RE: [council] Attendance at Council meetings

["Neuman, Jeff" <Jeff.Neuman@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Bruce,

The gTLD Registries Constituency will be participating in the call tomorrow.
I believe Cary will not be in attendance, but that he has given his proxy to
Jordyn and if he is not there, to me.

However, our earlier concerns and reservations still apply.  Our
participating in this call should not be viewed in any way as waiving any of
those concerns or reservations.  If we believe that the discussion takes a
turn towards what we believe are anti-competitive or discussions that have
anti-trust implications, we will have no choice but to leave the call.

In addition, I would like to raise another concern involving openness and
transparency.  It has come to our attention that the Business Constituency
has attempted to arrange a private meeting during the Tunisia meeting with
several other constituencies (including the ISPs, the Registrars, the ALAC,
etc.) to discuss the Wildcard Service and introduction of registry services
in general.  

While meetings on ICANN-issues should certainly be encouraged, meetings that
exclude certain groups from participating (including the Registries and the
Noncommercial Constituency) are, in our view, in violation of ICANN's Bylaws
and not in line with the notion of transparency and openness.  

While we see no problem with one constituency having closed meetings to
formulate policy positions and handle internal constituency matters, when
more than one constituency gets together to discuss topics, then those
meetings should be required to be open to all constituencies to attend. This
type of activity goes to the core of our concerns about anti-trust and
unfair competition.  

By this note, I have also put the ICANN General Counsel on notice of our
concerns.  I trust that this type of exclusionary practice will not occur at
the Tunisia meeting or any other ICANN-sponsored event.

Jeff Neuman,
Chair, gTLD Registries Constituency