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GNSO Council Minutes - 7 January 2010

Last Updated:
Date

Proposed agenda and documents

The meeting started at 20:00UTC.

List of attendees:

Andrei Kolesnikov NCA – Non Voting – absent with apologies

Contracted Parties House

Registrar Stakeholder Group: Stéphane van Gelder, Tim Ruiz, Adrian Kinderis

gTLD Registries Stakeholder Group: Chuck Gomes, Caroline Greer, Edmon Chung

Nominating Committee Appointee (NCA): Terry Davis

Non-Contracted Parties House

Commercial Stakeholder Group (CSG): David Taylor, Wolf-Ulrich Knoben, Jaime Wagner, Kristina Rosette; Mike Rodenbaugh,joined after the roll call,

Absent with apologies: Zahid Jamil

Non Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG): Rafik Dammak, Debra Hughes, Wendy Seltzer, William Drake

Absent with apologies: Mary Wong
Absent: with apologies – Rosemary Sinclair

Nominating Committee Appointee (NCA): Olga Cavalli

GNSO Council Liaisons/Observers
Alan Greenberg – ALAC Liaison
Han Chuan Lee – ccNSO Observer – absent with apologies

ICANN Staff
Kurt Pritz – Senior Vice President, Services
Denise Michel – Vice President, Policy Development
Liz Gasster – Senior Policy Counselor, ICANN Policy Support
Craig Schwartz – Chief gTLD Registry Liaison
Margie Milam – Senior Policy Counselor
Marika Konings – Policy Director
Julie Hedlund – Policy Director
Rob Hoggarth – Senior Policy Director
Tina Dam – Senior Director, IDNs
Bart Boswinkel – Senior Policy Advisor, ccNSO
Marco Lorenzoni – Director, Organizational Reviews
Glen de Saint Géry – GNSO Secretariat

For detailed information of the meeting, please refer to:

Item 1: Administrative Items

1.2 Update any Statements of Interest

No updates

1.3 Review/amend the agenda

  • No changes

1.4. Note the status of minutes for the following Council meetings per the new Council Operating Procedures:

Item 2: Issues Report regarding vertical separation of Registries and Registrars

Margie Milam presented the Council with an overview of the Issues Report

The following points were highlighted in the Council discussions that followed

  • The need for a model for registry/registrar separation for the next version of the Applicant Guide Book
  • Staff suggested that it would be difficult to launch the Expression of Interests (EOI) model currently posted for public comment
    http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-18dec09-en.htm
    before the fourth version of the Applicant Guide Book is available.
  • Because the proposed model suggests that participation in the EOI be a requirement to apply for a new gTLD in the first round, to be consistent with the GNSO communications period recommendation all substantive issues, such as vertical separation, need to be in place.
  • With regard to the Business Constituency's position that there should not be changes to existing Registry agreements it was clarified that there is currently no uniformity of contracts and the provision that the registry operator can not acquire more than 15% of the registrar which is in some contracts was never developed through a policy process.
  • It was suggested that Council focus on gathering constructive, timely input on the process.

Kurt Pritz informed Council that the Washington D.C. meeting on Thursday, 7 January 2010, which resulted from discussions in the Registry stakeholder group meeting in Seoul about the process for amending the proposed Registry agreement, was well attended by representatives from the Registries, Registrars, and other stakeholders in person and remotely.

Discussion items included:

  • The process for amending the registry agreement in accordance with ICANN's commitment.
  • The changing environment from a few to many registries and the conclusion that there should be one or very few registry agreements
  • Changes should serve the benefits of registrants and users
  • There should be certainty of the agreement as a base for businesses
  • Vertical integration of registrars and registries (or vertical separation) -
    the discussion focused on determining whether there are areas of compromise or alternative solutions. The specifics of certain models, such as brand TLDs, were also discussed.
  • Pricing for registry services -
    there was good support for including price controls for renewal pricing in the Applicant Guide Book

A record of the meeting will be made available to the participants.

Next steps:
Alternate models based on the suggestions during the discussions will be posted for consideration before the ICANN meetings in Kenya.

Action Item:

Chuck Gomes urged Councilors to continue the discussion on the Council mailing list in preparation for deciding whether or not to initiate a policy development process (PDP) at the Council meeting on 28 January 2010.

Motions should be submitted to the Council no later than 20 January 2010 to be considered at the GNSO Council meeting on 28 January 2010.

Item 3: Prioritization of GNSO work

Olga Cavalli reported on the status of the GNSO Work Prioritisation drafting team which has weekly teleconferences and is developing and testing, with the help of Staff, a methodology to prioritise GNSO projects.

The next step is to finalise the procedure for Council consideration to prioritise the Council's projects.

A small group headed by Adrian Kinderis will red team whatever recommendations are made for the Council to consider.

Please contact Olga Cavalli and Adrian Kinderis if you want to join the red team.

Item 4: The Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) Implementation Working Team Final Report

Tina Dam provided the Council with a brief overview of the report as follows:

Variant Management

  • A TLD applicant may request variant forms of a base label and must classify each variant as 'desired' or 'undesired';
  • Desired variants can be allocated to the applicant;
  • Desired variants can be delegated to the applicant if the applicant agrees to conform to the Rules outlined under Section 3.3;
  • Undesired variants will be reserved and neither allocated nor delegated.

Three-character Restriction in gTLDs

  • Two-character gTLD strings can be allowed subject to conformance to the Rules outlined under Section 4.1.1;
  • The team does not recommend the banning of the one-character gTLDs. This issue is a matter of policy and must therefore be addressed by bodies such as the ccNSO and GNSO;
  • See Rules in Section 4.1.2.

