Notes from the ISPCP Meetings in San Juan, Puerto Rico
Tuesday, 26 June 2007
Twenty-four people attended the ISPCP meetings held in the afternoon of Tuesday, 26 June 2007. ISPCP Chairperson Tony Holmes called the meeting to order at 14:12pm local time.
Tony Holmes led the group in introductions and welcomed those participants who were attending for the first time. Mr. Holmes called for additions and changes to the agenda. Mark McFadden, ISPCP Secretariat, asked for time to make some administrative announcements. Mr. McFadden noted that there was a need for ISPCP elections between the San Juan meeting and the upcoming Los Angeles ICANN meeting. He also noted the welcome news that a new member had joined the constituency in the last week: EuroISPA, the European Association of Internet Service Providers. It was noted that another new application for membership from the African Internet Service Provider Association. It was decided to have the Chair should work with the Secretariat to schedule the upcoming ISPCP elections.
The ISPCP then reviewed the results of the two Tuesday morning Cross Constituency meetings – the morning Board breakfast and the regular Cross Constituency meeting. Each of the items on the Cross Constituency agendas was reviewed and the particular impact on the ISP community considered. In particular, the ISPCP will follow up the presentation made on the budget to thank ICANN staff for responding and formally acknowledging that they will consult with all Cross Constituency members during next year’s process.
The next issue to be discussed was the introduction of new TLDs into the root zone of the DNS. One concern raised was that the fine tuning of the process is holding up the deployment of new TLDs. Tony Harris pointed out the differences between the earlier round of new TLD deployments and the new round. It was noted that the gNSO policy would probably be going to the board in a few weeks. An RFP would then be issued after board approval. Once the RFC was issued, a 120-day period would ensue while responses were prepared. The ISPCP was reminded about the impact of new TLDs on ISPs in the past. ICANN has trouble getting the word out on this issue and the ISPCP should highlight this problem to our customers and partners.
Tony Harris was asked to describe the current state of the whois effort inside ICANN. The work of previous whois efforts inside the gNSO was reviewed. The whois was described as a flawed instrument where the data does not have to be accurate. The constituency noted the conflicts between privacy interests and those who have a real need for access to the information. The constituency then discussed the current OPOC (Operational Point of Contact) proposal. The group noted that registries had a significant business selling “privacy protection services.” The latest discussions in the whois Working Group still have conflicts between the privacy interests and those with legitimate needs for access. There is no real consensus or agreement on rules and process for access to whois data. The relationship between government views on whois and the gNSO position was then considered. The ISPCP objections to the OPOC proposal and our constituency’s overall position on whois wer
e described and then discussed. Maria Farrell from ICANN talked about her relatively optimistic view of the recent work of the whois Working Group. A new draft of the whois proposal should be posted by the end of the San Juan meeting.
The next topic on the agenda was recent developments in gNSO reform. The group talked about how the use of working groups inside the gNSO has made policy development processes work better. There are some people inside of ICANN who would like to see recent successes amplified by incremental changes to the processes used in the gNSO. It was also noted that there was another group who would like to see significant, large-scale structural changes to the gNSO. The ISPCP should develop a position statement on gNSO reform and submit it to the public comments mailing list on gNSO Improvements. The ISPCP should support the idea of initial, incremental improvements to the gNSO. There was an extended discussion of the reform process and the history and context of gNSO reform inside ICANN.
One suggestion was that the ISPCP prepare a separate response on the issues of Working Group organization and PDPs – and then another response on structural changes. Wold-Ulrich Knoben of Deutche Telekom suggested that any response should suggest measurable metrics for success and a phased process of implementation. There was support within the constituency for the Working Group model and a focus on changed that can be judged against metrics. There was broad support for this approach over the large structural changes strategy.
One suggestion was that we should support the introduction of new constituencies as long as the membership of those constituencies was carefully defined. The group agreed that Mark McFadden, Tony Harris, Greg Ruth and Tony Holmes will prepare an initial draft of a response on gNSO Improvements and then forward it to the mailing list and website for further comment by the constituency.
Tony Harris, the ISPCP representative to the NomCom, updated the group on the progress of the 2007 Nomination Committee. A plan is in place to meet on the 9th of July for the election process. Announcements of the selections made by the Nomination Committee will be made in August of 2007.
A final item on the agenda saw a proposal that the ISPCP respond to the draft comprehensive registry failover plan. It was also suggested that the constituency bring up the need for a registrar failover plan. The constituency agreed to this proposal and a response will be drafted and sent to the mailing list.
Chairperson Tony Holmes closed the ISPCP meeting at 16:35pm.
