Dear all,

Here is my report of the GNSO Council's 18 Apr 2024 meeting.

It's quite substantial as Council discussed at length and decided on quite a few issues. There were also a couple of amendments to the agenda but I have parsed out what I think are the key matters of interest to us. You can also read this report posted at the ALAC Liaison to the GNSO workspace, or simply using the links included below to navigate to the Apr 2024 entry.

Special Summary Report of 18 Apr 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 Apr 2024 Matters of Interest and/or from GNSO Council Apr 2024 Meeting Records.

1. Consent Agenda

• Council resolved to adopt its Review of the GAC ICANN79 Communiqué
• Council resolved to adopt the updated Small Team Guidance Document
• Council confirmed the Standing Predictability Implementation Review Team (SPIRT) Charter Drafting Team Leadership (Chair - Nitan Walia; Vice-chair - Alan Greenberg; GNSO Council liaison - Anne Aikman-Scalese)

2. Diacritics in Latin Script

• Council had deferred for several months (since ICANN78 in Hamburg) on discussing a way forward to address the challenge affecting future applied-for strings in the Latin script containing diacritics that may be confusingly similar to ASCII strings and which are non-variants as GNSO support staff had indicated that a proposal for a solution was being worked on which might alleviate the need for a study request which Council had been mooting earlier.
• GNSO support staff suggested that a solution could be incorporated through Council's deliberation of the Subsequent Procedures Supplemental Recommendations on Topic 24 String Similarity, and accordingly suggested that Council withhold those supplemental recommendations 24A, 24B and 24C for further work, instead of considering their approval and onward submission to the ICANN Board.
• Council was also given a short briefing by Sarmad Hussain on the process and work of the (now disbanded) Latin Generation Panel (Latin GP) which resulted in the Latin Label General Rules (Latin LGR) that deemed strings in the Latin script containing diacritics and their ASCII "equivalents" as non-variants.
  • As an eg, due to the application of the Latin LGR in the Root Zone Label Generation Rule (RZ-LGR) as the authoritative source for determining the variants of a string, .québec (with diacritic) is not a variant of the already delegated .quebec (without diacritic), resulting in the likelihood that the existing registry operator of .quebec (or any other party) would not succeed in obtaining .québec due to the 2 strings being found confusingly similar.
  • The current New gTLD 'rules' dictate that an application for any string that are found to be confusingly similar to an existing gTLD would be disallowed, while an application for an applied-for string that is found to be confusingly similar with another one or more applied-for strings would result in the strings being placed in a contention set. 
• After much discussion, Council concluded that GNSO support staff's suggested way forward is neither feasible nor desirable, because:
  • The Topic 24 String Similarity recommendations only deal with singular/plurals and ought not be willfully expanded to resolve the diacritics challenge, i.e. Council should not shoehorn its Topic 24 Supplemental Recommendations to accommodate the diacritics challenge;
  • Resolving the diacritic challenge should undergo a proper policy development process per the GNSO's operating procedures; and
  • Resolving the diacritic challenge should not present as a condition to the implementation of the Next Round. 
• As a result, Council reverted to requesting GNSO support staff to circulate work done on a study request that could be utilised as a foundation to an Issues Report for initiating an EPDP should Council decide so at a later date.

Action by ALAC Liaison: to update ALAC/CPWG after the GNSO Council's May 2024 meeting on any direction taken with regards to resolving the Diacritics issue.

3. Singular/Plural gTLDs & String Similarity

• ICANN Org's Lars Hoffman (who is the lead for the Subsequent Procedures Implementation Review Team (SubPro IRT)) informed Council that ICANN org had been requested by the ICANN Board to propose an effective way to implement what Supplemental Recommendations 24A, 24B, 24C are attempting to achieve with regards to singular/plurals while addressing the Board's subsisting concerns with the supplemental recommendation language, bearing in mind that the Board SubPro Caucus co-chairs had earlier indicated that the ICANN Board may still decline to adopt Supplemental Recommendations 24A, 24B, 24C because of already shared concerns.
  • ICANN Org's proposition is to essentially remove the singular/plurals assessment out of String Similarity Review altogether and rely on an 'objection-like' approach without it becoming a formal objection process, which would still place burdens on the community to take action to prevent the singular/plurals from being approved if there was a concern. 
• Council was amenable to consider Lars' proposition in-principle, subject to details being fleshed out further.
• On these bases, Council opted to withhold Supplemental Recommendations 24A, 24B, 24C from the slate of Supplemental Recommendations which its SubPro Small Team Plus had produced and which had gone through community consultations, most recently at ICANN79.   
• However, Council had yet to decide as to who would consider/discuss Lars' proposition in detail - whether it may be the SubPro Small Team (or Small Team Plus) or Council itself. There were differing views expressed by Councilors on this. Council will review this question in May 2024.

Action by ALAC Liaison: to update ALAC/CPWG when GNSO Council has decided on whether and how the Supplemental Recommendations 24A, 24B and 24C on String Similarity might be reworked further based on the intervention of the Board and ICANN org.

