum to hear your comments.
But we thought it might be helpful just to give an indication of some
of the features.

So, John, take it away.

>>JOHN JEFFREY:   Certainly.

So as Peter has mentioned, the posting of the board's proposed process
on this was unprecedented.  For the first time, the ICANN board
published a decision-making process that it might use for
consideration of an important topic.  Over 13,000 comments were
received, and the board has reviewed a summary of those comments in
considering how to move forward.  The board has reviewed this topic in
detail and is considering the following path subject to the comments
taken in this forum and further board consideration prior to the
meeting tomorrow.

Number one, the board proposes to accept and act in accordance with
the Independent Review Process majority.

One, that the board of ICANN in adopting its resolutions of June 1,
2005, found that the application of the ICM registry of the XXX sTLD
met the required sponsorship criteria.  And, two, the board's
reconsideration of that finding was not consistent with the
application of neutral, objective, and fair documented policy.

Two, the board proposes to direct staff to conduct an expedited due
diligence to ensure that the ICM application is, "A," still current,
and, "B," that there have been no changes in conditions.

Third, if expedited due diligence is successful, then staff will
proceed into contract negotiations with ICM.

Number four, upon finalizing a draft contract, the board will
determine whether the proposed contract is consistent with GAC's
advice, and if not, will enter into a GAC consultation following the
provisions of the ICANN bylaws.

And last, based upon that GAC consultation, the board would decide
whether to approve the contract and would declare whether it is in
accordance with GAC advice or not.

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, John, and thanks for the response
to that careful presentation from General Counsel.  It's not often you
get clapped at for describing legal matters, John, so well done.

So that's an outline of our possible way forward.  And I guess we now
need to throw the floor open to public comment on this issue.

You'll see on the screen, I hope, a three-minute timer.  I think those
of you who have been to these meetings before know sometimes,
depending on the number of people, we have had a two-minute timers and
sometimes a one-minute timer.  So I reserve the right as chair to
reduce that down depending on the flow rate.

So at this point you have three minutes each to make comments.
Forgive me, the lighting is difficult but I think it's Marilyn Cade.

>>MARILYN CADE:   Thank you, Peter.  My name is Marilyn Cade and I am
speaking as an individual, and I would like to thank the board for
taking very seriously the importance of understanding the implications
related to accountability when you devise this response.  The
acceptance of the Independent Review Panel majority recommendation is
the right thing to do for ICANN, it is the right thing to do for the
particular applicant as well, and I applaud you for doing that.

I have, in the past, spoken in support of the intents of this
particular registry application, but my comments today, while I do
support this particular registry application and the approach that
they have taken, and I do think that they will bring great value to
the space, I also applaud the board for having stepped up to our
responsibility as a community to provide an appeals process and to
adhere to the findings of the Independent Review Panel majority.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Marilyn.  I can't see who is
behind you, but sir, you have the floor.

>>FERNANDO GUERRERO:  Thank you.  My name is Fernando Guerrero.  I
manage a small international company based in Spain, and I had
opportunity this week to be in a dinner at the European Parliament
with some of you, and I was very interested in the discussion about
the future of ICANN related to this matter as well, but mostly about
the Affirmation of Commitments and how the different countries were
pleased to have a possibility of taking some accountability measures
that can make ICANN accountable beyond just accountability that was
formally done by the U.S. government only.

So many of the European Parliamentarians who were there were very
pleased by that, but at the same time, I heard the president of the
board saying that the Affirmation of Commitments were supposed to be a
temporary solution that were going to be soon to be terminated.
Perhaps I misunderstood this.  But if that was the case, and this
Affirmation of Commitments are going to be temporary only, how do you
expect us, the community at large and the governments, to make the
ICANN board accountable for decisions as anything related to the new
dot XXX TLD, for instance?

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, sir.

The president who gave that speech to the European Parliament is here,
so I have asked him to respond on this question of whether or not this
is a temporary situation or not.

Rod.

>>ROD BECKSTROM:   Sure.  Well, it will be whoever we wish it to be.
The intention is that it be an ongoing long-term or perpetual
document.  And perpetual is the term that I use, and the reason I say
that it will be what we want it to be is because both parties to the
Affirmation of Commitments have the right to leave the agreement at
any time.

Now, obviously, that's only going to happen if there's some major
issues that would arise between the parties.  So I think we view that
very constructively for ICANN overall, since the previous agreements,
the JPA, were typically created on three-year cycles with annual
renewals, for example, in the MOU.

So the fact that it lasts longer term I think we view in a positive
fashion.  But again, if at any time it doesn't meet where we are as an
organization, then we can consider that issue, as can the United
States Department of Commerce, the other party involved.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Rod.  Can I just add to that that we
regard this current arrangement as very much more stable than the
previous one.  The very existence of the agreement used to come up for
review.  What comes up for review now is simply the performance
requirements against ICANN.

So the very nature of the relationship is no longer constantly being
challenged.  The decisions being made that ICANN is the right place to
be doing these jobs and what we now do periodically is check to see
how well we're doing it.  And that's an enormously different
arrangement which is far more stable.

Next in line, please.

>>LIZ WILLIAMS:  Yes, my name is Liz Williams.  I am making this
comment about ICM's application for the XXX top-level domain in my
personal capacity.  I currently provide advice to a number of new TLD
applicants, and my comments, whilst they may not reflect the views of
those particular applicants or their organizations, I do make them
with their interests close to my heart.

I wanted to also provide some context for my comments, especially
given John's very precise and welcomed analysis of what he thinks the
way forward is.

I attended my first ICANN meeting in Los Angeles in 1999 to commence
my Ph.D. research into the globalization of the Domain Name System and
the impact of national governments on ICANN's work.  And it seems,
given what John has just said, that that is still a very component of
ICANN's work.

During 2002, I was elected to the dot AU domain administrations board
and I was the deputy chair of the board during my term.  During 2003
and 2004 I was retained by ICANN to develop the application system for
the 2004 round of new TLDs.  Subsequent to that I was the chair of the
sponsorship and other regulatory issues evaluation team, which was
responsible for the analysis of the ten applications, and the dot XXX
application was only one of those.

Between 2005 and 2007 I was retained by ICANN to work here in Brussels
as the lead policy development person on the PDP for new top-level
domains and for contractual conditions on registry operators.  I have
also acted as an elected member of ICANN's Nominating Committee.  So
the brief introduction is to say things take a long time and I do have
some different perspectives on the way things happen here.

Last year I was asked to be an expert witness along with Becky Burr,
Milton Mueller, and Harvard professor Jack Goldsmith for ICM's
registry application for review onto ICANN's international
arbitration.  Of course the results of that arbitration are now common
knowledge and we know the steps we need to take.

The only thing I would do now is to turn the discussion around to the
impact of any delay on any potential new TLD applicant.  The board has
an opportunity here to act as John has said expeditiously, quickly,
precisely, and affirmatively to move to the next stage of their
operations to enable the XXX application to finally become real after
a very, very, very long and expensive time.

XXX, leaving aside that particular issue for the moment, the greatest
issue that the board has before it is any quibbling or any delay or
any further discussion of the XXX application with respect to new TLD
applicants tells any applicant, any government, any community, any
board of shareholders, any taxpayer that their application may well be
under threat if the board is not able to act clearly and precisely
about an application system.  And we certainly do not want to go back
down the road of six years of very long and expensive work for any new
TLD applicant for any kind of application.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Liz.

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Just I see people gathering around that
microphone.  Just a reminder, there's a microphone over here for this
side of the room.

Next in line, please.

>>DIANE DUKE:  Thank you, and I want to thank you for the opportunity
to speak.  My name is Diane Duke and I am the executive director for
the Free Speech Coalition.  We are the trade association for the adult
entertainment industry

I would like to speak about a number of concerns that we have about
the sTLD dot XXX.  One of our first concerns is the wavering
definition of what sponsorship community is.  According to the 2004
criteria, the definition of sponsorship community is broad based,
which means more than just two men and a dog.

We have evidence -- and that you have to provide evidence of support
from the sponsoring organization.  Support for the sTLD, support for
the sponsoring organization and support for the proposed policy
formation process.

Not only is there lack of support for that in the adult entertainment
industry, there's outright opposition.

We believe that ICANN that is been misled by ICM as far as the level
of support from the adult entertainment industry.  Many of the -- we
also believe that many of the support -- people of support, businesses
of support that they have reported to ICANN comes from the original
application that they did in 2000 for the gTLD.  And many of those
businesses are out of businesses, and those same businesses do not
support an  sTLD.

We also believe that some of the preregistered names that are
mentioned are defensive in nature, and also registries who are just
looking to sell those names later on.

I want to address the public comment period because there were a
number of names, there were a number of issues around that as well.

If you look at the support from the adult community for dot XXX there
are 255.  200 and 40 of those are names listed by ICM as a
compilation.

We couldn't find anybody in our industry who knew any of those people.
Not only that, we couldn't even -- we had a very difficult time
finding those names on the Internet at all.  The only time that they
showed up was on -- in the ICANN registry under the -- I mean in the
ICANN notes under the public comment periods.  And of those, we did
find 14.  Of those, two of them were adult registries, one was an
advertising company, five were just mainstream registries, one was a
religious organization, and as anybody who has looked at the public
comment period knows that there was a lot of comments from the
religious organizations, two were software companies and one was a Web
service.

So even of the compilation that was reported by ICANN, we could only
find 14 of those.  Of those 14, only two had anything to do with the
adult entertainment industry.

FSC supports option number three because we believe that the board got
it right in 2007 in Lisbon.  We believe that there was no lack of
support for the dot XXX, and that the board recognized that and GAC
said that as well.

And so we believe that that is the true -- the right decision.

However, if the board does move forward with acknowledging and
accepting the option number -- accepting the IRP's decision, we do
hope that you will move forward with utilizing the criteria and find
out if that criteria is still met today.

We offer our resources if we can help new the due diligence process.

Thank you very much.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Ms. Duke.

Can I just check with that voice that calls itself Rob.  Rob, are you
there and are there any online questions or comments?

>>ROB HOGGARTH:   Yes, Peter, thanks.  George Kirikos of Leap of Faith
Financial Services submitted the following statements last question.
As ICANN acknowledged a few days ago, they have apparently red the Tim
Berners-Lee document which opposed the introduction of new TLDs,
including dot XXX.  He wrote that, quote, "The root of the Domain Name
System is a single public resource by design.  Its control must be for
and indirectly by the people as a whole.  To give away a large chunk
of this to a private group would be simply a betrayal of the public
trust put in ICANN," end quote.

Why does ICANN believe that it is right and Tim Berners-Lee wrong in
its plans to give away a large chunk to private groups.

Furthermore, what has been the economic impact in millions of dollars
for all past new TLDs, both benefits and costs?

What would be the economic impact, both costs and benefits in millions
of dollars for dot XXX?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I have some difficulty translating or
applying any of that to the current topic, unfortunately, but I hear
what he has to say.

Can we go back to this side.  It's your turn.

>>STEVE DELBIANCO:   Thank you, Steve DelBianco from net choice
speaking entirely in my personal capacity, and do I believe that the
XXX has met the criteria and I do encourage the board to honor the
decision of the review board and stick to the process, but I have two
requests about that.

Even if you are absolutely dead certain that you have followed GAC
advice in every way, I would ask you to still communicate that clearly
to the GAC.  Be as respectful and specific as understanding you can to
the GAC at describing why you believe you haven't in any way
conflicted with their advice.  And I think in that consideration, we
probably ought to be expansive in what we consider advice to be,
especially given the discussion that went on Sunday.  And that would
include winks and nods as you said and conversations that the GAC is
formally communicating what it believes.

And I think that if we do that, we'll have a much better opportunity
to make things go smoothly in the year or two ahead, because look at
what's in front of us.  We are encouraging governments to embrace the
Affirmation of Commitments.  It's that new era of global
accountability.  We are encouraging governments to enroll in ever
greater numbers and send people to ICANN meetings through their GAC
representations.  And we want them to renew the IGF, the Internet
Governance Forum, later this year at the United Nations.

Those are three good reasons to follow what I always heard was a good
rule when you are working with people that you need help from, and
that is don't move in the giant.  Let's make this as respectful as we
can.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Steve, I think that's certainly good advice
to treat the GAC and our dealings with them with great respect and
clarity.

I think the point is rather, from what John was saying, that if we go
ahead with this that we will be in conflict with GAC advice.  And the
issue then brings into bear that mediation part of the bylaw which
says we are obliged to have a very careful negotiation with the GAC.
So rest assured if we get into that negotiation we will do that with
the greatest respect for everyone's views.  But thank you.

>>MICHELE NEYLON:   Hi, it's Michele Neylon from Blacknight in
Ireland, and I just wanted to go on the record in saying that we would
be very supportive of dot XXX going ahead.

The Independent Review Panel found issues with the processes that the
ICANN board had followed.  So in the view of this new era of
accountability and transparency, we feel that it is important that
ICANN show and lead by example and move forward with dot XXX.

And another thing is in relation to the new TLDs.  If ICANN cannot
follow its own procedures and processes and allows applicants to go
through the entire process as laid out in whatever the final version
of the DAG is, then all of these different interest groups will have
wasted large amounts of times, money and resources.  And ultimately we
as an industry will be seen to be the laughingstock of the modern
world.

Thanks.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  Next in line.

>>TOM HYMES:  Hi, I am Tom Hymes.  I am also with the Free Speech
Coalition.  First, thank you for allowing us the opportunity to speak.

Also, we are acutely aware of the political, legal, and internal
pressures that ICANN board is under to see this application through.
Unfortunately, that said, this is a very difficult situation for us
because we know that our industry does not support this, and yet it's
been very difficult for us to regularly communicate that through
official channels to the board.  And we sincerely hope that in this
expedited framework, we'll be given the opportunity to present our
case to the board.

There's also some unavoidable ironies for us.  Considering with the
current situation, in that in 2000 the board rejected ICM's
application for a gTLD, not least out of concern that ICANN would
ultimately have to regulate content-related issues.

The solution to that problem was to have ICM reapply under the new
sTLD regime in which a sub-org -- in that case, I4, would provide the
regulatory framework that nobody else wanted to be in charge of.

Despite the fact that the industry rejected that scheme, according to
testimony given during the IRP process by ICM's chief executive, ICANN
could still find itself as the final arbiter of content-related
issues.

It would then need to justify its decisions not only to the adult
entertainment industry, but also to outside groups, including those
that contributed so vociferously to the public comment period.

That's really not a place that you want to be.  You do not want that
responsibility, we do not believe, respectfully.

It remains our position that neither ICANN or I-4 will be equipped
with either the expertise, the experience or the support to deal with
those issues.

We come to that conclusion because we deal with them intensively on a
daily basis.  Free Speech Coalition has argued before and won cases
before the U.S. Supreme Court.  It is currently in litigation with the
U.S. federal government and deals regularly with issues ranging from
piracy, censorship, workplace safety, zoning, and many others.

This is what we feel passionately about, and we are very concerned
that this new regulatory body will not serve our industry well.

We look forward to working with the board.  We care very much about
ICANN and the new gTLD framework going forward.  And thank you again
for your hospitality this week.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.

Next in line.  Thank you.

>>PAUL FOODY:   Hi, Paul Foody, speaking on my own behalf.

As someone who, in 2000, sponsored an RCMP officer to go to the top of
Mount McKinley to bring attention to the need for dot XXX, I am
definitely a supporter of a dot XXX.  But at the time what I envisaged
was a tie-in with dot com, so that you would go to a dot com site and
the dot com would describe the sort of content you would be able to
see if you had access to the dot XXX.

Does this dot XXX proposal include any requirement, stipulation on
what can be shown and what will be able to be shown, displayed on dot
com?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   No.

>>PAUL FOODY:   So is there really any point in it?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   That's up to the applicant.

>>PAUL FOODY:   Surely ICANN has a responsibility -- if you are saying
that dot XXX is a good thing, why is it a good thing?  What possible
benefit could it bring if kids going on dot com are still able to get
porn?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  I'm not going to discuss with you the merits
of the application today, Mr. Foody.  The application that -- what
we're discussing today is what to do as a result of the decision of
the panel, finding that the board was wrong to turn it down.

>>PAUL FOODY:  Okay.  But, you know, Tim Berners-Lee says that you are
the guardians of the global resource.  You're giving away a big slice
of this pie.  And once you give away dot XXX, you can't -- you can't
take it back.

So would it not be a better idea to negotiate with VeriSign and say,
"Look, you know, this is what the dot com registrants, you know, might
want" before you enter into an agreement.  Or maybe -- maybe the guys
doing dot XXX would negotiate with VeriSign anyway, but I've made my
point, thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Mr. Foody, they may be very good ideas but
that's not the purview of the board to start talking about commercial
arrangements between this applicant and VeriSign, but by all means,
take it up with those parties.

>>PAUL FOODY:  But you do have a requirement to judge applications on
their merits and their benefits, their social benefits.  I mean,
that's in the economic report.  They talk about social externalities,
benefits to the rest of the community and if you give away this chance
to really make the Internet safer, then, you know, I hope you regret
it.  Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you.  Jean-Jacques wanted to make a
comment.  Jean-Jacques.

>>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT:  No.  I only wanted to ask a question.

The speaker who spoke immediately before Mr. Foody suggested at the
beginning of his intervention that this board was under strong
pressure, political pressure among others, and I wanted to ask --
because I'm not aware of that, and I would not like to be unaware all
my life.  So I would like to ask him to indicate clearly what these
pressures might be, what these pressures are, and this is regardless
of the topic we're talking about here.

Generally speaking, if he thinks we're under strong political
pressure, I'd like to know these pressures, what these pressures are.
Thank you very much.

>>GREG DUMAS: Hi.  My name is Greg Dumas and I represent PANANAMES,
which is the only ICANN accredited registrar in the country of Panama,
next in Colombia, which is a great place and I highly encourage
everyone to attend that conference.

But we also -- we also host a lot of adult domains, and I personally
have been in the adult industry since 1994 in various capacities.  And
I would like to say that, you know -- oh, I'm also a former board
member of the FSC and a strong supporter of the FSC and I'd like to
say that there is support in the community and there -- you know, it
is a hot topic and a lot of people are talking about it, but -- and
there is a lot of quiet support for it and a lot of people -- unlike
myself who is standing up here with a microphone in front of them --
don't really want to talk about it too much because they're afraid of
a little bit of the backlash that could come because a lot of the
people who are against it are their customers and that's important to
understand.  And -- but there is support for it.  Heck, I support it
and I'm from the adult industry, and my clients who own some of the
larger domains or, you know, more popular domains in the industry also
support it.  They're not -- they're not afraid of possibly losing
value of their domains that they've invested a lot of money in,
whether it's developed domains or whatever it is, and I'd like to just
go on record as saying that there is support and, you know, I think
the -- it would be a good thing to have, and especially nowadays.

So that's all I wanted to say.

Again, I'm here representing PANANAMES, not the adult industry.  Thank
you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you.  And the next in line.

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: Thank you, Peter.  My name is Nigel Roberts.  I
happen to own a registry, although that's not the capacity in which
I'm speaking today.  I'm not here to support or to discourage the
application for dot XXX.  I think listening to some of these pros and
cons that we've heard from the various previous speakers, you'd think
that we were trying to re-litigate the merits of this all over again.
Is it a good idea, is it not a good idea.

Well, you've done that.  You've done that ad nauseam.  What this is
about is about the processes that make ICANN what it is, and what it
can be.

There's been a review of a particular decision made.  It happens to be
that that decision is something that is controversial.  It could just
as easily have been a completely uncontroversial decision.

There's been a review.  The review has come to some conclusions.

What I would say is that taking what the review has said to you and
then applying that to the decision that was made, you now have an
opportunity to make that decision again.  You might come to the same
conclusion, but from my reading of the papers, I think it's likely
that you should not.  But as I say, I'm not here to argue the merits
pro dot XXX or against dot XXX.  What's more important -- and they say
that hard cases make bad law, but what's more important is that this
case does not disrupt what some of us have spent the last 10 years or
more building.  Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you, Nigel.  Next in line?

[Applause]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  I think I recognize the former vice chair of
the board, Roberto Gaetano.  Roberto, you are very welcome.

>>ROBERTO GAETANO:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  The reason why I'm -- I
asked for three minutes here is because I was on the board as a
nonvoting member in the beginning and voting member at the end, and so
I participated in these discussions and I would like to explain why I
voted against dot XXX and why I would vote against it again if the
board -- if I were on the board for considering the case.

The reason is that we are talking about the sponsored TLDs and there
is a very specific issue about the sponsored TLDs which is the
criterion, which is the consensus of the community that the sponsored
TLD is addressing.

And at that time, I have heard substantial disagreement from the
people that were part of that community to the creation of the TLD, so
it's like -- I don't know, if we were to create a dot cat with a lot
of Catalan, saying, "Well, we would not subscribe in dot cat in the
first place because we would like to stay where we are in dot com," so
I think that that was the reason.

Now, it is a completely different ball game if dot XXX reapplies as
part of the generic TLD.  That would be subject to a completely
different set of rules, but my understanding of the rules at that time
-- and I think that those rules have to apply in a case of a
reconsideration for dot XXX as a sponsored TLD -- led me to pass the
same judgment, that we don't have the consensus of the community that
is supposed to be using that TLD.  Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you, Roberto.  Marilyn, are you back
for a -- no?  No further speakers on XXX?

Excellent.  Let's move on then to the next topic, which is the posting
of -- proposed posting of some bylaw changes relating to remunerating
the chair of the board.  Now, I've made a practice of not speaking
about this at all so I'm going to hand this topic over to Dennis, and
just as I do that, explain that I've asked John Jeffrey if he would
explain just quickly the background to the bylaws that are proposed.

Dennis, you have the chair.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Thank you, Peter.

John, can we have the explanation of the background?

>>JOHN JEFFREY:  Certainly.  Since ICANN's New Delhi meeting, members
of the community, independent reviewers, and the board have discussed
the concept of board member compensation.  The board discussion has
led to consideration at this time of compensation of the chair, but
not compensation for the entire board.

To properly analyze the idea of board chair compensation, the
following steps have been taken:  Staff was directed to and did obtain
independent comparable compensation data for the board chair to help
determine reasonable compensation.  The board and various board
committees determined that it is appropriate to consider reasonable
compensation for the chair of the board of ICANN.  All nonconflicted
members of the Compensation Committee -- Peter as chair is also a
member of the Compensation Committee but he did not participate in the
discussion at the Compensation Committee, so all nonconflicted members
of that committee carefully considered the independent compensation
data.

The Compensation Committee determined that it would be appropriate for
the board to consider a reasonable level of chair compensation and
further recommended that such compensation be set at $75,000 per year.

The current ICANN bylaws prohibit any board member's compensation, so
a proposed bylaws change is required, and if it were approved, it
would allow for compensation of the ICANN chair.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Thank you, John.  Do we have any comments or
questions from the community?  Bruce.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Can we have a lawyer provide some technical
support to Dr. Tonkin, please?

>>BRUCE TONKIN:  Okay.  We switched to a different mic technology.

I just wanted to kind of just add a little bit to the preamble.

So John's given a provision of, I guess, the legal steps that were
followed.  I guess the preamble is really what we're seeking is
community feedback on whether there is value in compensating the chair
of ICANN, and to get that feedback, we felt it was important to
establish what the level of compensation that would be reasonable, so
that you're making -- you're giving guidance to us in that context.

So I just want to make clear that the real question we're asking is:
Do you think it's reasonable to compensate the chair of ICANN?  And
we're giving you an indication of what level it would be if there was
community support for that idea.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Thank you, Bruce.  I see we have a line.  Do we
have any online questions first?

>>ROB HOGGARTH:  Not at this moment, Dennis.  Thanks.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Thank you.  We'll take the first question from the
microphone on my right.

>>ANTONY VAN COUVERING: Hi.  This is Antony Van Couvering from Minds
and Machines, and frankly I'm shocked and appalled at this proposal
because I think Peter Dengate Thrush and any subsequent chair deserves
far more than $75,000.  I think he's done a superb job, and I've known
him for years and I've watched him work and to the extent that we are
progressing today as a community, it is in large part due to him, and
so I would urge the board to vote him compensation and if possible, to
give him more.  Thank you.

[Applause]

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Have we a question from the microphone on my left?

>>MARILYN CADE:  I'm tempted to introduce myself as "Microphone Left."

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Speaking in a personal capacity?

[Laughter]

[Applause]

>>MARILYN CADE:  My name is Marilyn Cade, and I am indeed a long-
standing member of the ICANN community, having helped to create the
circumstances and the -- contributed to the creation of the
organization, as many people here did.

I'm very much aware that this is actually not a question about
compensating a particular chair, but a question about compensating the
chairman of the board of ICANN.

I have spoken before in the long, long, long process that we have
engaged in in discussing this.  There have actually been many public
fora where the community has called for compensating the board and has
recognized that there will be board members who will not be able to
accept that compensation but others who can.  And who need to.

I look at a board that works as hard or harder than anyone else in the
community does on behalf of ICANN, and I expect us as a community to
provide the financial remuneration that is necessary to ensure that we
can have a diverse, well-informed, and effective board.  And that
means that compensation -- the availability of compensation is a tool
that the community must have and must be able to use.

So I would say you're making the right decision on compensating the
chairman of the board.  You are making -- you're going too slow on
addressing the question of the availability of compensation for the
rest of the board members who may be able to avail themselves of it.
You are denying the community, perhaps, further options as board
members who, with the small subsidy that -- the small payment -- it is
not a subsidy, the small payment that you will be giving them may be
able to step up and dedicate the extreme amount of time we need from
you.

And finally, I will say that I think that this chairman and future
chairmen do deserve higher pay.

[Applause]

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Thank you, Marilyn.  Be assured that as rapidly as
we can after going through this process for the chair, we will
consider the question of remuneration of board members.

Next question, please.

>>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  My name is Avri Doria speaking for myself.  I
don't know about my capacities.

[Laughter]

>>AVRI DORIA:  Basically, I have oftentimes stood at the microphone
and spoken against remunerating -- paying anyone simply because it
blurs the line between volunteer part of an organization and not.
However, at this point, I'm sort of giving up on that because I've
realized that that's probably a lost cause.

What I actually have is a question about people participating who were
nonconflicted in a committee-making decisions.

Now, very often when that happens in various legislatures and such,
anyone who has participated in a nonconflicted capacity is sort of
forced into the position of needing to refuse any salary increase or
payment that may be decided upon by a committee that they were a
member of, so I'm wondering whether that was a consideration and how
that would work in this particular case, once you decide on the
matter.  Thank you.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Thank you very much.  A question on my right.

>>RAÚL ECHEBERRIA: Okay.  This queue is faster than the other.  Thank
you.  So my speech will be very short.  I think that usually I would
be against this proposal in a more typical organization, but the chair
in ICANN has a lot of work, so I think that's -- the compensation is a
good idea, so I support it.

I could not support a much higher salary, compensation than what is
being proposed, so I think that the board should be careful in the
future in -- for future reconsiderations of this amount.  I have heard
some people saying that Peter deserves more and I don't have any doubt
about that, but we are talking about the chair of the ICANN board
without specific names, so I think that -- I'll repeat:  I'm in favor
of this proposal.  I support it.  I think that the amount that is
being proposed is very appropriate.  I think that it should remain
more or less in the same level that it is being proposed now.  Thank
you.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Thank you very much.  And be assured that the
Board Governance Committee will look at the issues of constantly
reviewing this whole area, as appropriate.

Rob, any questions on the -- online?

>>ROB HOGGARTH:  Yes, Dennis.  I have a statement from George Kirikos,
Leap of Faith Financial Services.  He's stating his opposition.  I'm
opposed to any compensation for board members as it continues the
excessive spending by ICANN.  ICANN is currently paying, according to
the latest IRS Form 990, 16 or more staffers more than $200,000 per
year.  Half of those are earning more than 300,000 per year.  Can
ICANN point to any other nonprofit organization where such a high
proportion of staff earn more than 200,000 per year?  If so, what is
the compensation of the board chairman of those nonprofits?

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Thank you for that question.  I'll take a question
from the microphone on my left and then Rita I'll ask you for a
moment.  Question over here?

>>RON ANDRUFF:  Good afternoon.  Ron Andruff, RNA Partners, and in an
effort to -- of transparency, we're also an applicant for the new top-
level domain.  I would also mention that I'm a BC representative and
like Marilyn, I am also speaking on my own behalf.

I support what Marilyn Cade said and many others about board
compensation for the chairman.  I've followed this now for two or
three years, and often came and made comments during the discussions
that your committee's held and I'm very pleased to see that the board
has taken this step to ensure that we can get the best and brightest
for the heavy load that our chairs and our board people -- board
members carry.

So I would also encourage you, Mr. Chairman, to look into the rest of
the board being compensated appropriately.

Finally, I would just say that as this has gone on for two to three
years, I would strongly support the fact that this should be
retroactive.  Thank you.

[Applause]

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Thank you.  Rita, you had a question or comment?

>>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON:  Hi.  Thanks, Dennis.

This has been an interesting issue for me.  I haven't been on any of
the committees, but it seems as though the majority of the community
has supported at least the chair compensation and the board decided to
separate chair compensation from overall board compensation because it
seemed like there really was a clear support and recognition that
whoever is the chair of this board has quite a lot of work to do.

I think with respect to board compensation, at least from my
perspective, it -- I understand the reasons why people are saying it's
a good thing.  It feels somehow not quite the right time for me
personally and I'm not speaking in behalf of anyone else on the board,
because there's so many people in this community -- all of you
included -- who spend a lot of time and money and we still have a lot
of expenses and people that aren't being able to be funded to do the
wonderful work that you do.  So that's the reason Ron, Marilyn, and
others that we're taking a considerable amount of time thinking about
board compensation, because we think of this as a more complex issue
than just the chairman's comp.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Thanks, Rita.  I'll just do my tech support here.
There we go.

Can I have a question from my socialist microphone on the left?

>>CHUCK GOMES:  Thank you, Dennis.  This is Chuck Gomes speaking in my
personal capacity.  Thanks, Rita, for the recognition of all the
volunteers here and that aren't here today.  That's much appreciated.

I would just add one thing to what you said, and that is that in
addition to all the time that you put in as board members, and even
more so as chair, you have a fiduciary responsibility that goes beyond
what we have, and that is broader than what we have individually, so
whether that's a factor or not, I'll let you evaluate that.  But I
think that's important.

You've heard me say it many times before so I'll be very brief.  I
think there are very few, if any, boards in the world that commit the
amount of time that each of you do and that those in the past have
done, and I fully respect that and certainly support remuneration for
any board members who feel comfortable taking that.

And in particular, the chair who has an even greater responsibility
and time commitment.  Thank you.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Thank you, Chuck.  And from the right wing, we
have...

>>ROBERT HALL:  My name is Rob Hall, the CEO of Momentous Group, and
I'll try and speak in all my capacities, if that's possible.

I want to actually just address something Rita said in my comments.

I sat on the nomination committee of ICANN last year and I'm not on it
this year so I think I'm a little free to speak what perhaps they
can't, which is, it is incredibly hard for us to find perfect members
of the board or what this community would think are great members of
the board when we go out to people that have never heard of ICANN and
we tell them, "Look, we want you to sit on this board.  We think
you're, you know, the CEO or the chairman of a Fortune 500 company, a
high-tech company, or a nonprofit.  We want you to be on the board.
It kind of governs the Internet and does all things Internet.  They
say you'll spend 20 to 30 hours a week and there's no compensation."

So if this board truly wants the level of people that -- that want it
-- that it does want, I believe, and that could be on it, and that
high caliber in the future, you're going to have to start looking at
compensating them or reducing the workload of the board members
because the two don't go hand in hand.

So on the subject of conflict, I think you've got some cover here,
board members, that the community has spoken many times that you
should do this.  Not just for the chairman of the board or the vice
chair, but also for all directors of the board.

So I would encourage you that if you want to get to a higher level of
board member -- not that -- I realize as I'm saying this that I'm
perhaps tarnishing all the existing board members and that certainly
is not my intent, but I can tell you from the nomination committee
point of view what we get is everybody in this room wanting to be on
the board.  We're all in some way conflicted.

So if the nomination committee's input is to truly appoint independent
people, to get those true independent people from ICANN, the amount of
work you do and the nonpayment is an issue for getting the higher-
level people you want.  Thank you.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Thank you very much.  Rita, you wanted a quick
response, and then Rod, you wanted to comment.

>>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON:  Is this on?

I do.

And Rob, we absolutely have thought about that.  I guess from my
perspective, I'd be on the camp of less work for board members, and
not because it takes up so much of my time personally but if we look
at what ICANN is meant to be, which is this multistakeholder bottom-up
process, we actually need to enhance both the caliber of the board
but, most importantly, the caliber of the people in the community
doing the work.  And so that's the reason why I, to some extent, am
conflicted.  If I'm going to be paying members of the community, it
should be across the policy-making groups that are actually making the
decisions, doing the hard work and bringing that up to the board.  So
I fully support what you're saying, Rob, and I get that.  I'm just
taking it to the next level, which is, we need to raise that bar
across the general community as well.  And so there's only a finite
number of money that we have, frankly, so just thinking about those
resources and how we can best use them.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Thanks, Rita.  Rod?

>>ROD BECKSTROM:  Yes.  I just wanted to amplify or expand on Chuck
Gomes' comments that I very much concur with.

I've sat on a lot of nonprofit boards and spent very considerable time
doing that.  I have -- and I've stated, I think, in the past I've
never seen a board that works nearly as hard and spends nearly as much
time as this board.  It's just an exceptional commitment, all the way
across, and it is necessary as well.  Some different efficiency might
be introduced in some way or another, but the reality is, you know,
this is the policy and the technical and the coordination group for
the domain name system globally, which is absolutely critical to the
operation of the Internet.

And the Internet is getting larger and more complex and growing many
different directions, and the workload is just massive, in terms of
what has to get done, but just want to express my -- my appreciation
as a CEO for the incredible efforts of the entire board and for this
current effort.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:  Thank you.  Now, Rob, have we an online question?

>>ROB HOGGARTH:   We have another question from George Kirikos.

George says, instead of paying direct compensation to the
board/chairman, one approach would be to provide an honorarium that
the board member/chair would be compelled to donate to the charity of
their choice.

Would ICANN consider that approach instead?

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Thank you for the question.  Noted.

Can we have a question from the microphone on the left, my left.

>>KIEREN McCARTHY:   Hello, Kieren McCarthy.  I just wanted to speak
in favor of compensating the chairman.  And I know a lot of people
have already said the board does a huge amount of work.  So I thought
I would add to that so it's not just SO, AC, chairs, et cetera, but
someone who has worked inside the organization.  You do a huge amount
of work, and the chairman in particular.  I don't see that there will
ever not be a huge amount of work.  And I think you need to compensate
someone when so much of their life is taken up with the work of an
organization.

I know it's slightly outside the scope of what you wanted to discuss
today, but, inevitably, we'll get to board compensation.  And broadly,
I think it's a good idea for most of the reasons that Rob Hall just
made, some small degree of compensation.

I do think the board should look at two things.  One would be to
reduce the numbers there are of you, because, number one, I think
there's too many of you.  But number two, if you start adding
compensation times 23 or 21, whichever it is, that gets very, very
expensive.  And I also think, having been on the inside, you should
really look at ways to reduce the amount of work that you do.  You do
too much work.  And for a -- for it being your free time, it's too
much to ask, frankly.  I think -- I'm amazed that you all do it.  So I
would say some compensation, small amount of compensation.  I would
say try and reduce the size of the board.  Try and reduce the amount
of work that you do.  But I definitely think paying the chairman a
rate of compensation that makes it worth his while is a good idea.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Thank you, Kieren.

Having given George Kirikos's suggestion due consideration, for my
part, the answer is no.

Mike, you have a question?

>>MICHAEL SILBER:   Thank you to all the speakers for the very nice
words.  Obviously, compensation will be provided outside the hall
afterwards.

But, rather, a question, which is, if we move from the chair, which
certainly is something that I understand, then we move to the board,
then we move to the AC and SO chairs, then we move to the councils,
then where do we move?  Where do we get to a situation where we
actually say, you know what, these people don't do enough work to
justify it.  Because I think everybody in this room to be a greater or
lesser extent, and whether or not they're paid for it by their
companies, is putting in hard work.  It may be lifting their arms.
But they're putting in hard work, coming to meetings, reading
documents, doing preparation.  And I'm just very curious to hear from
the community, where does the limit get drawn?

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Mike, thank you.

Bruce, did you want to have a quick comment?

>>BRUCE TONKIN:   Yeah, thank you, Dennis.

I just wanted to respond.  I noticed there was a couple of comments
about the level.  Some people think it's too much; some people, it's
not enough.  And there were also some comments about ICANN staff.

One of the things that's available on the ICANN Web site is actually
the compensation practices for the organization.  And one of the
things that the compensation committee, of which I'm a member, has --
is planning to review those compensation practices.  The last time
they were reviewed were in 2006, about four years ago.

But that policy is there for the public to review.  And certainly
anything that we have recommended with respect to the chair is
consistent with that policy.  And so we have actually reviewed the
salaries of other similar organizations, and we've been given data
from that, and our recommendation is based on that benchmark.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Thank you, Bruce.

Just to be clear on my comment, it is, of course, always available to
the chair, and if/when we have compensation for board members, for
them to decline or, indeed, accept and transfer it to a charity.
These, of course, are options available.

Question on my left.

>>JAIME WAGNER:  My name is Jaime Wagner.  I'm not an English speaker,
but I will try to do.

I am also with the GNSO, but I'm -- council, but I'm here speaking in
my personal capacity.

So what I would like to share with you is that compensating the board
is --  The board is not the only body of ICANN.  There are the
councils, and the bulk of the work is done on the working groups.  And
this is voluntary work.

So where will this compensation stop?  If the -- if the reason to
remuneration is work and the amount of time that one dispenses to this
work, where will the reasoning stop?  Is it at the board level?  At
the council level?  At the work group level?  Because the voluntary
work, then, is -- becomes compromised.

And I would like to share also a parallel with soccer, not just
because I'm a Brazilian guy, but there is professional soccer and
amateur soccer.  Once they begin to professionalize the soccer, it
improved the quality.  But still we remain dependent on the amateur
soccer to provide the good soccer players in the beginning.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Thank you.  I think a number of board speakers
have already indicated that that is a complexity that we will consider
when considering compensating board members.

Again on my left here.

>>NAOMASA MARUYAMA:   This is Naomasa Maruyama, I'm from Japan.  I've
worked many years for Japan Network Information Center.  That is the
philanthropic organization which works for the healthy development of
the Internet in Japan.

So I do not oppose to this proposal, specific proposal, $75,000 for
the chair.  But I have to say that we have to be very careful, and to
this specific subject, I want to share what I experienced in my own
organization that is, in the past, we actually paid lots of money for
the compensation for the people who worked for our organization.  But
what happened, what I saw in our organization, which I never want to
see again, is that the -- we -- our compensation is not so low so that
the -- the people who worked for us lost their genuine heart of
voluntary contribution.

For this kind of public organization, the heart of the genuine
voluntary contribution, that is very important.  And if we pay too
much, the people with that kind of genuine heart, lose that kind of
genuine heart, and money becomes the purpose of these people.  And
what I saw and never want to see in our organization is that that
actually happened.  And I fired them all.

[ Laughter ]

>>NAOMASA MARUYAMA:   So please, I do not oppose this specific
proposal --

[ Applause ]

>>NAOMASA MARUYAMA:   -- but please keep this amount of money not too
much.  That is my proposal.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Thank you very much for those comments.  I think
we can rely on our various selection processes to make sure that the
people of the right quality are appointed, not people who are just
seeking the positions for financial gain.

Timekeeper, could I ask you to move the clock to one minute, please.
We have four minutes left.  So if we could switch the clock to one
minute, and I'll take a question on my right.

>>ANTONY VAN COUVERING:   Hello.  Antony Van Couvering again.

To Mike Silber's point, I think that what compensation should do is to
not disqualify qualified people.  In other words, if they need to be
able to -- they need to be able to afford to work on the board.  I do
not want to see people who can, for instance, live on 30, 40, $50,000
become permanent heads of permanent working groups.  I don't want to
see that kind of stasis in ICANN.  I think this should be limited to
the board.  It should not be a reason in itself to serve on the board,
but it should be there so that qualified people are able to take the
post and give their service.

Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Thank you.

Have we an online question, Rob?

>>ROB HOGGARTH:  Yes, we do, Dennis.

Elaine Pruis from Minds+Machines has the following short comment:
Compensation is essential in order to bring and retain talent.  How
many board members will not consider chairmanship because they cannot
work full-time and chair ICANN?  A show of hands, please.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Thank you.  I think we won't surprise the board
by asking for that show of hands straight at the moment.  It was an
interesting question.  Let me reflect on it.

Question from my left.

>>ADIEL AKPLOGAN:   Adiel Akplogan from AfriNIC.  I have two or three
comments.  The first one is that I think it is a good thing to
compensate a fine incentive to attract people on the board, and
especially for the chair.  So I support this proposal.

But I would support some of the comments which were made earlier.

First of all, if the board spent 20 do 30 hours a week for ICANN work,
that means the board is very heavily involved in operation.  And
probably it is a culture that's come from the beginning of ICANN, when
there were very few staff.  And today, the board may look at getting
less involved and working less so that we don't come to getting into
more and more compensation.

Secondly, I also support the fact that the amount of people on the
board need to be probably reviewed so that when we are going to the
compensation --

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Can I ask you to wrap up?  I'm sorry but --

>>ADIEL AKPLOGAN:   -- we can do that in a more efficient and
sustainable way.  Thanks.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:   We are under time pressure.  From my right.

>>JOHN CURRAN:   John Curran, president and CEO of ARIN.  Speaking
from personal experience, I was the chairman of a volunteer board for
12 years.  I will say that there's absolutely no doubt that for an
organization of ICANN's size and importance, that the board should be
-- that the -- the chairman should be compensated.  There's --  It's a
simple question.  It's the question before us.  And I have no doubt
that the chairman should have the level of compensation being
discussed.

With respect to the board, a very modest compensation for board
members is something that's a courtesy.  It allows a board member to
look back to their family, for example, and their organization and
say, "I'm getting something small for this.  That's why you don't see
me on nights and weekends when I'm on the phone."  I think for the
sake of the families of the board members, a -- something very modest
is worthwhile.  Taking the comments of the previous speakers, it
should not be something anyone can live on, but it's just something to
pay respects to the time that's spent here.

Thank you.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Thank you.  And it looks like our final question
on the right here.

>>ANNALISA ROGER:  Yes, I'm Annalisa Roger.  I'm involved in two
nonprofits in California, where ICANN does have two offices.  I want
to make a point that, well, first, it should be really clear how many
hours is involved in being the chair of a global organization,
something that has this much responsibility and covers -- actually
affects this number of people in the world.

And if that number of hours is close to a full-time schedule, in
California, $75,000 is -- is going to make that individual eligible
for government subsidies, because -- I'm sorry, but that's not going
to give somebody the chance to work full time on something that's as
important as the chair position of ICANN.  So I wanted to point that
out.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Thank you very much.

Rob, do we have one final question online?

>> Rob Hoggarth:  No, Dennis, very active chat room discussions, but
no more questions.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Thank you very much, indeed.

So we're now going to publish the outline bylaws, proposed changes for
comment.  And you'll have an opportunity to comment online.

That, I believe, closes this topic.

Peter, back to you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Dennis.  And thank you for
chairing that so well.

And just personally, if I could just say thank you to those people in
the community who took the opportunity to make a personal comment,
even though the comment was not personal, it was about an
institutional matter.  I personally appreciate the comments.  So thank
you for that.

We move, then, to another financial topic, which is the minor matter,
he said, of the budget of ICANN.  And I'd like to ask our chief
financial officer to come and just briefly introduce this topic, Kevin
Wilson.  Thank you, Kevin.

>>KEVIN WILSON:   Thank you, Chairman.  I'm pleased to inform the
board and the community that we are -- the trains are almost into the
final station, that we've had a process that started with the adoption
of the strategic plan in February and developed the budget with
community consultations and board consultation, and under the
direction of the Board Finance Committee.

The second to last stop of that process was the open forum this
morning.  And even though it was after the gala, it seemed to be quite
a lively conversation, with the community providing lots of comments,
including appreciation for the level of detail in the budget documents
this year, but still requesting more.  And then also some substantive
comments, such as requests for more contractual compliance resources
for ICANN.

And I think our quick response to that is that we think that
compliance is a very important subject at ICANN, and last year, our
budget growth for the contractual compliance area was over 30%.  And
this year, with the revenue cap at about 3%, growth at 3%, we just
have limited resources.

That being said, we believe that the -- there's adequate contractual
compliance resources within that budget constraint environment in
order to execute and continue the good work of the compliance team.

And with that, I'd like to say thank you to the Board Finance
Committee for their oversight, Ramaraj, especially you, with your
chairmanship leadership on that.  And this is the budget.  We'll take
off the draft watermark and submit it to the board tomorrow for their
-- for their vote for adoption.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Kevin, thanks very much.  I wonder if you
would take a seat but stay close.  I'm sure there will be questions
that we'll need some financial expertise in answering.

Let's start on this side, sir.  You have the floor.

>>MIKEY O'CONNOR:  Thank you.  My name is Mikey O'Connor.  I'm a
member of the business constituency and retired.  So I, of course,
speak in a personal capacity.

I'm also the junior co-chair of the Vertical Integration Working Group
in the GNSO.  And I just want to let you know that this compliance
problem isn't really a problem just for the vertical integration
group, but it's certainly gotten us pretty stuck.  And we could use
some help getting unstuck on that.

There are several points of view.  But I think what it boils down to
is that because of this sort of resourcing and capability issue, we're
finding it pretty tough to get through that vertical integration
discussion.  And it would help us -- I'm speaking personally now, not
as a representative of the group, because the group hasn't talked
about this -- but it would certainly help me, as the co-chair, if
there was some room to maneuver on the compliance budget sort of as a
-- the -- you know, the beginning of the end of a very long
conversation.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Mike.  I think Bruce wants to
make a quick response, and then we'll go back to the other side.

>>BRUCE TONKIN:   Thank you, Peter.

I think you've got to separate the budget for next year, which is
based on our current policies, and the budget in future years that
might be based on future policies.  So what I'd suggest -- and this is
something that I'm encouraging a number of areas -- is actually think
about the costs of the decisions that are being made.

And so, in simple terms, if we were to take WHOIS -- 'cause I'll give
the concrete example there.  There is a WHOIS policy.  It's one of the
few actual consensus policies on WHOIS.  And that is called the WHOIS
data reminder policy.  And the policy basically says that registrars
each year should send a reminder notice to all registrants that they
should check their WHOIS and update it if necessary.

Now, associated with that has been a budget for compliance which was
never really talked about when the policy was developed.  But the
concept was that, hey, we've now got this policy, and so we should
have staff check to see that registrars adhere to that policy.

And I think it would be interesting -- one of the things we can get an
idea just for feedback to the GNSO, is what that actual cost of
compliance is.  And it's significant.  There's about 1,000 registrars.
The staff do spend a lot of time chasing that up.  And each registrar
has to provide evidence that they have complied with that particular
requirement.

So what I would suggest with vertical integration, instead of thinking
about it in terms of saying, okay, the budget for compliance is X
dollars, and therefore, you know, how much would -- how much of that
compliance budget should we spend?  Think about it more in terms of
what compliance do you expect with whatever rule you come up with, and
then perhaps we could get an idea -- a budget estimate of what it
would cost to provide that compliance.  And that's -- that can help
guide your policy-making.

