This will serve as my April-May liaison report. Preliminary minutes from the Board's April 20 meeting are now online. <http://www.icann.org/minutes/prelim-report-30apr08.htm> I was unable to make this meeting because it was 2 am locally, and a power outage cut my alarm clock. From the minutes and from follow-on conversations, however, I note several items of interest to At Large: The At-Large Summit, ALAC review, and GNSO improvements. While the summit is budgeted separately from the Cairo meeting, in the 2008-09 budget, some Board members raised concerns about the expected cost. The Summit team and At-Large should be prepared with compelling explanations of the proposed summit's value to ICANN. With regard to the GNSO Improvements plan, I'd like to know what ALAC and At-Large want conveyed to the Board. At the moment ALAC is signed on to a joint statement about which I've heard much concern on both process and substance.
From the minutes: The Chair was interested in the GNSO review and improvements and inquired as to whether Susan Crawford was working with the GNSO on implementation of the recommendations. Roberto Gaetano advised that Susan was not chairing but participating, and that she is acting as liaison to the GNSO in order to facilitate the possible implementation. Gaetano continued that the comment period had just ended and that one proposal to have different structure for GNSO Council, or alternatively to go with new proposal of the three stakeholder groups to lump registries and registrars in one group. The proposal came from Philip Sheppard and it is signed by the cross constituencies, NCUC and ALAC. Roberto Gaetano indicated that he would leave it to ALAC Liaison Wendy Seltzer to comment to the Board, but that in his understanding there is a significant discussion about whether ALAC endorses the proposal. Gaetano indicated that there would be additional discussion with the goal of making a decisi on at the Paris ICANN meeting.
The ALAC review was discussed, and it was noted that this is an "ALAC" review and not a review of all of "At Large's" place in the ICANN structure. The Board also authorized steps toward DNSSEC. Please let me know if you have questions or comments. --Wendy -- Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@seltzer.org Visiting Professor, Northeastern University School of Law Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html http://www.chillingeffects.org/ https://www.torproject.org/