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March 11, 2001 Melbourne, Australia ICANN Public Meetings I. Welcome – Pindar Wong – At Large Study Committee A. Presentation delivered [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/Melbourne/archive/presentations/wong-atlarge-ga.html] B. Some members of study are still tentative. Anticipate ratification shortly. Skills & expertise listed in presentation. C. See study’s web site – http://www.atlargestudy.org D. To study concept, structure, processes relating to an “At Large” membership for ICANN. 1. Committee works without preconceptions (“clean sheet”). Previous discussions and decisions are informative but not determinative. 2. Need to generate agreement, but getting there is important too – need to find community consensus, if there is one. 3. Seek a long term solution. E. Work done so far: 1. Getting web site working. 2. Preparatory meeting in Washington DC last month. 3. Prepared email lists. 4. Drafted preliminary report and budget – now on web site. F. Obtained access to member lists. ICANN took and takes seriously its commitment to control use of personal data. Have sent a message to At-Large Members. (If you’re an At-Large Member and didn’t receive that message, let Pindar know.) Over 4000 people have joined Announce mailing list since then. G. Outreach at Apricot 2001. H. Outreach to various groups earlier this week. I. Brown-bag lunch. J. Some aggregate data available – see documents on http://www.atlargestudy.org re dates of registration, activation, activation delay (after sending of PIN letter), etc. K. Some concerns expressed re time schedule. Study’s draft must be completed by September. 1. No decisions to be made at outreach meetings. Outreach meetings primarily to receive input. Then working meetings. 2. Committee intends to receive input primarily via email. Also the web and discussion forums. 3. Committee will work via email with regular teleconferences and face-to-face working meetings. 4. Propose that Executive Director attends all outreach committee, and at least three members of Committee will attend. 5. Will issue a draft with view towards a final report by November. 60 days between posting draft and making final recommendation to ICANN. L. Have prepared a list of example questions to be answered. See presentation in archive. M. Difficult to budget for translation despite desire to do so. Hard decision was that working language of activities is English, and no budget for translation. (Otherwise, have to decide what to translate, and who will pay.) Have asked Government Advisory Committee to provide outreach and translation assistance. N. How you can help 1. Read documents. 2. Think deeply. 3. Provide input. 4. http://www.atlargestudy.org II. DNSO General Assembly A. Roberto Gaetano, Chair 1. Agenda posted • Draft circulated – http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/20010311.GAmelbourne-agenda.html • Administrivia - Report from Chair (Gaetano’s term expired) - Report from Secretariat - Discussion • Feedback from Constituencies, WGs • Chair, Alternate Chair election • Debate on Issues - DNSO Review - Individuals Constituency • Any other business 2. Will work hard to accept comments from remote participants. (No comments received as yet!) B. Report from Porteneuve, Secretariat 1. Budget group has been working on determining amount of funds required. 2. Making plans to hire necessary staff. Need a bank account, etc. in order to be able to do so. 3. Working on improving procedures. 4. AFNIC continuing to provide Secretariat services. In 1999, AFNIC agreed to provide Secretariat for free for a limited time; have done so for a longer period, then sent NC an invoice, which was accepted on three conditions (provide service for first three months of 2001, provide voting system software, transfer contents of DNSO server to whomever will be secretariat later). So, are providing service voluntarily until the end of month. III. Feedback from Constituency Meetings and WGs A. Business Constituency - Sheppard 1. Discussed multilingual domain names. Good for consumer so good for business. But concerns about technical and logistical issues. • Retrieval of WHOIS data in other languages. • Consumer confusion re character translation. • Desire to achieve progress quickly might lead to incompatibilities in the long run. 2. Discussed Verisign agreement. Two concerns: • Underlying assumptions are uncertain. Unsure that competition has improved sufficiently. Worry about risk to registrants if a registrar fails. • ICANN’s pro-competition policies may not go far enough, especially in light of new TLD agreements. B. gTLD Registries – Chuck Gomes 1. Report available at http://www.gtldregistries.org 2. Anticipate a multi-member constituency, via proposal to Board in Stockholm. Look forward to working with other gTLD Registries C. ISPCP – Michael Schneider 1. Administrative issues – funding. Progress made. 2. Discussed Verisign agreement, which took ISPCP by surprise. Even Board Members aren’t familiar with all details of proposed agreements. Will ask Names Council to request additional time to make assessment. 3. Discussed WHOIS. Still waiting for report. Have set up own working group on WHOIS. 4. Question about what’s a political issue versus a technical issue. “Infosessions” to be offered, starting in Stockholm. D. Martinez - Non-commercial Constituency 1. Held meeting yesterday. Archive to be available shortly on http://www.ncdnhc.org. 2. Discussed WHOIS, privacy, At Large, Verisign contracts. 3. Remote participation was available in NCDNHC meeting – audio transmission. Suggest that other constituencies do the same. E. Palage - Registrars 1. 20+ ICANN-accredited registrars in attendance. 2. Briefing by Touton, Sims re proposed modifications to NSI-ICANN-DoC agreements. Significant concern within constituency re these contracts. 3. Restructuring constituency to be more proactive. 4. Presentation by new unrestricted TLDs. • Registrars await expansion of namespace. F. Intellectual Property Constituency – no report G. De Blanc - ccTLD 1. Some consensus re best practices. Working on bylaws. 2. Working on translations of appropriate documents to help members. Should consider simultaneous translation of some meetings. 3. ccTLD constituency elections are one-vote-per-ccTLD. Need info re who’s entitled to vote – IANA database may be partially inaccurate. 4. Discussed funding, ICANN’s proper role (“thin” versus “thick,” which likely costs more). ccTLDs are equally divided between the two. H. DNSO Review Working Group - Park 1. Report written by Burton. 2. Sense is that WGs are not functioning properly. Some are unhappy with result of WG processes. • Question of how to make WGs work better. 3. Question of Constituencies – can be difficult to reach consensus within a constituency. 4. Question of GA’s role – how to get substantial progress made in GA. 5. Members of Review WG are focusing on how to improve DNSO process. • Sense is that constituency system may not be working properly. • Maybe don’t need constituencies at all. Thought to be an “extreme” position. • How to recognize a new constituency? 6. Names Council can create new WGs and can end a WG. 7. Risk of other urgent issues taking precedence over DNSO Review. 8. WG on Review needs more time in order to reach a more substantive conclusion. Recommend continuation to Stockholm meeting. 9. Comments • Sheppard (Chair of NC): YJ has expressed concern re the way that WGs operate, and the rest of NC agrees that past means of outreach have been suboptimal. Are working to improve that. Want to move forward from discussion re what is wrong to implementation of a fix. I. Metalitz: Intellectual Property 1. Discussed improvement of website, outreach. 2. Reviewed discussions with new TLD registries. Substantial improvements made, but still don’t know full scope of proposals by new registries for protecting intellectual property. Will be studying appendices to agreements. 3. Presentation (jointly with Business constituency) from new TLD registries. 4. Discussed new proposed NSI agreements. To what extent would new investments be directed towards improved protections for intellectual property? 5. Interested in best practices of ccTLDs. IV. Election of the DNSO GA Chair A. May need to reconsider procedures used previously in light of changes in the nature of the job. But, it seems undesirable to change the rules at the very time of an election. 1. Should GA elect its chair directly, not via NC? B. Now have an official GA voting registry. http://www.dnso.org/secretariat/rosterindex.html 1. Registration template available there. C. Porteneuve: Approximately 287 people registered to vote. More people must be interested, but they haven’t registered yet. 1. Nomination to be issued on March 16 … voting from March 31 to April 7, using STV. Rest of procedure described on http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/2001.DNSO-GAchair.html 2. Next Names Council in April will elect the ultimate chair. D. Comments: 1. ??: Why do people have to re-register for the GA election? 2. Gaetano: Not all constituencies have a complete list of members, creating a problem. It’s the same as when there were candidates for the ICANN Board. It’s not a big political problem to subscribe to one more list. Administratively, not a big problem to add people automatically to the voting registry. But most constituencies don’t have that list. 3. Porteneuve: If you would like to proceed that way, let us know. But need a well-defined electorate. 4. Gaetano: No problem accepting a list from constituencies of their members? 5. Porteneuve: List of members should be provided to secretariat prior to the start of the vote. 6. Gaetano: Need to make sure this doesn’t open up a potential for certain problems. Don’t want to receive a huge list (a hundred thousand) of “fake” members. But if these are real members, we can of course add these to the voting roster. 7. Porteneuve: Secretariat of each constituency should provide the lists. 8. Remote comment from Sotiris Sotiropoulos (#1179) read and displayed: How will NC choose from ranked comments? • Sheppard: NC will by and large follow the recommendation of the GA. Consider analogies in certain governments (i.e. Britain). 9. Coulis: Concern that scribe’s notes may be imperfect. • Gaetano: By and large pretty good. • Edelman: See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/scribefaq for info re how to suggest a change. Also full video archive to be posted. V. DNSO Review A. Gaetano: New GA Chair may bring in new people, fresh enthusiasm. B. How to make process more effective? Other improvements? Comments from the GA? C. Comments 1. Younger: Participated in DNSO Review WG. Looked hard at problems, tried to find solutions. Found serious problems, and saw two ways to fix: • Auerbach: Roll constituencies into GA, and end constituency structure. • Or, add new constituencies. • Possibility of individuals constituency, small businesses, public policy groups, end users. • No consensus yet. VI. Individuals A. Want participation by individual users, individual domain name holders. Have to solve this problem in the near future. B. Comments 1. Teernstra: Participated in Review WG. Personally, proposed not to abolish constituencies but to add new ones so as to achieve a balance of interests. Need to protect individuals’ interests in their domain names. Individuals (as distinguished from businesses and organizations) register a sizable portion of domain names. Individual domain name owners should remain focused on ICANN, because alternative is “frightening” (“an Internet of robber barons that own chunks of TLD space … no controlling authority at all”). • WG discussed possibility of making GA into a constituency. GA has a finite mailing list and a voter’s roll. So GA is as identifiable as any other constituency. This approach should be considered also. • Gaetano: Have been thinking of GA as a place for all constituencies to come together to discuss common issues. Hadn’t thought of GA as having a focus specifically on those not part of the other constituencies. Teernstra’s proposal may have merit given recent changes (i.e. single companies being both registry and registrar). 2. Gomes: ICANN’s Bylaws specify a method for creating constituencies. Constituencies must self-organize, and in any case those that cannot may have difficulty being effective constituencies. Those who want an individuals domain name holders constituency must organize themselves, presenting a viable proposal to the NC and then to the Board. First proposal was rejected, but a viable plan must still be put together. • Teernstra: IDNO’s petition was never rejected, rather was never considered. 3. Dawson (remote #1178): “When will GA ask for a time-schedule for creating of Individuals Constituency?” (Read and displayed.) • Gaetano: Agree with Gomes that it’s not the task of the GA to make decisions here. Those who want this constituency must organize it. GA can’t give a timetable for self-organizing. 4. Gaetano: Had expected that DNSO constituency structure would be more dynamic. “Paris draft” gave rules for creation of new constituencies, that section ultimately rejected. 5. Teernstra: Overview of IDNO’s progress to date. Have web site, polling booth. Have faced some attempts at capture, especially of mailing list. Two people with plenty of free time can capture a list, CONTACT INFORMATION For additional technical information, please contact: Ben Edelman and Rebecca Nesson |