But ultimately, you will make that policy.  The policy will, you know,
be accepted by the board.  Then that policy then gets implemented.
And then there's a cost of implementation.  And that cost of
implementation appears in a budget.

So don't think about the budget as being capped at, you know, what it
is just for next year.  Think about it in terms of what compliance you
want to see, a rough idea of the budget of that, and then that's
something for the GNSO to think about.  And then just accept that that
then goes into the budget process for the, you know, future years.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Bruce.

Let's go to Chris Disspain.  Chris.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   Good afternoon, everybody, Chris Disspain, I'm
chair of the ccNSO, and I'm speaking as the chair of the ccNSO.  A
couple of things, I'd like to first of all acknowledge and thank Kevin
for all of the hard work that he and his team have done.  I think
they've done a fantastic job.

[ Applause ]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   I would like to comment on the budget, but I
can't, because we have asked a number of questions that we have not
yet received answers to.

We first asked a number of questions about two and a half months ago.
And when the new document came out, there was a teleconference which I
was on, and I asked a whole series of other questions which have now
been sent in as comment by the ccNSO.  It's a plea, really.  It would
be great if we could get the answers to the questions that we asked so
that we were able to comment properly.

>> Kevin, do you want to respond to that?

>>KEVIN WILSON:   Hello?  Can you hear me?

Thank you, Chris.  We're planning to post a blog after the meeting.
And we'll answer all your questions there.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, let's come back -- Chris.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   Kevin, I understand that, and thank you.  But it's
actually a little -- that's after the board has adopted the budget.
So I appreciate that you're going to answer my questions, but it
doesn't really help me all that much to give view on behalf of the CC
community valued input into the budget if you're going to answer the
questions after it's been improved.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Something perhaps the accountability and
transparency team might want to look at.

Right, let's go back to this side.

>>MICHELE NEYLON:   Michele Neylon again from Blacknight.  Again,
thanks to Kevin for going through the budget with us all.  He met with
various groups throughout the week and went through it with detail.

And I'd echo what Mikey was said about compliance, but, actually, from
a different angle.  One of the areas where ICANN and the ICANN
accredited registrars come under a lot of criticism is in relation to
bad actors within our community.  And the only group -- the main group
within -- within the ICANN structure that is able to deal with that is
the ICANN compliance team, which is led by David Giza and his team.
And they have been doing some fantastic work, and they have helped
resolve a lot of issues.  But there are still issues there that are
outstanding.  There are still registrants who are very, very
frustrated and end up having huge issues.

But David and his team, they have -- you're giving them a best-
practice.  But I think they need more.  Because, ultimately, if the
community wants to bind registrars like ourselves to a contract, you
need to be able to be seen to actually be applying that uniformly
across the board and not just to those of us who make the time to get
involved by coming to meetings, by getting involved at working groups
and all that, because we're not hiding.  We're here.  But you need to
be doing that in a uniform way.  And I think the compliance team need
as much support as possible.

Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you very much.

Rod wants to respond.

>>ROD BECKSTROM:   Michele, I just want to thank you for your remarks.
First, thank you very much for recognizing the excellent efforts of
David Giza and the entire compliance team.  They work very hard on
this issue.

We recognize there's more work to be done.  And we see what the budget
figures are and what the overall growth is.  Clearly, last year, we
had a big up in compliance.  It will not be as large this year.  But
thank you for sharing this message.  And I hope you'll weigh in
heavily as we develop the process moving forward.

Thank you.

>>MICHELE NEYLON:   Just coming -- the mike.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Quickly.

>>MICHELE NEYLON:   Just coming back quickly.  Can you hear me?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes.

>>MICHELE NEYLON:   Okay.  Just coming back quickly to Rod.  In
relation to the compliance actions that David and his team have taken,
if you actually look down through them in detail, you'll see that
they're -- at the moment, they're only able to go after registrars
primarily on a financial basis.  They are not able to get them on
other areas.  And, you know, that needs to be something that is
changed, obviously.

>>ROD BECKSTROM:   Point taken.  Thank you very much.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   So back to this side.  Sir.

>>MIKE SACHS:  Okay.  Hi, my name is Mike Sachs, and I'm a Belgian, so
I'm very pleased and honored to welcome everybody here to Brussels.  I
hope you have had a lot of fun.

[ Applause ]

>>MIKE SACHS:  The rest of my comments are personal and not on behalf
of all Belgians.

You are a nonprofit, and you've been a very successful nonprofit.  And
in the last three years, your budget -- or, I'm sorry, your revenues
have grown by 20%, which is incredible and impressive, considering the
economic downturn.  But it makes me wonder if you are concerned about
maybe a natural tendency for, you know, budgets to get bloated and for
the organization to start growing by taking on tasks that are beyond
its original mission.

So do you feel or do you want budget -- revenues to keep growing at
such a fantastic rate?  And are you concerned about budget bloating
and mission creep?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   A very quick response from Dennis.  Dennis.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Actually, if you look at the revenue figures for
next year, they're flat on this year.  So there is no longer a
dramatic increase on the income side.  So there's squeeze on the
expenditure side.  I regard that as a healthy thing, because it's time
to look at priorities, and it will be painful as we prioritize, as
you, the community, prioritize, and we, the board, prioritize.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks.  Let's go back to this side.

>>BOB HUTCHINSON:   Bob Hutchinson from Dynamic Ventures.

Kudos.  I attended the budget review session this morning in this
room, and kudos to the people who put together the budget.  I think
it's a much easier-to-read document and much clearer than we've had in
the past.  So very good.

In today's session on security initiatives, it was made clear that no
budget exists in fiscal year year 11 to support the DNS CERT proposal
and that the DNS CERT proposal, or what it was, will now go through a
PDP and working group review, as proposed by the ccNSO letter.

It's clear that consensus in the public comments to ICANN in response
to the DSN CERT do not support operating a CERT.  It seems that
there's also been a lot of resources expended on this proposal
already, and it seems that there -- more resources will be taken to do
the formal PDP and the working group and so on.

There's already a consensus in ICANN's role that outside of the root
operations, ICANN can support things like event response coordination,
education, and technical advice.

ICANN should clarify for the community what channels are currently
used to support DNS components, and please be careful to avoid a top-
down staff-driven proposals.

ICANN should remain a bottoms-up and community-driven process.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Ayesha on this side.

>>AYESHA HASSAN:   Thank you, chair.  Ayesha Hassan from the
International Chamber of Commerce.  ICC a member of the business
constituency.

Many of us in the business community have been taking outreach to
business from across sectors and around the world very seriously and
think it's an important responsibility.  We have been doing many
efforts, significant efforts to raise awareness about participation in
ICANN and the issues among the business community from around the
world.

That said, I note in the budget that we have reviewed that the global
engagement and partnerships budget item highlights the need for
increased stakeholder participation and allocates resources, but it
specifically refers to these efforts vis-a-vis the ccNSO and the GAC.

We would greatly appreciate consideration of a specific reference to
increasing broader business participation from around the world and
allocation of resources.  We'd be pleased to work with staff to
identify ways for resources to be targeted in that way, to implement
the efforts that many of us are making.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Ayesha.

Sir.

>>RUDI VANSNICK:  Hi, my name is Rudi Vansnick.  I am from Poland.  I
drive a small (inaudible) enterprise to help the people build the
software for the Internet.

But being here, I am just a bit concerned to hear that you plan with
the budget 2011 to create new cybercrime unit DNS CERT.

In my opinion, it should be not valuable.

I participate to the session when you discussed this topic DNS CERT,
it was first time during my life, during my long life, I feel very
young but I am 50-plus.

I am proud of the police.  Really, it was the first time during my
life I use this term.  In my country in Poland, police works pretty
well in this area throughout cyber attacks and very quickly compared
to the ICANN.  I participate to the Congress in Paris two years ago,
and I can compare the speed of working police and ICANN.  Please let
this area for the police in my country and other countries, they work
pretty well in my opinion, and to spend money to other important
project and topics.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  Avri.

>>AVRI DORIA:   I am here in my role as NCSG executive committee chair
reading a joint statement of the commercial stakeholder group and the
noncommercial stakeholder group.

ICANN and the ICANN board have consistently emphasized the
multistakeholder bottom-up community-driven and consensus-based nature
of its mandate.

In addition, they have highlighted the need for greater and more
diverse participation throughout the ICANN community.

The evolution of the GNSO policy development process into a working
group-based model will also require every stakeholder group to expend
more time as well as financial and human resources than ever before.
Yet the fiscal year 2011 operating plan and budget makes no provision
for support which will enable all of ICANN stakeholder groups to more
fully participate in the expanding number and scope of ICANN's
activities and policy processes on an equal basis.

Although there is a section titled "Constituency Support," it is very
clearly -- it very clearly and specifically directs such support only
to the registry and registrar stakeholder groups.

In addition to support for activities that are specific to those
groups' needs, the FY 2011 operating plan and budget envisages support
for active participation in GNSO policy development process activities
that directly impact gTLD registries and ICANN accredited registrars.

Except for councillor travel to ICANN meetings and the shared support
provided to community in general, the commercial and noncommercial
stakeholder groups do not receive any funding support from ICANN and
continue not to do so under the FY 2011 operating plan and budget,
notwithstanding the misleading and inaccurate constituency support
section it contains.

We call on ICANN and the ICANN board to remedy this inequality in
light of the ICANN mandate.

As joint stakeholders with the other two stakeholder groups, we
believe that all ICANN stakeholder groups should receive equal,
adequate, and nondiscriminatory ICANN support.

Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I was just asking Kevin if you would like to
make a comment in relation to the way that the presentation of support
appears in the budget.

>>KEVIN WILSON:   I just wanted to make it clear that the presentation
probably used words "registrar" and "registry," but the intention was,
as you mentioned, the shared resources for all the stakeholders.
There's meeting rooms provided, there's staff support, Secretariat
support.

So that was -- I apologize, it was a bit of an oversight in the
presentation of the material, but your point is well taken about
should there be more resources directed to that group or not.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Kevin.

Let's come back to this side.  Sir, you have the floor.

>>BILL SMITH:  Bill Smith with PayPal.  I would like to speak to two
things, one is on the DNS CERT and reiterate the comment just made
earlier, and that it's my belief that the community spoke pretty
clearly in reviewing the documents in the comment period and saying
that it felt ICANN would be best, basically, to stay out of this area
of DNS CERT, though it may have some role.

And I was concerned in the GNSO meeting when I saw action taken to
create a joint, I believe, drafting team to discuss the issue yet
again.

So while staff may not be expending resources, we have the volunteers
now expending resources on this.  And so that's a concern of mine.

The second thing is around security and stability of the Internet
which is also what DNS CERT is.  And the issue there for me and PayPal
and others is the validity of WHOIS data.  There have been a number of
reports published indicating that it is a very low percentage, on the
order after quarter, 25% is accurate.  The only sport I know of in the
world where a 25% success rate is considered good is the United States
and that's in baseball.  A 250 batting average is good.

I have no doubt that ICANN staff is working hard, that they are doing
what they are told to do, and doing this to the best of their ability.
My suggestion is that they may not be being directed to do the right
stuff.

We know that inaccurate WHOIS data -- there is a correlation between
bad actors and WHOIS data when we do the investigations, and our
company does investigations, there is a very strong correlation
between a bad actor and WHOIS data that is either unavailable or
obviously inaccurate.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  Just a very quick response.  Of
course, you will know that there are four very detailed WHOIS studies
that have been done, the first two that have been costed at just over
400,000, and there are two more yet to come.

So we need that data as part of taking any further action.  Quick
response?

>>BILL SMITH:  Quick response.  I would suggest we already have the
data.  We don't need to spend $400,000 and another year to determine
what the exact numbers are.  If we only have 25% that's accurate, we
know that 75% is inaccurate.

We should do something about that, and we can do that today.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  Let's go back to that side.
Steve Metalitz.

>>STEVE METALITZ:   Thank you very much.  Steve Metalitz, first
speaking in my role as a member of the executive committee of the
commercial stakeholders group, and simply to endorse the joint
statement that Avri Doria read to you a few moments ago about the
allocation of support for stakeholder groups in the budget.

I think the staff has accomplished something very important here by
continuing to cater exclusively to the needs of the registries and the
registrars and by continuing to neglect the need for more outreach,
for example, to the business community and the noncommercial
community, something Ayesha Hassan mentioned.  By continuing these
policies, the staff has instigated the first ever joint statement
between the commercial and noncommercial stakeholders group.  So
that's the first official act of our noncontracted parties house, and
we thank you for it, but we would also wish that would you heed these
words and change the budget accordingly.

The other comment I'd make is in my capacity as a member of the
Intellectual Property Constituency, and that is simply to second,
third and fourth the statements you have heard about the contract
compliance funding in the budget, including Bill Smith's statement
just now about WHOIS inaccuracy, which is, to a great extent, a matter
of inadequate contract compliance efforts.

I think I recognize that this is a period of relative fiscal austerity
for ICANN, but the fact that ICANN is proposing to spend -- I am
losing my voice here -- ICANN is proposing to spend less in 2011 than
it actually spent in 2010 in compliance, and that is what the budget
document says, and that even budget against budget, it plans to grow
that expenditure at a slower rate than the growth of expenditures as a
whole, those speak volumes about the degree or lack of it of the
commitment of the overall organization to contract compliance.

And I would suggest this is just one of many needs clamoring to be
met.

The real basis of the ICANN experiment, in my view, is the attempt to
substitute for regulation by governments instead management through
contracts of the management of this global resources that has been --
of which you are the stewards.  And if you are not going to enforce
those contracts and you are not going to give adequate resources to
those tasked with helping to enforce those contracts, then I think
your commitment to the experiment can fairly be questioned.

Thank you.

[ Applause ].

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Steve, just before you go, can I just ask
you a question?  I'm just a bit concerned at the sort of allegation
that one group has got more resources than another.  What's supposed
to happen in the presentation of the budget should be a contest
between the different parts of the organization for resources, and
occasionally some group will get more than others.

Are you suggesting there's something that's either gone wrong with
that process or that it's delivered a very unfair result?

>>STEVE METALITZ:   You are referring to the first part of my
comments?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes, yes.

>>STEVE METALITZ:   Yeah, I do -- This is not a new problem.  The
budget said the same thing last time.  We pointed it out last time, we
pointed it out April 1st in our comments, and nothing really has
changed.  According to the material that the CFO presented, ICANN
expends $6 million a year to support constituencies, and the only
examples given are going around the world to meet with registries and
registrars and helping to develop their activities and to work with
them.

Ayesha spoke a few minutes ago about the need to do more outreach to
global business.  I'm sure the same is true on the noncommercial side,
and we don't see anything in the budget to do that.

Now, we know that we get to hold -- all the constituencies and all the
stakeholder groups get meeting space at the meetings.  We are not
claiming we have been shorted there.  But everything above that
baseline goes to the contracted parties.  That's what the budget
documents say.  If it's not the reality, it's certainly what we have
been told consistently for the last two years.

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Steve, let's take this off-line now, but
what I will do is I will get together if I can with you and the chair
of the Finance Committee in the break and just see if we need to do
something before approving the budget, we do.

Let's come back to this side.

>>CHRISTINE JONES:  Hi, Christine Jones from GoDaddy.

A comment and then a question.  I don't go to these meetings very
often so I am not a member of the 30-year pin club, and what I have
noticed, having not been here for a while, over this past week is a
couple of themes.  The first and most troubling theme is that
registrars are bad.  Registrars are bad according to law enforcement,
they are bad according to the intellectual property community, they
are bad according to the at-large committee, and pretty much anybody
else you ask.

Just let's keep in mind, and I am going to get to the budget question
in a minute that registrars aren't the bad guys here.  You are asking
registrars to police the bad guys; okay?

Registrars don't infringe your intellectual property folks.  Customers
infringe your property.  You are asking us to stop it; all right?

Not only that but registrars pay your budget.

Hold on.  I am get to go the registries in a second here; all right?
Marilyn.

Hold on a second.  Registries to a lesser extent via registrations
that come from third parties.  Called registrants; right?

Okay.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   All right.  Let's just calm the heckling
from the seats at the back, please.  You have made your point.  Please
let the speaker carry on.

>>CHRISTINE JONES:  I think it's really, really important to note that
the registrars are not the bad guys, and frankly, neither are the
registries.  We're trying to be helpful.

If you want to come look at our operation and the 2500 people that we
have hired to help you police the Internet, I will be happy to open my
doors to you.

Second observation is that ICANN doesn't have any money.  We have seen
it from day one.  Every single meeting we have been in, ICANN has a
budget shortage.  "We don't have any money.  We can't afford this.  We
can't afford that."  ICANN has no money.

That came as a surprise to me because you have a pretty big budget and
a pretty big revenue stream.  So here is my question on the budget.
Because we are not the bad guys but we do fund a substantial portion
of your budget, could you please tell us exactly what the budget is?

When we ask questions in meetings this week -- for example, what are
you going to spend your compliance money on -- we heard answers like,
well, there's a little bit of money in there for this and there's a
little bit of money in there for that, but we don't really know what
that money is.  So could we once and for all see the line item budget?

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Kevin, just a quick response in relation to
the display of the information.

>>KEVIN WILSON:   Yeah, sure.

In response to community feedback, we have increased steadily the
amount of data that's provided in the document.  I think it's 83
pages, and so we have gotten the clear message that that's a good
first start.

We have also gotten clear messages on where we can provide more and
more data.

So we'll respond to those and provide those, and we would like to hear
your specific questions, suggestions for that.  But theirs there is a
lot of data in here and we have received positive feedback on that.

>>CHRISTINE JONES:  So that's yes, we get the line item or or no, we
don't get the line item?

>>KEVIN WILSON:  Well, yes, you have an 83-page document to review
now.  Any suggestions, and we have received some specific suggestions
this week to increase the information, we will do that.  I am going to
recommend that we have perhaps an FAQ to answer some of the specific
questions on areas that weren't clear.

>>CHRISTINE JONES:  So no.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   That sounded pretty much like yes to me, but
let's move on.

Marilyn.

>>MARILYN CADE:   My name is Marilyn Cade, and I will first of all
note that I, too, don't think that all registrars are the bad guys and
I think they play an important role.

I just happened to think that registrants are the place where we all
go to find the sources of funding for ICANN.

But leaving that aside, I'm actually here to make a different point.

I want to thank Kevin for all he does to meet with three noncommercial
-- sorry, the noncontracted commercial constituencies at each meeting.
He does come to listen to us, and he does listen to us.

However, I'm not sure the board is empowering Kevin to hear us.  And
this I think is your responsibility because you are, after all, a
governing board.

The fact of the matter is that we are contributors to ICANN.  We're
not a cost center.  None of us are.  Yet your budget approach treats
all of us like a cost center.

So for instance you want to count how many meeting rooms my
constituency uses so you can allocate cost to me.  You want to
allocate how many staff come and meet with me so you can allocate cost
to me.

I think we're thinking about this wrong.

We contribute to ICANN, we build it, it is a bottom-up, consensus-
based organization.  In that kind of environment, you will have a very
big core budget.  So please try to think about this a little bit
differently.

I want to go on to -- because I think that helps as well in the
exchanges between the communities and the staff as they're trying to
plan the budget and helps us to give you information that helps you
design a budget that meets our needs and our expectations.

It is a very challenging financial time.  However, I recall that in
Ghana, a member of the business community called on ICANN, I think the
fees at that time were 8 cents, to go to 25 cents.  And for a time
ICANN did have a 25 cent fee.  I take note that you have changed that.
You changed that through meetings you held with some parts of the
community but not all.  I personally don't feel comfortable with that.

One more key point.  However, I think we're spending some money on
some extremely high-level activities, yet we're not bringing all of
the staff that we need to the meetings.  Three meetings a year are
essential in order for us to meet with you and to meet with each
other.  I realize it's a cost, and I mention it now because I fear
that in your efforts to find things to slash to protect certain other
things, you will take away the only opportunity we have to come and
interface with you and to tell you and to contribute to ICANN's
success, and even its survivability.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Marilyn.

Next, please.

>>MICHAEL SETTON:  Hello, my name is Michael Setton.  I work with a
company, Sensaris.

I heard a suggestion this week that participation to these meetings
might become -- might come with a fee.  So I would like to ask the
board to guarantee that participation will remain free because I come
from a small company.  And for us, it's important to have physical
meetings and not just be compelled to have online meetings
participation just because we would have to pay fees to participate in
such meetings.

Now, I work in Internet of things, and even if technology allows us to
do a lot more things in the future, I still think that face-to-face
meetings like this are very important.  And I would like to avoid
future meetings being between not only the good and bad guys but also
have the big fish and the small fish still participating.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks.  Just my quick personal response, I
haven't heard of anyone suggesting we charge fees for coming to these
meetings, and I would personally think it was ridiculous because the
people who come are doing the for the benefit of the community who
aren't here.  So charging them to come, there's a complete mismatch
between the idea of paying to come to this meeting. So not on my
watch.

Chuck.

>>CHUCK GOMES:   Thanks, Peter.  Again, speaking in my personal
capacity, because I haven't had time to clear these comments with my
stakeholder group or the GNSO or even with my company.  So I want to
respond to the suggestion that the fees going to the contracted
parties, the support for contracted parties is different than
noncontracted parties.  That may be the case, but I don't think we
have enough data to know.

In the personal comments that I submitted yesterday and in comments I
shared with Kevin and even with some members of the Finance Committee
during the week, I noted that there's not enough detail to tell, and
suggested that we get that kind of detail.  In fact, a response to
that suggestion was maybe the supporting organizations, possibly the
advisory committees, too, should be treated like an operating division
of ICANN where we can really see the charts and know enough to see
enough detail to tell whether that's true or not.  I cannot tell, and
I went through the budget thoroughly, whether it's imbalanced.  If it
is, I respect the concern.

But, again, and Kevin as well as Finance Committee members that I have
talked to have been very responsive in working towards that level of
detail in the future, and I strongly encourage that.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Chuck.

Just a quick response from Dennis, and then a comment from -- sorry,
from Bruce, and then a comment from Dennis.

Bruce.

>>BRUCE TONKIN:   I just want to comment firstly with respect to the
comment Steve Metalitz has been making about the compliance side.
There are two elements of that.  If you are saying compliance is
inadequate, is it because the staff don't have the right tools -- in
other words, they don't have the right things in the contract -- or is
it the staff actually saying to you, hey, we'd love to check that but
I don't have enough people to do it?  Because it would be useful to
understand whether you are actually saying there's not enough staff
able to carry out the compliance that you are asking for.  So I think
it would be useful to clearly understand that.

Secondly, just with respect to the constituency support, and if you
look at the interactions that ICANN, as an organization, would have
with a registrar or registry, there's a policy interaction, but that's
not really done through any staff of ICANN.  In fact, the registrars
employ their own staff to write any policy documents.  They have no
ICANN staff support with respect to policy.

The staff support goes into the policy development process, like
working groups and the GNSO.

Then there's what your cooperation staff, and cooperation staff is
really managing the contractual relationship between ICANN and a
registrar.  So that's things like making sure registrars understand
their obligations, education about if things are being raised that
it's found that registrars don't seem to be complying with something,
then maybe they don't understand that.  So there's education sessions
where it's clearly explained what's required for WHOIS compliance,
what's required for escrow so that it's that educational role and
general contract management role.

And then the final area is compliance.  Originally it used to be the
same staff that were doing that.  This is what you need to do, this is
how you comply with escrow.  And it was the same person that was doing
compliance.  That's now separate.

So the staff that are doing compliance are separate from the staff
that are supporting the contract and helping on the education front.

