Dear all, Here is the written update from one of the last sessions at ICANN 73. The discussion forum on the overview of legislative initiatives with potential impact on DNS occurred after our council meeting, so some of you might remember that I volunteered to send the report in writing. Here is the short report, even though I must say that the update was very rich and full of details, and so was the discussion during the Q&A. The session aimed to provide the ICANN community with information about various national, regional and international legislative, regulatory and other proposals and initiatives that can potentially affect DNS and, as a consequence, ICANN’s mission. The members of the ICANN GE team provided updates related to various international processes: United Nations’ Open-Ended Working Group, which deals with international cybersecurity and the UN Ad Hoc Committee cybercrime negotiations, and also the processes taking place at the ITU, WIPO, and OECD. Another international update focused on the Council of Europe’s initiatives, such as the second additional protocol to the Cybercrime Convention, which enables direct requests for domain name registration data from foreign law enforcement. In terms of regional initiatives with potential global impact are the EU proposals, which encompass the NIS2 (Network and Information Security) directive proposal and the EU cybersecurity strategy. It was noted that these initiatives could directly impact the DNS and fragment approaches to DNS governance. The directive itself, if adopted, will have to be transposed by 27 EU member states in their own way. This particularly concerns Art. 23 of the proposed directive, which puts forward requirements for the accuracy of domain registration data. Concerns were raised that the article was drafted in a way so that we could end up with 27 different accuracy policies in 27 member states. Another EU legislative proposal currently in the making is the Digital Services Act, which will have a global impact despite being an EU legislative initiative. The update highlighted some problematic areas of this proposal, such as its failure to reflect the technical categories of DNS services when it comes to the liability exemption for content. Lastly, the EU non-legislative initiatives, such as DNS4EU and the DNS root servers contingency plan outlined in the EU cybersecurity strategy, also prompted some concerns about the policy imperatives and the need for such projects at all. The updates from the ICANN GE team were followed by a very interesting discussion in the Q&A format, which touched upon various issues – from the EU DNS abuse report to the question of ICANN’s jurisdiction. As to the community engagement and information about all these initiatives and ICANN’s written submissions to various intergovernmental processes, it was noted that the comms team is remodelling the government engagement pages on the ICANN website, making them multilingual and more interactive and friendly, with such functions as keyword search and a possibility to subscribe for updates. It was also stated that this is the first session in what hopefully in the future becomes a regular series of updates and dialogues with the ICANN community on this issue. Hope this is helpful - happy to answer any questions about this short update. Warm regards, Tatiana