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Developing Regions and New gTLD Program - JAS Final Report
24 October 2011
Dakar, Senegal


>>CARLTON SAMUELS: Good morning, everyone.  We would like to get this
ball started rolling.  If you could take your seats, please.

Thank you very much.

Come, come, come.

Good morning, everyone.  My name is Carlton Samuels.  I'm a member of
the ALAC from Latin America and the Caribbean, specifically Jamaica,
and I'm the co-chair of the -- what we call the JAS working group, and
we're here to tell you a little bit about the work that we have done
in this very important subject for us.

It's about supporting applicants from developing economies to start
registries in the new gTLD program.

I have a few members of the working group up here with me who have
played very significant roles in developing the report and making the
recommendations.  Starting from my left, we have Tijani Ben Jemaa, who
is a member of ALAC from the African region with Alan Greenberg, who
is a member of the at-large and the GNSO liaison.  We have Avri Doria
who is formerly in the GNSO and now a member of the at-large
constituency.

To my right is Andrew Mack, who is in the GNSO constituency.  And
there's Evan Leibovitch, a member of ALAC from the North American
region, and of course Cheryl Langdon-Orr, member of ALAC from the
APRALO region, and the vice chair of the ALAC.

We are going to get into the meat of the matter momentarily.

I want to tell you that this issue is of great importance to the at-
large, contrary to what some of you might have heard.  It has been a
part of the at-large agenda since as early as 2009.  When we had the
at-large summit at Mexico City in March of that year, several of us
got together and thought that it was important in the globalization of
the ICANN agenda for ICANN to develop some discrete and concrete ways
to show its support for the inclusion of developing economies and
countries into the names and numbers policy space.

So here we are.

This report has been a long and hard slog.  We have been meeting since
June of 2010, twice per week in teleconferences, and we believe we
have produced two good interim reports that paved the way for this
final report.  We believe that we have handled the matter as best as
we can, given the circumstances.  And we hope you will find it
necessary to give your support to these recommendations and the next
steps in the implementation of these recommendations.  That being
said, I'm going to turn it over to the chief presenters this morning,
Avri Doria and Alan Greenberg.  Thank you.

Oh, I forgot to mention my co-chair, who unfortunately is not here.
There is a chair reserved for him.  Rafik Dammak is a member of the
NCSG constituency from the GNSO.  He unfortunately was supposed to
come in remotely from Japan, but unfortunately he's not with us.

So Rafik, if you're listening, thank you for the work you've done with
us and we hope you are there cheering us on.

Avri.

>>ALAN GREENBERG:  Actually, Alan.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Alan, thank you.

[ Laughter ]

>>ALAN GREENBERG:  All right.  Thank you.  We don't have very much
time, and the intent is to go through the presentation very quickly.
If I'm going too quickly -- quicker than I should, someone should give
me a sign, but we'd like to leave as much time for questions and
interaction, instead of just reading to you a summary of a summary,
which is already in your hands.

We're going to be looking at a number of issues, starting with
terminology.  The working group itself was very confused when it
started, and we were using words in ways that made sure everyone
misunderstood what we were saying within the group.  We'll look at why
we should provide support, what has happened so far, and then go into
the actual content of the report.

In terms of terminology, we are using -- and I hoped we used
consistently in the report -- the term "candidate" as someone who is
looking for support.  So it's a candidate, an approved candidate,
becoming a recipient, should anyone actually -- we've reserved the
term "applicant" for an applicant in the overall gTLD process, because
otherwise, we were -- we ended up using the term "applicant" for
everything and it didn't yield any good results.

In terms of highlights, the original policy that came out of the GNSO
made it clear in a number of its recommendations that although the
process had to be cost recovery -- that is, we shouldn't be billing
old applicants -- or old users or existing domain holders for the
process -- it didn't talk about anything else other than that.

It did, however, explicitly say "and differential fees" particularly
for things like requiring assistance from those in developing
economies was acceptable.

So there was nothing in the original guideline that said the fee had
to be uniform.

We have an activities guideline here which starts with the board
resolution in Nairobi.  Those who have been around for a while
understand that the actual discussion of supporting applicants started
sometime around 2006, and there was always a discussion and the issue
raised, pretty much on every single version of the applicant guidebook
and prior to the first one being issued, and the answer tended to be,
"Let's wait till the second round," implicitly adding "if there is
one," and I personally feel that if we had done something moderate at
that point, we wouldn't be in the position we are today, but we
didn't.

So we have the board resolution in Nairobi, we have a later board
decision to allocate $2 million to the process, and followed by more
recently the GAC and the ALAC recommending very explicitly a fee
reduction in addition to other levels of nonmonetary support and
monetary support by the $2 million.

The final report looks at a number of critical points:  When should
support be provided, who should be approved to receive support, how
should we decide -- make that decision, what support should be
offered, how should the support process work, and how does it
integrate with the applicant guidebook process that is well
established.

When should support be offered?  Again, tied back to the discussions
that go back to 2006, there was a strong belief among some parts of
the community that support had to be offered in time to allow
applicants to participate in the first round.

We're all presuming there will be a second round, but exactly when it
is, given the review process that's going to follow this one, we don't
really know.  And we feel that to be equitable, to be inclusive, the
program has to allow some level of gTLD support, new gTLD support, for
economies that can't otherwise afford it.

There's significant discussion in the community -- and I'm sure on the
board -- about how important new gTLDs are and how do you define one
that is really absolutely crucial, you know, the deal-breaker which is
going to disenfranchise feminine.  But it's hard to say that we
believe, as we are saying in our publicity, how large an impact new
gTLDs are going to have on the world and pretend that they couldn't
have any impact in some economies.

You can't take that differing position.  If we believe it's going to
have a major impact, then it's going to have a major impact on the
other -- on the developing economies as well, although it's hard to
quantify at this point exactly how or what.

And perhaps more importantly, we are including IDN gTLDs for the first
time.  Although that market has been somewhat addressed by the fast
track ccTLD IDN program, again, we're pretending that -- or claim that
the gTLD program will have a major impact in the rest of the world.
There's no reason to believe that there will not be scripts and
languages which will not be served well by ccTLDs, and therefore,
there is a potential for great benefit.

Who qualifies for support?

Lots of discussion on this.  When we started the process, we said --
we started enumerating how do we recognize a poor person, essentially,
or a poor organization.

We quickly realized that poverty alone cannot be the criteria.  It is
absolutely critical that we look at what they're planning to do and
what the social benefit of it is, okay?

