GNSO Council Cape Town Meeting Minutes

3 December 2004.

Proposed agenda and documents

List of attendees:
Philip Sheppard - Commercial & Business users C.
Marilyn Cade - Commercial & Business users C.
Grant Forsyth - Commercial & Business users C. - remote participation- proxy to Marilyn Cade/Philip Sheppard
Greg Ruth - ISCPC
Antonio Harris - ISCPC
Tony Holmes - ISCPC
Thomas Keller- Registrars
Ross Rader - Registrars
Bruce Tonkin - Registrars
Ken Stubbs - gTLD registries
Philip Colebrook - gTLD registries - remote participation - proxy to Ken Stubbs
Cary Karp - gTLD registries
Lucy Nichols - Intellectual Property Interests C - absent - apologies - proxy to Kiyoshi Tsuru/Niklas Lagergren
Niklas Lagergren - Intellectual Property Interests C
Kiyoshi Tsuru - Intellectual Property Interests C.
Robin Gros - Non Commercial Users C.
Marc Schneiders - Non Commercial Users C. - remote participation, proxy to Alick Wilson/Ross Rader/Bruce Tonkin
Carlos Afonso - Non Commercial Users C.
Alick Wilson - absent - apologies - proxy to Amadeu Abril i Abril
Demi Getschko
Amadeu Abril I Abril

16 Council Members

Dan Halloran - Deputy General Counsel
Paul Verhoef - Vice President, Policy Development Support
Barbara Roseman - ICANN Staff Manager
Glen de Saint G�ry - GNSO Secretariat

Kurt Pritz - Vice President, Business Operations - absent - apologies
John Jeffrey - General Counsel - absent - apologies

Vittorio Bertola - acting ALAC Liaison to the GNSO
Suzanna Sene - GAC Liaison -absent - apologies


Real Time Captioning
Quorum present at 10:40 local time,

Bruce Tonkin chaired the meeting.
Bruce Tonkin welcomed the new Non Commercial Users Constituency representative, Robin Gross.

Item 0: Approval of Agenda

Item 1: Approve the minutes of : GNSO Council teleconference 18 November 2004
Deferred to the next GNSO Council meeting

Item 2: Update on Draft initial report on procedure for use by ICANN in considering requests for consent and related contractual amendments to allow changes in the architecture and operation of a gTLD registry.

Bruce Tonkin reported that the report had been reviewed by ICANN staff and in their analysis over 80% of the requests were simple, with two in particular that were more complex. A copy of the staff analysis is available at:
http://gnso.icann.org/issues/registry-services/L-PDP-registry-services-ver3-28nov04.pdf

Bruce Tonkin will update the draft initial report to take into account this staff input and present to the Council committee for review.

Item 3: Update on WHOIS

Bruce Tonkin reported that the Whois task force 1 & 2 had developed consensus around two positions:
1. Recommendations relating to improving notification and consent for the use of contact data in the Whois system.
2. A Procedure for conflicts, when there are conflicts between a registrar's of registry's legal obligations under local privacy laws and their contractual obligations to ICANN.

The GNSO constituencies were required to further consider the recommendations for review.
The next step was to develop an initial report based on these recommendations which would include constituency impact statements and financial impacts before putting out the recommendations for the first public comment period.

The WHOIS task force 3, relating to accuracy, met a couple of times in Cape Town and the focus was on a standardized procedure for when a registrar received a complaint, the steps that the registrar would take to resolve that complaint, and as well as considering what to do when it was necessary to respond quickly on an issue that might impact security or stability associated with a particular domain name.
The next step was to provide an initial report which would be put out for public comment, and the aim would be to have some concrete recommendations by the Mar del Plata meeting in Argentina.


Item 4: Discussion of recommendation from ICANN staff to Board on WIPO-II recommendations

Paul Verhoef referred to the letter and annex from WIPO and stated that a middle ground should be sought to move forward.
Philip Sheppard, a member of the President's working group on WIPO, responded that there were three options open:
- to do nothing
- to amend the existing trademark UDRP in such a way as to accommodate country names and international organization names, albeit in slightly different ways
- the creation of one, perhaps two completely separate dispute resolution processes which would accommodate the WIPO request.
The complexity of the issue has to do with the fundamental difference between the two processes whereby the existing UDRP had always worked on the basis that if either party did not like the outcome of the UDRP they could resolve the issue in court.
Bruce Tonkin concluded that the Council was in monitoring mode, seeking what the public comments would be and identifying if there would be a middle ground suitable for refinement via a policy development process.

