Dear all, Below are some notes from the call the ccNSO had with the GAC on the 17th February on IDNs. Kind regards, Gabi --- GAC: Australia Canada Denmark Egypt France India Japan Latvia Malta Norway Nigeria Spain UK USA ccTLDs: Chris Disspain, .au Patricio Poblete, .cl Annebeth Lange, .no Keith Davidson, .nz Janis Karklins, Latvia started the call by explaining that the text on the IDN ccTLD principles was agreed on in Seoul, with the final adoption postponed to Nairobi, as the GAC wanted to give the ccNSO an opportunity to read and react to the text. He also mentioned that there were ³a number ³of GAC members (none of them present on the call) who strongly pushed for calling the document ³GAC IDN ccTLD Principles². Chris Disspain was asked to explain the ccNSO¹s main concerns with the proposed principles. Chris noted that the overarching issue is not with the principles as such, but the concept of the GAC coming to a set of principles at the stage where the IDN PDP is on its way and the principles are still up for discussions in the PDP. Adopting principles at this stage would preempt the outcome of the PDP in some cases it is possible that consensus decisions reached in the PDP will be different from those set up in the GAC principles. Manal Ismail, Egypt suggested that the principles should be called ³Interim ccTLD IDN Principles² instead. This suggestion was backed up by the other GAC participants, which were present on the call. Janis added that this should rather be seen as an input to the IDN PDP process. He also asked whether the ccNSO would be happy with the proposed renaming of the principles to ³Interim IDN ccTLD GAC Principles². Chris replied that the ccNSO probably is happy with this and will treat the document as input and guidelines to the IDN PDP. It was pointed out that some of the wording in the Interim IDN PDP Principles might have to be changed, if it is going to be treated as input to the PRP (such as in Principle three, mentioning ³Equal points² principle 3). Janis said that the text would be finalised in Nairobi and the document would have to undergo some procedures to be renamed into ³GAC Interim IDN ccTLD PDP Principles². He further said that he does not see there would be any objections to do this; however, the issue will be revisited to give all GAC members the opportunity to submit input. Janis also noted that a 1 1Z2 hour long joint session is scheduled with the ccNSO in Nairobi and that the issue is the first one to be discussed on the agenda. Mark Carvell, UK wanted to flag that he wishes to get some further explanation in Nairobi on some of the wordings in the ccNSO letter to the GAC (such as ³/the principles/Scould create potential inconsistency²). Chris noted this and said it will be addressed in detail in Nairobi. Annebeth Lange, .no pointed out that in the proposed GAC principles, it seems like the protection of country names would only apply to non-ascii names in other languages. It was noted that this issue would be for the IDN PDP to resolve. Suzanne Sene, USA asked whether the ccNSO members agree of ICANN¹s assessment on how much the ccTLDs cost ICANN. Chris replied that the ccNSO still is an an early stage of upcoming deep discussions and that the topic will be addressed in Nairobi.