It's fine for people to risk their own money on something stupid --
that's my terminology; it's not in the report -- but if they're asking
us for our money, then we have a right, just like any other donor
organization in the world, to evaluate what it is they're trying to do
and make a judgment call.  Because it is a judgment call on whether it
is worthy of support or not.

Okay.  If there's an implicit lack of fairness in some people's mind
that judgment calls means someone's going to get rejected, well, so be
it.  The group felt very strongly that it is more important to avoid
gaming and to avoid supporting really bad applications, that it's
better to reject some good applications than to accept a lot of bad
ones.  And we've tried to push that philosophy through in the whole
report.

We've provided a number of guidelines, some of which have some holes
in them, in terms of identifying potential candidates based on
established U.S. lists looking at nonprofit civil society,
nongovernmental organizations, but we did not rule out entrepreneurial
commercial operations, if they could make a good case on the social
benefit of the application.  So we're not rejecting someone just
because they plan to make money in the long term.  The real criteria
is, do they have a good enough rationale for doing it, and do they
need help, can they demonstrate they need help now.

We identified a number of groups and potential applicants that we
would not support.  There's been a lot of talk, although the applicant
guidebook never defined it, with dot brand.  You know, in other words,
if you want to have a gTLD to support your commercial venture, you
know, it's your billboard.  Our interest is not in supporting that.
That doesn't mean we won't support something which happens to be a
trademark, but if it -- if the tone of it is, "It's a dot brand," we
don't believe it's something that we should be eligible for support.

We ruled out -- excuse me -- government and para-statal institutions
completely.  The GAC came back and said they really believed we should
rule out national governments, but not necessarily others.

That's still an ongoing discussion, because we really didn't have
within the group the expertise to delineate those and put what the
specifics are, so we put in what we could come to closure on within
the working group, but we believe that's one that probably does need
to be adjusted between now and the end of the year, hopefully in
discussion with the GAC.

Geographic names were something that were highly contentious, but
again, we figured that these do not fall under our purview.  Again, if
you could not build a commercial case for doing it properly, we
probably didn't want to be the ones to support it either.

And there's a number of issues which duplicate those within the
guidebook.  That is, if you're bankrupt, if you're a criminal.  We
found it necessary to put them there because as you'll see in a
moment, the process to decide whether to support the applicant -- or
the candidate, I'm sorry -- comes prior to the review in the applicant
guidebook.

So we needed to just make it clear that ultimately you're going to get
rejected anyway, don't bother applying to the first part of the
process.

And the last item, the "incapable of meeting any of the applicant
guidebook's due diligence procedures," the intent -- and we have one
exception later on -- is that we are not asking you to bypass any of
the rules that were established to ensure security and stability of
the domain name system.  Once you get approved, you're going to have
to toe the same line as everyone else.  There has been some talk in
the community that we reduce the engineering requirements
significantly, and I -- as one of the authors, I don't think we put
that in the report, but it's been discussed as if it was a given.

As I mentioned earlier, we went very quickly in the working group from
simply looking at poverty issues to public interest.  Now, we truly
believe that if you cannot make the case why this -- your TLD is going
to serve the public interest, you know -- and that can range from
providing access to linguistic or script groups that are not well
served, ethnic communities, underserved languages, the list goes on --
we believe that this is not something that ICANN should be supporting.
ICANN or the people who hopefully will help us by matching the $2
million.

We are recommending that the fee go down to 47,000.  A lot of question
has been asked about where did we come up with that number.  I'm not
actually the one who came up with it so I can't pretend that I was
there and conceived of it.  It's a quarter of the total amount,
rounded.  I believe it was a number that had some analysis based on
the components of the 185,000, which could be used to rationalize it,
but I think the bottom line is, it's a moderate number that we feel
reduces the threshold very significantly and yet still makes a
reasonable demand on the applicant.  Because regardless of how low the
fees go, there's money involved in keeping a domain running, and there
has to be some sort of financial backing to this whole procedure.

We have recommended staggering application fees.  If you remember
correctly, in the current process, with the full 185,000, if an
applicant doesn't get all the way through the initial process, refund
some of the money.  We're simply saying that should be reversed, and
for applicants who are deemed worthy of support, they should not have
to pay it up front until it's actually due.

So in other words, ICANN shouldn't get the float on the money.  The
applicant should have the benefit of that doubt.

It's not -- that's not as needed if we do the reduction, but it's
still a relevant factor.

The continuity instrument is one that has been subject to a lot of
discussion.

There are a number of ways that we believe that this can be reduced.
Number one, there's a general feeling in parts of the community that
the overall number was geared to large, for-profit, commercial TLDs
where the understanding is, the assumption is, you're going to sell it
to someone else so ICANN has to keep it running as a full-blown
commercial operation in the interim.

We believe that a lot of the TLDs we're talking about here are not
going to be in that category; that if we need to keep them running at
all, then all we need to do is basically keep the domains in the root.
We don't -- necessarily are going to add some.  And there are some
people in our group who feel if it didn't survive, it didn't survive.
Tough.  And there's no real costs other than the shutdown costs
associated with it.  So we believe that has to be addressed somehow.

There's also been talk of having consortiums to share the costs, on
the assumption that not everyone's going to fail the same day in the
same way.

Again, this needs to be refined in the implementation plan, and
hopefully staff is looking at that.

And lastly, but not least, there has always been an assumption in the
community that there's going to be some windfall profits in this whole
thing attributable to auctions and similar processes.

We are reiterating what has been said many, many times over at least
six years.  That money should not simply be put into ICANN general
coffers, it should be put into some sort of foundation to do good
things.  One of the good things, but certainly not the only one, is
this gTLD process.  Either to repay money that was essentially loaned
from it or to go to second rounds and refine the process.

The fee reduction, again, is likely to be the single item that is
going to be discussed most.  It is not well understood, and I'm afraid
the final report, due to the time frame that we had to produce it,
didn't do a lot to make it a lot clearer.

I'll give you my version of it, and there are some variations, but I
think it's important to understand that this is possible to do without
impacting the cost recovery nature that the GNSO required nor
impacting ICANN's budget significantly.

To do that we have to go back in history.

The original gTLD process, we hoped would be launched somewhere in the
2009 time frame.  For those of you who have calendars, it's past then.

Once that passed, it was understood that the development costs, which
if you remember correctly, the 185,000 had, I believe, a $25,000 item
to repay the development costs to the ICANN reserve.  That is, the
theory was that -- and it was a disputed theory when it was first
announced -- that although those costs were budgeted in the years they
were incurred, they were budgeted at the expense of a return to
reserve, and the intent was to recoup the money from the applications.

