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GNSO Council Teleconference Minutes

Last Updated:
Date

7 June 2007

Proposed agenda and documents

List of attendees:
Philip Sheppard - Commercial & Business Users C.
Mike Rodenbaugh - Commercial & Business Users C. - absent
Alistair Dixon - Commercial & Business Users C
Greg Ruth - ISCPC
Antonio Harris - ISCPC
Tony Holmes - ISCPC
Thomas Keller- Registrars
Ross Rader - Registrars
Bruce Tonkin - Registrars
Chuck Gomes - gTLD registries
Edmon Chung - gTLD registries
Cary Karp - gTLD registries
Kristina Rosette - Intellectual Property Interests C
Ute Decker - Intellectual Property Interests C
Kiyoshi Tsuru - Intellectual Property Interests C - absent
Robin Gross - NCUC
Norbert Klein - NCUC.
Mawaki Chango - NCUC
Sophia Bekele - Nominating Committee appointee - absent
Jon Bing - Nominating Committee appointee - absent - apologies
Avri Doria - Nominating Committee appointee

17 Council Members
(23 Votes - quorum)

ICANN Staff
Dan Halloran - Deputy General Counsel
Kurt Pritz - Senior Vice President, Services
Denise Michel - Vice President, Policy Development
Olof Nordling - Manager, Policy Development Coordination
Liz Williams - Senior Policy Counselor
Maria Farrell - GNSO Policy Officer
Craig Schwartz - Chief gTLD Registry Liaison
Karin Lentz - gTLD Registry Liaison
Glen de Saint G�ry - GNSO Secretariat

GNSO Council Liaisons
Suzanne Sene - GAC Liaison - absent - apologies
Alan Greenberg - ALAC Liaison

Rita Rodin - ICANN Board member

Invited observers to the new gTLD PDP
Adrian Kinderis - Registrar constituency observer
Marilyn Cade - CBUC
Mark McFadden - ISPCP Secretariat
Jon Nevett - Registrar constituency chair
Werner Staub - Registrar constituency
Ken Stubbs - Registry constituency
Victoria McEvedy - NCUC
Miriam Sapiro - consultant
Ray Fassett - registry

Quorum present at 12:10 UTC.

MP3 Recording

Bruce Tonkin chaired this meeting

Approval of the agenda

Item 1: Update any Statements of Interest
No updates

Item 2: Approval of the GNSO Council minutes 24 May 2007

Chuck Gomes moved the adoption of the GNSO Council minutes, 24 May 2007

Motion approved.
Mawaki Chango abstained

Approval of the GNSO Council minutes of 24 May 2007

Decision 1: The GNSO Council minutes of 24 May 2007 were adopted.

Item 3: Ratify the result of the election for the GNSO Council chair
http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg03552.html

The chair must receive affirmative votes comprising a majority of the votes of all the members of the GNSO Council – ie at least 14 votes

The election results were:
15 FOR Avri Doria
9 FOR Philip Sheppard
0 ABSTAIN

There were 27 votes in total accounting for 21 Council members.
http://gnso.icann.org/council/members.shtml
19 Council members voted - accounting for 24 votes. 2 Council members did not return their ballots accounting for 3 votes, one council member holding a single vote and one holding a double vote.

Bruce Tonkin proposed a procedural motion to ratify the results of the GNSO Council Chair election and congratulate Avri Doria as the new GNSO Council chair.

The motion passed by a unanimous vote of acclamation.

Decision 2: The GNSO Council ratified the results of the GNSO Council chair election and congratulated Avri Doria as the new GNSO Council chair.

Item 4: Review new gTLD recommendations
http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/pdp-dec05-draft-fr.htm
http://www.gnso.icann.org/meetings/council-meeting-table-07jun07.pdf

The purpose of this discussion is to review any changes/updates to the
draft recommendations since Lisbon.

Council discussed the recommendations and the following changes were made on the call.
(The italics indicate text that was struck, and the bold indicates text that was added.)

NEW TOP LEVEL DOMAIN INTRODUCTION:
PROPOSED RECOMMENDATIONS

RECOMMENDATION 1.
ICANN must implement a process that allows the introduction of new top-level domains.
The evaluation and selection procedure for new gTLD registries should respect the principles of fairness, transparency and non-discrimination. All applicants for a new gTLD registry should therefore be evaluated against transparent and predictable criteria, fully available to the applicants prior to the initiation of the process. Normally, therefore, no subsequent additional selection criteria should be used in the selection process.
[GAC2.5]

RECOMMENDATION 2.
Strings must not be confusingly similar to an existing top-level domain.

Text struck:
In the interests of consumer confidence and security, new gTLDs should not be confusingly similar to existing TLDs. To avoid confusion with country-code Top Level Domains no two letter gTLDs should be introduced. [GAC2.4]

RECOMMENDATION 3
Strings must not infringe the existing legal rights of others that are recognized or enforceable under generally accepted and internationally recognized principles of law.

