GNSO Council Meeting #2 of 2025 held on 13 Feb 2025 

Full Agenda  |  Documents  |  Motions

• Item 1: Administrative Matters
• Item 2: Opening Remarks / Review of Projects  Action List
  • 2.1 - Review focus areas and provide updates on specific key themes / topics, to include review of Projects List and Action Item List.   
• Item 3: Consent Agenda
  • Confirm the GNSO-nominated ICANN Fellowship Program Mentor and Selection Committee Member positions
    • Mentor: Glen De Saint Géry
    • Selection Committee Member: Maud Adjeley Ashong Elliot
  • Confirm the Latin Script Diacritics PDP WG Chair
    • Michael Bauland
• Item 4: COUNCIL DISCUSSION - Update on ICANN’s Enforcement of DNS Abuse Mitigation Requirements - Six Month Progress Update
• Item 5: COUNCIL DISCUSSION - Next Steps for Policy and Implementation Policy Status Report
• Item 6: COUNCIL DISCUSSION - EPDP Phase 1 on the Temporary Specification - Implementation Question re: Billing Contact
• Item 7: COUNCIL DISCUSSION: Final Report of the Transfer Policy Review PDP Working Group
• Item 8: COUNCIL DISCUSSION: Outcomes of Strategic Planning Session 
• Item 9: Any Other Business
  • 9.1 - ICANN82 planning update
  • 9.2 - Discussion of Request for LinkedIn Post re: Human Rights Checklist
  • 9.3 - Volunteer needed to be the GNSO Liaison to the Latin Diacritics PDP

Special Summary Report of 13 Feb 2025 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 Feb 2025 Matters of Interest and/or from GNSO Council Feb 2025 Meeting Records.

1. Consent Agenda

• Council confirmed Glen De Saint Géry as the GNSO's ICANN Fellowship Program Mentor, Maud Adjeley Ashong Elliot as the GNSO's ICANN Fellowship Program Selection Committee Member, and Michael Bauland as the Latin Script Diacritics PDP WG Chair.

2. DNS Abuse Mitigation

• Council received a presentation from ICANN Contractual Compliance on a six-month report, "ICANN's Enforcement of DNS Abuse Mitigation Requirements," detailing its enforcement actions under the new Domain Name System (DNS) Abuse mitigation requirements. The requirements, which became effective on 5 April 2024, require generic top-level domain registry operators (ROs) and registrars to take mitigation steps to address well-evidenced DNS Abuse, which, for the purposes of ICANN agreements, is limited to malware, botnets, phishing, pharming, and spam used as a vector for delivering the other forms of DNS Abuse.
• During the initial six months of enforcement, from 5 April to 5 October 2024, ICANN's Contractual Compliance team launched 192 DNS Abuse investigations involving contracted parties. This enforcement effort led to impactful results, including:

  • Issuing formal Notices of Breach to an RO and a registrar for noncompliance with DNS Abuse mitigation requirements.

  • Resolving 154 cases that resulted in the suspension of over 2,700 abusive domain names and the disabling of more than 350 phishing websites.

• Discussion on this report touched on:
  • Need for better types of data, for eg. average turnaround time by CC in handling complaints
  • How learnings from handling complaints filed with CC could support development of guidance material for potential complainants in respect of understanding ICANN's role in addressing complaints and the need for completeness in information for a complaint to be actionable, as well as the need to contact relevant registrars in the first instance. 
  • Anticipation of inclusion of more data arising from a complete Contracted Parties' audit cycle.
  • What data and how such data could inform whether the new DNS Abuse mitigation requirements have actually improved CC's enforcement efforts and if so, how.

3. Policy and Implementation Policy Status Report

• Council received an update from Global Domains and Strategy (GDS) and GNSO Policy Staff on the Final Policy Status Report on the Policy and Implementation Recommendations, intended to provide Council with an assessment of the following GNSO processes which the PSR found to have proven effective in supporting and enhancing GNSO Policy and Implementation efforts, but also identifies a number of caveats and possible improvements:  
  • The GNSO Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP)
  • The GNSO Guidance Process (GGP)
  • The GNSO Input Process (GIP)
  • The Implementation Review Team (IRT) Principles & Guidelines, as well as the requirement to form an IRT following the adoption by the ICANN Board of GNSO Policy recommendations
  • The Consensus Policy Implementation Framework (CPIF) 
• Council decided that to have its Standing Committee on Continuous Improvement (SCCI) to consider the Actions Table for this PSR.

4. Transfer Policy Review

• Council received, in part, a detailed presentation on 47 final policy recommendations in the Final Report of the Transfer Policy Review PDP Working Group, and expect to continue consideration of the same during the Pre-ICANN82 GNSO Council Webinar.
• What is interesting to note that this Final Report differs in structure from a standard GNSO Final Report, with the structural reformatting is designed to make the report more digestible and reader friendly.
  • The main body of the report includes a table for each policy recommendation, which includes:
    a. Recommendation # & Title
    b. Recommendation text: the specific consensus recommendations proposed by the Working Group.
    c. Policy Impact Indicator: a new feature to help the reader understand the degree of change being proposed by the Working Group, i.e., how much does this recommendation differ from the current Transfer Policy.
    d. Recommendation Rationale: an explanation provided by the Working Group to explain and justify the proposed recommendation.
    e. Implementation Guidance: where applicable, the Working Group included a brief explanation to assist in the implementation phase of the policy recommendations.
    f. Links to Charter Questions & Summary Deliberations: The extensive summary deliberations and charter questions are now included in an annex to the report, which significantly reduces the length of the Final Report body but allows interested readers who desire further historical context to easily toggle between the recommendation’s tables and the annex where the deliberations can be found. 

5. EPDP Phase 1 on the Temporary Specification - Implementation Question re: Billing Contact

• Council continued its deliberation on the questions of:

  • Does the Council confirm billing contact was in scope for the EPDP on the Temp Spec - Phase 1 Team? 

  • Does the Council confirm:

    • the collection of billing contacts by registrars should continue to be required as per current RAA requirements because EPDP Phase 1, by being silent on this, did not mean to change this requirement, OR

    • the collection of billing contacts by registrars should become optional because EPDP Phase 1, by being silent on this, meant to change the RAA requirement?

• Discussion did not result in a clear conclusion. Council Leadership to draw learning from discussion and to propose a way forward.