Item 5: GNSO Council self-review
- motion to vote for approval of self-review document

Philip Sheppard seconded by Cary Karp and Kiyoshi Tsuru proposed the motion:
Council resolves to forward draft 2.2 of the council's self-review within 7 days to Patrick Sharry unless substantive changes are received to the report from council members, in which case it may necessary to reconsider a new draft and a new council meeting to vote on the report.

Motion passed unanimously

Decision 1: Council resolves to forward draft 2.2 of the council's self-review within 7 days to Patrick Sharry unless substantive changes are received to the report from council members, in which case it may necessary to reconsider a new draft and a new council meeting to vote on the report.

Bruce Tonkin referred to the issue of two versus three representatives per constituency, where, at the 2003 annual meeting, the board was requested to provide an extension of one year of the three representatives while the GNSO review, part of the ICANN bylaws, was conducted. The council wished to request a further extension of that ruling until the meeting in Argentina, which would give adequate time for the public to comment on the review and adequate time for ICANN to draft changes and put those changes out for public comment.
Bruce Tonkin clarified that General Counsel's feedback on the motion before the Council was that the ICANN Board would prefer to have a date on an issue they were to approve, but if that date became a problem, Council would seek a further extension at that time.

Bruce Tonkin, seconded by Tom Keller, proposed the following motion with a nominated vote:

"Whereas at the ICANN meeting in Tunisia (October 2003) the Board resolved to change the transition article (Article XX) to allow three representatives per constituency on the GNSO Council until the end of the ICANN annual meeting 2004; and resolved to perform a review of the GNSO Council in or around July 2004 which should include among other aspects of the review criteria, an analysis of the efficacy of having three representatives from each constituency on the GNSO Council. Taking into account the draft of the external review report on the GNSO Council, and the Council's self-review, the GNSO Council requests that the ICANN Board extend the current arrangement of 3 representatives per constituency until the ICANN meeting in Mar del Plata, Argentina (April 2005). This will allow time for the external review to be completed following a public comment period, allow time for ICANN to announce a proposed change to the ICANN bylaws to allow three representatives per constituency on an ongoing basis, and allow an appropriate period for public discussion before changing the bylaws."

Motion passed, 27 votes in favour.

Decision 2:
"Whereas at the ICANN meeting in Tunisia (October 2003) the Board resolved to change the transition article (Article XX) to allow three representatives per constituency on the GNSO Council until the end of the ICANN annual meeting 2004; and resolved to perform a review of the GNSO Council in or around July 2004 which should include among other aspects of the review criteria, an analysis of the efficacy of having three representatives from each constituency on the GNSO Council. Taking into account the draft of the external review report on the GNSO Council, and the Council's self-review, the GNSO Council requests that the ICANN Board extend the current arrangement of 3 representatives per constituency until the ICANN meeting in Mar del Plata, Argentina (April 2005). This will allow time for the external review to be completed following a public comment period, allow time for ICANN to announce a proposed change to the ICANN bylaws to allow three representatives per constituency on an ongoing basis, and allow an appropriate period for public discussion before changing the bylaws."

Item 6: ICANN strategic plan

The GNSO Council welcomed that the supporting organizations would be involved in a dialogue with the ICANN staff on the best way to manage the process of consultation with appropriate time lines before the ICANN Board signed off on the plan.

Item 7: Any other business

Staff support update
Paul Verhoef reported that recruiting was taking place throughout the organization. It was foreseen that John Jeffrey and Kurt Pritz would have additional staff which would assist in providing Council with continued general counsel office advice and verification that operational implications were taken into account. On the GNSO Senior position, final candidates had been interviewed and on the GNSO support position, decisions would be made shortly, hopefully both candidates being in place by January or February 2005.

Bruce Tonkin, on behalf of the GNSO Council, expressed thanks and appreciation to Amadeu Abril I Abril for his contributions as a Nominating Committee representative at the conclusion of his term.


Bruce Tonkin declared GNSO meeting closed, thanked everybody for attending, those councillors on the phone and the audience for their participation.

The meeting ended: 12 :23 ( local time)

• Next GNSO Council teleconference 13 January 2005.
  see: Calendar