GNSO Council Kuala Lumpur Meeting Minutes

20 July 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
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 Cary Karp
Cary Karp - gTLD registries
Lucy Nichols - Intellectual Property Interests C
Niklas Lagergren - Intellectual Property Interests C
Kiyoshi Tsuru - Intellectual Property Interests C.
Jisuk Woo - Non Commercial users C. - remote participation, proxy to Carlos Afonso
Marc Schneiders - Non Commercial users C. - remote participation, proxy to Carlos Afonso
Carlos Afonso - Non Commercial users C.
Alick Wilson
Demi Getschko
Amadeu Abril I Abril

17 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 - ALAC Liaison
Suzanna Sene - GAC Liaison -absent - apologies


Real Time Captioning
Quorum present at 14:00 local time,

Bruce Tonkin chaired the meeting.

Item 1: Approval of agenda


Item 2: Report from Security and Stability Advisory Committee
- Steve Crocker to present outcomes of review of Sitefinder
Bruce Tonkin invited Steve Crocker, chair of the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) to give a summary of the Report from Security and Stability Advisory Committee and an update on DNSSEC.

Steve Crocker emphasized that the Security and Stability Advisory Committee was composed of unpaid volunteers drawn from various technical expertise, operating independently, who spoke their minds not only to the ICANN Board but to the community as a whole with the primary focus on security and stability matters as opposed to political or contractual issues.
The two reports, one from the Security and Stability Advisory committee looked backwards at things that happened and the other, DNSSEC report looked forward at what was hoped would happen.
In summary, on 15 September 2003, Verisign changed the COM and Net domain registries which blurred the architectural layers and violated the engineering principles that the network was built on. The community response was swift and vocal resulting in ICANN speaking from a contractual point of view and Verisign suspending the change.
In essence, the 4 SSAC recommendations were:
- no new wild cards in TLDs,
- roll back wild cards in existing TLDs,
- clean up the specifications
- enforce proper discipline, including open notice and consensus, for registry changes.

The response to a question, concerning the balance of innovation versus security and stability, whether future registry and registrar software choices could be limited, was no. However, Steve Crocker elaborated by saying that the genius of the Internet design was that the core, which should remain stable, was as thin as possible and that innovation should take place in a dependable framework at the edges.
Bruce Tonkin commented that the concept of supporting international domain names and the recent Verisign announcement regarding the speed with which name servers were updated after a change from a registrar, were two changes that have been made at the core, illustrating
that the core was evolving rather than static.
Ross Rader asked about the term "spyware" which was clarified as a means of accumulating information about what the users were doing.
Amadeu Abril l Abril asked whether there were any concrete lessons, parameters or questions that needed to be incorporated into the new registry services as being examined by the GNSO in the policy development process. There was no prescription, but to proceed carefully and have a wide number of people look at and sort out the equities.

Bruce Tonkin stated that new TLDs and a tender process for dot NET were being looked at and that from the GNSO Council perspective a question was whether any action should be taken regarding DNSSEC.
Steve Crocker replied that it was time to adopt the DNSSEC in the plans going forward. In summary, the DNSSEC consisted of cryptographic signatures in the DNS which assured the integrity of DNS query results making it possible to check through a chain of signatures up to the root so assuring the correct response and that along the way there had been no substitution or tampering. Deployment would be a gradual process involving a new project, called "virtual program management" with Government funding, major groups and objectives such as IANA, Root Server Operators, gTLDs, ccTLDs, DNS Software vendors and major organizations.

Item 3: Update on WHOIS task forces
Receive an update from the WHOIS task force chairs
- reports to be updated by 12 July 2004
- plan meetings in Kuala Lumpur

Bruce Tonkin reported that a joint meeting took place between the three Whois task forces and the GNSO Council members on Tuesday 20 July at 11:00 to 13:00.
In Whois task force 1 and 2 reports the suggested recommendations ranged from making it more obvious to registrants at the time of registering a domain name that their information will be available in a public directory to two tiers of information access.
Implementation issues in the potential recommendations in the task force reports needed to be analyzed before these recommendations could be submitted to the GNSO for consideration.

