GNSO Council Teleconference Minutes
| 31 January 2008
Proposed agenda and documents List of attendees: 18 Council Members Rita Rodin - ICANN Board member Avri Doria chaired the meeting. Item 1: Update any Statements of Interest Kristina Rosette and Mike Rodenbaugh updated their statements of interest. Item 2: Review/amend the agenda Item 3: Vote for GNSO Council vice chair 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 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 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: Chuck Gomes highlighted the following sections in the report: 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: Proposed GNSO response: The GNSO supports continued mapping to the ISO 3166-1 list. Should an IDN ccTLD string be “meaningful”? How many IDN ccTLDs per script per ‘territory’? 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. 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? 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? 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. 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 Item 9: Decision on absentee voting 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. 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. 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 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.see: Calendar |