When the costs of development became much, much higher, ICANN had two
choices.  They either could have raised the 185,000 to cover them in
the first -- cover all the development costs in the first round -- I
think ICANN made a wise decision in that it said, "We'll simply defer
the return to reserve over multiple rounds and hope there are multiple
rounds to return it.  Otherwise, we have a reserve problem.  Fine."

With a little bit of analysis, you'll find that for the number of
applications that is reasonable for us to support, the fee reduction
can be funded in exactly the same way.  We defer a return to reserve.

If there's windfall profit from auctions, so be it.  Then we -- we
repay that, and the reserve doesn't take a hit at all.

If there is no windfall profit, then we've deferred the return to
reserve by some amount of time by allowing the round to be completely
inclusive and allowing application -- candidates who otherwise
couldn't compete to compete.

So there is no operational impact on the real fund by looking at it
like that.  There is an impact -- potential impact on return to
reserve, but it's a concept the board has already approved and
ratified in how it's handling the original sunk costs.  So I think
it's a viable way of approaching it.

And, you know, to implement that, we're going to have to look at the
details of how many applicants we can support.  It's hard to do that
because we don't know how many applicants there are going to be total,
but I believe the implementation plan can come up with a simple
algorithm which will guarantee that we won't impact the overall
process too much and yet provide the fee reduction which both the GAC
and the ALAC said they believe is necessary.

And I turn it over to Avri Doria for the next part of it.

>>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.

Okay.  So I'm going to start talking about the other financial support
that was mentioned.

And this is basically the financial support funded from various
sources, of which the 2 million that the board has indicated they
would make available is hopefully the seed.

And then basically dealing with obtaining more for matching that, both
from soliciting other contributions and hopefully from some allocation
of what comes out of the auction funds after the reserve fund has been
repaid anything that was used for the fee reductions.

Now, the creation of the foundation is something that we're asking the
board to investigate.

It was felt that this went beyond what the JAS was actually able to
decide on itself, because there were many other people that sort of
said, "If there is such a foundation, if there is such a fund, there
are other things that need to be done."  But the JAS work is really
just to focus on the application period.

So therefore, we're going to the board and we're basically asking the
board to look at doing this.

There were also a number of legal questions that would come up every
time this issue was posed that we didn't necessarily have the
wherewithal to answer.

One thing that we did say is that any of the monies that were
allocated from such a fund, were it to be created, would be things
that the successful -- the successful candidate who created a
successful new gTLD would be expected to pay back into, so there will
also be a continuation and a sustainability to such a fund.

So in terms of the foundation, we were asking the board to set up a
committee, basically, you know, perhaps using the models that have
been used for the review teams and such that drew from the whole
community to basically, first of all, work with ICANN staff to sort of
investigate the issue of, can a 501(c) set up a foundation.  If so,
what are the legal, financial, and other constraints.

Every time we've brought up the topic, somebody has raised the flag
that there are issues, but no one's ever been able to pin down for us
what those issues might be.

So that was something, again, that we felt needed to be deferred to
both a staff and committee action.

Then basically do the work of setting up such a foundation, a fund, a
foundation with several funds -- again, we're not trying to
predetermine what that committee would do and what the foundation
would look like -- that would define the responsibilities, that would
define the methods by which it would work, you know, that would
suggest the members for the first board and that would make a
recommendation to the board of, you know, "Here's the foundation
proposal.  Please approve that by whatever means are appropriate under
bylaws," et cetera.

And also, one of the things would be to start obtaining pledges to
that fund, and this comes more on the next slide, but I know I've
talked to various possible donors, as have other people on this team,
that have said, "If there was a well-formed fund, and if we knew that
there was going to be responsible handling of such funds, et cetera,"
then they might be willing -- now, yes, I know that's many
conditionals in one sentence but without the well-formed fund, nothing
happens.

Oh, yes.  The other thing is, we weren't also determining what would
be the proper legal domicile for such a fund or foundation.  We had
many views from, "Well, of course it needs to be in California" to,
"Well, this might be a good time to do something in an another country
to show the geographical diversity."  So that was, again, one thing we
said needed to be looked at.

So in terms of the funding sources, as I said, the allocation -- the
generous allocation from the ICANN board is, indeed, a fantastic seed.
We're looking for it to at least be matched.  You know, auction
proceeds, soliciting pledges and guarantees from those who have been
quite successful through the ICANN processes for many years.  You
know, one of the flippant comments sometimes I make, if people just
gave the fund the proceeds -- I mean, the costs of one of the parties
that they throw, that would be a great thing and that would help a
lot.

So voluntary allocations.  I've talked to several ccTLDs that sort of
said sure, they might be willing to do this.  They might need to
direct things to activities in their countries or whatever, but
they're willing to talk about it, if there is a well-formed fund.

So, as I said, gTLD registries, the incumbents who may have the
ability to contribute external funding sources, whether it's grants
from governments, intergovernmental organizations, speak have spoken
to the World Bank, there has been a lot of conversations, there has
been a lot of "maybes," "if," but we need to take the next steps.
Something like the JAS group can only propose that other people think
about recommending so that a board can approve.

So that's what we're doing.

The use of the funds -- and this is beyond the recommended reduction
in fees -- is, basically, to bring in applications of this is what we
would use the funds for, and they would be used to sort of help relax
or defer upfront costs, whether it's a ccTLD that wants to bring its
registry up to the gTLD requirements, whether it's something that
wants to apply for the build-out of a new back end, whether it's an
applicant that needs to do extra work to be able to do -- meet some of
the technical requirements, like meet the IPv6 or meet the DNSSEC.

Basically, there are many requirements in there that would require
money.  And as people sort of say, well, the initial fee is just a
drop in the bucket.  There is a lot of other expenses.

So while the JAS group sort of said every applicant needs to put a
certain amount of funds in that they have on their own to show that
they are on their own, that they do have their own financial
liability, sometimes these expenses would be beyond and would be aided
by a well-thought-out proposal with a business rational that goes to a
group that review it is and says, yes, this would be a reasonable
allocation of money to help you do what is required to be done to be a
registry.  And that's basically what's in that slide.

So the types of non-financial support, as it were assistance in the
preparation of the gTLD application.  So there is also -- I mean, for
some people who did not even have the linguistic -- we have to submit
applications in English.  And the applications have to be intelligible
and able to be dealt with in English.  And that may require a certain
amount of assistance in cases where there might not be available.