So the staff that ICANN has mainly focused on registrars are either
looking at managing the contract, making sure the registrars
understand their obligations, responding to requests from registries
for new services, because ICANN has to give approval for those.  So
there's definitely no business development going on.  The staff
receive a proposal and then they come back and say that's not
acceptable, you know, you haven't met these requirements.

So that's purely contract management.  And then there's compliance
people that are there to make sure that the registrars/registries are
complying with their contract.

So policy development is definitely not supported in any way, but
contract management and compliance is where the resources are.  But I
think perhaps for Kevin to maybe provide some answers in more detail
on just exactly what the breakdown is with respect to that budget
level.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Bruce.  It raises the obvious
question to me, though, that if one group has a whole lot of staff
doing what you call compliance work, why can't another group in the
community have a whole lot of staff doing what they might think of as
outreach work.  Let's try to get some balance between these
activities.

Dennis.

>>DENNIS JENNINGS:   Thank you, Peter.  Two quick comments.  First of
all, I think we should remember that only three years ago, two, three
years ago, the financial information that was provided to the
community was pretty sparse.  We have come a long way in the last two
to three years.  But in my view, not far enough, and there is a need
for more detail, and certainly I'm committed to providing the sort of
detail that people are asking for should I get an opportunity to
influence that.

And I can't remember my second comment.

Oh, yes, just a quick point.  Can we set the timer when board members
are speaking?  I think we should be on the clock, too.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Let's resist such blatant democracy and move
to Rita.  Rita, take as long as you like.

[ Laughter ]

>>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON:   Just a quick comment.  As chair of the Audit
Committee, I am not allowed to get involved with the Finance
Committee, which actually makes me happy that Ram and Bruce and others
have to deal with this.  But just as a comment of what I have heard
today in the public forum, so we need -- ICANN needs more resources to
enforce its contracts and deal with compliance.  ICANN use more
resources to pay for to bring people to meetings.  ICANN should bring
more staff to meetings and should compensate the board.  I am reminded
of something my dad used to say when I was trying to make my case for
purchasing luxury handbags.  "What, am I made of money?"

So I think it's important that, I think as Dennis commented, we are
leading to much more transparency.  I think Kevin and Ram and the team
have done their best in trying to give a very detailed budget, and I
think everybody in the community has to work together and be
reasonable and figure out how we best balance things and allocate
resources with the scarce budget that we do have.

Thanks.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Milton, you have been waiting patiently.
We'll hear from you and then Doug Brent wants to add something.

Doug, stay there ready to go.

Let's just hear from Milton.  Milton?

>>MILTON MUELLER:  Yes, thank you, Peter.  This is Milton Mueller,
Syracuse University.  I want to pick up on some of the comments that
the GoDaddy representative made in talking about compliance and cost
of compliance.  I came to this meeting from an OECD conference that
was held in Paris a few days earlier on the subject of the
responsibilities and liabilities of Internet intermediaries.  And I
want to caution the board against the idea of loading too much
responsibility for solving the world's Internet problems on the
intermediaries that they regulate; namely, the registrars and
registries.

What came out very clearly in that OECD conference was the notion that
by imposing too heavy responsibilities on the intermediaries for
policing third-party crimes, you're imposing very heavy costs and
sometimes blocking access to users who -- you know, 99.9% of whom are
completely innocent.

I really resonated with the comments from the GoDaddy representative
that if you are trying to think that by harsher and harsher and more
costly impositions on registrars and registries you are going to solve
all cybercrime and all trademark problems on the Internet, I would
caution you against that.

I think at some point you just have to go after the perpetrators.  And
if you don't have effective ways of going after the perpetrators
themselves, by pushing too much of the responsibility on the
intermediaries, you are going to impose heavy costs on users that may
not have a real compensating benefit in terms of their actual effect.
Thank you.

[Applause]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you, Milton.

And now that the applause has died down, let me just introduce Doug
Brent, our COO.

Doug, you wanted to make a comment?

[Applause]

>>DOUG BRENT:  Just quickly on this discussion of financials, over the
last several years, ICANN's financials have increased in detail every
year and there's a great deal more detail.  To the comment earlier,
this is a line-item budget.  In fact, I have actually reviewed the
U.N. budget that's a $12.5 billion budget and the ICANN budget is a
much more detailed budget than that.

Still, clearly, that doesn't satisfy what the community wants in terms
of getting access, really, to what's much smaller than will ever show
up in a line-item budget.  That's why you heard Kevin talk this time
about in the next budget cycle, I think it's very important to get
input from advisory committees, supporting organizations in a way that
has yet to be determined and work with those supporting organizations
in a way the activities that they care about can be identified and
reflected up and clearly identified whether those activities are going
to take place or not.  Thanks.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thanks, Doug.  I'm going to close the queue
after the two here, and the then we're going to take a break.

So, Naomasa, your turn.

>>ROB HOGGARTH:  Peter, this is Rob.  Just to acknowledge we still
have remote participation, if you could allow that before you cut off.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you, Rob.  I shall.

>>NAOMASA MARUYAMA:  This is Naomasa Maruyama, again, from Japan.  I
decided to -- I gave a general comment.  I decided to give this speech
because of having heard the discussion about the constituency support.
The keyword I want to give you here is, again, the genuine heart of
voluntary support.

I think this -- I'm not sure this word is good enough to express my
thinking because I am not a native speaker, but let me use this one.

I think it's very important to keep this genuine mind or heart of the
volunteer contribution because this is the real base of this kind of
bottom-up consensus or policy developing process.

And I have to say that the -- you can use the money -- to the staff,
you can use the ICANN budget to foster this kind of a genuine mind,
genuine heart of the voluntary contribution.

But if wrongly you use the budget, it will jeopardize the genuine
heart of the voluntary contribution.  That is -- I want to say here,
that is the very important thing we can think about.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you, Naomasa.

Let's go to the gentleman from PayPal.

>>BILL SMITH:  Yes, Bill Smith from PayPal.  I want to respond to the
comments about, "What are you thinking?  I'm made of money?"  I'm
certainly not asking that the board allocate additional funds.  I'm
asking that the funds that have been allocated be spent appropriately,
number one.

In response to GoDaddy and that all registrars are bad, we do not
think that all registrars are bad.  I want to be clear about that.

And the gentleman from Syracuse indicated that we shouldn't ask the
registrars to police the Internet.  We're not asking for them to
police the Internet.  We're asking that the information that they
collect be accurate.  And we are an interested third party, and we
have no way to effect a change other than to speak here and say we
would like to see the information that they collect, that it be
accurate so that we, PayPal, and other companies can conduct the
investigation that is we do, okay, that we do into fraud, misuse and
abuse of the Internet.  We cooperate with law enforcement.  We're not
asking law enforcement to do all of it.  But we need information.  We
need accurate information just like if I need accurate information on
a corporation.  In the United States, I go to the secretary of state's
office of any state and I can get information about corporate
officers.  I can find out who I need to contact.  And that's what we
need in the Internet.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you for that.  And, lastly, but by no
means least -- (applause) -- Jaime.

>>JAIME WAGNER:  Jaime Wagner.  I'm speaking for myself.  I would like
to echo the recently made comments by PayPal and also would like to,
first, say that the degree of transparency that ICANN has in all its
efforts, including the budget, is awesome and I would like, firstly,
to make a compliment on this aspect.

And, secondly, I would like to share some rearrangement I made on the
items that are in the budget.  34% of our budget goes to -- well,
should go to community engagement.  It is constituency support,
meeting logistics, travel support and global engagement.  This made
for 34%.

Second comes what I call the technical functions:  IANA, security and
stability and DNS operations.  That accounts for 25%.

Then it comes new gTLD and IDN.  That's what I call from the economic
perspective an investment.  Well, 14%.

Both policy development and internal affairs, I would say, that
ombudsman, organizational improvement, NomCom support, board support,
both policy development and these internal affairs both account for
11%.

And last with 6% comes contractual support -- compliance.  That's what
I am advocating for, not more money, but a reallocation of priorities
in money allocation.

[Applause]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you, Jaime.  Let's finish off with you,
Rob.  Any questions from the online community, please?

>>ROB HOGGARTH:  Thank you, Peter.  You saved George for last.  This
is from George Kirikos.  Budgets are important.  Because you are
spending the money of registrants ultimately, money that is paid
through registrars or registries ultimately comes from registrants.
These registrants are now being taxed on the order of $60 million per
year with spending growing exponentially.

ICANN does not appear to cap its budget to a reasonable level which
would force it to prioritize properly.

My questions are:  Can ICANN point to any other non-profit
organization that uses for-profit companies as comparables and pay
such a high proportion of staff more than $200,000 per year?  If so,
please name a single example.

Also, ICANN is spending millions of dollars on new offices for Rod
Beckstrom over the coming years.  Did ICANN consider instead using
Cisco telepresence which would have provided a much more cost-
effective means to allow him to communicate with the LA offices from
his home office?

Also, will the Sydney office of Paul Twomey be closed now that the CEO
has changed in order to save money?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thanks.  We are going to take a break for 20
minutes.  Please get back here by 4:15.  Thank you.

[Break]

>> Ladies and gentlemen, if you would be so kind to take your seats.
We'll be starting our second portion of the public forum very shortly.

We would like to suggest for the ease of our scribes and our
translators that when you are asking questions, perhaps you can speak
a little slower so they can do the translation for those that are on
headsets.  Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back chairman, board of ICANN,
Peter Dengate Thrush.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you very much.  Please take your seats,
ladies and gentlemen, and we'll begin the second part of the program.
We are going to begin with a discussion of a new portion of the
budget, which is to have the new gTLD program with its own separate
budget that's been talked about on a number of occasions in other
budget discussions.

And I'll call on Kurt Pritz to take us through that.  But before we do
that, I know that some of you thought that I had just summarily
dismissed George's questions.  The answer is we had several board
members who needed to go and take a break, so we broke.  We've now got
answers to George's questions.  Hopefully, George is still online.

And I will ask Doug Brent, ICANN COO, to go through and respond to
those questions.  Thank you, Doug.

>>DOUG BRENT:  Thank you, Peter.  If I miss one, please give it back
to me because I wasn't taking notes.  I know one of the questions was
about the expenses associated with the Palo Alto office.  And I, like
others here, wanted to get a T-shirt that said "No, there is no DNS
CERT built into the budget and, no, there is no TV studio built into
the budget."

So in terms of Palo Alto expenses, what the board approved last
September was a total over ten-year budget for that facility for
occupancy expenses, $5.1 million over ten years, ranging from about
$400,000 in the first year to $575,000 in the tenth year.  And that is
in the -- I don't recall the exact board meeting, September 2009 time
frame.  So you can find it -- you can find that information there.

Of those occupancy expenses, the net sort of buildout expenses -- it
is a shell building -- so the net buildout expenses to ICANN are about
-- between 5- and $600,000 that are amortized into that total expense.
So the total expense will be about $400,000 beginning in fiscal year
'11 going over ten years to 575,000.

I think the next question -- I actually would like to add something on
that.  Clearly, the reason why ICANN entered into that contract was
that it was an aspect -- it was a contractual element of bringing Rod
Beckstrom on as CEO.  I will also say as someone who lives in
California, that in terms of getting the best technical talent really
in the United States and, certainly, in California, that's available
in the Silicon Valley.  One of the challenges for ICANN, as many of
our employees have come from Silicon Valley.  Recently we've announced
Elise Gerich, Whit Diffie.  David Conrad, myself are Silicon Valley
residents.  So that's -- you know, we see that as giving us additional
options that way.

The second question is will we close our Australia office.  Right now
our Australia office is the only ICANN presence that we have in the
broad Asia region.  I know there's -- certainly in the ICANN Asia
region.

And I think that ICANN should continually look at all of its expenses,
look at how we're operating our Brussels office.  One of my biggest
points of pride was that we once got a criticism for the amount of
rent we're paying on our Brussels office because our budget was so
detailed.

You can actually find out how much rent we are paying in Brussels.  I
think, perhaps, that's something we will consider a new facility in
Brussels and constantly evaluate all our facilities.

Those are two of the questions.  I think the third question was have
we looked at the proportion of individuals compensated over $200,000
as it relates to other non-profit corporations.  I don't know the
answer of how our proportion compares to others.

The fourth question by the respondent was:  Are we aware of other non-
profit corporations that use for-profit benchmarks in doing their
compensation?  And while I can't give names right off the top of my
head, with the compensation consultant that ICANN uses, we've
extensively looked at appropriate benchmarks, appropriate comparables.
They have assured us that this is.

The board actually has had a discussion with staff at this meeting
about rebenchmarking all our comparables.  And that's something that
we're going to be looking at.  I would look forward to being able to
answer that question, which is the proportion of relatively highly
paid people in ICANN versus other non-profits.  I think that's a great
question to benchmark ourselves against.  I don't have the answer to
that today.

Was that all the questions, Peter?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Typically efficient, Doug.  Thank you very,
very much.

All right.  Let's go to the new gTLD program and the special budget
that has been posted in relation to the new gTLDs.  As we've said on a
number of occasions in budget discussions, we're carving out the new
gTLD program.  And I call on Kurt who has been leading the new gTLD
program for many years to take us through a quick introduction to this
budget.

Thanks, Kurt.

>>KURT PRITZ:  Thank you, Peter.  Too many years.

Yes, everybody, as you all know in our budget reporting, we've been
constantly investing in the new gTLD program to bring that to fruition
wisely using the contributions of registrants, registries and
registrars to perform those tasks necessary to develop the program.

When you are getting ready to launch a program, there's a family of
costs that you don't want to start spending until you're certain that
the program's going to launch and you're pretty darn certain when the
program is going to launch.  So the easiest category of those, of
course, are the operational-type programs, hiring the panels that are
going to do the evaluations, getting the facilities in which to house
the operations to do the evaluations, those sorts of things.

And then even before that, there's a family of costs we call
deployment that are getting software licenses to get access to use the
software to operate the program, on-board panelists, creating certain
training programs, bringing certain people on board, certain parts of
the communication program that you don't want to -- it wouldn't be
friscally -- I can't even say it -- fiscally prudent so how can I do
it?  It wouldn't even be fiscally prudent to spend that money until
you're certain of the program date.

And, of course, that program date and the spending of those costs are
not in sync with the ICANN budgeting calendar or budgeting year.

And that's why we've said for quite some time we're going to establish
a separable new gTLD budget and post that for community response and
go through the same sort of transparent public review and process and
iteration that we do with the regular ICANN budget.

Now, of course, there's a second reason for establishing a separable
new gTLD budget, and that is that when you get to the part where ICANN
is receiving application fees and spending all that money to evaluate
the fees and mitigate the other costs, that's a pretty darn big number
and might tend to swallow the whole.

It makes a lot of sense to keep those costs and those cash flows
separate so they can be efficiently, accurately and transparently
administrated.  So that's the reason for the budget.

If you read the budget document, it's brief.  It calls for $6.2
million in those -- or is it $2.6 million -- $2.6 million in those
deployment costs.  And then you see the operating costs, the costs of
receiving and evaluating each of the applications as sort of an
ongoing budget.  And I invite you to read that.

If there are any questions or comments about that, please come to the
microphone and make them.  Thank you, Mr. Chair.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you, Kurt.  Questions, then, or
questions in relation to the budget for the new gTLD program?  We're
going to have a discussion about the new gTLD program after this.  So
I'm not looking for comments on that.  Just looking for comments in
relation to the budgeting exercise and the budget that's been
published.

Elliot?

>>ELLIOT NOSS:  Thank you, Elliot Noss from Tucows.  Kurt, we'll still
contemplating when there's string contention as a mean of breaking
that contention, the possibility of raising funds to significant extra
funds.  One of the things that I've been calling for, for a while now,
although not under the new CEO's regime, I would note, is that we
start to be a little forward-thinking as it relates to what is
possibly a significant excess.

I should note that at a budgeting level, I think it would be imprudent
for the organization to count on there being significant excess.  As
somebody who runs a company, I would never count on something like
that.  But I think it would be equally imprudent to not contemplate
the significant likelihood that that will happen.  So what I have
called for in the past, I'm going to reiterate the call for here, that
we start to be forward-thinking about that and not have that excess
flow into the general coffers but instead look at putting something
together for a productive use of those funds that would relate to the
greater good of the Internet.  Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thanks, Elliot.  There is a number of board
members who have expressed support for that proposal over the time.
That call has not gone unheard.

Elaine?

>> ELAINE PRUIS:  I'm Elaine Pruis, Minds+Machines.  I'm here to ask a
question that our working group, which is trying to come up with ways
to support disadvantaged applicants, has not been able to find an
answer for.  And the question is we have a $60,000 line item in the
application fee for risk mitigation.  And we really don't know what
that means.  So could you just give, like, a two-minute review of what
that is?  And if you have $60,000 per applicant and you are expecting
500 applications to come through, that's $30 million.  So is there
that much risk?  Thanks.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  I understand the bulk of that is actually
litigation risk, but I'll let Kurt or John explain more about the
contingency for risk in the budget.

Kurt?

>>KURT PRITZ:  Thanks, Elaine.  The way that figure was arrived at,
it's a set of low-probability, high-value costs that may occur.  So
litigation is one of those.  The costs associated with a potential
security breach is another one of those, other sorts of things that
occur.

But it's a present value.  In other words, it's those costs multiplied
by the probability that are going to happen.  So at the end of the
day, we think the final cost to ICANN will be that amount.  It's going
to take several years for that to play out, of course, because those
costs take several years to occur.  And then there was one more point
I wanted to make, and that's how we arrived at those costs.

I don't see Kevin, but we -- who did we hire to help us with that?
Willis, is that the name?  So we interviewed a number of insurance
companies that insure for this sort of risk, and they led us on a
company-wide exercise with all the executive senior management sitting
around a table to identify costs for the potential for those occur and
did quite a bit of financial analysis and probability analysis to
arrive at the number.  So it was arrived at with some considerable
study.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  And just adding to that briefly, obviously
much of that uncertainty arises from the fear of the unknown.  And as
we go further down this program, more will become known, and.  I think
there is a reasonable expectation, Kurt, that that portion of the fee
will decline as some of the uncertainties start to become more
certain.

So, Elaine, if your group is looking at -- if you call them the
"disadvantaged applicants," as time goes -- I'm not sure why the
disadvantaged applicants are very keen to get into the first round.
That's clearly going to be the most expensive round.

So I think you might have a look at the urgency with which they need
to act and the costs associated with that.

>> ELAINE PRUIS:  Can I respond to that?  That's another thing we
talked about.  It makes sense that the disadvantaged applicants might
want to wait till the second round when things are much less expensive
and they might not have to pay for the cost development of the
program.

But one of the responses from a participant in the working group was
the last time we had new TLDs was several years ago, and the risk of
waiting for these disadvantaged applicants far outweighs trying to
find a way for them to go this time.  Thanks.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  That's a risk-balancing exercise they'll have
to work their way through.  Mike?

%%%jen1end.

%%%l3start.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:   Thank you, Peter.

As Kurt mentioned, this new gTLD process has drug on for a number
years.  We're now on version 4.

Now, one of the things that I find interesting is, in the very first
DAG, the cost for an application was $185,000.  And it was supposed to
be a cost-recovery model.

So what I'm trying to figure out here is, we've had two years of
delays, probably tens of millions of dollars added, but the one thing
that still hasn't changed is the $185,000 application fee.

Could someone help reconcile that number.  Was it right back then or
is it right today?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I'm sure it was right all the time.  But
let's have Kurt explain just how that arithmetic works.

>>KURT PRITZ:   Or I could announce a rise in the fee just to
accommodate Michael.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I think we should put the fees up.

>>KURT PRITZ:   So the original fee has in it 25- or $26,000 to absorb
the development cost.  And as you point out, the program has continued
for some time, and development costs have increased because we've
continued to spend.  So instead of increasing the fee, the plan is to
recover those fees, instead of the first round of applications, to
recover the fees over more than the first round of applications.  In
other words, we'll absorb the development costs at the rate of $25,000
per application for as long as it takes to absorb the development
costs.  So it might take longer than the first round because we've
increased those costs.

You know, as an alternative, though, and a discussion that's probably
not finished with the finance community, you know, we want to ensure
for ICANN that that's the right thing to do.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:   Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Mike.

Next in line.  Thank you.

>>ANDREW MACK:   I'm Andrew Mack, with AM Global Consulting.  I'm a
member of the BC and the a member of the working group that Elaine is
part of on new gTLD applicant support.  And I am speaking on my own
behalf, although I don't think anyone from our group would really
disagree.

For those of you who weren't able to be here yesterday, we had a
really great panel on this subject.  And at the risk of sounding like
complimenting our own group, I think you'd find it very interesting.
So worth taking a look at.

We talked about three different kinds of support that we're hoping
that the ICANN community will offer new gTLD that are coming in that
are needy:  Logistical support, like translation and outreach and
consulting.  Technical support to help them prepare for IPv6 and
DNSSEC.  And support to build out in underserved languages and IDNs,
like bundling, bundled prices, an idea we had talked about in Nairobi.
And we all recognize this is going to cost money.

And I think everyone in the working group recognizes that that funding
will have to come from a multitude of sources.  However, we think that
it's extremely important that ICANN be a part of that funding, that we
find some resource inside of ICANN to support these needy groups.

When it comes down to it, I mean, I agree personally very much with
Avri's statement on making sure that the budget supports all deserving
stakeholder groups.  I hope the ICANN community will really take
seriously the challenge of supporting these new gTLD applicants.

I've got one more thing to ask of you.  That is what we've put all of
our recommendations online.  We have two weeks to get people's
comments.  We'd very much like to get the support and the suggestions
of the community.  Thanks.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  Ken.

>>KEN STUBBS:   Yeah, testing.  My name is Ken Stubbs.  I'm speaking
as a private individual here, but with a little bit of experience,
about 40 years in finance and public accounting.

I'm somewhat concerned.  As you know, we're projecting into the
hundreds on the number registries that may very well be approved by
ICANN.

I think all of us who have been involved in one way or another in
registry operations or who have a familiarity with the financial
aspect of it are aware of the fact that there's a high possibility
that you're going to end up with some of those guys who have really
faulty business plans, and you're going to have to step in or some
sort of a plan is going to have to be put forward in order to deal
with those issues.

First of all, I'd like to make a recommendation to ICANN, and that is,
instead of putting you on the spot right now, I think it would be a
very good idea to take that specific issue and explain to the
community in the form of some sort of a document as to how you plan to
handle those.  Because in the case of registrars, there's an active
market for the portfolio in many cases because there's value in what's
left.

But in the case of a registry that may have five, ten, 20,000
registrations and is inordinately expensive to operate and maybe in a
part of the world where it's very difficult, this could be a problem.

I consider it myself not to just be a business problem, but to be a
stability problem, because anytime you create a new registry by
contract, you are, in effect, creating what I would consider some sort
of a trusteeship for the community.  There's implied in there some
sort of consistency.

Thank you very much for hearing me out.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Ken, just a quick -- I think the registry
failover program is probably the short answer to that.  But I'll just
ask Bruce to talk a little bit on that line.

>>BRUCE TONKIN:   Yeah, thanks, Peter.

Ken, if you look at the draft applicant guidebook, there's actually a
section on contingency planning.  And part of that section, from
memory, is that an organization needs to establish, I think, three
years of operations in escrow.  So they actually have to put up funds
for three years that are separated from the company.  So it's at least
a three-year transition available.

>>KEN STUBBS:   May I just respond quickly to Bruce.

I think there we are looking at a real strong compliance issue.
Because you need to be able to identify early enough on where problems
are.  I know all of you -- Rod, you've had the experience in dealing
with those kind of business issues.  So it's extremely important as
part of I'll call it an oversight function to make sure you get a
reporting system that really gives you the opportunity to see a
potential problem early enough to make -- to create a stable solution
for dealing with T.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Ken, I think you've also raised another
potentially much more challenging topic, and that is this concept that
all of these registries are going to continue under the same kind of
trustee concept that we had with just the one or two or three and the
ccTLDs.  I mean, it might be inherent in a brand-new solution which --
which is very much more market-operated that some of these TLDs are --
will fail, you know, and don't need -- and will not be picked up.  I
mean, there's a whole topic there, isn't there?  Has there ever been
any agreement in the course of this process that every single TLD is
going to be treated, you know, in the way that you want them treated?