4. Subsequent Procedures Supplemental Recommendations

• Having dealt with the pending Subsequent Procedures recommendation, Council tasked the SubPro Small Team Plus with an updated assignment form. The Small Team Plus has committed to a work plan to address the recommendations not adopted by the Board.
• Following that plan, the Small Team agreed to Supplemental Recommendations on five of the six Topics, i.e. (i) Registry Voluntary Commitments / Public Interest Commitments, (ii) Applicant Support, (iii) Terms and Conditions, (iv) String Similarity Evaluations, and (v) Limited Challenge/Appeal Mechanisms. Based on the expected implementation as it relates to the Continued Operations Instrument (COI), the Small Team Plus determined it was unnecessary to develop a Supplemental Recommendation for the 6th Topic 22: Registrant Protections.
• On 1 April, an “Explainer” document was shared with Council that consolidates all of the Supplemental Recommendations and provides a brief explanation for each of them.
• Following Council's deliberation on the issues of Diacritics in Latin Script (item 2 above) and Singular/Plural gTLDs & String Similarity (item 3 above) which resulted in the withholding of Supplemental Recommendations 24A, 24B, 24C, Council proceeded to unanimously vote to approve the SubPro Supplemental Recommendations for (i) Registry Voluntary Commitments / Public Interest Commitments, (ii) Applicant Support, (iii) Terms and Conditions, and (iv) Limited Challenge/Appeal Mechanisms. These will now be submitted to the ICANN Board's consideration/approval.

Action by ALAC Liaison: to update ALAC/CPWG on GNSO Council's adoption of the SubPro Supplemental Recommendations for 4 topics.

5. Cross-Community Working Group on Auction Proceeds (CCWG-AP) Recommendation 7

• In its 2 March 2024 letter, the Board notes it “has been considering whether there are further ways to meet the community’s broader intention with Recommendation 7. If the phrase ‘from the Independent Project Applications Panel’ is removed from Recommendation 7, many of the Board’s concerns that supported the October 2023 action would be addressed. The Board also notes that removal of that phrase would support what it has always understood to be the intention of the CCWG-AP in making Recommendation 7 - to preserve the auction proceeds for funding projects, not challenges. Therefore, the Board asks for the Chartering Organizations’ support in considering an update to the recommendation. Specifically, the Board asks for each Chartering Organization to the CCWG-AP to approve an update to Recommendation 7 that would remove the phrase ‘from the Independent Project Applications Evaluation Panel’ from the text of the recommendation. If the Chartering Organizations approve this update, the Board believes that there is a path to full implementation of the CCWG-AP’s Recommendation 7, including the ability to apply the restriction to third parties.”
• Council agreed to reply to the 2 Mar letter expressing support for the Board's suggestion to remove the phrase ‘from the Independent Project Applications Evaluation Panel’ from the text of the recommendation.

6. Privacy and Proxy Services Accreditation Implementation (PPSAI)

• The issue with PPSAI is it is in 'rather unique' situation in that there is a gap between when the policies were adopted but implementation was subsequently delayed, and when work is now planed to resume again, those policies may no longer be fit for purpose due to new legislation coming into effect and other factors.
• Council was informed that ICANN Org has been working on an implementation plan and planning to reengage with its Implementation Review Team (PPSAI IRT) at ICANN80. A fresh call for volunteers will be issued prior to ICANN80 to constitute a refreshed PPSAI IRT with an open + rep model. 
• There are currently 4 "threshold questions" for the refreshed IRT's consideration:-
  • Are there any policy questions or items the IRT already wants to bring to Council for guidance?
  • Can an implementation model without a formal accreditation program remain consistent with policy recommendations?
  • Are there specific areas to revisit under new law/policy (Org to share assessment, IRT to review)?
  • Can these frameworks be aligned with existing work on RDRS, Registration Data Policy, etc and remain consistent with policy recommendations?
• It was noted that this PPSAI IRT could be seen not as a conventional IRT but rather as a scoping team for issue identification based on the first question.

Action by ALAC Liaison: to update ALAC/CPWG when the call for volunteers to refresh the PPSAI IRT is made.

7. IPC's Request for Reconsideration (RfR) on the Board's Proposed Bylaws Updates to Limit Access to Accountability Mechanisms

• IPC received a response from the Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee (BAMC) rejecting IPC's RfR on the basis that IPC was not a party harmed by the Board's Proposed Bylaws Updates to Limit Access to Accountability Mechanisms
• NOTE: While the GNSO Council did not support the Board's proposal and the ALAC did, the issue being contended here, as explained to Council by an IPC Councilor, is the principle that an ICANN community group can be found to have no standing (i.e. has been unable to show harm suffered) for something that has yet to be implemented.

Action by ALAC Liaison: to liaise with IPC on next steps to the BAMC's rejection of IPC's RfR on the Board's Proposed Bylaws updates to limit access to Accountability Mechanisms, if so instructed by ALAC-LT/ALAC.

Thanks for reading.