So we're looking for a certain amount of volunteer activity to be able
to help people, so facility people with the IPv6 compliance.

IPv6 is required for all registries, not necessarily everyone is going
to have it.  So there will need to be tunneling of various sorts to
allow people to meet those requirements.  That kind of help will need
to come from people who have IPv6 capability who can provide the
bandwidth and such.

Consulting and education requiring the DNSSEC.  Even among those of us
who are here and involved in this technical world, the implementation
of DNSSEC is not yet universal and certainly requires some aid.

While I'm at this, I would like to actually take one slight tangent.
One of the things that's not in this -- and, therefore, we don't have
a slide on it is waving any of the technical requirements.  We are not
recommending that.  There is one recommendation that sort of says,
perhaps, a DNSSEC requirement might be delayed for some new income,
for some new registry.  But there is certainly no waiving of any
technical requirements, including the v6, though there were certainly
a split opinion within the group of whether that was, you know,
something that we could request deferral of.  The decision of the
group was no.  Whether it was a political decision or a technical
decision in ICANN, that everybody had to do v6.  It was accepted.  It
was something that was not asked to be deferred against.  So I just
wanted to take that tangent to say -- because I've been in a lot of
rooms where people have said we are against waiving the technical
requirements.  As I said, except for perhaps a temporal deferral for a
bit of time on the DNSSEC implementation, there is no requested
waiving of any technical requirement.

So outreach on educational efforts, logistical translation, technical
support.  And we're asking -- Again a question has come up:  Are you
asking ICANN to do these things?  No, we're not.  What we're asking
ICANN do as the centrally placed organization is to serve as sort of a
matchmaker, bring them together, make it possible for the person who
is willing to offer aid to be able to know who needs the aid.  And
ICANN has already started doing that.  It was one of the earliest
requests we had, so that's already being worked on.  But it is still
part of the recommendations of the group.

The eligibility requirements is, basically, has to include the notion
of specific service to the public interest and both a level of
financial need and financial capability.  So we're not just sort of
saying that you get aid.  You have to show that you have a business
plan, you have got to show that you have some financial capability to
be able to do anything, but we're also making an assumption that the
financial capability that is reasonable in a development area isn't
necessarily the same financial capability that is reasonable at Marina
del Rey or in any of the developed area, that there's a difference in
that.  And that's what we are looking to help with, is adjusting to
that differential.

Various criteria should be disqualifying.  We've already talked about
that.

One of the issues that came up and one of the sort of difficult ones
is the prohibition against aid for a dot brand.  But then it was
brought up that in many cases a NGO, a community, a culture may have
actually used the trademark system to protect its name or its language
or the name of the NGO.

And so it's not that having a trademark is a barrier.  If you happen
to meet all the other requirements of being a NGO or being a cultural
applicant and happened to have a trademark that is associated with
your name, that's not, per se, a disqualification.  So that's really
the fine line that we're trying to cut there.  And since we have a
board, a group that would be reviewing these applications, that's a
guideline that they would have to work in.

So all candidates would be required to, first of all, provide a self-
declaration saying we need this.  But they would have to back that up.
They would need to give annual reports or equivalent, again looking at
the cross-cultural aspect of this, not every group from every country
would have the same level of financial report.  So its financial
report or equivalent banking statements, whatever it is that is
appropriate to the community and culture from which the application is
happening.

Evidence of previously funded projects showing degree of success in
meeting the goals of the project, this was a requirement that's put in
to sort of say you can't just be a self-forming group that's decided
we want to do something, gTLD, what a cool idea, let's apply.  You are
expected to be an established community, an established NGO, an
established something that has shown that you can take funds, you can
use them properly, you can account for them properly and have you got
somebody whether it is World Bank or some other funder who can say,
"Yes, this is a candidate who has received money before and has done
what they said they would do with it."  So the financial reports,
letters of reference regarding the ability to form a sustainable --
and any documentation supporting the qualifications of the applicant
would be things that they would be requested.

A support evaluation process.  Once again, we've added yet more
acronyms to the list.  We're good ICANN citizens and such.  We believe
this process should take place before the gTLD application review.  So
during -- before applications start, if we can get started, we would
like to.  But certainly even during the application period, matching
as closely as possible the requirements of the application period.

Each application would be reviewed by a panel.  We think this panel
needs to be composed of both people inside who understand the process,
who understand how to game.  It has been very important to us that we
have some of our master gamers on this panel, people who can as soon
as a whiff of gaming is present can sense it and can point it out.
And, obviously, they would not be applicants.

[ Laughter ]

When the review panel rejects a candidate -- a support candidate, it
should explain its reasons.  This is part of the whole new general
philosophy in ICANN, if you make a decision positive or negative, you
should be able to explain it.

And, of course, this should not bar the candidate from applying if
ICANN rejects them for help but then all of a sudden they can find
another funder, the World Bank, it doesn't disqualify you from finding
another source of help if you can't.  So it wasn't that you applied
for aid, you didn't get aid, your application can't go forward.  We
didn't feel that was a decision we could make.

We would imagine that anybody doing this would probably apply from aid
from any source they could find.  And we're asking that the ICANN
staff help and produce a support candidate guide that explained how
the support program worked to match the excellent application
guidebook that they have produced for all.

This I'm not going to talk through.  But, basically, this is
describing the process and going through.  So the next steps is for
all of you to -- You have to have the picture, come on.  And,
basically, we are asking for the board to consider this.  We've asking
for the staff to start doing an implementation on it.  There is a
public comment at the moment which closes on 16 December.

And we're certainly remaining all available, and I'm volunteering for
all of us, myself included, we are all available to do anything that
anybody needs to help clarify, to work on stuff, to work with staff,
et cetera.

And that's where you find more information.  And then I thank you.
And then questions.

[ Applause ]

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you, Avri.  Yes, Steve?  Can we have a
microphone over here.

Yes, while we wait for the microphone, I just want to let you know
that the report is published and it's available for public comment
until December 16th.  So we would love for you to take a good look at
the report and make your comments online.  Thank you.

>>STEVE CROCKER:  So, first of all, bravo, congratulations.  This is a
weighty and very substantive piece of work.  It is quite evident that
you all have put an enormous amount of energy into it, very
thoughtful.  And it resonates and strikes some very positive cords.
And so I'm generally very impressed.

So that said, we get into some of the more interesting aspects.

