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May 25 & 26, 1999, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm Hotel Adlon, Berlin, Germany Real-Time Remote Viewing and Participation ICANN Open Meeting - Morning Session[afternoon session]I. Status Report A. 90 days since Singapore B. 1 year since US government statement of intent C. Transition agreement runs until September 2000 II. Root Server System Advisory Committee Report - Jun Murai presentation A. Y2K - If there is a problem, what is the timetable for resolution? What are contingency plans? 1. Listening to comments and working with root server operators as necessary. B. The system has lots of redundancy in case of failure. Committee has done background work since its last meeting. C. Amadeu: Does ICANN have authority over the root? Plans to relocate the root servers to reflect Internet traffic patterns? Plans to relocate A root server to "more neutral" location? 1. Working item to study allocation for increased stability. 2. Can advise the ICANN board on that subject. 3. Will advise as much if it would increase stability. D. Izumi Aizu: Much effort focused on the root servers. Should similar work be done at the ccTLD level? 1. This is an issue, and work is underway. But it's not the work of this committee. III. Governmental Advisory Committee - Paul Twomey A. It's challenging to maintain an international government committee. Thanks to ICANN staff, ITU, and Australia. B. Attendees from key national governments and international organizations. C. Web site through ICANN homepage D. Role is to provide advice to ICANN E. Yesterday: Agenda included committee organizational issues and substantive issues. F. GAC requests that ICANN amend its bylaws to assure consistency with committee operating principles. G. Recommendations (see communique) : 1. Welcomes WIPO report, endorses its general principles of providing best practices, administrative dispute resolution 2. Reaffirms requirement of transparency and reliability of DNS registration data. 3. Want ICANN to provide a mechanism for dispute settlement by Santiago. 4. When the delegate of a ccTLD lacks the support of the relevant community (ISO 3166 code), there may be a request to ICANN to reassign management of the ccTLD. H. The GAC will continue to evaluate issues re domains containing restrictions or conditions on registration. I. Q&A 1. Jim Higgins: Asia Pacific ccTLD group. Concern about way that members of committee were invited. Must assure that developing nations have access to GAC meetings. Concern that GAC's participation criteria is disenfranchising certain governments. Need to assure that everyone is included in discussions. Expect Asia Pacific secretariat to be present at next meeting. 2. Ken Stubbs: Registrars accredited for second phase are working to develop their own dispute resolution process. Moving ahead independently. 3. Representative of Moldova: (1) GAC changed rule to require that representatives to GAC be officials of a government and not delegates of that government. (2) Also other governmental entities were prevented from attending because thought not to have sovereign status. Suggest that definition be expanded to include sub-national entities that have ccTLDs. (3) Concern that meeting was closed. (4) GAC is ahead of other constituencies of ICANN; shouldn't move ahead on issues like WIPO until others have had the chance to provide comment. 4. Ed Sweeney: GAC is not representative of the regions it serves. Especially an issue with ccTLD delegations. GAC shouldn't take a policy-setting role. Roberts: ICANN bylaws carefully crafted and strictly interpreted. Board welcomes comments if it's thought that a committee has gone beyond its powers. Twomey: Well aware that the GAC is an advisory committee, composition is defined in bylaws. 5. David Johnson: Bylaws VI.2.C To be considered later 6. Bill : Concern re insufficient geographic diversity. Should give precedence to those who traveled far and won't be here for long. Australian government puts a high priority on geographic diversity. But it's difficult in practice. Roberts: Board wants comments - public comment time this afternoon. IV. Proposed ICANN Transition Budget for 1999-2000 -- Mike Roberts presentation A. Jay Fenello: Concern re "domain name tax." 1. White Paper said Newco would be supported by the community. Board has had no discussion of fees beyond .com, .net, and .org. B. Eric Eden: Contingency plans for if the domain name fees result in the collection of too little or too much revenue? 1. Will see what can be done when there's a shortfall. If there were too much revenue, the board would have an obligation to account for all the money - adjust the fee. Present feeling is that $1/domain is a ceiling. C. Izumi Aizu: Cost guidelines to assure economic diversity? It's hard to get people to participate when it's so expensive to attend many meetings each year around the world. D. Amadeu Abril i Abril: Budget seems high. Does the $1/domain fee apply to every registrar, including NSI? E. Elisabeth Porteneuve: ICANN is international and the budget will be collected worldwide. Suggest consideration of this international aspect also. V. Protocol Supporting Organization - John Klensin A. Proposal developed by IETF reviewed with other likely participants who have endorsed it. B. Trying to keep it streamlined. C. IETF, as an engineering organization, has learned to build things and observe how they work after design/discussion. D. If everything else can happen rapidly enough, it might be possible to convene the first PSO GA meeting, or at least an MOU session, at the Oslo IETF meeting in July. Our intent is to have the PSO up and running before Santiago meeting. E. What the PSO is: Expect involvement of international standards bodies that make Internet protocols. Based on MoU between them and ICANN. Intends to get lots of work done quickly. F. Q&A 1. Danny Weitzner, W3C: Wishes ICANN success. Cooperative relationship between standards bodies and ICANN is valuable. 