Greetings fellow Council Members,

The Empowered Community Administration has received formal communication from the ICANN Corporate Secretary that the ICANN Board has adopted a Standard Bylaw Change on 13 May with respect to Section 11 of the ICANN Bylaws.

The change adopted by the Board, is detailed at https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/amend-bylaws-article11-gnso-redline-13may18-en.pdf.  The rationale for the Board decision regarding this standard Bylaw change is detailed at https://www.icann.org/resources/board-material/resolutions-2018-05-13-en#1.d.rationale.

(This Bylaw change has to do with the GNSO requesting some “clean-up” in various voting thresholds within their various “houses”, which has nothing to do, nor any impact on, the ccNSO).

In theory, this notice has triggered a 21 day Rejection Action Petition Period with respect to the Action taken by the Board.

HOWEVER, the formal notice from the ICANN Corporate Secretary appears to be defective, in that it makes reference to an “...ICANN Board approved Standard Bylaw Amendment to Annex A of the ICANN Bylaws”.

I have reached out to ICANN for clarification on this particular point, as has Alan Greenburg, representing ALAC.

It’s possible that organizationally we might have a problem here, in that per the Bylaws, ICANN has 7 days from the adoption of a Standard Bylaw Change to notify the Empowered Community of said Bylaw change, and yet, they seem to have failed to properly notify the Empowered Community of the Standard Bylaw change adopted by the Board on 13 May because of the mis-statement in their letter to the Empowered Community.

No action or reaction is required of the Council at this point in time.  I correspond with you on this matter in order to keep you fully informed of developments as they relate to the Empowered Community.  Any thoughts regarding this matter that you might wish to share with me would of course be appreciated.  And of course, any questions that you might have I would be more than happy to attempt to address.

Best Regards,

Stephen Deerhake

AS Domain Registry

GDNS, LLC