There has already been quite a bit of discussion, and I know that some
of my colleagues on the board and in the ICANN staff tend to focus on
the impact of such a program might have on the financial health of
ICANN.  I want to set that entirely aside and focus instead on the
viability of the program from the candidates and potential applicants'
point of view.

We're talking about -- the thing that glitters the most, that catches
the attention, is the $185,000 application fee, the potential for
reducing that to your recommendation of 47,000.  And those numbers are
the ones that catch the headlines that everybody talks about.

What we all understand is that the cost of running a new gTLD is
substantially greater than that, that the application fee, whether it
is 185,000 or 47,000, in the overall scheme of things is but a small
fraction.

Further -- and you do make pretty clear references, but I want to
drill down a bit.  There is the usual sharp distinction between what
in the investment lingo is called capex versus opex, the upfront
capital investment costs versus the ongoing operational costs.

One of the things I focus on rather quickly in thinking about all of
this is:  Are we facing the prospect of creating problems -- sort of a
nightmare scenario is supporting a lot of candidates.  They go into
business and they fail and they fail at a much greater rate than the
unsupported applicants.  Then we would have created a problem that we
will regret, I think, greatly and it will not be to the benefit of any
of us.  It won't be to the benefit of ICANN, but much more
importantly, it won't be to the benefit of the applicants, and it
won't be to the benefit of the Internet community as a whole and most
particularly won't be to the benefit of the portions of the Internet
community that we are trying to be supportive of.

So that to me is focus Number 1:  Will this be effective, and how do
we shape this so that it is effective or at least has the best
opportunity and we avoid some of the obvious mistakes?

In all of the statements that you've made today about financing and
about analysis and so forth, I listened as carefully as I could and
sort of parsed the statements with respect to that.

There's a lot more detail in why the fee should be reduced to a
certain amount, where those funds could be repaid back to ICANN and
what the impact would be on ICANN and so forth.  Relatively little
detailed understanding or presentation -- perhaps there is a great
deal more understanding -- on the ongoing operational costs and on the
financial health.  So that, to me, would be absolutely concern number
one.  So in looking at potential candidates and making those
decisions, a viable business plan that at least has the reasonable
prospect for success, even if you reduced all the upfront costs to
zero, which is not going to happen, would be the first thing to look
at and then backing that up into what the investment profile is and
where else the funds are coming from.  That's the main thing I wanted
to emphasize.

A handful -- and I will be quite brief here -- of other points.  On
the business of IPv6 or DNSSEC and what those costs are, we actually
considered the same kind of questions upfront in structuring the new
gTLD process a few years ago.  And the idea of deferring -- in other
words, a very specific discussion, the idea of deferring DNSSEC
requirements was proposed and instantly there was response not from
the security oriented folks but from the people who have deep
understanding of the operational costs, registry operators, in other
words, saying this makes no sense.  It costs much more to do it wrong
the first time and then come it back and do it right the second time
rather than to do it right just up front.  It was almost an
instinctive reaction.

And I completely concur with that.  So I think it's understandable
from a distance that these things might seem like there were
additional costs and we don't know what they are.  I understand also
we don't have the expertise, in other words, it is not quite available
and so forth, all of that is very reasonable.  That I would say, set
the requirements to say get it done and it will be much, much better,
don't even waste the time talking about that.  That's just a small
point there.

With respect to the proceeds of the enormous amounts of money that are
going to magically appear from the auction process, two very strong
comments.  First of all, I tend to be on the very conservative side of
that.  We'll have to wait and see what there is.  The gTLD program has
been structured in a way that discourages and tends to veer away from
creating those kinds of windfall funds.  The contentious applicants
are encouraged to work it out for themselves.  And so the auction is
provided as a last resort.  If it happens, it happens, that's fine.

Equally, if we get great surpluses from huge numbers of applications
so that we exceed our financial estimates, that's fine.  But it's a
long way from certain.

Second, as a matter of policy, we agree that such surpluses will not
just be thrown into the ICANN coffer.  They will be accounted for.
They will be segregated.  They will be dealt with.  And that process
will be a separate, open, public, fully consultative process.  That
also implies that there will be no automatic allocation of those funds
back to gTLDs for whatever purpose, that they may well be included as
one of the possibilities, but there are many other worthy things to
do, and we have not had that discussion.

So I don't want an assumption to be taken broadly that, well, there is
going to be all this money and, therefore, it should go back into the
gTLD program.  I think that's a discussion yet to be had.

I have -- with respect to the foundation idea, I think that's a great
idea.  You have to think through how much work that's going to be,
think about how much work you all have put in to getting to the point
of saying, "Well, these are the things we want."  The translation of
that into action is also fairly heavy weight.

The board itself has no capability for making anything happen, I'm sad
to say, having sat on the board for a long time.  We give -- we pass
messages around.  We listen carefully.  We make some decisions that
are policy decisions with respect to the corporate operation of ICANN.
And we delegate outward and downward action.

There's going to have to be some act of magic.  Some people are going
to have to appear on the scene and form a foundation, take that
action.  It is not going to happen magically.  And it is not going to
happen, I'm afraid to say, by having the board simply direct staff "go
make it happen."  At least not in any time frame that's consistent
with what you are thinking about.  These things take a while that have
complexities.  Particularly if you are going to add "well, before we
do that, let's consider the domicile and let's consider the legal
issues."  Anybody can go -- in the U.S. can go whip up a new
corporation overnight.  You can fill out Corporation for Dummies forms
or whatever.  But there is more to it in this situation that we are
talking about.

And let me end with a question that you may have some sense about and
maybe you will want to share.  Do you have a sense of how many
successful candidates you are expecting or have in mind?  Are we
talking about -- I'll put sharp numbers on the table.  The breakeven
analysis for the gTLD program is geared at 500 applications.  Are you
intending or do you expect that there will be an equal number of
supported candidates?  1/10th?  20%?  Twice as many?  So forth.

The quantification of that would be helpful in terms of framing this
and getting focus of attention.  It doesn't take away from the
analysis required of each individual candidate as to whether they're
viable.  But it does help in shaping the overall effort necessary to
provide support and move this forward.  Thank you very much.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you very much, Steve, for that question.  We
figure out we have about five questions out of that.  The first one
concerning the operational costs, Alan would take that one.  Avri will
talk -- Avri will talk about the operating costs.  Alan will talk
about DNSSEC.  And we will also talk about the foundation issue.  We
also will address the issue about the amount of expectation for
support candidates from the breakeven number.

Avri?

>>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  I will give some very quick answers.  I
think on the viability of the business, the operation, the opex versus
capex, I think our point here was that a regular business plan is
required both for the application for support and still for the
application.  At no point is there a request that they not have a
viable business plan, that that be waived as part of the application
process that every application needs.

So all of those considerations need to be dealt with as any applicant
needs to deal with them.

Now, obviously, they may have different things inside them saying how
they will deal with it.  But there's nothing in what we've said to
waive that at all.

In terms of the auction -- and I will just quickly go through a
couple, and other people will add -- we knew and as we had gotten
comments, I think our first milestone report had said auction monies
to new gTLDs.  That raised a lot of questions to put it mildly.  And
that's one of the reasons why we've said -- we've sort of pushed that
off to further considerations saying we want to be one of those
considerations for auction.  I think we're more optimistic perhaps
than you are that there will be or perhaps pessimistic -- I don't know
whether it is the case -- that there will be auction monies.  From
everything I have heard, it is not all going to happen through under-
the-table deals where one guy buys out another.  Some of them are
going to end up in auctions.  But whether that's pessimism or
optimism, I don't know.

The last thing I'm going to comment on is the number of -- two other
things.  We weren't planning to ask the staff to go off and start a
foundation.  We were asking the staff to work with a dedicated group
of volunteers.  The optimism on my part says that look at all these
review teams we've got.  We look at all the others.  We can find the
people.  I think I have been telling Chris he could easily find the
number of people to lock in a room for a couple weeks and say "do it"
and they would get a lot of this done.

So, you know, lock a bunch of people in a room and tell them to get it
done and it will get done.  Maybe I'm an optimist, or a masochist, I
don't know.

Finally, on the number of successful candidates, we tended to see it
as a goal.  We tended to see it that we have to set a goal of how many
we think there should be.  And we looked at things in terms of the 10
to 20% maximum.  More likely the 10%.  We thought if we got 10% of 500
applicants, that would be amazing.  So that was kind of our view.  But
we weren't setting a -- we knew how many.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Alan, go ahead.  DNSSEC.

>>ALAN GREENBERG:  I will make a couple of comments to elaborate on a
some of the things Avri said and then go on to DNSSEC also.

In terms of the failure rate, I think I tried to make it clear that
we're looking for a group of hard-nosed people making these decisions.
We prefer to reject people than accept them just to keep those kind of
numbers reasonable.

In terms of foundation, I think Avri made clear, all we were asking
for is to investigate.  We had no illusions that you were going to
create it in the next three months.  But let's start understanding
what is involved in terms of that.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Yes.

>>ALAN GREENBERG:  DNSSEC.

This was a working group.  If you remember, when the GNSO was
reformed, the board instructed the GNSO to use the working group
model.  Well, the working group model has some benefits over previous
models.  It has some problems, too.

It brings very vocal, very interested people with very strong opinions
together, and you cannot necessarily end up with a single idea.  There
were some people in the group who felt very strongly that DNSSEC
should be deferred or deferable, others who felt exactly the way Steve
described the thing.

We presented what we had to in the report to get the report out.

Understand it was a divided group on some of these issues and there
was not uniformity.

The only issue that we did make a very strong statement on is:  Find a
way that people who physically do not have IPv6 in their country can
provide -- can meet the requirements in the applicant guidebook.  That
one, we felt strongly on, because there are countries where it is
essentially not available.

In terms of the number of successful applicants, my number is 10.  If
we reach 20, I think we've made a mistake somewhere along the way.

>> (Speaker is off microphone.)

>>ALAN GREENBURG: Percent, percent.  Sorry.  And since we don't know
what the -- what the multiplier is, we don't know what the absolute
number is, but that's the kind of target, and if we have to assign --
for financial reasons, if we have to assign an absolute physical
target, we can come up with a number, but, you know...

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you, Alan.

Two small things.  The question was -- that Avri mentioned in her
presentation -- that we were looking that the people we expect to
apply would be people who were experienced and so on.  We want to make
one small clarification.

The persons involved might be experienced, but it might be a new
single-purpose vehicle that is put together for this enterprise.
That's understood.

The other issue is the DNSSEC.  Again, that's one of the areas we
think that practitioners with experience would certainly be helpful in
getting over that hurdle for new applicants.

>>STEVE CROCKER:  (Speaker is off microphone.)

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you.  Yes, Karla.

>>KARLA VALENTE:  Yes, this is Karla Valente from ICANN staff and I'm
acting as remote participation manager for this session, and we have
about 29 remote participants, including Rafik Dammak, who is the co-
chair of this session, and he asked me to thank everybody here for
participating and encourages everybody to support that effort, not
only here during the Dakar meeting but also through our public comment
that ends on December 16th.

We have one question.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you, Rafik.

>>KARLA VALENTE:  Yes.  We have one question from Joly MacFie.  Will
eligible applicants include those looking for IDNs and variants?

The second question comes from Faisal Hasan, and it's about the new
gTLD communications and outreach program.

Is there any plan to organize sessions to promote and inform the
application rules for business communities in developing countries?
Is there any way ISOC chapters can help in this program?  Thank you.

>>ANDREW MACK:  Let me see if I can jump in on a couple of those.

In terms of the outreach program, we actually had a nice conversation
about this yesterday in the ALAC meeting, and we recognize that a lot
of outreach is necessary and not nearly enough has been done
especially focused on communities in the southern hemisphere, and so
we know that there is not nearly the level of sensitization about
this.

We think it's extremely important.  It kind of goes to this question
of whether the budget that we have currently to work with is enough,
and clearly there's an awful lot of potential uses for that $2
million, and so whether we work through a foundation or in what other
way, we clearly need to raise that amount so that we can get the word
out.

It also suggests that we need to work with groups like the
international business community and others who have the ability to
reach out into emerging markets to make sure that the -- that these
audiences really understand what's going on and see themselves in this
program.

In terms of the work on IDNs, this has been a significant topic of
discussion over a significant period of time.  We recognize that there
can be no real success in this program without some focus on IDNs, and
in whatever way that we can to try to incentivize the build-out and
the focus on new IDNs as part of this process, that's definitely
something that we as a group feel is important.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you, Andrew.

>>STEVE DelBIANCO: Thank you.  Steve DelBianco with the business
constituency.

First, congratulations.  You guys have accomplished amazing things in
a short period of time, but I wanted to explain why the business
constituency council abstain from supporting the report.

We didn't vote no but we abstained and I'll just explain quickly why.
We don't have very much time.

But the BC is completely focused on business users and registrants and
assuring they have a stable and secure DNS with lots of availability
and integrity in a global environment.

But when we looked at the focus of what JAS went after, it was so much
more directed at applicants and less focused on end users and
registrants, particularly from the business community.

Let me see if I can explain how that may come at the expense of the
business community.

We've already covered the notion of DNSSEC deferral, and I think that
you've heard the input on that, because the BC was opposed to any
lowering of the bar for technical, or for continuity of operations.

And Alan mentioned that continuity of operations may not be such a big
deal for maybe one of these applicants because they're not looking to
sell the TLD.  Maybe they just want to shut it down.

Maybe, Alan.  But maybe, just as true, several thousand registrants
plunk down money to buy a domain name, change their T-shirts, business
cards, and logos, paint it on the side of their trucks, and embark on
a whole branding exercise to use a new TLD from an applicant you
supported.

Continuity of operations for the purposes of the applicants and --
applicants is one concern, but it's the registrants and users we'd
like to see more focus on.

And the second reason is that we really feel like this program will
only be successful, as Andrew Mack said, if we really do roll out TLDs
to underserved linguistic communities, underserved languages and
scripts.

And I know Alan mentioned it as the second bullet on the criteria
slide, but I would love to have seen that rise to the top, because how
can we miss the opportunity of creating incentives so that applicants
for new TLDs, whether they need money or not, will be encouraged to
build out their script in multiple languages, particularly those that
are underserved.  And I don't want that to come at the expense of the
funds that Avri described.  It shouldn't be money that's charity.
We're just suggesting, recommending that staff and the board discount
applicants who put in multiple strings in different versions, and in
such a way that the staff doesn't have to spend extra money evaluating
the applicant, so if there's any cost savings for an applicant with
four strings, let the applicant reap the cost savings as an incentive
to build out more strings.  Thank you.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Alan, you want to respond directly?

>>ALAN GREENBERG:  Yeah.  Two very, very quick responses.

In terms of shutting down the domain if it fails versus keeping it
alive, my preference -- and I thought I made that clear -- was the
absolute minimum amount that the applicant should be required to
provide is enough to keep it alive.

Keeping domains in the zone -- in the root zone is not an expensive
process if you're not trying to get new ones at the same time and
things like that.

Now, some people said, "Well, maybe we want to shut it down."  And
fine.  If you want to, we'll allow you to.  But that wasn't the real
target.  It was making sure that the registrants are not
disenfranchised because someone had a bad business plan.  And that --
again, this is a working group and what comes out of it is the merger,
not what everyone wants to see, and I think the same can be said in
terms of the order in which IDN was put in.

And on bundling, we probably spent more talk on bundling scripts and
languages than on any other subject.  We could not come to closure on
it.  So be it.

>>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR:  If I may, Sharil Langdon-Orr for the transcript
record.

We also note that the GNSO was very firm on the matter of bundling and
I didn't think the working group was in a position to overturn a
previous ruling from a support organization.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you, Cheryl.  Next question.

>>MOUHAMET DIOP: Okay.  Thank you, Chair.  My name is Mouhamet.  I'm
from Senegal.  Welcome in that country for the ICANN meeting.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you.

>>MOUHAMET DIOP: I just want to echo first that this is one of the
greatest initiatives I have seen involving so many people trying to
address one issue regarding the developing countries.  So for that, I
just want to say thank you to ICANN and thank you to all the
volunteers who have worked on that.

But the issues that needs to be covered for that one, I mean, are so
huge that I can imagine that at that point we cannot fill all the
questions we get regarding the developing countries for the gTLD
space.

But I want to raise one point, because if we do an effort of
decreasing the application fee for developing countries, all these
initiatives are great, but let me ask you one question regarding:  If
we think from an economic perspective, an economic point of view, we
want these registrars -- I mean, these new gTLDs to be successful, to
get their market, to get their business running.  But if we look at
the value chain of the business domain name in Africa, let's say that,
for example, we are more than 900 million people, we don't have in the
continent more than five registrars.  It means if a new gTLD has been
accredited, gets his contract, he spends the money he spends on it,
and he wants his business to run, who is going to be his interface in
terms of doing the job unfilled, guaranteeing that people -- the
contract, the registrants, the end user -- will be protected, safe,
and deal with people who are contractors and who get something to --
responsibility.  I mean, the assigned for gTLD responsibility.  It
means that there's something broken and I haven't seen any
recommendation going to move all this effort you're doing by providing
the correct links on fill in the developing country to help the new
gTLDs get their business done in a proper way, and the registrant at
the end of the day being protected by dealing with the new gTLD.

So from the business perspective, we need to add a recommendation, and
I'm not saying that something will be done in the short term, because
we already discussed with April in Singapore that the time was too
short to address it, but in fact if you don't say anything as a
recommendation from the JAS, I'm really desperately thinking that
people are going to have their accreditation, they're going to launch
their new gTLD, but it's going to be a big mess.  If we look at the
market, what's going to happen locally.  Thank you.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you.  Andrew?

>>ANDREW MACK:  Mouhamet, as we said in Singapore and when you brought
up the point the first time, we agree.  This is a crucial development
issue over the long term, absolutely.

As you can imagine, we had so much on our plate in the short term,
trying to figure out just -- just what we've discussed so far, and a
very, very limited budget in terms of time and resource, so I think
that it was the group's strong opinion that you're absolutely right,
and it's the kind of thing that we should be building toward and yet
another reason why we need to increase the pool of resources and
mobilize the community that much more to address just this kind of
issue.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you.  Next question?

>>MARY WONG: My name is Mary Wong, and as a councillor for the
noncommercial users constituency, NCUC at ICANN, I'd like to read a
statement.  Ooh, sorry.  The vertically challenged person with the
vertically challenged mic.

Thank you, Sebastien.

We would be submitting this into the public comment forum, and it has
also been sent to the board.

One difference from the version sent to the board is that we have
since been joined by individual colleagues from the new nonprofit
operational concerns constituency, and we are hopeful that as we get
more sign-ons, that this will become a full NCSG comment and not just
a NCUC comment.

The NCUC wishes to congratulate the JAS working group on the
recommendations it has made to enable the new gTLD program to become
one that gives a fair chance to the developing world.

As the NCUC, we have been arguing for policies in support of fairness
since the time when the new gTLD policy was first discussed in the
GNSO.