>>KEN STUBBS:   Well, I think that's kind of like the small elephant
in the room, we'll call it, that I think needs to be much more deeply
deliberated in this process.  But it's kind of something we really
haven't spent as of time as I personally feel we should.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Well, the -- the public comment process in
relation to the DAG 4 provisions that Bruce has alerted us to, perhaps
that's a way of testing the market on that.  Thank you.

>>KEN STUBBS:   No problem.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Bertrand.

>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE:   Good afternoon.  My name is Bertrand de
la Chapelle, and I'm the French GAC representative.

I just wanted -- this wasn't my intention, but I just wanted to come
back once again on this notion of cost recovery.

The notion that the fees that the registrants pay -- the registrants,
not the registrar and registries -- the registrants pay to ICANN in
its budget are used to develop a program whose objective is to not
only develop competition, but also develop social benefits.  It makes
perfect sense.

ICANN has spent a long time exploring all the possibilities to open
the gTLD program in the best manner.  The fact that the fee is based
on the fact that it should be recovering the past cost is an
artificial burden.  We have said that over and over again.  It is
based on the wrong assumption that the money that ICANN receives in
its budget comes from registries and registrars.  This is no more true
than the idea that the French government receives the added-value tax
that you pay when you go to a butcher from the butcher.  It is the
citizen who buys the meat who pays the value-added tax, and the
butcher is a collector.  The registries and registrars are the
collectors of the contributions to the budget of ICANN.

All registrants have contributed to a budget that allows the building
of a program that must maximize social benefits.

In that context, France is concerned that the evolution of the program
is adding more and more burdens to the potential applicants, giving
not only the high cost, not only the high technical requirements that
some very, very large ccTLDs consider themselves that they would not
have been able to meet, and adding in the vertical integration
question rules that are not in the favor of new entrants.  The fact
that in addition, applicants from developing countries are with small
TLDs or the perspective of small TLDs have will to go exactly through
the same root and through the same rule is disadvantageous for them.

I was this morning at the European Parliament in a session that was
organized with the help ECLID the European cultural and linguistic TLD
group.

I am concerned that the whole program is still geared toward a notion
and an ideal of competition that is actually not going to be true as
the recent study on economic and social benefits demonstrated.  And,
therefore, as a last comment, which is just a statement and not a
question, as a last comment to Peter, when he says, "Why couldn't the
small ones, you know, the developing countries and so on, wait until
the second round?"

My short answer is, maybe because they are very uncertain about when
and whether a second round will happen.  And so I'm afraid that the
way this has been handled until now is overburdening the first round,
because everybody will want to be in there.  And the reality is, when
we think about it -- this is my final point -- when we think about it,
the new gTLD program is nothing more and nothing less than the naming
policy at the second level of the dot root registry.  What we're
talking about is what is the policy for the entry of domain names at
the second level of the root.  And this policy, every single TLD has
talked more about the balance in terms of sunrise period, premium
names, and things like that, than the program today is doing, I'm
afraid.  Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Bertrand.

Sir.

>>STEFANO CIMATORIBUS:  Good afternoon.  My name is Stefano
Cimatoribus.  I am a new participant, attending my first ICANN
meeting.

I just want to support one of the previous speakers who suggested
bundling applications with lower fees for extra languages.

I served as commercial manager for a Russian firm based in Italy,
operating in the commerce sector of fresh-cut flowers,
retail/wholesale franchising.  And since I've always worked in the
commercial divisions, I had daily contacts with my former Russian
colleagues in St. Petersburg.  And I felt many times that I found some
operative obstacles in using Latin characters.  I hope that someone
will propose a new gTLD such as dot flowers, but I'm afraid that the
dot flowers applicants will not -- are not going to spend an extra 2-
or $300,000 on a Cyrillic dot flowers.  Therefore, I encourage you on
reducing the cost for extra non-Latin IDNs.

And one more thing.  My company doesn't want a country-code top-level
domain like dot RU or dot RF, because they don't want to appear as
only a Russian company, I think.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  Very interesting.

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Nigel.

>>NIGEL ROBERTS:   Thank you, Peters.  I will be very brief to say a
few words in support of what Michele and Bertrand had said.

One of the important things here is that the second-level entry into
the root is simply a label.  It is an expression of semantic content.

Disadvantaged applicants come from all parts of Europe, for example,
and from the rest of the world, linguistic communities and so on.

If, for example, the La Société Guernesiaise wanted to have a TLD that
promoted the Patois language, they would never be able to come to this
table.  They would never be able to do that.  So whether or not you're
talking about money or barriers to entry that are, should we say,
nonfinancial, the bar here is set far too high, and we must find a way
of changing that.  Otherwise, you're restricting people's freedom of
expression.  And that, I think, is not just a European ideal.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Nigel.

Avri.

>>AVRI DORIA:   Yes, Avri.

Avri Doria.  And pretty much speaking for myself, though I do happen
to be the co-chair of the group that's working on trying to find a
means to enable the disadvantaged applicants to apply.

I appreciate the comments that we often hear of why can't they wait
until the second round.  And I happen to be one of those that believes
that a second round might come within my lifetime.

But the question I have to ask you, in return, is why should they
wait?  Why should they have to wait?

Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Avri, there's not a question of why should
they wait.  It's a question of what's the cost of waiting and what's
the cost of moving now, sir, dot music.

>>CONSTANTINE ROUSSOS:  Hi, this is Constantine from dot Music.

I really liked Bertrand's comments.  And we're looking into doing IDNs
as well.  We're a nonprofit, so we're running this for the benefit and
the mission of the music community.

And we're looking at the budget.  And let's say we want to do seven
IDNs.  We're one applicant, one company, one community.  We're going
to choose one registry service provider.  But then we're asked to pay
$185,000 times, let's say, seven.  You're looking at a million and a
half dollars just to, you know -- just to go to ICANN, when the only
thing that needs to be seen is to validate the IDN that it's
technically sound and put it in the root.

I don't know why we should all be wasting the evaluator's time
checking backgrounds of the same person eight times in the same
application when the only issue is the string.

So I think it's an issue that ICANN should look at for -- for the
applicants.

And I think we're not given as much representation as we should have.
And a lot of risk goes to the applicants ourselves.  Everyone is
talking about trademarks, what happens to these people, what happens
to the other people.

But what happens to us?

And we'd like ICANN to look at us and say, hey, we don't want to rip
these guys off.  We want to do what's -- what's better for everyone.
And if people don't have enough money to go and pay one and a half
million dollars to do, like, the Latin and the IDNs, then how can
someone accomplish this under the current framework?

The mathematics just doesn't add up.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Just looking at Kurt.  I mean, I think we've
heard this a number of times.  And I've always responded, yes, that
sounds like a good idea.

Where are we at with that?  Kurt, is there a rule against bundling?
Because if there isn't a rule against bundling, if someone comes in
with a bundle, there should be a discount, because you don't have to
keep checking the same person, for example, again and again and again.
And the litigation risk isn't six times as great, is it, for the same
thing in six different scripts?

>>KURT PRITZ:   You're right, it could be.

We've looked at this several different ways.  At the end of the day,
we've created a model for how much -- how much it's going to cost to
process the new gTLD applications we get.  We've added that together.
And summing the revenues and the costs, at the end of the day, we get
zero left over.  And so not knowing how many applications we're going
to get or who or how they're going to be bundled, but taking an
additional risk on board in the first round to attempt to provide some
sort of discount in the end in a system that, you know, could
potentially be gamed with transfer of slots or combinations of firms
bundling to get reduced fees, and adding that into the equation,
that's already a zero-sum game where the sums of money involved really
treble the -- ICANN's budget when we -- you know, and Ramaraj and
Kevin and Doug and I will talk about this further.

But, to date, I think our conversations are about, you know, how much
uncertainty is there and how much additional uncertainty would there
be in combining models complexifying models going forward.  So, you
know, we can talk about it some more, and we can perform some more
analysis.  But it's a high-risk, important issue for ICANN.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Kurt.

Can I just do a room temperature test.  We're running out of time to
talk about the budget.  But I'll extend that if it's a concern.

Who wants to talk -- who's waiting to talk about the next topic, which
is the new gTLD program in general?

One, two, three, four, five, six -- lots.  Okay, I'm going to put the
one-minute timer, if I can, please, technical staff, on the budget
discussion, which has gone on longer than we allocated.  But let's
hear at the people at the microphone.

>>IZUMI AIZU:   Izumi Aizu, member of the at-large community from the
Asia Pacific region.  And I just would like to echo what our friends
from the French government and Avri said about the -- preparing for
our balanced, fair sort of ways for the application of the new gTLD.

So I will save the next spot of the things specifically related to.

But before that, the sole purpose of the creation of ICANN -- because
I'm also the member of the thirty-plus-pin club -- is to promote
competition globally.  And the current practice of imposing this
$185,000, not to mention due to documentation mostly for the English,
while most of the, at least, Asia Pacific countries don't have much
English native or working language even, so I think more consideration
should be made in -- to really keep the balance on a fair basis,
taking account many regions of the world.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Izumi.  And thanks for keeping
things short.  I'm sorry to do that to you.  Sébastien.

>>SÉBASTIEN BACHOLLET:   Sébastien Bachollet, representative of French
users.

I am convinced that they will endorse the position expressed on behalf
of the French government, expressed by the government representative
at GAC.  I was surprised by one of your comments, Mr. President.  If
we wait until the second round, it will be less expensive.  It means
that we give a bonus to those who have more money today, when what we
need is a system that is open as much as possible and who can serve
the users.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   -- on the budget discussion.  Thank you.

>>ALEX GAKURU:  Thank you very much, Alex Gakuru, I'm in the group
that's discussing support to the underprivileged in the new gTLD.

Waiting for a second round, whenever it will be, may be and will be
interpreted as a way of excluding disadvantaged regions, because by
the time the second round happens, whenever it will be, all the names
will have been taken over by the trademark owners who have a lot of
money and have gone ahead and registered all the names, so we will
actually be excluded.  That's how it appears to be seen.

So it is an urgency that it's included in the first round.  The
formula must be worked out somehow.  Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks for that.

Let's move, then, to the next topic, which is the discussion of the
new gTLD program itself.

Now, the DAG 4 has been published.  The public comment period is open.
I'm not sure whether people want -- show of hands.  Does anybody want
--  No.  We won't move that.  Let's go straight to discussions.

Comments, please, in relation to the DAG 4.

Starting with Ron Andruff.  Ron.

>>RON ANDRUFF:   Thank you, Chairman.

Good afternoon.  I'd like to read this.

I've been coming to the open microphone at the ICANN meetings now for
ten years, addressing various members of the board who have come and
gone, along with all of the members of the ICANN community who have
come and gone, as well as those who continue to participate in ICANN's
environment.

ICANN is a microcosm of the world, and we speak many languages, we're
from many nations, we come from different backgrounds, some of us are
lawyers, some technicians, some idealists, symptom are
obstructionists.  But we all have one thing in common, and that is, we
select few are interested in the core workings of the Internet.  But I
and others have getting extremely frustrated not because the new gTLD
is moving slower than we would like it to be.  Rather, because there
are too few in this community putting the institution of ICANN first.

The intense work of the Vertical Integration Working Group and the
difficulty we have had researching consensus after hundreds of hours
and thousands of exchanges on the list has tested us all in this
regard.  But there's a distrust clearly standing between the members
and consensus.

It's very unfortunate that the extreme amounts of distrust or in some
cases disrespect or in some cases a misuse of authority by staff or
board have become so pervasive that these issues threaten all that we
do.  We think that another person or entity has a specific agenda
often diametrically opposed to ours.  We think that another is trying
to get one over on us or trying to capitalize on something that we may
not even know what it is or how it works but will surely offer a
financial or other reward, and they can often be unfair or nefarious.
Some in this community are too smart by half and they're gaming the
system for all it's worth in these innocent times because ICANN
compliance enforcement has not been developed into all we hope for.
We've been given a gift to be able to work and play within this
environment, within this extraordinary group of people on an
extraordinary experiment.

But we abuse it.  We abuse the people we work with in this
international multistakeholder group, and we abuse the opportunity to
build ICANN into the remarkable institution it should be.

As I walk the streets in Brussels during this past week, it struck me
that many of the buildings we past were built in the 13th, 14th, and
15th centuries and the integrity built into these structures is
amazing to see 500 years more or later.  And I wonder when we will all
take a step back and take a similar longer view.

It frustrates me that there are some on the ICANN staff or community
that see my efforts and arguments to get the community evaluation in
the applicant guidebook down to a more fair 13 of 16 points rather
than 14 of 16 to allow for human error in a highly subjective
evaluation, to allow true communities to take charge of their own
Internet space for the good of all by seeing my argument as Ron's
personal self-interest.  It frustrates me that there are some on the
ICANN staff or community that see my arguments for a community
applicants to have the right to apply for a IDN for their specific
community without having to pay $185,000 for each IDN equivalent of
their chosen string, a translation that could take place in one minute
at no cost.

It frustrates me that we are all so jaded that we have trouble
believing that anyone here could actually be be interested in building
the institution of ICANN, but build this institution, we must.  So I
come to the microphone today's again at this Brussels meeting with my
current request to the board to hold the CEO to his promise that he
will provide whatever resources are needed to ensure that the
compliance department is fully funded, fully staffed to meet the
challenges we face as we embark on that great expansion of the DNS.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Ron.  You're out of time.  Is there
more?

>>RON ANDRUFF:   One quick sentence.

We've asked for market differentiation because this new report has
come out, and we need to make sure that in the coming ten, 20, 50, and
100 years from now that we have -- that an open marketplace is not
creating havoc and we need to give serious thought to that.  So I
thank you very much for letting me air my frustration, but it's clear
that we need to work more closely together.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks.  Okay.  Change to the housekeeping
rules.

If we stay on three minutes and you stay standing, the people at the
back are going to be standing there for close to 45 minutes.  So I've
asked staff if you could hold your positions now, nobody move.  We'll
take a list of the order in which you are now standing.  And we'll
work off a list so you can sit down until called.

Staff, is somebody -- I can't see anybody actually doing that.  Can
staff please attend to the taking of a list of names -- two lists of
names, one on the left, one on the right.

>>JOHN JEFFREY:   We're working on it.  We're going to have people
down to take names in a few minutes.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   In the interest of time, we're going to cut
you down to two minutes to make sure everybody gets a chance.  So
let's come to this microphone.  Adrian, I have to change to two
minutes.  It doesn't affect you, but you'll just have to go fast.

Thank you.

>>ADRIAN KINDERIS:   I won't go fast, for the scribes.

My name is Adrian Kinderis, from AusRegistry International.  As many
of you will be away, my company conducted a promotion where folks
could secure a tee shirt with their TLD printed on them.  Many of them
(inaudible) today, and we got rid of about 600 of them, soon to be
washing cars all over the world, I imagine.

[ Laughter ]

>>ADRIAN KINDERIS:   I thought I would share with the audience some
interesting data that has come out of this exercise.

We have had no trademark infringements.  We have not had to invoke our
immediate takedown procedure.

[ Applause ]

>>ADRIAN KINDERIS:   You're chewing up my time.

We have not had to invoke our immediate takedown procedure, which
would have meant ripping the shirt off the person to ensure that no
one was ever to wear it again.

We have had no issues with public morality.  We have no -- we have not
disturbed public order.

Anyone could have registered profanity on shirts with racist messages,
yet no one did.  We had one --  We had one objection, but the objector
was intoxicated and therefore deemed not to be in good standing, or
able to stand, for that matter.

[ Applause ]

>>ADRIAN KINDERIS:   Whilst we offered our shirts on a first come,
first served basis, no one complained except when we ran out.  We had
one complaint from the girl making the tee shirts, who didn't realize
that sweatshops were legal in Brussels.

Oh, and for the record, we had clear vertical separation.  We didn't
make the shirts, but we did distribute them.  No one was worse off for
this practice.

We are selling the scientific data and regarding exactly which names
were registered, and this will be available for a price to be
negotiated.

In all seriousness, I think the exercise showed in some small way that
our community's excited and we are all enthusiastic about new gTLDs.

Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   That's tremendous.

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Adrian, thank you for that.  What I'm
delighted about is you haven't actually asked the 2- or 300,000 for an
EOI, but you have managed to conduct one for us.  Let's go to this
side of the microphone.  If you can stay standing, sir, you have the
floor.

>>JASER ELMORISY:  Thank you.

Dear Mr. Chairman, my name is Jaser Elmorisy, and I attended the ICANN
meetings in Paris and in Cairo before.

Both times, the board assured me that the Arabic general TLDs will be
launching at the same time as Arabic country code TLDs.  Yet I had to
see a totally different outcome.

Owning an Arabic business, I have to stress out again how important it
is, especially for us SMBs in the Arabic world, to be able to
register, use, and secure our businesses in Arabic versions of dot com
or dot net.  I need to know whether the board will honor its promise
and accelerate the Arabic general TLDs, too.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, we'll come back to you.  That's a
complicated question about --  There's an answer to that.  I'll just
make sure we get it right for you.  Thank you.  Let's move to the --
to Dirk.

>>DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI:   Dirk Krischenowski, founder and CEO of dot
Berlin, and I'm also today speaking on behalf of other long-standing
initiatives for geo TLDs like dot Hamburg or dot Bavaria, which is
since 2006 online there.

The first point relates to the time line.  We missed or we -- the time
line was lost at the ICANN meeting in Seoul.  And it never came back.
And I had the hope at this meeting that the time line might disappear
somewhere here with the DAG 4 or during the meeting.  So the first
question is, when do we see a time line for the new TLD program?  And
I remind still for those who have been long in this process, we're
still nine months from now to the application window.  So there's some
pregnancy starting now and going on forever.

My second point is that we appreciate the progress that has been made
here from Nairobi since -- since Nairobi to now, and we think that a
lot of elements we thought would be good have been included in the
final DAG now.  For instance, we assumed that geo TLDs need to be
operated by the community concerned, similar as ccTLDs do based on the
RFC 1591.

We also anticipated that change of control of the geo TLDs' legal form
or an ownership or a complete registry sale should not be possible
without approval of the relevant governments.

 As you probably know we will developed a very large community here in
 Berlin, for dot Berlin over the past years in doing outreach for all
 relevant stakeholders in Berlin and beyond.

We think we did this in good faith in accordance with the ICANN model
and that should be considered in the DAG.

So my last question relates to the summit where we might solve all our
problems.  What are the plans for the so-called ICANN summit where we
might see the pre-pre-final DAG then?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you very much, Tina.  Let me just
confirm that I have got the list of this side right.  I have got Scott
Seitz, Ravi Zuo, Peter Vasil,  Ken Stubbs, Limei Liu and I'm sorry
about the pronunciation or my reading, Izumi Aizu, and Mikey O'Connor,
and Thomas Schneider.  If I have called out your name in that order,
you are guaranteed a place at this microphone.

If you haven't -- if I didn't call out your name, could you please let
Tina know.

>>ROB HOGGARTH:   And Peter, this is Rob.  I'm sure since he submitted
a remote question or two, that Mr. Kirikos would like to be on the
list.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   You are coming up next.  On this side, I
have Remi Caron, Khaled Fattal, Philip Corwin, Zahid Jamil,
Constantinos Roussos, Jeff Neumann.  Sorry, this is done rapidly by
Tina.

Somebody, I can't read the Christian names but it's Arribilloga, thank
you, my apologies, Antony Van Couvering, Paul Foody, Susan Reynolds,
Hirokatsu Ohigashi, and Mike Palage.

So apologies for pronunciation.  If you heard something that sounds
like your name, newer the list and you are on that microphone.

And again, if you didn't hear that, come and tell Tina.

So on that basis, if you have had your name called, you can sit down;
otherwise, you will be waiting.

Stay if you like, but you will otherwise be waiting 30 to 40 minutes
standing in that line.

What I'd like to be able to see is new speakers coming to the line, if
your name is not on one of these lists, if you can come there.

Jeff, your name is on the list.  Mike.

So the length of line at the microphone is quite a useful indicator to
me in terms of structuring the meeting.

Now, Dirk, you had some questions, including about timeline and about
the summit.  I will ask Kurt, please, if you can respond in relation
to the timeline.

Kurt, you might like to come and sit at the front with one of the
handhelds because there may be one or two questions I might ask you to
help with.

>>KURT PRITZ:   So, Dirk, with regard to the timeline, there -- well,
with regard to the timeline, whether or not this is the final draft
really depends on the response we get to -- we, meaning all of us, to
the comment forms that are associated with this version of the
guidebook.

So if we all think, and we can recommend to the board that we think
that the amount of change between this guidebook and the next one is
going to be sufficiently small that we think everybody is really on
notice for the rules and has had a chance to comment on them, then we
feel good about making that next version of the guidebook, you know,
potentially presented for board approval in December the final one.

But, you know, it depends on community comment.

I think that's the answer to that.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   And --

>>KURT PRITZ:   And the summit.  I think Jon Nevett brought that up,
and it also came newspaper a dialogue we had yesterday in another
meeting.  And I think the answer to that is, you know, on its face, we
think it's a very good idea.  What we want to do is flesh it out with
some agenda items so we can really prove to ourselves the worth of it.
And those agenda items will be generated through the comment fora we
receive in the guidebook.

So I think on its face we think the answer is a good idea and we will
prove that to ourselves by creating an agenda for it.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Okay.  Rob, let's go to the online
questions, please.

>>ROB HOGGARTH:   Thank you, Peter.  George Kirikos asked two.  He
said if I can get them within two minutes, I should try.

Since Peter said my question was not relevant during the dot XXX
session, I would like to ask it in this session on new TLDs.

As ICANN acknowledged a few days ago, they have apparently read the
Tim Berners-Lee document which opposed the introduction of new TLDs
including dot XXX.  He wrote that -- and I won't repeat the quote.
Why does ICANN believe it is right and Tim Berners-Lee wrong in its
plans to give away a large chunk to private groups?  Furthermore what
has been the economic impact in millions of dollars for all past new
TLDs, both benefits and costs?  Furthermore, while we oppose new TLDs,
we put forth a proposal on ascended TLDs which would be superior to
DAG v4 in that it would require all new TLD owners to obtain easements
from the owners of the matching dot com, dot net and dot org domains.

Doing so would internalize the negative externalities of applicants on
the public and ensure that confusion slash dilution would be
minimized.  Why can't ICANN start anew with approaches like this
rather than continue with the DAG 4 which has divided the community
and not reached any consensus?

And I will just continue with the second question in the time
allotted.

A lot of time is being spent on the topic of vertical integration.
Folks will recall that VeriSign used to own Network Solutions but had
to provide equal treatment to all registrars and the prices were
capped at the registry level.  In our view, vertical integration
becomes moot as long as prices are capped, just like they are for dot
com.

Market power cannot be exercised by registry operators as long as
prices are capped at the registry level and equal access is provided,
just like it was during the days VeriSign owned NSI.

So will ICANN in a future DAG finally introduce hard caps on registry
prices in order to protect consumers, thereby making the topic of
vertical integration moot?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Well, the quick answer, George, I think it's
flawed and obviously done for dramatic effect to try to position
something I have said and try to suggest that I am in conflict with
Tim Berners-Lee.  The reality is that the policy in relation to new
TLDs comes from the GNSO, which is the place in the multistakeholder
model where policy on new TLDs is supposed to be made.

And so it's being developed through the ICANN process.

If Tim Berners-Lee has a view about that, he has opportunities for
participating.

In relation to your suggestion about ascended TLDs, again, if you
raise that in the GNSO and you have community support for developing a
totally different policy, you can.

