| 31 January 2008 Proposed agenda and documents List of attendees: 18 Council Members ICANN Staff Denise Michel - Vice President, Policy Development GNSO Council Liaisons Rita Rodin - ICANN Board member Avri Doria chaired the meeting. Item 1: Update any Statements of Interest Item 2: Review/amend the agenda Item 3: Approve GNSO Council minutes of 3 January 2008 . Kristina Rosette seconded by Philip Sheppard moved the adoption of the GNSO Council minutes of 3 January 2008 The Motion passed unanimously. Decision 1: The Council approved the GNSO Council minutes of 3 January 2008 Item 3: Vote for GNSO Council vice chair Avri Doria noted that the formal nomination period for the election of the GNSO Council vice chair, for the period running concurrently with GNSO Council chair from 1 February 2008 until 31 January 2009, open for two weeks from Wednesday 9 January 2008 to Wednesday 23 January 2008 at 12:00 noon UTC was closed. Chuck Gomes, the only nominee, nominated by Avri Doria and seconded by Olga Cavalli, accepted his nomination. The result of the vote: Absent: Tony Holmes, Tony Harris, Ute Decker. Decision 1: Chuck Gomes was elected GNSO Council vice chair for the period starting 1 February 2008 until 31 January 2009. Item 5: Update from Denise Michel on Board activities Denise Michel reported that the ICANN Board met on 23 January 2008. The Board approved the GNSO Recommendations on Contractual Conditions for Existing gTLDs (PDPFeb06). The result of the discussion of ongoing community dialogue about IDN ccTLDs and gTLDs was a decision by the Board to acknowledge the receipt of both letters from the GNSO and the ccNSO as well as the GNSO’s request to create such a working group, and defer any further action until both councils met in New Delhi. The Board passed a resolution on Domain name tasting acknowledging the GNSO’s ongoing policy development process (PDP) and the GNSO Council’s directive to staff to pursue measures and have public consideration of a change in the fee as part of the next fiscal year’s budget process. The staff provided the Board with a series of short, in-depth briefing papers on implementation issues surrounding the GNSO Recommendations on New gTLDs. These will be made available to the Council and both the Board and the GNSO Council will be provided with further face-to-face briefings in New Delhi. No fixed date has been set for the Board to vote on the issue. However, Rita Rodin liked the suggestion from a Council member of setting milestones to work towards and proposed discussing it with the Executive Committee. The Board approved the creation of a Board Governance Committee Working Group and its selection of the Westlake Consulting Group, who would be in New Delhi, as the independent reviewer for the At Large Advisory Committee and supporting infrastructure. The Board received an update on the various bylaw-mandated, independent reviews. The status report on the GNSO Improvements draft report of the Board Governance Committee Working Group is scheduled to be posted shortly and the next steps are its submission to the full Board Governance Committee for consideration, and after approval, submission to the full Board for action. Roberto Gaetano, Chair of both the Board Governance Committee and GNSO Improvements Working Group, is scheduled to meet the Council during the GNSO working sessions in New Delhi to provide an overview of the recommendations contained in the report. An initial high level draft budget is scheduled for posting and will be the starting point for public discussion about the next fiscal year’s budget as well as the budget for the next three years and a three year operating plan. There will be an opportunity for public discussion in New Delhi that will be followed by another draft iteration and another round of public comments. The Board is expected to take action on the final budget in June 2008 during the Paris ICANN meetings. Item 6: IDNC update Edmon Chung said there was little to report since the last Council meeting. Edmon, Hiro Hotta and Janis Karklins provided edits to the initial report but due to lack of discussion, these would not be included in the public draft. Edmon noted that the group was not very interactive. The next step is the first scheduled discussion that will take place in New Delhi on Monday, 11 February 2008 before the IDN workshop on the same day. Item 7: Report of draft of Council response to Board resolution on IDN ccTLDs rework team Chuck Gomes thanked the drafting team for their work and proposed highlighting certain areas without discussing content and responding to high level questions. Council was urged to review the report in preparation for the discussions and the action that would be taken during the meetings in New Delhi. The report would then be submitted to the ICANN Board and the ccNSO policy development process. Background. The response starts by referencing 5 documents: 1. ccNSO-GAC Issues Report on IDN Issues: Chuck Gomes highlighted the following sections in the report: 1. IDN-labeled TLDs (whether considered gTLDs or TLDs associated with countries or territories) should be introduced as soon as practicable after technical requirements and tests are successfully completed. 