Moving forward actions:

  1. Review of received comments, comment forum closes 8 January 2010. This includes questions for clarifications of what a variant is and we are looking at that.
  2. Initiation of DNAME analysis to determine whether it can be used for variant management.
  3. Inclusion of the 2-character registrations in the Applicant Guide Book
  4. GNSO/ccNSO work on the 1-character registrations

Action item: The working team report recommends that the GNSO and ccNSO do policy work with regard to the following two issues related to single-character IDN top level names:

  1. selection of scripts for which single character IDN TLDs should be allowed;
  2. method for allocation of single character IDN TLDs.

The Council agreed to include the following two topics in the Joint ccNSO-GNSO IDN Working Group (JIG) work and agreed that this could be done without modifying the charter:

  1. selection of scripts for which single character IDN TLDs should be allowed
  2. method for allocation of single character IDN TLDs.

Membership – excerpt from the Charter –
“The ccNSO Council will appoint no more than 5 members to the WG in accordance with its own rules and procedures. The GNSO Council will appoint no more than 5 members to the WG in accordance with its own rules and procedures. The chairs of the ccNSO and the GNSO, or somebody they appoint as an alternate, will be ex-officio members of the WG.”

The current membership of the group will be reviewed and a call for participants launched.

Rafik Dammak from the NCSG volunteered as a participant.

Bart Boswinkel confirmed that Jian Zhiang, from the CNNIC has been appointed co-chair of the JIG by the ccNSO while Edmon Chung is the co-chair from the GNSO.

Item 5: Add Grace Period (AGP) Limits Policy – Implementation Report

Craig Schwartz provided the Council with a brief overview of the Add Grace Period (AGP) Limits Policy – Implementation Report

Councillors are encouraged to interface directly with Craig Schwartz for additional information on the topic.

Councillors, and any constituents in the stakeholder groups are welcome to put forward a request with regard to pursuing the issue further.

Item 6: Status updates

6.1 Items of interest to the GNSO from the ccNSO

Olga Cavalli informed the Council that the ccNSO is setting up an Ad-hoc Study Group on Wildcards and is now calling for volunteers to this group.The Study Group, created at request from the ICANN Board, is to provide a report on mechanisms that could be employed to ensure that wildcards at the top level are effectively prohibited, to provide an overview of the use and need of wildcarding at the top level and, if considered appropriate, advise on further actions. The group's final report is expected no later than the ICANN meeting in Brussels. The ccNSO Council has appointed Young-Eum Lee (.kr) and Ondrej Filip (.cz) to co-chair this group.

For further information, please see the Study Group’s Purpose and Scope of Activities:

6.3 Questions/comments on written status updates

In the interest of time, Council members were encouraged to review and comment on the Council mailing list on the written status updates sent in advance of the meeting by leaders of working groups and working teams.

Item 7: Any Other Business (AOB)

7.1 Staff update on plans to ensure safety and security in Nairobi

Denise Michel informed the Council that there was no additional information from the ICANN staff who handle security issues. Chuck Gomes expressed the Council's dismay at this lack of actionable information.

Councillors and the broader GNSO community are encouraged to address any specific concerns or questions directly to Greg Rattray and Geoff Bickers, and to Nick Tomasso for hotel information.

The GNSO Secretariat will provide their contact information to the Council members.

7.2.1 Draft Proposal for Affirmation of Commitments (AoC) Review Teams

Denise Michel and Marco Lorenzoni gave a brief overview of the report and referred Council Chuck Gomes's summary on the topic.

Council agreed to provide comments to the discussion draft that addresses the requirements and implementation processes for the reviews called for in the Affirmation of Commitments.

Action Items:

  • Form a drafting team which is to select a lead person for coordination purposes
  • Draft comments on behalf of the GNSO
  • Agreed to provide comments as soon as possible so that the full Council can consider the proposal before the next Council meeting on 28 January 2010
  • Examine how the Council will endorse candidates
  • Establish a mailing list
  • Launch a call for volunteers on the GNSO Council mailing list to join the drafting team.

The following Councillors Volunteered to start the process:

Olga Cavalli – NCA – GNSO Council vice chair
William Drake – NCSG
Chuck Gomes – RySG – GNSO Council chair
Caroline Greer – RySG

7.3 Joint Meeting with the GAC in Nairobi

Chuck Gomes noted that the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) was prepared to meet with the GNSO in Nairobi on Sunday afternoon, 8 March 2010.
The GAC proposed discussion topics are:

  1. New gTLD policy implementation, including Expression of Interests;
  2. Affirmation of Commitments (AoC).

There were no objections from the Council to the proposed agenda items.
Councillors were encouraged to submit any other suggested topics to the Council list.
In the interest of time, there was no further discussion.

Action Item:

Chuck Gomes proposed drafting specific questions for the Council to commence discussions in preparation for the joint meeting with the GAC and the GNSO Council.

Item 8: The updated GNSO Project Status List

http://gnso.icann.org/meetings/pending-projects-list.pdf

Council members are reminded to review the updated GNSO Project Status list and comment on the Council mailing list.

http://gnso.icann.org/meetings/pending-projects-list.pdf

8.1 Questions/comments

There were no further comments or questions.

Chuck Gomes adjourned the GNSO Council meeting and thanked everyone for their participation.
The meeting was adjourned at 22:33 UTC.

Next GNSO Council meeting will be on 28 January 2010 at 11:00 UTC.
See: Calendar