September 2008 - council - lists.icann.org

One more volunteer for drafting team to develop a proposal for consideration by the Council for ICANN subsidization of GNSO travel expenses
by Gomes, Chuck Sept. 27, 2008

Sept. 27, 2008

Please add Ken Stubbs from the RyC as another volunteer for the drafting team to develop a proposal for consideration by the Council for ICANN subsidization of GNSO travel expenses. Chuck

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Cairo Meeting Schedule Posted
by Glen de Saint Géry Sept. 27, 2008

Sept. 27, 2008

[To: ga[at]gnso.icann.org; announce[at]gnso.icann.org [To: liaison6c[at]gnso.icann.org; council[at]gnso.icann.org] Cairo Meeting Schedule Posted http://cai.icann.org/en/cai/schedule 26 September 2008 ICANN today posted the schedule for its public Meeting to be held in Cairo 2-7 November. The meeting, which also serves as ICANN's 2008 annual general meeting, takes place at the InterContinental CItyStars Hotel, Cairo. ICANN encourages the business and technical communities as well as individuals to attend. Furthermore, ICANN is keen to encourage participation by all stakeholders and at this meeting there will be a series of session targeted at the business community. These sessions are planned to be posted early next week and will be identified on the schedule as "Business Access Agenda". To learn more about the meeting go to http://cai.icann.org. To view the schedule directly go to http://cai.icann.org/en/cai/schedule. Glen de Saint Géry GNSO Secretariat gnso.secretariat(a)gnso.icann.org http://gnso.icann.org

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Cairo Meeting Schedule Posted
by Glen de Saint Géry Sept. 27, 2008

Sept. 27, 2008

[To: ga[at]gnso.icann.org; announce[at]gnso.icann.org [To: liaison6c[at]gnso.icann.org; council[at]gnso.icann.org] Cairo Meeting Schedule Posted http://cai.icann.org/en/cai/schedule 26 September 2008 ICANN today posted the schedule for its public Meeting to be held in Cairo 2-7 November. The meeting, which also serves as ICANN's 2008 annual general meeting, takes place at the InterContinental CItyStars Hotel, Cairo. ICANN encourages the business and technical communities as well as individuals to attend. Furthermore, ICANN is keen to encourage participation by all stakeholders and at this meeting there will be a series of session targeted at the business community. These sessions are planned to be posted early next week and will be identified on the schedule as "Business Access Agenda". To learn more about the meeting go to http://cai.icann.org. To view the schedule directly go to http://cai.icann.org/en/cai/schedule. Glen de Saint Géry GNSO Secretariat gnso.secretariat(a)gnso.icann.org http://gnso.icann.org

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GNSO Improvements Implementation Plan and Status Update notes posted on website
by Glen de Saint Géry Sept. 26, 2008

Sept. 26, 2008

Dear Council Members, Please note that the updated draft GNSO Improvements Implementation Plan can be viewed at: http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/gnso-improvements-implementation-plan-24sept08… And is posted on page: http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/ and the Status Update notes can be viewed at: http://gnso.icann.org/meetings/notes-gnso-25sep08.shtml and are posted on page: http://gnso.icann.org/calendar/#sep Thank you. Kind regards, Glen Glen de Saint Géry GNSO Secretariat gnso.secretariat(a)gnso.icann.org http://gnso.icann.org

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RE: [council] Making Council less crazy
by Tim Ruiz Sept. 26, 2008

Sept. 26, 2008

Perhaps I am crazy. Crazy for expecting a more sound approach to decision making for Council members. Crazy for thinking that the Council and Staff should be responsible for efficient use of limited resources in an organization whose budget is growing rapidly. I would simply like to make an informed decision when voting on requests for issues reports. I would like to know up front if the issue is within scope of GNSO policy making. That does not require a pre-issues issues report as Philip has attempted to charactize it. It requires only an opinion of Staff Counsel on 2.e 1-5 of the bylaws. As Philip points out, that has to be done anyway. There is nothing in the bylaws that prevent it from being done up front. The opinion can still be included in the issues report, if pursued, without duplicating any effort. What it would require is that our requests be well defined and specific and not broad brush strokes that at times appear to be fishing expeditions for something that may be in scope. Specific, limited requests would also make more efficient use of Staff resources. It has also been suggested that issues reports might be requested just to gather information, perhaps to consider a best practices approach, etc. I think any request that is intended as such should be fully identified up front, with the understanding that Staff is not bound to the bylaws in responding to any such request. Annex A of the bylaws appears to me to be very specific about what an issues report is for. Crasy as it may be, I and my constituents want to know exactly what I am voting on. Tim -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [council] Making Council less crazy From: "Philip Sheppard" <philip.sheppard(a)aim.be> Date: Fri, September 26, 2008 4:33 am To: "'Council GNSO'" <council(a)gnso.icann.org> Background On yesterday's call I used the word crazy to describe a part of the debate I heard around the agenda item on abusive practices and the request for an issues report. My apologies again for being late to the meeting as my day job responsibilities intervened. However, I would like to clarify what I meant. It is my burden to have been a member of Council for some time and thus have a certain institutional memory. I also helped write the current PDP (and advised strenuously against putting it in the bylaws so that we could fine tune it every quarter). What is crazy then? I use the term in the sense of unsound. Crazy 1 A Council member requests that before an issues report we have a pre-issues report to determine if the issue is in scope. BUT the PDP http://www.icann.org/en/general/bylaws.htm tells us in 2e that one key element of the issues report itself is: "the opinion of the ICANN General Counsel regarding whether the issue proposed to initiate the PDP is properly within the scope of the ICANN policy process and within the scope of the GNSO." Crazy 2 Even after the Council member has requested this and in advance by e-mail no staff member intervenes to explain this. Crazy 3 The Chair of the meeting does not rule the motion out of order. Crazy 4 We debate on whether policy staff are sufficiently resourced to act on our request. It is NOT the job of Council to micro-manage staff. We request what we want. It IS the job of the Vice President, Policy Development to manage policy staff and tell Council when we need to make priority choices. Crazy 5 In the same light we start to negotiate with staff on the timelines in the knowledge that we all know the PDP timelines are hopeless (and as mentioned above ill-advisedly enshrined in the bylaws). Council should make its request. Then Staff should advise on the art of the possible with respect to the request and other requests. Then if necessary we advise on priorities. As we move forward to revise PDP etc lets us bear the above in mind. And lets please empower our professional staff to advise, to act, to counsel and to guide. Philip

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GNSO Council teleconference draft status update notes
by Glen de Saint Géry Sept. 26, 2008

Sept. 26, 2008

Dear Council Members, As requested, attached and in text please find draft status update notes from the GNSO Council teleconference 25 September 2008. Item 4: Status Update 4.1 ICANN Board Denise Michel noted some of the following agenda items on the next ICANN Board of Directors meeting on 30 September 2008 / 1 October 2008 Approval of the ICANN Board of Director's Code of Conduct; De-accredited Registrar Transition Procedure; Financial Approval of Contractor Agreement for Multiple Language Algorithms- Relating to Aspect of New gTLD Implementation; Review of .COOP and .MOBI Contractual Amendments; GNSO Council Re-structuring; 8) President's Strategy Committee Report and Approval of Associated Director's Travel; 9) Approval of Board Governance Committee's Recommendation for ICANN SSAC Review TOR, RFP, and Working Group Charter; Approval of Board Governance Committee's Recommendation for ICANN's RSSAC Review Independent Review Contractor; Approval of Finance Committee's Recommendation for Approval of IT Equipment Purchase; Independent Reviews Status Report; 13) Board Finance Committee Report; Board Governance Committee Report; Update on Annual Audit 4.2 Fast Flux PDP WG Mike Rodenbaugh reported that the Fast Flux working group was moving forward and an initial report was expected, 10 days before the Cairo meeting for distribution to the constituencies for comments. The plan is that the Council be given an overview of the Fast Flux work during the Sunday meeting and that the working group would meet face to face during the week to discuss the report. 4.3 Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy (IRTP) Part A PDP Mike Rodenbaugh reported work was in progress on collecting constituency input following the template the group developed. This should be completed within about 10 days. There is a possibility of an open working group meeting on Sunday, but the group should confirm this to the GNSO chairs and staff after their next meeting on Tuesday, 30 September 2008. 4.4 New gTLDs Kurt Pritz reported that ICANN plans to publish an initial draft version of the RfP for New gTLDs, an "Applicant Guidebook" prior to the ICANN Cairo meeting. The applicant Guidebook will describe: how an applicant applies for a gTLD, the evaluation process. It will include: business & technical evaluation criteria; the TLD string criteria, the process for resolving formal objections to a string (in accordance with the four grounds enumerated in the policy recommendation), and resolution of contention in case of collision between identical strings or strings so confusingly similar that user confusion results. Importantly, this draft RFP is for public comment. There has been much consultation to date. Now, at this stage, there will be a document to mark-up. Kurt asked the council's help in getting the message out that this is not a final version, rather it's the next step in collaboration for the launch of New gTLDs. One area of considerable discussion is geographical place names. Since the Board approved the policy recommendations, staff has had consultations with the GAC, to discuss the GAC principles on new gTLDs. Those principles state that country and place names should not be delegated without he approval of the relevant government. This does not't call for a reserve names list, but does call for an administrative process to release names. In consultations with the GAC, these types of protections for geographical names for governments were discussed. At the Cairo meeting, ICANN will facilitate Advisory Committee (AC) - Supporting Organisation (SO) discussions, to normalize the requirements set out by policy recommendations and working group reports with the formal GAC advice to the Board. Answers to questions: In addition to the scheduled time on Saturday to talk about New gTLDs, and the joint meeting with the GAC on Sunday afternoon to discuss geographical place names, there will be a workshop "Understanding the RfP" and sessions in different languages that are more basic about the 'New gTLD program'. ICANN is working very actively with CRA to publish a report regarding separation of registrars and registries: reviewing portions of report, (this version of the report is not yet concluded). The report is expected to be published before the Cairo meeting.The base agreement will be published as part of the applicant guidebook. The applicant guidebook will be published in the six UN languages; applications will be English. The entities that will provide dispute resolution services will probably be identified in that publication. The dispute resolution process published will be a general process agreed to by the dispute resolution providers who will later provide their own rules or detailed procedures. 4.5 Fast Track Denise Michel reported that staff continues to work on the numerous implementation issues that arose out of the IDN Fast Track proposal accepted by the ICANN Board in Paris Currently a meeting in Marina del Rey is addressing a number of implementation issues which include tracking the IETF work on protocol revision, issuing a request for information to Governments and ccTLDs to gauge which countries are interested in and ready to advance with their IDN fast track applications, developing various elements of a fast track IDN application process, work also includes IANA processing and string validation fees. In Cairo there are plans for an open workshop, as well as discussion during the SO-AC-GAC meeting on Monday. Staff will provide draft material for review in Cairo. The IDN ccTLDs fast track is planned to coincide with the New IDN gTLDs applications. A 'Document of Responsibility' is being developed to ensure that parties fulfill certain aspects of ICANN's mission. This will include security and stability aspects, enforcement measures to comply with consensus policy as well as recognition that there are considerable expenses being generated in the development of the IDN program. 4. 6 Add Grace Period (AGP) Craig Schwartz in an Add Grace Period (AGP) update to the Council noted that ICANN staff will provide an update to the Council and the community (in a public forum) in Cairo. AGP Limits Policy Work on the draft AGP Limits Policy implementation plan continues and staff is committed to posting the draft for public comment prior to Cairo. 27 August outreach to gTLD registries and registrars around providing input to the draft Policy implementation plan has been incorporated to the draft notes. AGP Budget Provision With regard to the AGP budget provision, because registry transactional information in confidential for three months, staff cannot at this time provide specific numbers from these reports. 4.7 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) Amendments Kurt Pritz noted that a set of 16 amendments have been developed through a process that began with solicitation of community input as to how the RAA might be amended. Significant input was received and synthesized into potential contract modifications. Wording on preliminary amendments was refined in discussion with registrars. The RAA requires a consensus process to implement the amendments. There has been some criticisms of amendments in the comment forum, that the amendments don't go far enough. There are a few options for proceeding: approve the set of; approve the set of amendments begin another round of discussion similar to the last round; or not to go ahead with set of amendments, start a discussion to create new amendments. It's the staff's position that these amendments provide some significant improvements in the way the relationship between ICANN and registrars, and the protection of registrants and should be implemented. (Examples were given.) The mechanism for improving this set of amendments requires GNSO and Board approval. In response to questions Kurt committed to get clarification regarding required approvals. That staff supported approving these amendments now even though there might be additional meaningful amendments in order to capture the work of the last two years and realize benefit in the near term. Negotiations between ICANN and registrars seem to be done and additional negotiation would not result in modification. In agreement with a comment, the RAA was adopted before the implementation of the PDP so that the RAA reference to a policy development requirement to amend the agreement does not refer to the current form of the PDP. Kristina Rosette commented that there was significant frustration within both the user and the Intellectual Property constituency (IPC) about the amount of time and energy devoted to carefully drafting very specific and clear language. "At this point, those hundreds of hours have essentially gone down "Alice's rabbit hole." These groups are having a hard time understanding why ICANN thinks there may be further incentive for those in community to spend more time on this when we have yet to see any explanation why original amendments were rejected. I think you're dealing with an incentive issue here. " Kurt responded that he would like to have a more detailed discussion on this issue after the meeting. The redline agreement the IPC provided is evidenced in many of the amendments in a different form. The viewpoint expressed may be that the wording is not as effective as compared to what the IPC presented. From a checklist that identified the IPC areas of amendment, staff believed that many of them had been addressed. Kristina Rosette commented that if there was a decision to move forward with the amendments in place, the staff report should include very specific suggestions and discussion as to why particular suggestions are not adopted. For example, what you see in the Federal Register when an agency publishes a final rule: at that point they have to identify the reason for not adopting recommendations/suggestions provided during the public comment period. ">From a credibility perspective in view of my constituency, this has to happen." Kurt acknowledged the comment and committed to get a greater understanding offline. These are notes and not the official minutes. If you have any questions please let me know. Thank you. Kind regards, Glen Glen de Saint Géry GNSO Secretariat gnso.secretariat(a)gnso.icann.org http://gnso.icann.org

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Making Council less crazy
by Philip Sheppard Sept. 26, 2008

Sept. 26, 2008

Background On yesterday's call I used the word crazy to describe a part of the debate I heard around the agenda item on abusive practices and the request for an issues report. My apologies again for being late to the meeting as my day job responsibilities intervened. However, I would like to clarify what I meant. It is my burden to have been a member of Council for some time and thus have a certain institutional memory. I also helped write the current PDP (and advised strenuously against putting it in the bylaws so that we could fine tune it every quarter). What is crazy then? I use the term in the sense of unsound. Crazy 1 A Council member requests that before an issues report we have a pre-issues report to determine if the issue is in scope. BUT the PDP <http://www.icann.org/en/general/bylaws.htm> http://www.icann.org/en/general/bylaws.htm tells us in 2e that one key element of the issues report itself is: "the opinion of the ICANN General Counsel regarding whether the issue proposed to initiate the PDP is properly within the scope of the ICANN policy process and within the scope of the GNSO." Crazy 2 Even after the Council member has requested this and in advance by e-mail no staff member intervenes to explain this. Crazy 3 The Chair of the meeting does not rule the motion out of order. Crazy 4 We debate on whether policy staff are sufficiently resourced to act on our request. It is NOT the job of Council to micro-manage staff. We request what we want. It IS the job of the Vice President, Policy Development to manage policy staff and tell Council when we need to make priority choices. Crazy 5 In the same light we start to negotiate with staff on the timelines in the knowledge that we all know the PDP timelines are hopeless (and as mentioned above ill-advisedly enshrined in the bylaws). Council should make its request. Then Staff should advise on the art of the possible with respect to the request and other requests. Then if necessary we advise on priorities. As we move forward to revise PDP etc lets us bear the above in mind. And lets please empower our professional staff to advise, to act, to counsel and to guide. Philip

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Absentee voting 25 September 2008
by Glen de Saint Géry Sept. 25, 2008

Sept. 25, 2008

Dear Councilors, In keeping with the absentee voting procedures, all councilors who were absent from the meeting today, Thursday 25 September, are invited to send the GNSO secretariat <gnso.secretariat(a)gnso.icann.org> a request for a ballot. Councilors noted as absent: Avri Doria, Jon Bing, Tony Holmes, Tony Harris, Ute Decker, Cyril Chua, Carlos Souza, Adrian Kinderis, Tom Keller, Edmon Chung, Jordi Iparraguirre. (Norbert Klein was disconnected from the call due to connectivity issues.) (Jordi Iparraguirre, Adrian Kinderis had dropped off the call at the time of the vote) You will then be sent a ballot with an option to vote, YES, NO or ABSTAIN. The current bylaws require a reason for abstaining on a policy recommendation, so please indicate your reason for abstaining. This process should be completed within 72 hours of the meeting which ended at 14:09 UTC on Thursday 25 September 2008. Completed ballots are due NLT 14:O9 UTC, Sunday, 28 September 2008 (10:09 EDT, 11:09 Rio de Janeiro, 15:09 London, 16:09 Germany, 21:09 Phnom Penh, 22:09 HongKong, 00:09 Melbourne Monday 29 September 2008) Motion proposing an Issues Report on aspects of Registry-Registrar Agreements Motion proposed by Mike Rodenbaugh, seconded by Greg Ruth with friendly amendments from Tim Ruiz and Chuck Gomes. Whereas: 1. ICANN's mission is to ensure the security and stability of the DNS, and to develop policy reasonably related to that mission. 2. Various forms of DNS abuse, in isolation and/or in the aggregate, cause a less secure and stable DNS. 3. Some of ICANN's gTLD registry agreements and appended registry-registrar agreements contain a provision such as Section 3.6.5 of the.info Registry Agreement, Appendix 8 : 3.6.5. (Registrars) acknowledge and agree that Afilias reserves the right to deny, cancel or transfer any registration or transaction, or place any domain name(s) on registry lock, hold or similar status, that it deems necessary, in its discretion; (1) to protect the integrity and stability of the registry; (2) to comply with any applicable laws, government rules or requirements, requests of law enforcement, or any dispute resolution process; (3) to avoid any liability, civil or criminal, on the part of Afilias, as well as its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers, directors, and employees; (4) per the terms of the registration agreement or (5) to correct mistakes made by Afilias or any Registrar in connection with a domain name registration. Afilias also reserves the right to place upon registry lock, hold or similar status a domain name during resolution of a dispute. 4. Afilias, the dotInfo Registry Operator, per its recent RSTEP request, has sought to clarify and implement its specific abusive registration policy with respect to this provision. This request has been approved by ICANN. 5. Some of ICANN's gTLD registry agreements, notably the Verisign contracts for .com and .net, have no such provision. Other gTLD registry agreements do contain such provision, but the registry operators have not developed or have inconsistently developed abusive registration policies. The GNSO Council resolves to request an Issues Report from ICANN Staff within 30 days with respect to the following: 1. To identify and describe the various provisions in existing and previous gTLD registry and registry-registrar agreements which relate to contracting parties' ability to take action in response to abuse. 2. To identify and describe various provisions in a representative sampling of gTLD registration agreements which relate to contracting parties' and/or registrants rights and obligations with respect to abuse. 3. To identify and describe any previous discussion in ICANN fora which substantively pertains to provisions of this nature in any of these agreements. 4. To request an opinion of ICANN Staff as to which aspects of registration abuse policies as discussed above may be within the scope of GNSO policy development. Glen de Saint Géry GNSO Secretariat gnso.secretariat(a)gnso.icann.org http://gnso.icann.org

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Action Items from GNSO Council meeting 25 September 2008
by Glen de Saint Géry Sept. 25, 2008

Sept. 25, 2008

[To: council[at]gnso.icann.org] Dear Councilors, Please note the immediate action items that arose from the Council meeting today, Thursday 25 September 2008. 1. Council representatives are asked to forward the recommended GNSO comments regarding the ICANN Geographic Regions report, http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/icann-geographic-regions-26aug08.pdf to their respective constituencies for discussion and comment as applicable and be prepared to finalize the GNSO comments in the Council meeting on 16 October 2008. 2. Council representatives are asked to distribute the updated draft GNSO Improvements Implementation Plan http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg05470.html right away, expedite discussions in their constituencies, and be prepared to vote on a motion at the GNSO Council meeting on 16 October 2008. In addition constituencies should be starting the process of selecting one representative each for the two steering committees so that the first Steering Committee meetings can be held in Cairo. 3. Constituencies should call for volunteers for a drafting team to develop a proposal for consideration by the Council for ICANN subsidization of GNSO travel expenses. Volunteer's names should be sent to the Council mailing list. Olga Cavalli and Zahid Jamil were the first two volunteers at the meeting. 4. Councilors should forward the WHOIS Hypotheses Study Group report to their respective constituencies ASAP for discussion and comment as applicable in preparation for beginning the process at the Council meeting on 16 October 2008 of deciding which, if any studies should be pursued further. (http://gnso.icann.org/issues/whois/whois-study-hypothesis-group-report-to-c…) Thank you. Kind regards, Glen Glen de Saint Géry GNSO Secretariat gnso.secretariat(a)gnso.icann.org http://gnso.icann.org

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GNSO Council meeting MP3 recording 25 September 2008
by Glen de Saint Géry Sept. 25, 2008

Sept. 25, 2008

[To: ga[at]gnso.icann.org; announce[at]gnso.icann.org [To: liaison6c[at]gnso.icann.org; council[at]gnso.icann.org] Please find the MP3 recording of the GNSO Council teleconference, held 25 September, 2008 at: http://audio.icann.org/gnso/gnso-council-20080925.mp3 http://gnso.icann.org/calendar/#sep Happy listening! Glen de Saint Géry GNSO Secretariat gnso.secretariat(a)gnso.icann.org http://gnso.icann.org

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