In Whois task force 3 report the potential recommendations pointed to work which could be done by ICANN in the areas of enforcement, measuring and monitoring on some aspects of existing policy. It suggested doing verification of data which would be a new obligation for registrars.

Bruce Tonkin proposed a step by step process aimed at getting out improvements regularly.
Council should decide on the apportionment of the work according to some options :
- combine the three task forces into one
- combine task force 1 and 2 and task force 3 work in parallel.

Discussion revealed most opinions were in favour of merging task forces 1 and 2 and having task force 3 work in parallel presenting a merged report of all three task forces to the GNSO Council when the work was completed. Amadeu Abril l Abril was however in favour of merging all three task forces while Niklas Lagergren was in favour of keeping all three separate to move forward.

Bruce Tonkin, seconded by Carlos Afonso proposed that:
- Whois task forces one and two combine and work together, in particular looking at the tiered access option and developing further up-front advice to registrants about their obligations and the fact that none of the data becomes public
- Whois task force three proceed to clearly identify its recommendations for new policy and work on determining what are the implementation issues for work done by ICANN and work done by registrars
- the work output of the two groups, combined Whois task forces one and two and Whois task force three, be combined before next going out to public comment.

Carlos Afonso proposed renaming the task force.

The motion was unanimously adopted (27 votes in favour)

Decision 1:
- Whois task forces one and two combine and work together, in particular looking at the tiered access option and developing further up-front advice to registrants about their obligations and the fact that none of the data becomes public
- Whois task force three proceed to clearly identify its recommendations for new policy and work on determining what are the implementation issues for work done by ICANN and work done by registrars
- the work output of the two groups, combined Whois task forces one and two and Whois task force three, be combined before next going out to public comment.

Item 4:Update on PDP for approval process for gtld registry changes
- draft report for comment
Bruce Tonkin reported that a draft report which included descriptions of the flow diagrams was available for comment from the GNSO Council members, after which the committee would approve putting the document out for public comment.

Item 5: Update on Re-assignment of .net advice

The GNSO Council, asked to give advice to the ICANN Board on the reassignment of .net, formed a subcommittee chaired by Philip Sheppard to develop a consensus statement using the framework of the policy development process. Two public comment periods were completed, and all submissions were taken into account in the completed report before Council which had the unanimous support of the subcommittee.
ICANN Deputy General Counsel, Dan Halloran clarified that the process gone through by the GNSO Council subcommittee was in compliance with the Dot Net Registry Agreement, which predated the new ICANN bylaws and policy development process, and that section 4.3.1 "Consensus Policies" defined a consensus policy as a recommendation adopted by at least a two- thirds vote of the Council.
Council considered the .net GNSO Council subcommittee Final report version 8, Designating a successor operator for the . net registry, comments were received from the floor where members of the public raised certain issues which the subcommittee would address and clarify. ICANN staff was requested to summarise the comments received during the public comment periods, annex all comments in full and then, the revised report would be resubmitted, on a date to be decided, to the Council for a vote.


Item 6: Update on meetings with ICANN staff regarding policy development processes

Bruce Tonkin reported that some councillors had met with senior ICANN staff on Sunday, 18 July in Kuala Lumpur. The essence of the meeting minutes was that policy development need to be looked at as a project from issue development, through to the policy development process, to implementation and measurement and then measurement information provided back to Council so that Council could determine whether the policy should be modified. The skills for the jobs currently advertised by ICANN to support the GNSO policy development process were discussed.

Item 7: Update on meeting with ccNSO regarding liaisons

Bruce Tonkin reported the ccNSO council would consider whether to exchange liaisons and respond to the GNSO Council on the issue.

Item 8: Any other business

Bruce Tonkin stated that ICANN was requesting what should be done with the money collected by the constituencies for use by the Names Council that was currently in a separate account but managed by ICANN.
The general discussion was consistent with a previous Council motion on the topic that the funds should remain with ICANN as a contingency fund for the GNSO Council.


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

The meeting ended: 16 :14 ( local time)

• Next GNSO Council teleconference Thursday, August 5, 2004 at 12:00 UTC.
  see: Calendar