Summary Minutes

Participants ALAC: P Vanda Walle, S Bachollet, V Scartezini, C Langdon-Orr , C Aguirre, A Greensberg, A Peake, H Diakite Apologies: V Vivekandan, TH Nguyen, B Brendler, F Seye Sylla, J Ovidio Salgueiro, W Ludwig Absent: M El Bashir, R Guerra Liaisons: R Vansnick (ccTLD council), W Seltzer (Board), A Piazza (dotMOBI) Guests: D Younger, P Dandjinou (PSC), M Cade (PSC) Staff: M Langenegger, N Ashton-Hart, MH Bouchoms, H Ullrich
The Chair opened the session by thanking H Diakite for her contribution to the last IGF meeting.
The staff introduced to ALAC, Dr. Heidi Ulrich, the new Manager for At Large affairs. She will be based in the Los Angeles office. A bio will circulate shortly to the lists.
A Greenberg said that, to his view, each group that wants to participate in the gTLDs should participate in the GNSO. He said he found the business definition of ‘commercial’ was too restrictive for people who did business occasionally
D Younger agreed that the division between commercial and non-commercial was an artificial construct. A non-incumbent party could be put together.
Adoption of past summary minutes
S Bachollet moved to adopt the meeting minutes of the 25 November 2008.
Against: none
Abstention: none
In favour: P Vanda Walle, S Bachollet, V Scartezini, C Langdon-Orr , C Aguirre, A Greensberg, H Diakite, A Peake
The motion was carried.
A Greensberg moved, seconded by P Vade Walle, to adopt the Cairo meeting minutes.
Against: none
Abstention: A Peake abstained due to the fact that he was not yet an ALAC member at the time of the Cairo summit.
In favour: P Vanda Walle, S Bachollet, V Scartezini, C Langdon-Orr , C Aguirre, A Greensberg, H Diakite
The motion was carried.
At-Large’s involvement in the President’s Strategy Committee
P Dandjinou and M Cade then joined the conversation.
M Cade thanked the ALAC for the invitation and noted that she could be reached at marilynscade@hotmail.com. She stressed that she was a chief advocate of the ICANN model and would welcome any comment, also those made individually. She added that the strategical advisory to the Board was PSC main task. The Board Chair P Dengate-Thrush had tasked the PSC to undertake the outreach to the community about their specific interests. The transition from the JPA with the DOC emerged as the chief topic. Another item of concern to the PSC was ICANN’s accountability. M Cade noted that the PSC had was a messenger within ICANN but could not determine ICANN’s strategy in any way.
P Dandjinou introduced himself to the ALAC and noted that he had been chosen to the board because he could provide a view from the different regions. The PSC was, he reminded, interested in what must be the next steps according to the community and At-Large feedback on this. External or internal capture, accountability, internationalization, ICANN financial stability were also key issues for the PSC. Pierre promised he would keep ALAC posted on the PSC timetable in the future.
M Cade said that a further key issue was the reinforcement of the bottom-up multi-stakeholder ICANN participatory model, using the broad definition of the private sector for that. Currently, the original ICANN model had been under attack and reinforcement for the original concept of the white paper was needed. Easy to understand documents and multilanguage efforts were important to get the whole community to effectively participate and she vigorously asked ALAC to let her know about the barriers met in that respect so that she could mention these to the ICANN Board.
D Younger asked the PSC members to provide red line documents of its publication. He expressed concerns about the capture of some constituencies and that they should be measures to deal with the internal capture issue. With regards to capture, M Cade noted that she always maintained the view that Governments needed an important role in the process and that presently their participation needed to be enhanced for the important government involvement was a means against capture. However she, personally, was against any change to their purely advisory function. She agreed that ICANN was captured by the interests of the contracted parties but thought that it could be overcome.
M Cade insisted that a successful transition was not possible without a clear understanding by the GAC, ALAC and other ICANN bodies about the policy issues being discussed. The various groups should be empowered by a clear understanding of the policy issues and processes. An initial neutral briefing should be provided on any policy issue.
V Scartezini said that she felt that the governments were going too fast, compared to the other stakeholders, in their claim for power. A more balanced approach was needed as well as the whole community understanding of the policies at issue and the process at stake.
P Dandjinou added that he believed capacity building was a key to successful transition.
A Peake noted the similar interests between the ALAC and the GAC regarding translation and briefings needs. People should look at the ICANN’s bylaws to be reminded that their opinions mattered.
S Bachollet noted that the Mexico summit was an opportunity to introduce the broader At-Large community to discuss the transition and the broader ICANN’s mandate.
M Cade suggested inviting the PSC to the summit to do outreach directly to the ALSes and discuss the issue further. She said that building a bridge between ALAC and regional business communities around the world was important to identify the things they agreed on and to strengthen ICANN together. ICANN was a multi-dimensional diamond of dependency that called for new interactions.
D Younger wanted to follow up on A Peake’s point and noted that ICANN was giving excess power to some constituencies.
M Cade agreed and noted that one way to address this was to give the opportunity to all communities to reject decisions by the Board.
C Langdon-Orr thanked P Dandjinou and M Cade for their time and effort.
The Staff will extract the recording of the PSC discussion and distribute it to the regions for further discussions.
ALAC position on whether the proposed RAA amendment package should be approved by the GNSO.
A Greenberg said that ALAC did not have a vote on the issue and gave a short overview of the current RAA amendments. He said that the GNSO did not need to go to a PDP process as currently defined but just needed to decide on the amendment package. He noted that many thought the RAA Amendements to be insufficient but some contractual terms could not come out of a PDP process. In Alan’s view - there was a general agreement among the ALAC in Cairo to accept the current RAA Amendments if it was a binary decision.
(See : raa the way forward)
D Younger expressed the opinion that given the fact that there was no briefing and no discussion was held on the issue within the community, it was preferable not to move until a briefing was made.
M Cade suggested that ALAC could express its concerns and state that they had not received the briefings they asked for in order to vote. As a PSC member, she said she understood their objections.
A Greenberg said that he stipulated that a briefing was held on the voting format not the content of the RAA itself.
A Greenberg said they could support, reject or defer and asked for a roll call to know about how to instruct the GNSO liaison but he feared there was no longer time to await a briefing.
S Bachollet suggested that the issue would be put to an online vote with some descriptions.
The question was then put to the participants: (the elaboration of the final questions is still under process at the time of this summary minute)
1) Recommend the GNSO to defer because the briefing is required to understand the context
2) Recommend the GNSO to accept the current package, with the possibility of further work on amendments on issues remaining continues
3) Recommend the GNSO to reject the amendments package and start from square one, but the ICANN Board would probably not accept it.
A Greenberg moved that V Scartezini replace C Langdon-Orr in the OSC working group. The motion was seconded by C Langdon-Orr.
Against: none
Abstention: none
In favour: P Vanda Walle, S Bachollet, V Scartezini, C Langdon-Orr , C Aguirre, A Greensberg, A Peake, H Diakite
The motion was carried unanimously by the present attendees and Staff will put up an online vote for the ALAC members on this issue.
Staff will organise a single purpose call on new gTLD's set up with enough time for community feedback to be prepared and sent in. A Greenberg said he volunteered to work on gTLD’s comments and the staff added that Beau Brendler also worked on them.
Next call
The next meeting will be on 13 January at 1230 UTC.
The meeting was then concluded.