We will get someone else to answer the last question.

Let's move over back to this side (indicating) and we come to Scott
Seitz.  Scott.

Sorry.  Your left, my right.

>>NANCY LUPIANO:  Excuse me, could we please try to talk a little
slower?  The translators are still having a difficult time following.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Nancy.  I'll try as well.

>>SCOTT SEITZ:  I will be very brief.  This is Scott Seitz with
dotGay.  Greetings again to the ICANN board.  This is my second
meeting.

I would like to comment on the current morality and public order
conversations that are ongoing.

I encourage ICANN to stay vigilant.  To assure these conversations do
not turn into tools that would enable discrimination and hurt.  The
gay community knows this all too well.

In addition, I'd like to ask ICANN to reflect on their own policies to
be sure that they are inclusive in supporting the gay community with
same-sex orientation.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Scott.

Let's go back to the other side and come to Remi Caron.

REMI CARON:  My name is Remi Caron.  I am running a small business in
the Netherlands, and this is my first ICANN meeting.

I develop software that's being hosted in the cloud which enables me
as a very small business to open up services to the rest of the world,
which is a great opportunity that otherwise, for a small business like
mine, would not exist.

Although this is a very bright future, I do have two concerns.  And
first of all, it concerns about privacy regulations and data
protection mechanisms that are in place in the various countries and
states within Europe, but there's another thing that concerns me
extremely on top of that, and that is the outlook of having hundreds
and hundreds of new TLDs that will be deployed all around the world.

So since the stakes have gone up for small companies but also for
larger companies in order to be sure that the DNS is reliable and
always redirecting information in the right direction, I would like to
ask the ICANN community to select managers for the TLDs that set a
very high standard, because otherwise, the whole cloud initiative and
those extra TLDs will first of all be a burden instead of an addition
to the community.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.

We come to Ravi Zuo.

>> Thank you, chairman.  I am (saying name) from China.  I speak on
behalf of China organizational name (saying name) Center, Connex
(phonetic) in short.

We got many inspiring information in this meeting with the effort of
ICANN and all the stakeholders, it is delighted to see that we are one
more step towards the opening of gTLD application.  But it is still
not transparent enough as the final application time has not been
decided yet.

ICANN tries to make one such fit for all policies.  Well, afraid that
more efforts you make, not only the thicker the application guidebook
grows but also the greater differences among stakeholders expands.

Thus we recommend ICANN to add two categories to fit different
communities common needs.  One for commercial use and another for
noncommercial use.  And to develop public policies and the evaluation
procedures respectively.

We believe it will simplify the management of the gTLDs and accelerate
the evaluation pace for some of the new TLDs.

As a matter of fact, GNSO also groups itself into commercial and
noncommercial stakeholders.  You know, both in Arabia and Brussels,
some GAC members reiterated the importance of classification of gTLDs.
We also learn that GAC and some organizations have already done some
preparatory work in these fields.

We appreciate all the efforts that ICANN has made and are willing to
make our contribution to assist ICANN achieving the goal in this
regard.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you very much.

Let's go back to this side for Khaled Fattal.

>>KHALED FATTAL:   Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My name is Khaled Fattal.  I am chairman, CEO of the Multilingual
Internet Group.  I have a prepared statement for you and it goes this
way.

Those who have been involved in the ICANN process as long as I have
naturally become accustomed to ICANN controversies at all levels, but
the latest is a wrong of international ramifications.

The latest version of the guidebook for the new gTLDs called DAG 4 is
hundreds of pages long with a lot of the good, the bad, and to some,
the ugly.  However, something new has appeared in the DAG 4 that can
be called the disturbing.

It seems ICANN has now ventured itself into the field of terrorism
verification.  In DAG 4, Section 1.2.1, Eligibility, and 2.1,
Background Check, it states, and I quote, background checks at both
entity -- excuse me.  "Background checks at both entities level and
individual level will be conducted for all applicants to confirm
eligibility.  The background check may include but is not limited to
any of the following areas.  It lists six areas, and one of them is
terrorism."

End of quote.

What is alarming to me is nowhere does the DAG 4 contain any
definitions of standards upon which these checks on terrorism will be
conducted.  For ICANN to invoke the term "terrorism" in this arbitrary
manner threatens ICANN's ability to effectively undertake its mandate
of being the global technical coordinator of the Internet.  It would
also challenge its legitimacy as a global public service provider in
the eyes of the international community if it continues on this path,
but most importantly, alienate many of the international community.

Moreover, it raises many concerns as to whether ICANN is succeeding at
truly internationalizing itself.

So whose standards is ICANN planning on adopting?  The U.S. State
Department definition on terrorism or the U.S. resolution on
terrorism?  Have ICANN drafters, staff, board members who have worked
on this and reviewed this DAG 4 prior to posting it for comments on
its Web site not realized this possible consequence?

Furthermore, the arbitrary inclusion of terrorism as a measuring stick
without any internationally recognized law or standard is wrong and if
acted upon it can be understood or seen by Muslims and Arabs as racist
and profiling.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Khaled, you are running out of time a bit.
Can you bring it to close?

>>KHALED FATTAL:   I will bring it to close but under the
circumstances I will come up with a recommendation for to you act upon
so I ask you to indulge me, Mr. Chairman.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  If you have it written down, why
don't you e-mail it to us so we can --

>>KHALED FATTAL:   I will, but if I can indulge another 20 seconds.
Which terrorism is ICANN preoccupying itself with, sir?  Islamic
terrorism, cyber terrorism or state terrorism?  I will provide you
with the written statement and it will be posted online, but to
conclude I have some recommendations.  One, either the retraction of
"terrorism" as an area of checks or verification of applicants in the
guidebook, or the term or are of terrorism checks to be included but
only if the basis upon which these measures are to be conducted are
100% clearly defined based on international and local jurisdiction
laws.  And I will leave it for that at the time being.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  Kurt, do you want to make a
quick response on the nature of the checking that is required to
establish the bona fides, et cetera, of applicants?

>>KURT PRITZ:   Thank you, Khaled.  We had a conversation or
discussion about this in a previous forum, too, and I think Khaled's
points are excellent.

We included background checks in this version of the DAG in a response
to community -- specific community suggestions about mitigating
malicious conduct.  And that list that's in the applicant guidebook
you see is actually a list we received after solicitations from
security firms that do background checks.  So it's not an ICANN list.
Like so much other stuff, we go to experts.

So despite your first statement that the guidebook is getting too
long, I agree with you that certain terms, and especially that one
that is so sensitive, either requires -- it should be removed or it
should be -- you know, it should have additional definition.

So I take his comments.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Okay.  Let's go to the gentleman behind you,
then.  Peter.

>> Hi.  My name is Vasille Petif (phonetic).  I am from Bulgaria
representing a company called Tularic (phonetic), a rather successful
I.T. company, I should say, in the sphere that they operate in.  We do
sell software around the world, including countries such as Russia,
Ukraine and Bulgaria.

And the reason I am here and speaking for this population in the world
is that we are very happy that ICANN has decided to open up the
Internet to non-Latin speaking countries.

However, I don't understand that the Cyrillic dot com domain name with
a K may not make it because it looks too similar to the Latin version
of dot com.  Which brings to the question how serious is ICANN in
supporting the Cyrillic languages, and what do we do as consumers
actually to help you guys bring the dot com -- the most famous domain
name dot com in Cyrillic?

And my second question is if.com in Cyrillic makes it, will you
provide some kind of mechanism so companies can actually have the
Cyrillic derivatives of their Latin URLs and have the first say when
purchasing them?

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.

Let's go to Philip Corwin.  Philip.

>>PHILIP CORWIN:  Good afternoon.  Philip Corwin speaking on behalf of
the Professional Domain Investors and Developers of the Internet
Commerce Association.

Three quick points which we will elaborate on in extensive written
comments.

The first is that we would hope that the trademark protections built
into DAG v4, particularly the URS, are left as is.  They are the
result of a long and contentious process involving the IRS, the STI,
the GNSO, et cetera.

We recognize that no one is entirely happy with them, but that's the
nature of compromise.

Having said that and recognizing that rights owners have legitimate
concerns about the cost and time of UDRPs, particularly in regard to
the 70% of default cases, we would encourage ICANN to look seriously,
after ten years of the UDRP, at a considered review and reform of the
UDRP process to assure better uniformity of administration and
consistency of result to give ICANN more graduated enforcement tools
and to assure that the process -- the review process is balanced to
take into consideration the concerns of both registrants and
complainants.

Finally, in regard to the background checks, we will be urging more
clarification in regard to the, quote, "pattern of intellectual
property violations" particularly because the present lack of
consistency and predictability of the UDRP.  We believe that's
necessary.  For example, while two UDRP violations in a short period
out of a 20-domain name portfolio might mean a lot different than two
violations over a ten-year period for a portfolio of 20,000 names.
We'd also like to know if there's been an appeal, and if the appeal
was not settled with finality by a court but --

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Can you bring it to a close, please?  You
people have to observe the two minutes please.  You should see the
time clock on there.  You shouldn't really need me to tell you that
your time is up.

>> Philip Corwin:  I will conclude.  It's hard to look at notes and
the clock at the same time.  We would urge some clarification of that
provision of the background check.

Thank you very much.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Philip.  We will see what we can
do.

Ken Stubbs.

>>KEN STUBBS:   Yes, Peter, before I start I want to you know I am
reading this on behalf of Brian Cute who all of you I'm sure are aware
of.

And I am going to read slowly out of respect to the interpreters and
the fact that I talk so fast sometimes that it's difficult.

The RAC proposal, VI proposal, supporters representing a broad cross-
section of ICANN's constituency is focused on the impact of
registrants as the essential issue for the board to consider in the
final resolution of the vertical integration policy discussions.

Access to registry data and the ability of integrated registry and
registrar to identify high-value names, take them off the market for
auction or secondary market sale could easily result in significantly
higher prices to new TLD registrants.

Over the past ten years ICANN has established ownership caps as a
mechanism to enforce separation between registries and registrars.
This mechanism is shown to be extremely effective in preventing
registries from discriminating amongst registrars and has minimized
the incentives for abuse.

As a result of this, ICANN policy registrants have benefited
significantly.

Some have proposed a vertical integration not be allowed and that
enforcement and compliance would provide adequate safeguards to
prevent gaming and abuse of the registrant.

The complexity of monitoring, investigating and enforcing against
gaming in the new gTLD round with potentially hundreds of new
registries according to ICANN's own estimate creates a substantial
undertaking that you will neighboring that's tantamount to design and
creation of an enforcement bureau at a very significant cost.

If ICANN is to have a rationale for its rules in the new round, it
must put the interests of the registrants first.  The existing
framework of separation between registries and registrars has
delivered significant benefits in the form of competitive prices and
choices among TLDs and registrars.

A framework in the new TLD round that provides meaningful separation
between registries and registrars will deliver these same benefits
with significant cost benefits.

Thank you.  I'm sorry, I tried to go slow.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Ken.

Let's go across to Zahid.  Zahid, it's your turn.

>>ZAHID JAMIL:   Zahid Jamil from Pakistan.  In the interest of
transparency, I have not been cleared by terrorism background check,
even though I am from Pakistan.

A policy counsel councillor for B.C.  The workshop on brand management
in the age of new tTLDs yesterday raised significant problems with
some rights protection mechanisms as well as the economic costs and
various challenges faced by B.C. members and other businesses in
protecting their customers from confusion, fraud and abuse.  I would
also like to underscore the acknowledgment in Nairobi of the consensus
position that the trademark clearinghouse was not a rights protection
mechanism.  This means that there are little or no new RPMs for new
gTLDs available to T.M. holders prelaunch.  This leaves a void in that
space, not to mention the cost of defensive registrations.  This cost
is acknowledged in the economic analysis as well which recommends that
several surveys and studies, the results and analysis of which are
supposed to help craft the new gTLD rules and processes take place.

I wish this economic analysis had taken place much earlier in the
implementation phase but I am confident now that we have these
recommendations the board will ensure these studies and consequently
recrafted rules and processes will precede and be included in the next
version of the DAG.

In the next -- In the new gTLD update it was mentioned that if
comments between one iteration of the DAG and another are less than
before, it must mean that the next iteration must have addressed the
concerns.  I note that the comments did not lead to changes since
Nairobi to the RPM staff proposals in DAG 4.  And in that light I
would therefore attempt to caution against the view that since you may
get less comments or hear less noise at meetings in regards consumer
confusion and trust or RPMs, that necessarily the problems of
exhaustive brand owners and consumer protection groups and commencing
during Nairobi and earlier stand effectively addressed.

I hope as part of ensuring effective implementation much rights
protection as mandated by the AoC and its fiduciary duties, the board
will ensure the implementation of RPMs that adequately address the
prelaunch defensive registration issue as well as range of monetary
and economic costs to the community in its important task of rolling
out new gTLDs.  And for the scribes, I will e-mail this as well.
Sorry to go so fast.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  Let's come to this side.  Limei,
to you.

>>LIMEI LIU:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I am Limei from China speaking
on behalf of CONAC (phonetic).

I would like to comment on simplified Chinese language and traditional
Chinese language.  Chinese Asian country with over 5,000 years of
history.  Our ancestors use the traditional Chinese.

With the evolution of language, we now have both the traditional
Chinese and the simplified Chinese.

At present, there are over 1.3 billion people using simplified Chinese
and tens of millions of people using traditional one, including people
in mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and those many overseas
Chinese.  Actually, simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese are
equivalent in meaning, although some of them are distinct in the
written form.

The relationship between the simplified Chinese and the traditional
Chinese is similar to that of the small English letters and the
capital English letters.

Simplified Chinese and the traditional Chinese are inseparable.  They
are integrated to Chinese culture.

The simultaneous use of simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese is
the real demand of the Chinese language community.  One world, one
Internet.  Everyone connected.

It's not only the goal of ICANN but also the common goal of the
Internet community.

The use of Chinese domain names include not only people who use
simplified Chinese but also those who use traditional one.  If only
simplified Chinese domain name is delegated while the traditional one
is reserved or vice versa, it means that while the door is open to
some people, it is closed to some others.

ICANN and all stakeholders have already made much effort in this
field, but there's still some way ahead to go.

We suggest all the stakeholders, with a joint effort, optimize the
policy of (inaudible) management and make endeavor to build an open
Internet to the world.

Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you.  The question of variants is
something -- particularly between those two scripts that you mentioned
is something that has occupied us considerably.  And I wonder, Ram or
Harald, if you just want to make a quick response.  Thank you.

>>HARALD ALVESTRAND:  It is, indeed, a very troublesome area.  And
we're trying to figure out how to find a way forward at the last
answering of this question and does not get us into the rat hole of
trying to answer all possible questions in all possible contexts
because we have studied this problem enough that doing that appears to
be impossible.

The thing we're looking most forward to is actually the report from
CNNIC that they have promised on well things work after they get their
two variants of the dot China domain.

This, I think, will be very helpful in informing the debate on how
this is going to work with some real data.  Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thanks, Harald.

Let's go to Constantine.  Thank you.

>>CONSTANTINE ROUSSOS:  Hi, this is Constantine from dot music.  I
would like to discuss innovation and the concept of community in the
new gTLD program.  I was looking -- everyone just calls new applicants
"registries."  I disagree with that wording.  We are not really the
registries.  We are actually the TLD owners or the operators or
managers.

The way that I see it is we look at vertical integration in this
manner.  For example, if I apply by myself and I don't choose Afilias,
NeuStar, VeriSign or whoever the big guys are, my application gets
rejected.

I look on the other side.  300 new gTLDs come out.  They all want
shelf space.  Who has a shelf space?  You look at the GoDaddies of the
world.  What is actually happening here is everyone is using vertical
separation just for us to pay money to other parties.

In other words, I pay money to ICANN.  I pay money to whoever I'm
using as a registry operator.  And, on the other hand, I pay the
GoDaddies of the world or whoever has the shelf space.  And I
guarantee if you have 300 new TLDs, there's going to be competition
for the shelf space where the big registrars benefit.

So as dot music, when someone thinks of music, they think of, one, a
home; two, discovery in search of music; and, three, products and
services and achieving the goals of musicians.

So how do we accomplish that with vertical separation?  You can't.  I
would love to hear any more comments about that.

The other thing I want to talk about is community.  So what is the
definition of "community"?  The way that I see it, we've been out
there.  We have over 4.2 million people on MySpace.  We've accumulated
over 1.3 million signatures, and we have nothing to show in the DAG.
So we'd like something to represent our efforts to market, first of
all, dot music, secondly, ICANN, because in every statement that we
make, we're marketing what you guys are doing and all the accomplices
of ICANN and would like in the DAG to have a section that says, Hey,
if you're not -- if you have not performed community outreach, you get
zero points.  If you have community outreach that's significant, you
get two.  If you are adequate, you get one.  That way we lessen the
impact of gaming that will potentially happen and will happen.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Okay, your time's up.

>>CONSTANTINE ROUSSOS:  That's my comments.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you very much.  Just to say to anybody
who is still in the line, first of all, I'm going to close the line at
this stage.  Otherwise, we will be here until 7:00.  Just to let you
know, the comments about the vertical integration at this stage are
not terribly helpful to the board.

While there is an active working group working on this, we want to
hear from the working group what that group achieves.  So individual
comments, simply repeating the patterns and positions that's going on,
are of no help to us.  We will just have to just discount them or put
them aside until we hear from the working group.

The working group might like to report to us a majority and minority
view.  I'm not trying to close down hearing the divergence of views
that are coming up.  This is not a forum for running the fight that's
going on in the vertical integration workshop.  I hope that's helpful.

Jeff Neuman?

>>JEFF NEUMAN:  I think it's on that side.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  I'm sorry.  I'm losing track.  It is Izumi on
this side.  Thanks.

>>IZUMI AIZU:  Half of what I prepared is related to vertical
integration.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Please take it out.  Thanks.

>>IZUMI AIZU:  Then I think what's going on right now live is that
Italy is led by Slovakia, 0-2; New Zealand, 0-0.  The beauty of the
World Cup is that it is giving a level playing field so that even the
small nations will have an opportunity to upset big guys like France
or Italy.

And not only the vertical integration stuff, but the current design of
the DAG seemingly with 185,000 applications and other documentation,
as I said, most of them must be prepared in English, which is not a
working language.  That costs extra money for non-English players like
us in Japan.

We are working to help the city TLDs or cities to consider how to
react to not only to apply for the TLDs but sometimes they have to
object or they have to consider.

And the current separation may give more favor to the big guys.  It
could be big registries or even the big registrars.  The official
purpose of the separation is not to give --

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Izumi, I think you are talking about vertical
integration.  I can't understand why.  I thought I was really clear
that this is of no assistance to us.  And all you are doing is using
up valuable time when members of the community could be making
presentations on things that are of great importance.

>>IZUMI AIZU:  I wish I heard that a little bit before I prepared to
come here.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thanks.  Jeff Neuman.

>>JEFF NEUMAN:  Thanks.  My name is Jeff Neuman.  I'm giving a message
on behalf of the registry stakeholder group.  I wanted to take this
opportunity to repeat a message I gave to the board at the registry
lunch on Tuesday.

"Although it took a long time to get to this point, I wanted to
express my gratitude and appreciation to the ICANN staff, particularly
ICANN's general counsel's office, in establishing a legal working
group to address the issues of amending the registry agreements and
the post-delegation dispute resolution policy.

"We believe this group worked extremely well together and serves as a
model for future work to be done of a similar nature."

My second comment relates to a number of statements made by the World
Intellectual Property Organization this week including statements to
the GAC.  "Please do not be fooled by their comments to the post-
delegation dispute resolution process.  WIPO's proposed amendments to
the PDDRP related to willful blindness are not only contrary to the
well-established laws of the jurisdictions that have addressed this
issue including the United States and even here in Belgium but are
also an expansion of international law.

"Just as we have heard from the GAC on the issue of morality and
public order, it is not the job of ICANN to create new international
law.

ICANN staff recognized this in the last version of the guidebook with
respect to the post-delegation dispute resolution process, and this
must remain unchanged."

And had I had a chance, I would have made these statements in front of
the GAC.  But, unfortunately, they do not allow rebuttals after WIPO
gives their presentation.  Thank you.

>>ROD BECKSTROM:  Jeff, I want to say thank you very much for your
kind remarks to our excellent staff that worked so hard.  It is
really, really motivational for them to hear the positive feedback
that you and the registry community and others have given.  Thank you
very much.

>>JEFF NEUMAN:  I'm glad to give that comment.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thanks, Jeff.

Mr. O'Connor.

>>MIKEY O'CONNOR:  This is Mikey O'Connor, not speaking about vertical
integration for the first time in four days.  It is pretty exciting.
I would like to echo Jeff's comments.  I am a large consumer of ICANN
staff support resources because, at last count, I'm simultaneously
participating on seven working groups.  And they are amazing.  So let
me chime right in behind Jeff on that.

My comment is about another group that I have been involved with, the
HSTLD advisory group.  Unfortunately, I'm the bearer of bad news, and
I hate that.  And I won't go into any detail.  I would encourage you
all to know that we're not really there in that one.  There isn't much
consensus in that report.  There is a lot of work yet to go.  There is
no way we're going to make it in time for anything approaching a
reasonable schedule on new gTLDs.

And, in fact, we have removed, at least in our draft, the HSTLD
program from the new gTLD thing.

So when you are thinking about malicious use as one of the overarching
issues -- and there is a bullet under there for HSTLD, just recognize
that there's no "their" there.  And keep an eye on that.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you, Mikey.

Can we come to this side to Iratxe from dot Iscarti (phonetic).

>> IRATXE ESNAOLA ARRIBILLOGA:  Good afternoon.  My name is Iratxe
Esnaola Arribilloga.  And I'm speaking on behalf of Dot Eus
Association, which is going to apply for dot eus for promoting the
Basque language and culture on the Internet.  Our social and non-for-
profit project was born at the end of 2006, and the association was
created in April 2008.

Therefore, Paris was their first meeting we attended.

In October, ICANN published the first draft of the applicant
guidebook.  We thought it would be the only draft we would have to
study, but it wasn't.

A few days later we attended the meeting held in Cairo, and the
process was delayed.  Draft Version 2 was published in March 2009, so
we decided to go to Mexico City.  More money, more time, more efforts
and more delays.  We thought the same, that it would be the last
draft, but we were wrong.

The next meeting was in Sydney, but there wasn't neither a new draft
nor an important movement in the new gTLD process.  We decided to save
money, time and efforts for the next meetings.

We read Draft Version 3 in October 2009 meeting in Seoul.  And
suddenly the timeline disappeared.  We understood it.  We also
preferred to have a real time line, but, again, much more than money.
No timeline, no movement, we didn't go to Nairobi.

We have now the opportunity to analyze Draft Version 4, and we are in
Brussels.  But ICANN hasn't shown the timeline yet.  And you told us
that the next will be the final.  But without the new timelines, you
make us think that we will have to discuss a fifth one.

To conclude, we would like you to take into account that social and
non-for-profit projects as cultural and linguistic TLDs are also part
of the global community to ICANN seeks to serve and respond.

We will thank you if you gave us a timeline as soon as you have it as
soon as possible.

It's the only way we have to organize by ourself and to keep the
project alive.  Thank you.

[Applause]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you very much.  Thomas, is it
Schneider?

>> THOMAS SCHNEIDER:   Thank you.  My name is Thomas.  I represent
Switzerland in the GAC.  First of signal, we are very happy to see
that in the AoC, ICANN promises to act in the global public interest.
And we are, like many others, eager to see how ICANN is living up to
that promise.

We think actually the gTLD process is a very good example for ICANN to
show that they live up to their promise in terms of global -- acting
in the global public interest.