5. Neither the introduction of IDN gTLDs or IDN ccTLDs should be delayed because of readiness specific to one category. 6. The situation of IDN ccTLDs becoming de facto “IDN gTLDs”, as has happened with some ASCII ccTLDs historically, should be avoided. The GNSO council supports efforts to determine the feasibility of a fast track process to enable the assignment of a few non controversial IDN ccTLDs in the interim. These should be limited to one IDN ccTLD per ISO 3166-1 territory, except in those cases where governmental policy makes selecting a single script impossible. However, before any policy regarding new IDN ccTLDs can be finalized, criteria must be developed to determine how TLDs will be apportioned into the ccNSO and GNSO for policy development purposes. This clearly demonstrates that the GNSO does not intend to slow down the introduction of fast track names or IDN gTLDs. It is crucial to recognize that decisions like the above must be made by the full ICANN naming community. It would not be appropriate for either the GNSO or the ccNSO to primarily take the lead in this task but both supporting organizations should participate equally along with open participation by the impacted community members outside of the two supporting organizations. The response enumerates the large list of questions and the proposed GNSO responses, a sampling of which were highlighted by Chuck: b) If so, should the ‘territories’ which are potentially eligible for IDN ccTLDs be exactly the same as the ‘territories’ that are listed in the ISO-3166-1 list? Proposed GNSO response: The GNSO supports continued mapping to the ISO 3166-1 list. Should an IDN ccTLD string be “meaningful”? Proposed GNSO response: The string must be a meaningful representation of the name of the territory or an abbreviation of the name of the territory in the relevant script. How many IDN ccTLDs per script per ‘territory’? Proposed GNSO response: Yes, the GNSO believes that there should be only one string per ISO 3166-1 entry per relevant script. If an IDN ccTLD string is not applied for, for whatever reason, should an IDN ccTLD string that could be associated with a particular ‘territory’ be reserved or protected in some way? Proposed GNSO response: The GNSO formed a special working group to deal with the topic of reserved names and that group recommended that a reserved names category for geographic names should not be created but rather that any disputes regarding such names should be handled through a complaint procedure (see recommendations 20 – 22 and associated supporting information in reference 4 above). Chuck commented that the group response indicated that IDN names should not be restricted to two characters as in ASCII. However, this would not apply to the ASCII ccTLDs, they should maintain the current status of two characters. Are there any ‘rights’ attached to a given script? GNSO proposed response: A fundamental purpose for this approach was to ensure that the string selection process and any dispute procedures associated with that process are as objective as possible by basing them on recognized laws. ICANN should not grant such special rights. In the US-ASCII case, ccTLD strings are currently primarily based on the ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 list. If a similar mechanism were adopted for IDN ccTLDs, this could mean that every ISO 3166 entry would have an equivalent IDN ccTLD string(s) to represent it. a) Is such a list necessary? Proposed GNSO response: Necessary no, but if such a list did exist, it might be a useful reference. What precedence should be given to ccTLDs in the IDN implementation process? Proposed GNSO response: There should be no formal precedence given to IDN ccTLDs over IDN gTLDs or vice versa. In the event that IDN gTLDs are ready before IDN ccTLDs, the interests of the IDN community should be protected by liberal use of the objection mechanism proposed in the new gTLD process (see reference 5 above). Likewise if IDN ccTLDs are ready for deployment before IDN gTLDs there should be an equivalent objection mechanism available for the rest of the community. The GNSO worked diligently and openly for over a year and a half to develop procedures for the introduction of new gTLDs including IDN gTLDs. The IDN gTLD process should not be put on hold unless there are technical reasons for doing so (i.e., the IDNA protocol revision is not yet finished). Delegation of IDN ccTLDs The group felt that it needed further clarification on this section to be able to respond