Examples of these legal rights that are internationally recognized include, but are not limited to, rights defined in the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (in particular trademark rights), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (in particular freedom of speech rights).

Text struck:
The process for introducing new gTLDs must make proper allowance for prior third party rights, in particular trademark rights as well as rights in the names and acronyms of inter-governmental organizations (IGOs). [GAC2.3]

RECOMMENDATION 4
Strings must not cause any technical instability.

RECOMMENDATION 5
Strings must not be a Reserved Word.

Text struck:
ICANN should avoid country, territory or place names, and country, territory or regional language or people descriptions, unless in agreement with the relevant governments or public authorities. [GAC2.2]

RECOMMENDATION 6.
Strings must not be contrary to generally accepted legal norms relating to morality and public order that are enforceable under generally accepted and internationally recognized principles of law.
Examples of such limitations that are internationally recognized include, but are not limited to, restrictions defined in the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (in particular restrictions on the use of some strings as trademarks), and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (in particular limitations to freedom of speech rights).

Text struck
New gTLDs should respect:
a) The provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which seek to affirm "fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women".
b) The sensitivities regarding terms with national, cultural, geographic and religious significance. [GAC2.1]

RECOMMENDATION 7:
Applicants must be able to demonstrate their technical capability to run a registry operation for the purpose that the applicant sets out.

RECOMMENDATION 8:
Applicants must be able to demonstrate their financial and organisational operational capability.

Text struck
An application will be rejected or otherwise deferred if it is determined, based on public comments or otherwise, that there is substantial opposition to it from among significant established institutions of the economic sector, or cultural or language community, to which it is targeted or which it is intended to support.

RECOMMENDATION 9:
There must be a clear and pre-published application process using objective and measurable criteria.

RECOMMENDATION 10:
There must be a base contract provided to applicants at the beginning of the application process.

Text and recommendation struck
RECOMMENDATION 11:
Staff Evaluators will be used to make preliminary determinations about applications as part of a process which includes the use of expert panels to make decisions.

RECOMMENDATION 12:
Dispute resolution and challenge processes must be established prior to the start of the process.

RECOMMENDATION 13:
Applications must initially be assessed in rounds until the scale of demand is clear.

RECOMMENDATION 14:
The initial registry agreement term must be of a commercially reasonable length.

RECOMMENDATION 15:
There must be renewal expectancy.

RECOMMENDATION 16:
Registries must apply existing Consensus Policies and adopt new Consensus Polices as they are approved.

RECOMMENDATION 17:
A clear compliance and sanctions process must be set out in the base contract which could lead to contract termination.

RECOMMENDATION 18:
If an applicant offers an IDN service, then ICANN’s IDN guidelines must be followed.

RECOMMENDATION 19:
Registries must use ICANN accredited registrars.

RECOMMENDATION 20
An application will be rejected if it is determined, based on public comments or otherwise, that there is substantial opposition to it from among significant established institutions of the economic sector, or cultural or language community, to which it is targeted or which it is intended to support

Item 5: Review options for voting on the recommendations (note a vote will not be conducted at this meeting, but the aim is to discuss the how such a vote would be managed):

Options include:

(a) Each Council member votes on recommendations as a whole

(b) Each Council member votes on each individual recommendation

(c) We separate recommendations that are "complete", versus those that need further work

Bruce Tonkin drew attention to the fact that Council votes on the recommendations of the new gTLD committee and does not actually approve the report, compiled by staff, that consists of appendices, records of public comments and constituency statements and such like which is sent to the ICANN Board for consideration.
There was general agreement that the Council would wait for an updated version and further discussion at the meetings in San Juan and possibly vote on all the recommendations together, after the ICANN meetings in Puerto Rico.

Item 6: Any other business
6.1 Domain Name Tasting Issues Report

Bruce Tonkin commented that the key issue was to have clear terms of reference to start the Policy Development Process (PDP) and suggested that if constituencies or Council members considered going ahead with the process they should draft a proposed terms of reference for consideration by the Council at its meeting in San Juan, or alternatively the Council may request that staff conduct further fact finding and research before initiating a PDP.

Bruce Tonkin handed the Chair to Avri Doria.

Avri Doria thanked Bruce Tonkin personally, and on behalf of the Council for his excellent leadership and wished him the best of luck as a Board member.

Avri Doria formally closed the meeting and thanked everyone for their participation.

The meeting ended: 15:25 UTC

Next GNSO Council meeting will be on 27 June 2007 at 10:30 local time in San Juan, Puerto Rico. .
see: Calendar

Summary of Work Items arising from the minutes:

Item 4. Staff to update new gTLD recommendations and report