2. Bridget Cosgrave, ETSI: ETSI qualifies for participation in PSO. Develops standards in telecommunications including public internet i.e. Typhoon project. More than 600 corporate members from 50 countries. Eleven years experience. Standards freely available. 3. Frank Cohen, ITU: Wishes success to ICANN and PSO, want to do their part. Willing to host meetings, work on web site. 4. Amadeu Abril i Abril: PSO is going to do as little as possible. Concentrating on conflicts in protocol formation process - action will be rare. 5. Hans van der Veer, Lucent: In agreement with Poisson proposal from IETF. Sees need for participation by other standards organizations (ITU) on equal footing to IETF. 6. Joop Teernstra: Perceive the PSO to be a rock of stability. Could PSO be an arbitrator in other forums? Weitzner: Hesitant to turn PSO into a moderator. Klensin: Speechless. But challenges in other areas are political and social, while PSO should focus on technical issues. VI. Address Supporting Organization A. Working together on a proposal for Santiago. B. Structures have evolved over the last ten years, based on regional address assignment bodies. C. Address usage is increasing "less than linear." D. Diversity in attendees E. Steps: Principles, description of operation, drafting formal document (bylaws). No undue haste. F. http://www.ripe.net/info/ncc/icann.html , aso-discuss@ripe.net, aso-discuss-request@ripe.net G. Amadeu Abril i Abril: question about process, participation 1. Differs among RIRs, trying to develop modes of participation VII. Report on Status of Competitive Registration, Mike Roberts 1. As stated in White Paper, US government intention to start competition in registration of .com, .net, .org 2. Amendment 11, to NSI contract, established responsibilities for NSI, ICANN, government ICANN to develop guidelines for accrediting registrars. Help create level playing field for competition in these 3 domains. Published preliminary document in February, took comments; - adopted statement of policy in Singapore; - April 21, press conference to announce 5 testbed registrars; also accredited 29 post-testbed registrars, + 8 new ones last night NSI required to divide its registry and registrar functions. Complicated. - Becomes a registrar in competition with the others. 3. Difficulty making the system work Technical people in 5 companies find it may still take several weeks before the competitive system is functioning. When will the competitive marketplace be functioning? No precise answer. ICANN can't make it happen, but is helping. B. Q & A 1. Chuck Gomes, NSI: 1st testbed registrar (register.com) could go live as early as today. Technical problems have been solved 2. ? post-testbed accredited registrar: testbed registrars supposed to be providing information to help subsequent entrants. Right now, no information coming out. Can ICANN provide a discussion, more information? Dyson: If we knew more, we could report more. Some confidentiality agreements. 3. Abril i Abril: Nominalia, post-testbed registrar. Congratulates ICANN board for selection of 5 testbeds. NSI-registrar agreement - questions for Dept. of Commerce. Prices - need accounting separation in NSI. Dispute resolution policy based in registry or registrar. Becky Burr: Under Amendment 11, NSI agreed to separate registrar and registry functions; in process. Puts dispute resolution policy in hands of registrars; encourage registrars to work together to establish baseline uniformity. Price agreement reached only for testbed. Not yet reached agreement on cost+reasonable profit price. Testbed is test of relationships as well. Will be around to take other questions. 4. Jay Fenello: ICANN board-established business model has peculiar definition of competition. Applicable to all new TLDs, as opposed to ccTLDs? Comments taken. Current policy guidelines not frozen, but will develop with experience. ICANN under contractual provisions that affect only .com, .org, .net. 5. Fenello: Application of potential policies: WIPO. Consideration of scope of applicability? Working with counsel to accredited registrars who are contractually obligated to adopt a dispute resolution policy. Collective effort. 6. Kent Crispin: is NSI formally accredited? No. it has not yet applied, but encouraged to. 7. Bret Fausett: What are ICANN's legal needs requiring 20% of budget? Accreditation work, worldwide scope, responsibilities under Amendment 11 8. Siegfried Langenbach: technical person responsible for implementation between CORE and NSI. Testbed is not going smoothly. 9. Michael Sondow: Registrar accreditation agreement binds registrants of domain names. Was this negotiated with any organization representing registrants? Dyson: No, but it made sense. Roberts: Companies that are becoming registrars have to sign two contracts - one with ICANN, one with NSI. Timing of contract was dictated by amendment eleven. Hundreds of organizations are potentially interested; we had a public comment process and are receptive to hearing more. 10. Chuck Gomes: Clarify statement of testbed - one registrar could go live this week. Many sources of delay. Accounting separation between registrar and registry functions has been done. VIII. Membership - George Conrades and Greg Crew A. Interim report prepared after Singapore meeting. Singapore recommendations. B. Board asked MAC to provide a number of possible models. MAC produced a set of variations on a single model. C. Principles 1. At-large primarily for individuals not represented through other forums. 