Dear Working Group members,

We write to follow up about next steps concerning the thirty-one (31) individual proposals that we as a Working Group received, and initially and very briefly reviewed late last year, on the Uniform Rapid Suspension procedure (URS). 

We thank everyone who took the time to fill out the survey that was conducted recently, and that had been intended to allow the Working Group co-chairs to “take the temperature” of the membership as to which proposals ought to be included in the Phase One Initial Report for public comments and which might reach the level of a Working Group recommendation. Following the Working Group’s discussion of the survey outcomes at our last ICANN66 session in Montreal, the co-chairs met with the incoming and outgoing GNSO Council liaisons to try to determine a path forward. 

We have collectively developed the following proposal for handling the individual URS proposals and the URS Sub Teams’ recommendations, which we believe builds on the initial survey results and our discussions to date. 

20 November 2019: Working Group meeting to complete discussions regarding  the recommendations of the URS Sub Teams’ to go into the Initial Report.

4, 11 & 18 December 2019 (Note: no meeting on 27 November due to travel associated with the US Thanksgiving holiday the following day):

Working Group meetings to review the individual URS proposals to determine which of them fall into the following categories:

• Include in the Initial Report as Working Group recommendations (see below for proposed methodology);
• Include in the Initial Report, not as Working Group recommendations, but as individual proposals for which the Working Group is seeking community input; or
• Do not include in the Initial Report, even as individual proposals, due to inadequate support.

2. Procedure to determine whether an individual proposal has sufficiently wide support to become a Working Group recommendation at this stage:

• All Working Group members are requested to review the survey results as well as the individual proposals prior to our December meetings (see https://community.icann.org/display/RARPMRIAGPWG/2019-11-03+ICANN66+Montreal+-+Review+of+all+Rights+Protection+Mechanisms+%28RPMs%29+in+all+gTLDs+PDP+WG?preview=/115641871/120819086/URS%20Individual%20Proposal%20Survey%20Result.pdf). 

• If a member believes that a specific proposal merits inclusion in the Initial Report as a Working Group recommendation, that member will have a short time to make substantive, evidence-based arguments in favor of that position on a Working Group call – preferably provided to the full Working Group in writing in advance of the allotted call. Members wishing to propose that an individual URS proposal becomes a Working Group recommendation must inform the Working Group leadership team and ICANN support staff by Sunday, December 1, to allow for advance notice and planning.

3. Procedure for handling individual proposals at each of the December meetings:
   • The proposals will be reviewed in the following order - begin with a proposal that received the highest level of support for inclusion in the Initial Report, followed by a proposal that received the lowest level of support for inclusion, then a proposal that received the next-highest level of support for inclusion, followed by one that received the next-lowest level of support, and so forth, until all proposals have been reviewed.
   • For each proposal, where a Working Group member had indicated (by the December 1 deadline) that he/she wished to argue in favor of including the proposal as an actual Working Group recommendation, that member will be given no more than 3 minutes to make his/her case, with questions and answers (limited to 2 minutes per question or answer and two inputs per member).
   • Members are kindly requested not to rehash arguments/discussions and to keep their remarks, questions and answers very brief.

• Subject to a determination by the Chairs, proposals with wide support and virtually no opposition will be considered as recommendations by the WG.
• Proposals with wide support and limited opposition will be published for comment in the Initial Report as individual URS Proposals.
• Proposals with virtually no support and significant opposition will not be published in the Initial Report.

• Following the Working Group’s review of all individual URS proposals, and in accordance with role ascribed to Working Group chair(s) under the GNSO Working Group Guidelines, the Working Group leadership team will determine whether there is sufficient support from other Working Group members: (i) to “convert” any individual proposal (where one was so argued) to an initial recommendation for purposes of the Initial Report; (ii) to include specific individual proposals in the Initial Report as proposals only; and (iii) to exclude the remaining individual proposals from the Initial Report (although these will all be referenced in the report, with links provided to the actual text of the proposals and the Working Group’s deliberations). 

We believe that this approach is an efficient way to proceed and will provide Working Group members with an opportunity to seek support for those (likely, few) individual proposals that they believe should be included in the Initial Report as a Working Group recommendation. At the same time, this approach also takes into account the survey results by placing the onus on members to make the case for specific proposals and by allowing consideration of members’ general preferences (as expressed in the survey) in coming to a decision as to how to handle the individual proposals. 

Thank you. We look forward to closing out the URS review and to maintaining our timeline as best we can (and as reported to the GNSO Council) for production of the Initial report.

Best regards,

Kathy, Brian & Phil (Working Group Co-Chairs)

Paul (GNSO Council liaison till 6 November 2019)

John (GNSO Council liaison from 6 November 2019)