precisely. a) Who can apply to have the IDN ccTLD delegated or to be the delegate for that ccTLD? Proposed GNSO response: After apportionment of IDN TLDs and the establishment of principles for such delegation by the Board based on the recommendation of the ICANN community, this is a decision for ICANN and the ccNSO with other supporting organizations and advisory committees as applicable. Nevertheless, the approved applicant should at least be from or be supported by the local territorial authority, e) Taking into account all experiences ICANN has acquired - should there be an agreement between ICANN and the IDN ccTLD operator on the operation of the IDN ccTLD string? Proposed GNSO response: ICANN should have a contract or some other form of agreement that includes appropriate technical, operational and financial requirements. At a minimum, IDN ccTLD operators must be required to follow the ICANN IDN Guidelines just like gTLD registries that offer IDNs. It was suggested that certain sensitive language, such as "unless Government policy suggested otherwise" should be sounded out with members of the Government Advisory Committee. Chuck Gomes urged Council members to study the report thoroughly in preparation for in-depth discussions on the topic during the New Delhi meetings. Item 8: Discuss feedback from Board relating to GNSO message Avri Doria noted that the topic would form part of the preparation for the joint ccNSO/GNSO council meeting in New Delhi. Item 9: Decision on absentee voting Liz Gasster reported the work was progressing on drafting language that could be included in the bylaws. The principle allowing for vote enfranchisement could be accepted by Council and language for the bylaws could be worked afterwards. Avri Doria proposed that Philip Sheppard, who had led the drafting group, be requested to add additional language where e-voting would not be allowed that would cover the concerns raised namely, having to vote consecutively in the case of multiple motions or in the case of unfriendly amendments. Item 10: Final plans for New Delhi meetings Avri Doria gave a brief overview of the topics for discussion at the face to face Council meetings in New Delhi on Saturday 9 February and Sunday 10 February 2008. The topics scheduled for Saturday include domain tasting, inter-registrar transfer policy, a presentation from Roberto Gaetano and other members of the Board Governance committee working group for discussions on GNSO improvements and Kurt Pritz would provide Council with an update on new gTLD implementation plans. Topics for discussion on Sunday include the GNSO response to the IDN ccTLD Issues paper and preparation for the joint ccNSO/GNSO Council meeting on Monday 11 February 2008. Avri Doria proposed a slightly different form for the Board/GNSO/staff dinner on Sunday night. The main topic for discussion would be the IDN ccTLD responses. Each table would have a member of the IDN rework group as a conversation facilitator and Avri Doria and Chuck Gomes would provide a short introduction on the topic before dinner with copies of the executive summary as a printed hand-out on each table. A joint ccNSO/GNSO Council meeting is scheduled on Monday, 11 February 2008 to discuss issues that have arisen from the GNSO resolution sent to the ICANN Board.The meeting will be facilitated by Patrick Sharry. It was agreed to keep the format of the open Council meeting which would include comments from the public and added time for the open microphone for public comment at the end of the meeting. The GNSO Council and the At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) planned to meet socially during the Delhi meetings. Item 11: Action Item Review It was noted that there were two parallel movements in the inter-registrar transfer policy issue. One was a drafting group looking at a set of recommendations for future policy development work and the other, the gathering of constituency statements relating to the policy development process (PDP) launched on inter-registrar transfers. Avri Doria noted that the nominations for ICANN Board Director seat 14 had closed, and suggested that the Council meeting on 28 February 2008 be devoted to an interview with the only candidate, Rita Rodin. Avri Doria noted that the Council Wiki had been set up and in the future, motions for Council consideration would be posted on the Wiki. A Council Jabber room was also being investigated. Item 12: AOB The Nominating Committee was scheduled to meet with the GNSO Council in New Delhi on Thursday, 14 February 2008. It was noted that the time zone in New Delhi, UTC/GMT +5:30 hours, would present remote participation challenges. Avri Doria adjourned the GNSO Council meeting and thanked everyone for their participation. The meeting ended at 17:00 UTC. Next GNSO Council teleconference will be in New Delhi on 13 February 2008 at 08:30 local time. |