2. Should be open to only individuals. (Revised from Singapore. Rough consensus.) 3. No dues at this time. 4. Privacy concerns given weight. 5. A single voting class. 6. Any member may run for office as an at-large director. 7. Candidates for directors should provide information about themselves, some of which will be posted on web site for members to inspect. 8. Perhaps establish online discussion forums for pre-election debate. 9. Recommendation that ICANN bylaws re regional bylaws should be amended to decouple at-large and SO representation. 10. At-large members will elect the at-large directors and approve amendments to bylaws. Should make adjustments if necessary, if California law differs - don't want members to bring derivative suits or unilaterally change the bylaws. 11. Issue of organizations as at-large members. General consensus is now that only individuals should be eligible to be at-large members. (One strong objection.) 12. Fees. MAC reaffirmed its view that barriers to becoming a member should be minimal, and even low fees may be seen as a barrier, also transaction costs relatively high. View is still that there should be no fees, at least initially. Avoid problem of non-active members by requiring renewal, etc. 13. Secret ballots necessary to protect privacy. An independent audit can fill need for inspection. 14. Yes, candidates for at-large seats have to be members. (In response to comment.) 15. Sunrise provisions. Should activation of membership require enrollment of a baseline membership before an election? e.g. a minimal number of members in each region or overall. Might result in less interested people joining just to get the numbers up. Alternative suggestion of no numerical minimum but outreach program to get lots of members. Divided on question but support for monitoring of demographics of membership sign-up. 16. Suggestion that new at-large directors should be phased in over multiple elections. Some concern with expense and complication of multiple elections. Committee divided, but rough consensus for staggering the election in some way. 17. Regional versus global voting pools. MAC divided between one global voting pool in which all members vote for all seats and a model in which a global pool elects four seats and five regional voting pools elect one board member per region. 18. Outreach plan (Kaplan) web site trade shows communication through registrars with existing and new registrants links with other web sites associations partnership program with emphasis on less developed regions corporate outreach plan 19. Having made its recommendation, MAC ready to be disbanded. Calls for board to form a new committee to study future issues, perhaps with a full time membership secretariat. E. Q&A 1. Werner Staub: Concern of implications of direct democracy. Outreach needs to be broad, fair. Agreed. 2. Amadeu Abril i Abril: Concern about capture. Must keep in mind what membership is for. Must be careful not to start voting until there are lots of members - more than ISOC's 7-8000. Refine nominations process. Conrades: Agreed that we need good candidates running for office. Crew: Membership should be large and widely representative. Dyson: Executive recruiter will ask potential CEOs who turn down the job due to lack of time to run for positions on the board. 3. Fenello: Gets impression that membership is going to be delayed, but it shouldn't be. Don't need more committees. 1000 people have already been following this - they are the best voters. Conrades: We all want to move forward. Crew: Committees sees SOs as forum for experts, at-large for general users. 4. Milton Mueller: Spirit of MAC is encouraging. Comments: Idea of no payment is troubling, argument based on affordability is suspect because other costs (time spent participating) vastly exceed the cost (say $50) of membership. Concerned about implications of free membership on election process. Also, 6-7000 seems like too high a threshold given the highly technical nature of the organization. Want good and responsible members, not necessarily a lot of members. Conrades: That reflects the discussions that the committee had. Many issues on both sides. 5. Izumi Aizu: Even some people who run NICs have very low income and cannot come to a meeting like this. We need your help recruiting members. Roberts: Wants feedback on fees and purpose of at-large membership. 6. Kent Crispin (online comment): Concern about capture - a large number of members may not be sufficient to prevent capture. 7. Richard Sexton: Concern about secret voting. Leave it to the discretion of the voters (saves authentication costs)? Fee around $10 might make sense. 8. Daniel Karrenberg: Don't just apply nuisance fee. Leave no fees. $50 is a lot in some parts of the world. 9. Jim Higgins: Many potential members can't afford even fees that some of us might consider very low. Don't want membership to be a thousand rich people. 10. Wolfgang Kleinwaechter: Should have a marketing concept - how to sell ICANN to the outside world, including the media. Crew: Outreach program anticipated. Will ask members to participate in ways other than fees (feedback, voting, candidacy). 11. Mueller: Adjust fee to account for regional differences. 12. Eileen Kent, ICC: Cost of administering the fees could be overwhelming. 13. Bob Hasted, Nortel: Should have goal of millions of members from all over the owrld. CONTACT INFORMATION For additional technical information, please contact: Ben Edelman and Wendy Seltzer |