RE: [council] Regarding Redrafted IDN ToR

["Bruce Tonkin" <Bruce.Tonkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello All,

I had conference call with the chair of ICANN Board (Vint Cerf) and
Chair of the ccNSO (Chris Disspain) along with several ICANN staff
members, to discuss coordination of work on IDN TLDs.

The general concerns raised were:

(1) The rules for creating new IDN-gTLDs should be consistent with the
rules for creating new ASCII-gTLDs.

(2) Any rules with respect to allowable characters, scripts, languages
etc in the TLD strings for new IDN-ccTLDs should be consistent with the
rules for new IDN-gTLDs.

The discussion was fairly consistent with some of the discussions of our
last conference call.

There was support for the current draft of the GNSO IDN terms of
reference.

The terms of reference already make clear that work on IDN-gTLDs will
make reference to the work in PDPDec05 on new gTLDs (e.g TOR 2a), and
that we will identify and document any policy issue for which it is
essential that policy is harmonized for all IDN-TLDs (TOR 1b).

It was suggested that once the GNSO approves its terms of reference,
that we should create a cover letter for communication to the other
supporting organisations, and advisory committees (including President's
Advisory Committee for IDNs)  that sets out some general principles and
objectives of the work.  The cover letter should also give examples of
policy issues that would require harmonisation between the ccTLDS and
gTLDs.  We can probably expand on the current preamble.    We should
work with the ccNSO in identifying some of these issues to include in
the cover letter.   

Note that any recommendations that are intended to apply to the ccTLDs
will need to go through the ccNSO policy development process.   For
example, the GNSO may develop a draft recommendation that relates to an
issue that is common to ccTLDs and gTLDs.  This recommendation would
then need to be taken through the ccNSO process.  If our recommendation
is as a result of wide consultation and careful consideration, we would
hope that the ccNSO process could be fast tracked.   The converse could
also apply where a recommendations is developed outside of the GNSO
process, and we could fast track its consideration within the GNSO.
We may decide to delay making a final decision on the recommendation
until we have confidence that the recommendation will also be supported
by the ccNSO.

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin