Dear all,
Please find below the notes and action items from today’s meeting on Thursday, 29 June 2023 at 12:00 UTC.
Kind regards,
Ariel, Emily, and Steve
Notes and Action Items - IDNs EPDP Call – 29 June 2023
Action Items
Action Item 1: Make sure court order aspect is integrated accurately and is consistent with agreements.
Action Item 2: Develop visual aid to assist in understanding impact of changes to the source domain.
Notes
Roll Call and SOI Updates
Welcome and Chair Updates
- Welcome back! Purpose is to review preliminary conclusions
- Reminders!
- Complete poll by Friday of next week - Select time and dates that work best for face to face
- Complete EPDP Team survey EoB Monday
Phase 1 Initial Report Public Comment Overview
- With close of public comment period on 19 June, summary is being prepared and reviewed by leadership. Developing a plan of attack. Not going over in detail today.
- There are a few areas where we may need to revise the recommendations.
- Also need to take a look at the work plan and timeline in light of public comments received, phase 2 progress, and F2F.
- Slide 4 – 12 comments from 10 commenters, which include two late submissions that are not available on the web site.
- Understanding initial nature of the comments – helps that many followed the submission framework. Staff had to make initial assessment for others that did not utilize the framework. 42/68
received comments and 21/68 received some significant concerns or objection.
- Will share public comment review tool when approved by leadership
- Slide 5 – topics that received highest concentration of comments. This includes the recs related to fee structure, Registry Agreement, ceiling value, removal of delegated variant label
- Slide 6 – other comments that may or may not warrant consideration by EPDP Team. The topic hasn’t been considered by the team yet – exception process for not exactly variants. May need
guidance from Council to determine whether in scope. Other development: recommendations regarding challenge/appeal mechanisms may not be approved. This impacts the EPDP Team’s recommendations. Lastly, still awaiting input on single-character gTLD guidelines
that a rec from this group is dependent upon.
- Allowing potentially confusingly similar strings – should take a look, but it might extend beyond the scope of this EPDP Team. Touches on singular/plurals recs from SubPro. As Ariel noted,
challenge/appeal recs are in question, so it may indeed impact this group’s recommendation. PointQuebec comments do seem out of scope, but looking for guidance from Council whether they’d like the team to take up the issue.
Review Preliminary Agreements (C4, C5, C6, C1, C2, D4, D6, D7)
- Extending thanks for those that joined and actively participated – made a big difference in progressing the work!
- Out of 19, the group has completed 8 of the more challenging and foundational phase 2 charter questions. Good progress so far.
- Slide 8 – Reviewing prelim outcomes for questions related to IDN Table Harmonization. Captured as preliminary outcomes to help develop formal recommendations as a next step. Includes bolded
words that may need to be defined in the glossary.
- In respect of future IDN tables, what was the case for submitting tables in 2012? They were submitted at time of submission and could be supplemented with additional tables along the way.
- Slide 9 - Reviewing prelim outcomes for questions related to same entity requirements. Agreement that prelim outcomes seem accurate.
- Slide 10 - Reviewing prelim outcomes for questions related to the domain name lifecycle. Continuing same approach, certain words are bolded that will likely benefit from inclusion in the
glossary. Identification of “source domain” may need to be determined jointly by registrant and registrar.
- Question about identification of source domain. There will need to be a lot of education needed. The policy language may need to be flexible. There may not be an actual discussion between
the registrant and registrar, but there will need to be a determination in some level.
- In respect of inter-registrar transfer, for involuntarily transfers (court, URS, etc.), where it only mentions a single domain, would the contracted party be at risk of following the policy
which may be contrary to the court order/local law?
Action Item: Make sure court order aspect is integrated accurately and is consistent with agreements.
- It seems that what may actually be more problematic is where a court order splits up a set. A court order moving just one domain could still comply with the policy.
- Can the source domain change during the lifecycle, noting that it’s not allowed to change at the top-level? Does something need to be prescribed or is it up to registry?
- May need to review contractual language about local law trumping policy. Will also likely need to comply with court orders. But, may be getting into edge cases where we are trying to predict
the outcomes of courts. Agreement that source domain must be determined collectively between registrant and registrar and as noted previously, might not require an actual discussion.
- In respect of changing source domain, seems more complex when taking into account grandfathering and transfers. Could just be that it’s up to registry policy.
- Suggestion to remove registrant and sponsoring registrar. However, ICANN org input has been that the including responsible parties in recommendations is important and helpful.
- Top top-level cannot change source label b/c the RZ-LGR is not always symmetrical. For second-level, do IDN tables establish symmetrical results? It is possible that second-label IDN tables
can develop symmetrical outcomes, but disposition values may be different.
- If there is precedent in the courts, they may look at ICANN policies, but they may not.
- Domains change all of the time and the new registrant may want to use it in a different way. Should not get in the way. At the top-level, there would far more wide ranging impacts if the
source label changes. The argument about different usage can apply to the top-level as well. Changing the source domain should not be limited to just transfers, so it should therefore not be restricted.
- Why is the question of changing the source domain important? A use case could be where a registrant has the source domain and a variant, but no longer wants to use the source domain. The
question seems important based upon whether the set is always symmetrical if the source domain changes.
- Confirming that when discussing lifecycle, a variant can be deleted without impacting the entire set. At the second-level, the intention is not to have the entire set be deleted automatically
if the source domain is deleted.
Action Item: Develop visual aid to assist in understanding impact of changes to the source domain.
- Slide 11 – potential terms to be included in the glossary. May want to include disposition value as well.
Discuss Variant Label Behavior in Domain Name Lifecycle: C4a
- Seems like a sub-question to the domain name lifecycle.
- Challenging wording for the charter question. It is related to existing and approved SubPro rec 25.8. This question is about a particular instance.
- Slide 14: context to support the discussion and the core question of C4a – should second-level variants under a single TLD that doesn’t have top-level variants behave the same? Should
the approach here be different to SubPro Rec 25.8? The charter question was drafted because of a perceived gap in the recommendation.
- Slide 15: does the SubPro question already cover this scenario? Agreement that there should not be an exception created as a result of this charter question. The domains should not be
required to behave the same. Could consider explicitly repeating or just affirming the SubPro rec. Is a recommendation actually needed? Could confirm or affirm in the deliberations rather that drafting a separate or new recommendation.
AOB
Steven Chan
Senior Director, Policy Development Support & GNSO Relations
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
12025 Waterfront Drive, Suite 300
Los Angeles, CA 90094-2536
Email: steve.chan@icann.org
Skype: steve.chan55
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