And it is also very good opportunity to convince other governments
that are not yet convinced that ICANN is acting in a global public
interest, that they actually do.  And since we are a fairly small
country with very rich taxpayers, I'm not only participating in ICANN
but in other fora like the ITU, the U.N. and UNESCO and so on.

We believe in the ICANN model, and we will -- we would be very happy
to see ICANN living up to these promises and convincing more
governments to participate in the GAC and so on.

And we would invite ICANN to use the gTLD process as an opportunity.

And what "public interest" means, it would refer to what Bertrand and
others have said in terms of a fair division of economic and social
benefits of these processes globally.

My second, more concrete, remark is to the DAG Version 4.  We are
happy to see that there is development in track differentiation with
regard, for instance, to gTLDs, geographic TLDs, which I think is a
very positive step in the right way.  And we would encourage ICANN in
drafting the next version to proceed the path of track
differentiations.

Also, in terms of technical and security requirements and other
things, for instance, we have a population of 30,000 people in
Switzerland who speak one language called Romansch, which is dying
out.  They would also like dot cat to profit from a TLD.  But with the
current requirements, there will be nobody able to finance this.

They would probably be able with a 9:00-to-5:00 hotline instead of a
24-hours hotline if that would enable them to finance these things.

And the same goes for the legal basis.  Probably a legal basis --
local legal basis would be more appropriate.  Vertical integration is
also a question.

So we could encourage you to proceed the path of track differentiation
towards regimes that fit the actual community who use the TLD because
we are all looking forward to having these TLDs as soon as possible.
Thank you.

[Applause]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you very much.  As always, it is a
pleasure to have representatives from the GAC taking part in the
public forum.

Antony?

>>ANTONY VAN COUVERING:  Yes, I would like to make a more general
comment.  And that is that I appreciate what the staff and, I assume,
by the direction what the board has done to limit the special pleading
that we've heard from almost every constituency and many other groups
that come forward.  Each, of course, has their own reasons why they
should be preferred, why exceptions should be made and, indeed, why
things should be classified.

And as I walked past the Magritte Museum on the way down here, I
thought I might find some inspiration there.  I would like to read you
a very short quote from André Breton and The Surrealist Manifesto.  I
will read it in English so that the translators can compare later how
well they're doing.

"If in a cluster of grapes there are no two alike, why do you want me
to describe this grape by the others, by all the others?  Our brains
are dulled by the incurable mania of wanting to make the unknown
known, classifiable.

"It is pointless to add that experience itself has found itself
increasingly circumscribed.  It paces back and forth in a cage from
which it is more and more difficult to make it emerge.  Forbidden is
any kind of search for truth that is not in conformance with accepted
practices."

And I would urge the board to -- and the staff to come up with a DAG
that really does let differences shine and not seek to know everything
before it can be known.  Thank you.

[Applause]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you.  Sophia?

>>SOPHIA BEKELE:  Thank you, Peter.  I'm Sophia Bekele.  As you know,
I have been heading the dot Africa initiative and also Dot Connect
Africa, a company that's an organization registered out of the country
of Mauritius in Africa.  And we're also sponsors here.  I just want to
say that the ICANN staff has, done tremendous work on the DAG4 and we
look forward to being able to present the application when it's ready.
Thank you very much.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thanks, Sophia.

Mr. Foody, you're next.

>>PAUL FOODY:  Hi, gentlemen.  Very quickly, has the root zone study
been published?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Which one?

>>PAUL FOODY:  The root zone study to find out exactly how many new
gTLDs will be permissible?  The root scalability.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Several studies have been published, yes,
about root zone scalability.

>>PAUL FOODY:  And have they come to a conclusion?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Yes.

>>PAUL FOODY:  Which is?

>>MIKE SILBER:  Can I suggest that speakers read documents and we
don't do a summary.

>>PAUL FOODY:  No.  Is a million TLDs, has that now been confirmed
that that's going to be possible?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  I don't think that question was asked of the
people who wrote the report.

>>PAUL FOODY:  Okay.  Well, you've produced another economic study.
The study has been -- it's requested three things.  You've requested
that the people who perform the study survey published studies and
resources that describe the potential impacts of new gTLD
introduction.

You have included studies by Mrs. Kruger, Van Couvering and Stahura,
all of whom added their name to the September 21st, 2009 letter to Rod
Beckstrom asking for new gTLDs.

You have not -- they did not consider the comments of Harald
Alvestrand who in Seoul did anticipate a root zone of a million TLDs.

The second thing you've asked is you've asked to examine theoretical
arguments about the benefits and costs of an increased number of
gTLDs.

Remembering Steve Salep's comments in Sydney that the facts matter,
the report has said that the benefits of new gTLDs will be they might
provide competition, they may support new business models, they might
relieve scarcity in domain names, and they might reduce search costs.

The projected benefits of new gTLDs that they will provide competition
to existing gTLDs, facilitating new business models, relieving
scarcity and domain names and reducing search costs.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Mr. Foody, your time is up.  Is there a
question coming?

>>PAUL FOODY:  My point is, this is not about increasing competition.
This is about increasing the cost of a domain presence to a million
dollars from $10 as it is today.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Okay, thank you.  Let me have a quick
response from Rod in relation to the economic study and from Harald in
relation --

>>ROD BECKSTROM:  The first phase of the economic study has been
completed and has been published online at icann.org for public
comment.  And the second phase is under discussion and should be
underway soon, we hope.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thanks.  Harald?

>>HARALD ALVESTRAND:  I must apologize for my command of the English
language in the public forum in Seoul.  When I read the transcript, I
was discovering that my statement that a root zone of a million names
would be a terrible idea had somehow gotten so many knots in it that
it seemed to indicate the opposite of what I was trying to say.  I
think it is a terrible idea.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  We will watch the scribes record that.  Mr.
Brueggeman.  Thank you, Jeff.

>> JEFF BRUEGGEMAN:  I first wanted to express my appreciation for the
economic study, which is something we have called for a long time and
it is a very thorough study that looked at a wide variety of
information that's available.  But I wanted to highlight a few
important implications for the study.

I think, first, I note the potential for defensive registrations and
calls for additional surveys of those issues, which I think shows the
need for a fact-based thorough survey of how the domain name system is
being used and potentially abused.

Secondly, it notes the potential for customer confusion with new
domain names and I think that shows the inner relationship of all of
the overarching issues.  So, for example, the malicious conduct
preceding issues relate directly to the economic analysis.  And it
noted how challenging it is to assess the costs and benefits of new
domain names given historical information.

Finally, it proposes that it might be beneficial for ICANN to have a
discrete, limited rollout of domain names so that these issues could
be better studied.  And I think consistent with what AT&T and others
in the business constituency have argued, it argues for taking a
careful approach to make sure that new domain names are really adding
value and innovation to the market and that they are implemented in a
reasonable way.

So to me the conclusions of the economic study are that we really need
a holistic assessment of all of the overarching issues including the
root scaling, the malicious conduct, the trademark protections to
assess the costs and benefits of how the new program should be rolled
out and what types of protections are needed.

And my question would be:  Given the conclusion of the study, you
mention there may be a follow-on but, also, how are all of these
issues going to be woven together to really assess the new domain name
program kind of from top to bottom?

>>ROD BECKSTROM:  Sure.  I mean, obviously economic research could go
on for -- you know, forever.  If you want more details, I recommend
speaking with Kurt Pritz, SVP of services, who's working with the
economists on that study.  We are moving into a scoping phase right
now on the next phase and trying to identify the critical areas for
further study.  Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thanks, Jeff.

Susan Reynolds.

>> SUSAN REYNOLDS:  I'm speaking on behalf of the dot gal initiative
for the Galician culture and linguistic community.  We are glad to see
with DAG4 we have a solution to the trademark issue.  We have always
thought that culture and linguistic TLDs did not have a problem with
this.  But, again, no timelines.

At the public forum in ICANN Mexico with DAG2, I said I wish there was
not a DAG4, not a DAG5.  And now in Brussels I final we will have
another one before the final RFP, maybe more, who knows.

It is very difficult for us to work without even having an idea when
we can start sending the applications and when the final -- what the
final requirements will be.  It is just taking too long.

I think it was Steve Goldstein who once compared the process to an
airplane.  The plane can take off safely with linguistic and cultural
TLDs, we know that because we have the dot cat experience domain which
is working well and is successful.

Dot gal is a bottom-up project, non-for-profit initiative which will
bring social benefits to the users on the Internet and it will
increase its diversity.  The Internet should, indeed, reflect the
world's culture and linguistic diversity and we can do it through
these new domains.  We know you want to make a fair process, to build
a house where we can all live and getting through one door.

But if all of us don't fit through the one door, then we could start
thinking of within those wall categories.  Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you for that.

[Applause]

Let me just say the board is very aware of the cost of delay on
applicants.  We understand that very well.  Most of us come from a
business background or understand the economics of delay.

%%%jen2end.

%%%l4start.

The reality, though, is these are serious issues, and the principle of
doing it right rather than doing it fast seems to apply.

Annebeth.

>>ANNEBETH LANGE:  Thank you, Peter.

My comments are on behalf of the Norwegian register.  I'm Annebeth
Lange.  For several years, ccNSO and the GAC have tried to get text in
the applicant guidebook that protected geographical names, and even
more country and territory names.  We and other ccTLDs have worked
hard to get a review in the field (inaudible).  It has been a lot of
frustration from our side.  Therefore, it's good to be able to stand
here today in a more positive mode for once and to thank the board and
the staff, and especially Kurt Pritz, for the positive evolution we
see in the DAG 4 in this area and for the hard work that has been
done.

Hopefully, the GAC and the ccNSO will find a sustainable solution for
country and territory names that we all can agree on.

We are very pleased with the change in regards to country and
territory names.  We understand why a list has been chosen instead of
accepting meaningful abbreviation and representation, even if that was
our first choice.

We will also express our pleasure seeing the new text about post-
delegation in connection with support and objection given by the
governments.  We are convinced that this will make it easier for many
governments to really support geo names in the field quicker.

We have a few questions for clarification, but we will submit those in
writing, and we'll come back to that later.

Thank you very much.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Annebeth.  And thank you for the
kind words for the staff.  Much appreciated, as Rod has said.

And last on this microphone, we come to Dr. Al-Zaman.  Is Dr. Al-Zaman
there?

>>KHALED FATTAL:  Mr. Chairman, Dr. Al-Zaman was unable to deliver his
note personally because he's on route back to Saudi Arabia.  He asked
me to deliver the statement to you, with your permission.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes, thank you.

>>KHALED FATTAL:   Statement by Dr. Abdul-Aziz Al-Zaman.

Peace be upon you.

In reference to DAG 4, section 1.2.1, "Eligibility," and 2.1,
"Background Check," I am personally very deeply concerned regarding
the DAG 4's insertion of the term "terrorism" so arbitrarily as part
of the background check on applicants and without providing any
definition or criteria that would be measured against approving or
denying an applicant for a new gTLD or IDN gTLD.

My concerns are that background checks in this area of terrorism, as
it is presented in the DAG 4, without any definition, is unacceptable
to many people, language communities, and faith communities around the
world.

While the international community is extensibly divided on who is a
terrorist and who is a freedom fighter, and notwithstanding ICANN's
lack of definition whatsoever in the DAG 4 on terrorism, it is a
surprise to me to see ICANN involving itself in the area of terrorism
while its mandate is only being a global technical coordinator.

Regards.

Thank you very much.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Next, we have Hirokatsu Ohigashi.  Is he
here?

If not, let's go to Mike Palage.  Thank you, Mike.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:   Thank you, Peter.

On Tuesday afternoon, at the registry constituency, you discussed how
the board, during its upcoming retreat for two days, would be devoting
almost its entire time to resolving the outstanding issues and I think
as you said, put some dates into the DAG to sort of finalize it.

If you do that, I think there will be a number of potential applicants
that you have heard today that will be very happy.  But as I also said
on Tuesday, finalizing the DAG without having the full economic
reports done might also perhaps disappoint some other people in the
community that have been asking for these, specifically, the GAC.

So here's my recommendation.

No matter what you do in September, you're damned if you do.  You're
damned if you don't.  You're in a Catch-22 situation.

So here's my suggestion.  While you engage in those two days -- two-
day discussions.

Provide an audio feed so the community can have trust in what you're
doing.  We're not asking for audio feeds for dinner, lunch, when you
go out and the board does what the board does.  Been there, done that.
You could have that private time for yourself.

But when it comes to presentations by staff trying to resolve these
issues, let the community see it.  That's how you gain trust.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Very helpful, Mike.  Thanks.  I personally
have no difficulty if we can arrange something along those lines.
We'll see what we can do.

I've got last on my list, Elliot Noss.  I'm not sure whether you're on
the list, ma'am.

>> I wasn't.  I wasn't, but just because I saw there is no one else, I
--

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I think -- I think you should start speaking
-- I think you should start speaking before Mr. Noss catches up with
you.  Go.

>> Okay.

Like one kind of observation from the first-time participant.  I am on
(saying name) fellowship.  So I just wanted to express my gratitude.
I hope I will be the last one and so we will finish on the positive
note, let's say like this.

I would like to express my gratitude to ICANN for that you give all of
us such great opportunity to express our questions, to say some
observations, objections, statement, et cetera, et cetera.  And, look,
we all have different background.  And here is a place where everybody
can say its words, can raise their voice, and here's what I observed.
Here's no fear.  Everybody says everything which it has in its heart,
it has on its mind.

So I want to say only one thing:  The organization which is built on
the principles where there's no fear has a future and a really great
future.  Thanks to you from all of the participants.

[ Applause ]

>>ROD BECKSTROM:   That's the multistakeholder model.  Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes, thank you very much.  And thank you for
contributing.

>>ELLIOT NOSS:   She stole my speech.  I --

[ Laughter ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Elliot, you are not a first-time attender.
I'm sorry.

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   But your comments are always fresh and
welcome.  So please go ahead.

>>ELLIOT NOSS:   So I actually -- I listened and listened.  It was a
very long line.  It was a very spirited discussion.

It brought me back to 1999, when we were about to launch -- we were in
the last months before launching as a competitive registrar.  And what
I remember most clearly at that time was that we were doing something
that was radically different.  We were introducing wholesale domain
registration at the time, every single registrar went retail.  We were
doing it with an API, which had never been done.  We were allowing
hosting companies to what felt like them sell domain names directly,
which had never been done.

And we spent the last six months of 1999 worried about how ICANN was
never going to let us do this and how our competitors -- few though
they were, at the time, they were very big and scary -- were going to
crush us.  That was most surprising about that whole experience and
the launch was the huge number of unintended consequences that flowed
from that.

Until we launched, pretty much every registrar was priced at $35, just
like the existing registrar was, the monopoly.

Pretty much every registrar was selling domain names in a way that
looked just like the existing registrar was.

It took a matter of three months, the first three months of 2000, for
us to be copied, our price to be cut, and people to do what we did
better than we were doing it.

The biggest benefiters of those changes were registrants.  They
benefited from innovation, at its core, because the light is flashing,
we don't know what's going to happen.  But you can never plan
innovation.  And I promise you that no economic study, no personal
putting their hand out for a special benefit in this process is going
to benefit registrants.  Registrants will be benefited by innovation
and by letting the creative people do what they do best.

Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Elliot.

And so we close the discussion on new gTLDs for today.  Just a
confirmation of the way I see things going forward.  I've said this a
couple times.  It appears that we will come to an end of the public
comment process.  There needs to be some time for staff to take
cognizance of all those comments.  The summer holidays to the northern
hemisphere occurs at about the same time.  So it looks like being mid-
September before they'll be fully written, fully documented proposals
available for the board to consider.

The current suggestion is that we take our existing scheduled board
retreat and turn that into a new gTLD solutions meeting.

If we -- if we can, then we will be solving things so that we have
final solutions for -- for Cartagena.

I'm not sure yet how we -- whether -- whether we can say anything more
about a summit.  I think Kurt has said we'll try and prepare some
agenda for that.

My concern about that is -- are the obvious ones of authenticity, who
shows up.  I'm not sure that the GAC, for example, would be able to
convene an intersessional meeting.  I'm sure not all constituencies
will be able to get all --  So there's a whole lot of issues that we
need to tidy up.  But I've also noted Mike Palage's suggestion.

We come, then, to another item on the agenda.  And it's with a great
deal of sadness that we have to say farewell to the -- to Janis
Karklins, who's been chairing the Governmental Advisory Committee so
ably for the last three years.

I'd like to read into the record something I've received from one of
the GAC members who's had to depart.

This is Jayantha Fernando from Sri Lanka, who says this:

It is with a sense of gratitude that I send this tribute to Ambassador
Janis Karklins, the outgoing chair of GAC.  I recall meeting Janis for
the first time during the ICANN meeting in Luxembourg.  He introduced
himself as the permanent representative to the Latvian mission at the
U.N. in Geneva.  But it wasn't clear to me what he was doing at the
ICANN meeting.  I can recall vividly his short reply, and that is, he
was there to see how ICANN is working.  As a true diplomat, his
replies were short and to the point.

My next encounter with Janis was in September 2005 in Geneva during
the prep meeting for the Tunis phase of WSIS.  Our ambassador in
Geneva had told us to meet Janis Karklins.  At the time, countries
from all corners of the globe were grappling with the various issues
being discussed at WSIS and were questioning the viability of the
multistakeholder model for the governance of the Internet.  The
question of what constituted Internet governance itself was confusing
to many delegations, and even within delegations there was friction,
and developing countries particularly were at crossroads about the
positions they should take.

Janis, with support from others in the community, gave leadership to
this crucial stage of our history and was able to reach consensus
between the contending forces with patient negotiations, using his
diplomatic skills, taking ICANN to safe harbor, ensuring the
continuity of the multistakeholder model for safe and stable Internet.

It is with this background that Janis kindly consented to lead the GAC
community in 2007.  His proven diplomacy during the WSIS process,
coupled with his ability to reach out to developing countries and
economies in far-off corners gave GAC a tremendous boost.  This made
it easier for us to convince other developing countries to join the
GAC.

In his role as the GAC chair, it was very clear to us that he had
grasped all of the issues very clearly, was able to read the body
language of various delegations to figure out what was comfortable to
them and what was not.

He was able to collect the diverse views of many and navigate
decisions in a direction that was comfortable to all, and this he did
without offending anyone.

It is the opinion of my peers and my country, as well as myself, that
Janis Karklins is an ambassador par excellence.  He is highly
respected in my jurisdiction, and we thank him with utmost gratitude
for the energies he gave us as the GAC chair.

End of statement.

[ Applause ]

(Standing ovation).

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Janis, I thought it appropriate to begin
with the statement from your peers in the GAC.  But I do open the
floor now to some further brief comments if there are other members of
the community who wish to contribute, we have time for a couple, and
from one or two members of the board.

Is there someone from the community who wishes to say something?

I see Marilyn Cade.  Thank you, Marilyn.

>>MARILYN CADE:   I would be derelict if I didn't endorse Jayantha
Fernando's comments about Ambassador Janis Karklins.

You see, it turns out that in the early days of the WSIS, the business
and NGO community were wandering without a door to go through in order
to be in the room to participate in the discussions that were going on
about the Internet, about ICTs and other topics.  And for those of us
from business, we found in Ambassador Karklins a willingness to listen
to us and a willingness to work hard to actually open those doors and
find a space so that we could initially just even sit in the room.

Things evolved over time, and we worked toward developing the
multistakeholder model at the IGF that Janis can take great pride in
having helped to architect.

The multistakeholder model that we practice at ICANN is slightly
different, and it fits us.  But the concept of multistakeholder I
think must be now a halo that Janis is going, "Did I do this by
myself?  No, with lots of other people.  But I did, in fact, play a
major part."

And we thank you for that.

I'd also, as someone who was around ICANN in the very early days --
that was when I was three --

[ Laughter ]

>>MARILYN CADE:   -- remember when we were quite concerned about who
the first GAC chair would be and who the second GAC chair would be.
And I think Janis has done all of us -- he's given us a great gift.
He has designed the template that will help us to always recruit the
right kind of GAC chair.  And he's raised the bar for all of us about
our own practice of being strong contributes regardless of what hat
we're wearing.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Marilyn.  I'm going to cut the
line off after Chuck, unless Jonathan is joining.  Or I can -- please,
nice to have you all.  Please keep it brief.  Thank you.

From this side, Steve.

>>STEVE DELBIANCO:   It's a comment on the affirmation of commitments.
This is just saying wonderful things about Janis.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   This is the Janis Karklins tribute.

>>STEVE DELBIANCO:   I want to thank you for the incredible
thoughtfulness and flexibility that you bring to that role.  You have
some very big shoes that we have to fill in your absence.  Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Steve.

Chris.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   Thank you.

I spoke about Janis in the  ccNSO/GAC meeting yesterday, so I'm going
to be very brief.  I just wanted to say one thing.

I think Janis has done an amazing job.  But it's perhaps best
exemplified by the way that the GAC and the ccNSO have worked -- how
that relationship has improved and how we now work together so
closely.  And, of course, the fast-track is perhaps the most shining
example of that, Janis.  And I think everyone owes you a huge debt of
gratitude for that.  Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Chris.

Alex, it's nice to welcome back another vice chairman of the board.

>>ALEJANDRO PISANTY:   You don't have a surplus of those yet.

My name is Alejandro Pisanty.  I think that it's -- coming to this
point in our relationship with -- with Janis, it's very important to
remember that ICANN does not exist in a vacuum.  ICANN exists in a
very, very challenging environment.  ICANN exists in a touch
environment.  The fact that stones are not thrown, rockets are not
thrown doesn't make it any easier to keep peace around what ICANN has
been doing for many years.

The World Summit on the Information Society was seen by many as a huge
overreaction by some organizations who create an environment where
ICANN would become irrelevant or would be absorbed or there would be
decisions by major powers to replace ICANN or put ICANN under higher
powers.

Janis was sensitive from very early in that process to what were the
really important objectives to be achieved in the growth of the
information society, and uncannily able to deal with all kinds of both
straight arguments and sneaky, cheaty, involved, baroque arrangements
that would suck away the value that the summit could provide.

From there to his steering of the negotiations to some very important
results, including the Internet Governance Forum as a space where all
these forces can be relieved, the ICANN community cannot be but deeply
thankful for his past, present, and surely future contributions.

>>CHUCK GOMES:   Thank you, Janis.  It's during your tenure in
leadership that I think we finally started having the communications
between the GNSO and the GAC.  And I think the one we should just this
week may have been the best.

One of the things I just want to say specifically:  I've been so
impressed by your responsiveness in communications whenever I've
sought information from you, the timeliness has been greatly
appreciated.  And as busy as you are, that's really to be
complimented.  Thank you very much.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Chuck.

I've got Jonathan.  No?  Or you're not talking about Janis.  Okay.
Sorry.

Sir.

>> LUIS MAGALHEÃS:  Thank you.  Thank you very much.

I wanted to pay tribute to Janis, too, because he really sets the
example for flexibility and diplomacy here at the GAC and also at the
Information Society World Summit.  Before him we used to have Adama
Samassekou, who did the same in the first phase.  So I just wanted to
say thank you, Janis, for everything you've done.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Ray would like to say something.

>>RAY PLZAK:   There we go.

There we go.  Okay.  Thank you, Peter.

Janis, you and I have interfaced in several different ways over the
years, indirectly during the WSIS process, directly during your tenure
as chairman of the GAC when I was with the NRO many, many times in
discussions about various address issues.  Then since my joining the
board, both in my role as the co-chair of the board/GAC working group,
and then also as being fellow board members.

And in that -- all that period of time and all that variety of roles,
I've always enjoyed the conversations that we've had.  And I've always
taken away from something that's always been positive.  So for that
reason, I would really like to thank you for all your contributions.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Ray.

Just so that members of the community appreciate it, the board has had
a number of opportunities to say this, so I'm actually going to limit
the comments from board.  And Janis knows that the board feels this
way on his parting.  I am just going to ask our CEO and president -- I
think that's appropriate for the occasion.

