Special Summary Report of 18 Jan 2024 Meeting to ALAC

For brevity, I will just highlight a few things here. For some of the issues, you can glean a wider perspective from GNSO Council Jan 2024 Matters of Interest and/or from GNSO Council Jan 2024 Meeting Records.

1. Consent Agenda

• Council resolved to approve both the Recommendations Report for the GGP on Applicant Support and the Recommendations Report for the EPDP on Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) for transmission to the ICANN Board. Correspondence to the Board completed on 18 Jan.

2. SubPro Small Team Update on Non-Adopted Recommendations

• Supplemental Recommendations on (a) confusingly similar singular-plural strings (Recs 23.3 and 23.5) are being refined/finalized; and (b) Waiver of RA Spec 11 3(a) & 3(b) for single registrant TLDs (Rec 9.2) is stable.
• Work of the Small Team Plus continues on (c) covenant not to sue (Recs 18.1 and 18.3) tied with (d) challenge/appeal mechanisms (Recs 32.1, 32.2 and 32.10)
• Work of the Small Team Plus expected to conclude - in terms of Supplemental Recommendations - before ICANN79, in time for the planned community consultation session at ICANN79. Thereafter, depending on any substantial community input received, Council plans to vote on the entire package of Supplementation Recommendations covering 10 pending recommendations (i.e. 17.2, 22.7, 23.3, 23.5, 9.2, 18.1, 18.3, 32.1, 32.2, 32.10)  at its April meeting. (For info on the 10 pending recommendations, see: slide no. 3 of my SubPro Update #5 to CPWG on 8 Nov 2023)

Action by ALAC Liaison

3. Registration Data Accuracy (RDA) & RDA Scoping Team

• By way of recap, the RDA Scoping Team was initiated by Council in July 2021 per the formation instructions, and tasked with considering a number of accuracy-related factors such as the current enforcement, reporting, measurement, and overall effectiveness of accuracy-related efforts. These considerations are to help inform the team’s deliberations and development of recommendations to Council on whether any changes are recommended to improve accuracy levels, and, if so, how and by whom these changes would need to be developed (for example, if changes to existing contractual requirements are recommended, a PDP or contractual negotiations may be necessary to effect a change). 
• The Scoping Team completed Assignment #1 (enforcement and reporting) and Assignment #2 (measurement of accuracy) and submitted its write up to Council on 5 September 2022. In its write up, the Scoping Team had suggested moving forward with two proposals that would not require access to registration data, namely a registrar survey (recommendation #1) and a possible registrar audit (recommendation #2) that may help further inform the team’s work on assignment #3 (effectiveness) and #4 (impact & improvements), while it awaits the outcome of the outreach to the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) by ICANN org in relation to proposals that would require access to registration data (recommendation #3).
• However, a number of factors which remain pending to-date have led Council to defer further work in this area. 
  • At Council's Jun 2023 meeting, Council voted to defer for 6 months, consideration of a registrar survey (recommendation #1) and a possible registrar audit (recommendation #2) pending resolution of recommendation #3 (pausing the work on proposals that require access to registration data until there is clarity from ICANN org on if/how it anticipates the requesting and processing of registration data to be undertaken in the context of measuring accuracy). 
  • At Council's Nov 2023 meeting, Council revisited this area of work and noted that, barring (i) completion of the Data Processing Agreement (DPA), (ii) implementation of the NIS2 directive, or (iii) publication of the Inferential Analysis of Maliciously Registered Domains (INFERMAL) Study, it may not be the appropriate time to reconvene the Accuracy Scoping Team.  
  • Given that (i) the DPA is not yet ready (confirmed by ICANN org staff) (ii) the NIS2 directive has not yet been implemented, and (iii) publication of the Inferential Analysis of Maliciously Registered Domains (INFERMAL) Study is still pending (targeted for Sep 2024), Council declined to take further action at this point.  

4. Diacritic Study Request

• GNSO Council Leadership is still reviewing a draft request prepared by Councilor Mark Datysgeld on the Diacritic Study and will report back to Council in due course.
• As a reminder, this request for a Diacritic Study is concerned with how to deal with existing ASCII TLDs which have a version with diacritics which are NOT considered as variants of each other accordingly to established Label Generation Rules (for eg. quebec and québec).   

Action by ALAC Liaison

- To alert ALAC/CPWG when the draft request is ready for Council's comment.

5. Privacy-Proxy Services Accreditation Issues (PPSAI) Implementation

• There are Board-approved PPSAI recommendations which have yet to be implemented as focus has been prioritized towards the implementation of the EPDP on Temp Spec Phase 1 recommendations instead thus far. However ICANN Org's GDS (Global Domains & Strategy) is now developing a work plan to actively work on implementing these PPSAI recommendations with input from the previous GNSO PDP on PPSAI members (by email).
• Next update will be available at ICANN79; but the work plan will only be ready at the end of Q1, 2024.