Thank you, Rod.

>>ROD BECKSTROM:   Janis, you are an amazing leader.  What you
accomplish so skillfully and smoothly as a true diplomat and strategic
policy leader is just phenomenal.  And I just want to thank you from
the bottom of my heart for all the help you have given me as a new CEO
here at ICANN and the just outstanding model that you provide to me
and so many others.

Thank you very much.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Rod.

Well, Janis, it's time for you to come out front and face the music,
as it were.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Here we go.  No, still not on.  Thank
goodness.

Janis, I want to add a few comments to the ones I just made previously
and to say how wonderful it's been to work with you.

People have touched on your time at the GAC, and I have seen that.  As
the chair of the GAC, you have done a superb job.  As a liaison
between the GAC and the board, you have also done a superb job.  And
just to echo Chuck's comment.  That timeliness and quick
responsiveness is a hallmark of you.  And the most recent
accomplishment I think has been your work involved in selecting the
accountability and review teams, and to see you working on that,
taking the community consultation and putting together what seems to
be a very hard working team of professionals is another tribute I
think you can take a great deal of comfort from.

The only good thing about your going is you are going to such an
exciting new job at a high level in another global body that will be
able to take advantage of some of your extraordinary talents.  So the
entire ICANN community wishes you really well in your time at UNESCO,
and thanks you for your service at ICANN.

It gives me pleasure now to give you a certificate which says thank
you for your service to ICANN, and a small token of our appreciation.

Thank you very much.

[ Applause ]

>>JANIS KARKLINS:   Thank you, Peter.

I am not really accustomed to these kind of ceremonies, so that
reminds me the last time when you are carried out with your legs
first, because too many things -- too many good things said about you,
it is close that it is not really true.

Thank you very much.  It was a very, very rewarding time in my life,
as rewarding as it was during the World Summit on the Information
Society.

I always think that there is no conductor with the orchestra, and the
orchestra is my fellows in the GAC.  And I think that I should start
the series of mentioning whom I should like to thank for this
rewarding time in ICANN, and I should start with me peers in the GAC.

Those who are currently in the GAC, those who were on the GAC when I
started as a newcomer, as invited person.  And really, thank you very
much, indeed.  Without your support, without your hard work, all that
we achieved together wouldn't be possible.

Clearly, I owe a lot of gratitude to those from ICANN staff who helped
me and uncontestably Massimiliano who supported me over the years.  I
owe a lot of thanks from my part.

But equally, those on ICANN staff with whom I worked very closely,
Paul Twomey, Theresa Swinehart, Doug Brent, Kurt Pritz, and all others
whom I not mention here simply to save time.

Board, thank you.  With you I spend about 50% of my time, and it is a
very, very interesting time to see the dynamics among board members,
to see how each of you react on things which GAC ask me to say, convey
to the board.

I met extraordinary people among board members.  Vint Cerf, starting
with Steve Crocker, Peter, yourself, Alejandro, thank you.  It was a
real pleasure to work with you, and I hope that this is not my last
speech in ICANN since in my capacity of Assistant Director General of
UNESCO, I will be in charge of implementation of the agreement which
Rod signed with UNESCO.

So I will be coming back and we will be doing things together.

So thank you very much, indeed.  I am not going away.  I will be still
around.  And once I will go away completely, then maybe we can repeat
this ceremony.  It was very pleasant.

Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Okay.  Let's go back to the agenda items.

We're now at general business or any other business.

Are there any other items that people want to raise in the public
forum?

We are running late, so again, we'll keep a reasonably tight frame.

Chris, you were first.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   Thank you.

Hello again, everyone.

I just want -- I briefly wanted to let everybody know that on the
subject of the security and stability of the DNS, the GNSO, ccNSO, and
the at-large have agreed to set up a drafting group to draft a charter
for a cross-ICANN working group to look at the questions arising under
the heading of the security and stability of the DNS.

If that drafting group manages to reach consensus on a charter, then
logically and hopefully, the working group itself will follow.

We will be asking the ASOs through the NRO to join us in that and the
Governmental Advisory Committee has indicated that they, too, will
assist in the drafting of the charter and, should the working group be
formed, will contribute to the working group.

So I just wanted to let everybody know.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes.  Quick response from Bruce.

>>BRUCE TONKIN:   Just a quick response, Chris.  I am so pleased to
see a technical topic under consideration by the policy bodies at
ICANN.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   Introduced by a lawyer who has absolutely no
technical understanding whatsoever, but nonetheless.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   It's bound to succeed.

I think we are going to put -- we will leave the timer at two minutes.
Let's come back to this.

Steve.

>>STEVE DELBIANCO:   Thank you.  This is a comment with respect to the
Affirmation of Commitments and all the attention we are putting to it,
especially because we are undertaking the reviews.  One under way and
two more this summer.

What I would like to suggest is the word public interest is going to
be so key there.  I have already said this to you before.  You know
it's three times in the bylaws and the public interest term is used
five times in the AoC, three times just ahead of it, and then two more
times in paragraph 9 which talks about the review.

But paragraph 3, the first time it talks about a key commitment of
ICANN, it says that number 3 is to ensure that decisions made related
to the global technical coordination of the DNS are made in the public
interest.

So we have really taken that on right now.  But what does public
interest mean in the ICANN context?  And importantly, what do the
signers of the Affirmation of Commitments mean when they put the
document in there and before they sign their name?

The U.S.A. I realize is the only signer right now, but I think it
would be great if other nations would sign up to the commitments in
the affirmation as well.  And that would be hazardous if they all had
their own definition of public interest.

So without a clear definition I think we risk raising more mission
creep than we have even had in the past, especially in the post-
transition era while we operate under the Affirmation of Commitments
as if it's part of our bylaws.

So finally, I'd like to say, I have said too many times, that I have a
proposed definition of public interest.  I won't bore you with it.  It
was integrity and availability.  And my definition isn't attracting a
following of fans so I will leave it at that and ask you to consider
this.  Think about declaring, the board, think about declaring soon,
while we are under way on these tests, these affirmation reviews, that
ICANN will constrain its definition of public interest to only that
which is affected by the technical coordination of the DNS.

Thank you very much.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Steve, that's helpful.  Thank you.  I think
limiting it to the mission is a great start in terms of thinking.

Bertrand.

>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE:   Bertrand De La Chapelle, French GAC
representative.

First point to support Mike Palage comment regarding, as much as
possible, providing a feed to follow the discussions of the retreat of
the board regarding new gTLDs.

Second point, to endorse, again, the idea of the possible summit to
iron out the last issues, but with a note of caution.  We had a very
bad experience in terms of process around the EOI.  It is extremely
important that the discussions regarding any summit or any meeting is
being done directly and as quickly as possible with the chairs of the
SOs and the ACs.  There is a list that has been established for that,
and I would highly hope that corporate in addressing the possible
modalities will come to this list and to the chairs of the SOs and
ACs.

And finally, just reiterating a comment that I made during one of the
public sessions regarding the great interest of expanding a little bit
on the modalities that the batching of applications will adopt.  Today
it is a one paragraph in the DAG.  There's a huge aspect of fairness
of treatment.  If any, this is the place where the notion of track
different registration, categories, whatever you call them, is useful.
It introduces no delay at all.  And I reiterate very strongly the
despondability and availability of myself, the people who have worked
on the concepts of categories and even GAC members to discuss this
with staff in an appropriate manner.

And I would really appreciate that this offer is treated in a more
earnest manner than the previous comments regarding categories where
the response was always, "Yes, it's a great idea.  We'll look into
it."  It's more than two years now.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Bertrand.

Sir.

>>CONSTANTINOS ROUSSOS:

>>JASER ELMORSY:  Thank you.  Earlier I commented on ICANN's promises
that have not been kept for the IDN gTLDs.  As happy as I am that you
have given me the chance to participate in your meetings a couple of
times before and today as well, and as happy as I am for all the
infrastructure here I still have an important question for you.  What
accountability measures will ICANN be taking so that S&B owners like
me who are taking the time and cost to fly to your meetings and to
participate in your discussions can start trusting in the answers that
are given on those meetings?

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I'm not sure now is the time to give you an
explanation of the current accountability mechanisms, but they are
available in the bylaws, and also of course to tell you that there is
a team reviewing our performance accountability and transparency.  So
you might want to participate in their work or watch some of that, if
that's of any help.

Mike.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:   Approximately two years ago in Washington, D.C., I
specifically raised the question to both you and Dr. Twomey about the
inclusion of ICANN's claimed privileges and immunities as a California
nonprofit in an MOU executed with the United Nations Economic and
Social Commission for Western Asia.

Last year in Sydney's public forum on improving institutional
confidence, I raised the question of an agreement between ICANN and
the New South Wales government regarding funding of ICANN Sydney's
office.  Then president and CEO Paul Twomey said these documents would
be available shortly online.  It's 12 months.  Still can't find them
and you know I'm quite good at navigating ICANN's Web site, Peter.

My concern is ICANN is engaged in a very patchwork approach towards
MOUs and agreements with governments and other organizations.  I
submit that there needs to be a community discussion on the frameworks
and principles of these agreements and that the ICANN community -- and
that ICANN should engage in public consultation prior to executing any
of these agreements in the spirit of openness, transparency, and
accountability.

So my question to the directors are, are there any directors that
disagree with that approach?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   We don't actually have time to conduct polls
of directors at meetings like this, Mike.  Otherwise, we would be here
for a long time.

I think there's certainly a lot to what you say, and I see Rod is
making notes about making sure that documents that should be on the
Web site are on the Web site.  I'm not sure if there was a question
related to the immunities question.  If you could let me now not now,
later, let me know what the cushion is and we will see if he can get
you an answer.

Werner.

>>WERNER STAUB:   My name is Werner Staub.  Personally I want to note
appreciation for the work of the real-time scribes or stenographers
who help us see what we say here.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Absolutely.  I think let's join in the usual
way of showing them that appreciation.

[ Applause ]

>>WERNER STAUB:   This is now the second meeting that they work
remotely, and I'm astonished at how much they are able to achieve that
way.  However, I think it would be great if they were here, and I
think they would be able to do more and have better quality tracking
what we say and also make it easier for people to follow what we say
when it is transcribed by people who see directly the people who are
participating.

Moreover, there are discussions where it would have been great to have
the real-time scribes where we did not have them.

I would also say it is very good that we have now a highly improved
tool for the real-time feed, and I encourage everybody to use it.
It's actually a great improvement over previous tools that we had.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Jonathan.

>>JONATHAN ZUCK:   My name is am Jonathan Zuck, and I am with the
Association for Competitive Technology and there is enough notches in
this microphone that you can probably already write my speech for me,
so I will try to find my way to a question at the end.  There's an old
Belgian proverb that a happy country has no history.  And I think it
goes without saying that this organization has a lot of history.

But at the same time, I think that everyone in the community, through
public comments, through coming to the microphone, through the defense
of this organization in the U.N. context, et cetera, has demonstrated
a great deal of idealism and optimism about ICANN and the
multistakeholder model.

But there's another old saying that I think is best attributed to Rita
May Brown which is that the definition of insanity is doing the same
thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

And while I must confess that every once in a while I am looking in
the ICANN bag and expecting to find a Minds + Machines branded
straitjacket, I hope that we're not acting insanely as we continue to
try to participate in this process.

And so I'm going to go back to an old story, which is that we had an
initiative on institutional confidence that was sort of replaced by
the AoC.  I saw some -- an exchange between the review teams and the
board that seemed to suggest that there was a standoff between the
ICANN staff and board and the review team sort of in our future.

I heard a comment from Peter at a forum a couple of days ago, at the
European Internet Foundation, that he actually expected or aspired to
the expiration of the Affirmation of Commitments, and I am wondering
what that means.  And all of that makes me somewhat less optimistic.

So what I would like to say over and over again is I hope everyone on
this board, and I won't poll them since you've already ruined that
idea earlier, but I hope everyone on this board is committed to a set
of rigorous objective criteria for establishing the objectives of this
organization and the measure of their success, because absent that, we
are all just wasting our time with useless rhetoric about
accountability and transparency.  We have got to objectify and measure
this process if we have any hope of being successful.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Jonathan.  I am going to close
the speaking order after the current last speaker so that's Edmon on
this side.  Thanks.

Edmon.

>>EDMON CHUNG:   Thank you.  Seems to have found a fast track, because
I think they were first.  But it's related to that, too.

I was listening in, and sort of maybe this is a useless process again,
but I'm observing that there are more and more situations where we are
creating working groups that are cross -- across supporting
organizations and also communitywide.  I just think that this might be
-- it seems to be a trend and seems to be something that perhaps --
it's sort of an open question, really, to everyone in the community
that perhaps there could be some sort of process in creating these
type of working groups because looking back at some of the -- like,
for example, the IDN fast track, when that group was created, there
were different types of -- I shouldn't go so far as saying friction,
but at least there were conditions where a level of certainty might
help in these type of communitywide working groups.

So perhaps some thought should be made into making that process a
little bit more predictable.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Edmon.

Marilyn.

>>MARILYN CADE:   Thank you.  My name is Marilyn Cade.  I want to make
three short comments.

My first comment is on the topic of different MOUs.  When I was on the
President's Strategy Committee we talked about the kind of
arrangements and agreements that ICANN might strike with different
entities.  And I am very cautious about that, and I would urge the
board to think very seriously about different kinds of agreements with
different international entities or different countries.  It is very
difficult to keep track of the obligations that you make, and if you
bind yourself in one agreement in one way, you may find that you are
then being expected to -- and if you create very diverse agreements,
you will have the tension of trying to make sure that you can meet
different expectations from different entities.  In certain legal
jurisdictions, there's something called most favored nation clause.
Enough on that.

Secondly, I remain extremely cautious about an intersessional meeting.
I have heard at this meeting that there is no budget to do the things
that my constituency and my community want done that we consider
essential like the tool book, the tool kit, et cetera.  So I would be
extremely cautious to think there would be an intersessional meeting
when very few members of my community would be able to participate, I
would question whether governments could participate.  I wouldn't be
comfortable with such a lack of balance.

Finally, to end on a positive note, I would like to announce that
again at this meeting the business constituency and fellow similar
constituencies organized an extensive outreach event.  We reached into
the local community and deepened our interaction with the business
community here, but also hosted an event, an invitational event
including the board and senior staff and the business community here,
and we will continue to organize events and activities that bring
together the business community and encourage them to become more
involved in ICANN.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Marilyn, thank you for organizing that
event, and thank you for inviting me to that.

I wonder, have you done any more in relation is to the discussion that
we had about keeping alive the enthusiasm in a particular region as we
move on?  So having done that in Brussels, are you keeping that group
together?  In fact, I have suggested previously that we might join
them telephonically or electronically next time.

>>MARILYN CADE:   A couple of quick ideas.  I will be on my way to the
East Africa IGF, I will be stopping in Kenya to give a speech to the
business community that came together there.

We are going to be proposing a small pilot where we would try to
identify business people, small business people from one country who
could come as a fellow to the next meeting and try to create and
catalyze an ongoing relationship for them, Peter, back in the country
we came from with other members of the community.

It will be a pilot to start.  We haven't figured it out.  We haven't
figured out the funding but we have figured out that the business
community is interested.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks very much.  Obviously when we go to a
region we generate such a lot of enthusiasm and make these
connections, it's just nice to have a program that works on keeping
them alive.

Bruce, quick one.

>>BRUCE TONKIN:   One thing that occurs to me is trying to keep track
of all the smaller events.  Like everyone knows about the big events,
the big public meetings in Brussels and then soon to be Colombia.  But
I know there are other smaller events, and there are sometimes events
held regionally by registrars, and I know some ICANN staff attend
those.  But perhaps what's useful is being able to share when those
events are held, and maybe at least leveraging some of the costs at
the same venue.  You could do a business outreach event at the same
venue because the audio/video costs are some of the most expensive
bits and if we can share those costs, we can leverage that.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Sounds good.  And last before we go to
online, Eric.  Eric Brunner Williams.

>>ERIC BRUNNER WILLIAMS:  Thank you, Peter.  I guess saying my name
would be redundant, but for the benefit of the scribes who are not
here and whom I worship at a distance, good afternoon.  My name is
Eric Brunner Williams.  I am employed by CORE.  My statement is made
in my personal capacity.

I want us to make a point that's made by the principal investigator
for the distributed Cooperative Association for Internet Data
Analysis, CAIDA, and their resident research scientist at the
University of California, San Diego, a supercomputer center, and that
is the absence of a relationship between the registry service
providers, current and future, and ICANN precludes the contractual
resolution of the barriers to operational DNS data gathering.  And I
have made this point to you, Steve, previously.

Not having a contractual means to liability-free data sharing with
researchers precludes forming policy based on data.  It's possible to
make some policy based on sources other than data, but we would not
call such a policy scientifically informed.  And service level
agreements alone is insufficient.

I wish to make the same point, the need for that relationship between
RSPs, or Registry Service Providers, current and future and ICANN from
an additional point of view.  It's a view that you've mentioned
earlier this afternoon, Peter, about bundling.

The evaluation of applications involves more than a nominal
examination of the applicant proposed Registry Service Provider.
There is not a lot of point in asking twice or more and potentially
many more times than twice, whether VeriSign or CORE offer sufficient
registry services to meet the needs of an applicant.  There's just not
a lot of benefit in the second time, let alone the third.

So significant savings in the evaluation process can be achieved by
recognizing that the technical portions of some, programs many
applications, once reviewed, need not be re-reviewed with any
meaningful increase in information; that is, without any identifiable
utility.

Thank you very much.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Eric.  And we will close with a
final comment from online.  Rob, I understand there's a further.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you, Eric.  We will close with our
final comment from online.  Rob, I understand there is a further
comment from George Kirikos.

>>ROB HOGGARTH:  Yes, Peter, thank you.  I will fit two questions into
two minutes, I hope.  The first is about UDRP providers, the second
about legal costs.  It was recently discovered and documented in the
ICANN community that UDRP panelists have been simply cutting and
pasting nonsense into their decisions.

Furthermore, UDRP providers have been widely criticized for
encouraging forum shopping by complainants.

Will ICANN be bringing UDRP providers under direct contract in order
to ensure accountability?  This was on the agenda at a recent ICANN
board meeting, but no action was taken.

And now the second question:  In this economic recession, even law
firms have been cutting back on their fees and staff.  Jones Day
recently reduced its L.A. staff, for example.  Has ICANN considered
creating a competitive tender for legal services to ensure that the
public gets the most cost-efficient legal representation?  ICANN spent
more than $2 million just on Jones Day according to the latest I.R.S.
Form 990, and there are a lot of other big law firms that might be
able to perform the same services at lower cost.

For example, Rita Rodin is from Skaden, a big law firm with competent
people.  And there are many other big law firms that should be able to
compete with Jones Day.

Also, has any other law firm represented ICANN in the past ten years?
Or does Jones Day have a monopoly at ICANN?  What is the total
spending on other law firms, excluding Jones Day, in the past year?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you, George.  You are quite right to
remind us about the UDRP contract.  The current status of that is
staff are preparing a paper for board consideration on that.

In relation to legal service providers, we have recently negotiated a
discount in relation to services with Jones Day, and we have no plans
to make any other provisions in that area.

That brings to an end the public comment.  Would any members of the
board like to say something before we close the session?

Katim?

>>KATIM TOURAY:  Hold it down and talk?

Okay.  Thanks, Peter.  Good afternoon, everybody.  It's been a very
interesting and certainly very useful extensive give and take, at
times very animated but all in the spirit of ICANN.

I have just two comments to make, two points to comment on.  One is
the fact that I think that we, ICANN, that is, do a very terrible job
of actually digesting all the feedback and great ideas we get from the
community.  I've heard over and over again quite a number of times not
only in this forum but almost every time -- each and every time we
have ICANN meetings from people in the community who tell me that we
suggested this and nothing else happened, we suggested that and
nothing else happened.

And here's what I would like to suggest.  I would like to suggest that
beginning with this forum we have a compilation that not only compiles
all the suggestions but especially the actionable ones and with the
intention that by the time we meet again, we prelude the public forum
with a discussion of what exactly happened with all those actionable
suggestions we had, including, of course, the suggestion that I have.

I would like to know whether this suggestion, by the time we meet next
forum -- in the next forum, whether this suggestion was actually
implemented.

All I'm asking for is let's compile all the suggestions we had that
demand that we do action.  And by the time we meet again, report back
to the community this is what -- this is what happened to the
suggestions we had to do something.  So that way we keep track of what
actually we are doing with regards to suggestions we are getting.

The other point I would like to touch on very briefly is the issue of
inclusiveness or inclusion in what ICANN does.  I heard a delegation
or representative from China quote the ICANN slogan that's one
Internet -- One World, One Internet, everyone connected.  I think this
goes to the heart of all the talk we have been having about one
internationalization of the organization's work and activities and,
secondly, inclusiveness.

I think it is important for us to realize that whatever we do, if we
do not back what we say with action, in the end, is begin to bring
horror.

There have been a number of people who complained here that ICANN has
promised them this and ICANN has promised them that and it hasn't
happened.  And I think we need to go against the continuation of a
situation like that.

Case in point is, for instance, Africa where, for instance, if you
look at the new gTLD program, a number of outreach efforts have been
held in various regions.  But there is yet to be one that's done in
Africa.  For a region that has incredible challenges in access and
documents online and also whose cultural heritage is really at stake
as we move into the new gTLD program, I think it is totally
unacceptable that up to this point we haven't made any effort
whatsoever to have an outreach program there.

And I think something like that -- just doing things along those
lines, in my mind at least, cuts from underneath the ground, from
underneath the feet of people who are enthusiastic in these various
developing countries who want to push the ICANN agenda because, in the
end, people are not going to believe what you say and it is going to
be a very tough sale going forward.  Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thanks, Katim.  Any other comments?

[Applause]

Mike Silber.

>>MIKE SILBER:  Thanks, Peter.  I'll try and keep it brief.  I have a
major concern with Katim's suggestion following what I think is the
incorrect format for this whole afternoon because people come and talk
to us as if we are some entity able to influence decisions.  About 80%
of what was spoken about today has got nothing to do with the board.
They are policy issues and policy issues -- policy is not made by the
board in a top-down fashion.

If you have a problem with policy, go back to the policy shops and
either start a new policy process, engage in existing policy process,
convince them to reopen a closed policy process or then come back to
us through one of the various mechanisms to review or re-engage in
that policy process because it's been closed or come to an incorrect
conclusion.  And there are various mechanisms available in the bylaws
to do that.

The 20% that comes -- that's appropriate to the board is unfortunately
so drowned out by the 80% of policy-related discussion that really
should be addressed to other people, that it's really difficult to
engage.

And I would really encourage you, you've had 3 to 3 1/2 days to engage
with people on those policy-related issues.  Don't come back to us
because you are unhappy with how you are not being treated or
respected in some other facility.

Come and engage with us on what we are doing right or not doing right
so that we can actually address and engage those timely consider those
timely instead of having to listen to the same points being made over
and over about things that the board cannot impact because we do not
make policy.  This is a bottom-up organization.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you, Mike.

If there is no further comments, I would just like to close with a
housekeeping kind of matter.  This is the first time in a long while
we've had the forum at this time of the day.  Could you just -- if you
have any thoughts about the effectiveness of the forum, please feed
those into the public participation committee or the public
participation staff.

So thank you for that.  Thank you for attending the forum.  Thank you,
everyone, for their contributions.  Thank you, board, for responding.
Let's close the session.  We'll begin again tomorrow morning with the
rest of the program which begins with chairs of the SOs and ACs
reports, reports from the various committees of the board and then the
board meeting itself.  Look forward to seeing you all here tomorrow.
Have a good night tonight.  Thank you.

[Applause]

>> Please, again, if you would be kind enough to make sure you leave
your headsets at the table outside the doors, we would appreciate it
tremendously.  Thank you.