We have continued this by being active participants in the JAS working
group, including having one of our members as the co-chair.

We are heartened to see that this effort is also being championed by
the GAC and the ALAC, and want to once again lend our voice to the
call for fairness.

We encourage the board to approve all of the measures in the JAS
report and we wish here to single out a few that we believe need
immediate approval and implementation.

Without question, the fee reduction as recommended in the report,
where all qualified developing economy applicants will pay the reduced
fee of 47,000 U.S. dollars is necessary for the new program to be
considered fair.  Even 47,000 U.S. dollars may be a challenge, but we
understand the need for applicants to have some degree of financial
stake.  To require more would exclude them from a chance of making any
application at all in this round.

We accept the arguments in the JAS recommendations that this
recommendation is consistent with the GNSO policy recommendations and
we accept the proposals also of ways in which the reserve fund portion
of the collected fees and the expectation of auction funds may be used
to satisfy the requirements for self-funding application processes.

We also support the suggestion in the report that the continuity
instrument required be made more affordable.

Finally, we urge the board to accept the proposal in the JAS report
for a board organized working group to create an ICANN foundation.
Its first goal being to raise and distribute funds to assist
developing economies in meeting the other expenses or creating
registries to serve populations in the world's developing economies.

We appreciate the seed funds offered by the board and encourage those
who have financially benefitted already from the domain name industry
and from the involvement with ICANN to contribute generously to build
on this seed once the foundation is created.

In the meantime, NCUC encourages all who can to publicly pledge to
such a fund in anticipation of its creation.

Thank you for your time.

[ Applause ]

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you very much, Mary, and NCUC.

We are running out of time, so we will take the last two, and that's
it.

>>MATHIEU WEILL: Thank you.  My name is Mathieu Weill.  I'm the CEO of
AfNIC, the French ccTLD registry.

And first of all, I want to commend the work of the working group in a
very short time for addressing a critical issue, I think in an
extremely constructive and thorough manner, which was quite a
challenge.  And even if I have to mention the opposition or pushback
that the group has been facing.

So I think this is a particularly interesting outcome from the
multistakeholder model that we should commend, and I have a specific
word to say for the vice chair, Rafik, who is not here but I know has
been extremely active in that.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Yes.

>>MATHIEU WEILL: I want basically to provide support from one ccTLD.

As has been mentioned in the report, that some ccTLDs would be willing
to support, and I think it would be -- it was important to express
this support.

I think this comes at a time when -- where it is critical for ICANN to
demonstrate its commitment to the public interest, and this is a
critical opportunity to give the idea to the world that ICANN takes
into account the fact that why we have a global Internet.  It doesn't
mean it's one-size-fits-all.

So -- and we have a very short time left, so despite some concerns
that are valid, not -- I mean, the board will have to decide, taking
into account a number of risks, but they have to take this risk.  Not
everything can be absolutely certain, but I think the goal here is
higher than the risks.

And of course apart from this support, I mean AfNIC has been involved
in capacity building for -- ever since it was created in 1998, and we
will definitely increase our support for capacity building initiatives
next year.

We have a dedicated fund that has been running since 2008, and its
amount is going to be tripled next year, precisely to support new gTLD
applicants in the process.

So of course we would hope that this support -- this extra support
does not go into ICANN fees, but rather into supporting initiatives in
the emerging countries.  Thank you very much.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you very much for that.

[ Applause ]

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Next question.  We have Katim.  And the last one,
we have Katim Touray, from the board.

>>KATIM TOURAY:  Thank you very much.  I have no computer with me.  I
have no notes.  I am going to speak from the bottom of my heart.

I am incredibly proud of the work that's been done by the JAS working
group.  I had the fortune and the honor of joining two of your calls
-- I think one or two of them -- and I was just absolutely amazed at
the kind of work that you guys have been doing, that you guys were
doing.  And to imagine that you were doing this twice a week for the
past couple of months is really simply incredible.  We really can't
say -- years, I should say.  I beg your pardon.  So thank you so very
much.  I really, really appreciate it.  And the work is very important
for two main reasons, in my mind, at least.

One is that you helped the board actually operationalize the
commitment it made in Nairobi in March when it passed the resolution
that specifically called for an inclusive new gTLD program.  So you
really, as the Americans would say, are saving our butt, basically.  I
think that's a very important point.

But also important is the fact that you helped us achieve the
recommendation -- and a very important one at that -- of the ATRT.
That's the Accountability and Transparency Review Team.  They
specifically mentioned that ICANN should redouble its efforts to build
stronger relationships with the developing world, and I think that's a
very important issue, because I think that relationship is, in my mind
at least, something that is of importance to the existing -- important
to ICANN, because there is quite a lot of talk about what the
consequences of this type of dissatisfaction that exists in many
people in developing countries.  What are the consequences of that
dissatisfaction for ICANN as we move forward.

So that you are doing something that's going to really help appease
quite a lot of people -- and not just for appeasement's sake, but
because it's the right thing to do -- I think is very worthy of
commendation, and again, thank you very much.

I have one question, and that is in regards to the -- regarding the
issue of the $2 million that the board committed to in Singapore.
What I'd like to hear from you is:  What's your take between applying
those $2 million to -- as a cost deferral and applying it to something
else?  I think I would -- I would love to hear what your take on that
is.

And finally, let me just mention that some of you might recall that in
Singapore, we had a preparatory meeting on the proposed idea of having
an ICANN summit on developing countries.  We discussed this whole
matter in a more strategic sense and a 360-degree sense, and we are
going to have a follow-up meeting in Dakar here.  It's going to be on
Thursday from 12:30 noon till 2:00 p.m.  Check the schedule for the
proper room.  But it's going to be -- it's going to be done this
Thursday, and we're going to expand the discussion a little bit and
talk not only about the idea of the summit but see really what we can
do in terms of developing a framework for building a stronger
relationship between ICANN and the developing world.  Again, thank you
very much.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you, Katim.  Tijani.

>>TINJANI BEN JEMAA: Thank you, Carlton.

First of all, I want to say that the JAS program is not intended to
solve all problems of the new gTLDs.  I want to remind you that the
JAS working group was created as per the Resolution 20 adopted in
Nairobi, and the Resolution 20 spoke about applicants.  So we
addressed the applicants issue.

It was about support for applicants that need assistance in applying
for and operating new gTLDs.

That's why we didn't solve the problems of the registrars, the problem
of the bundling, et cetera.

Even if we all individually support the concept of the bundling, the
JAS working group is not -- hasn't the mission to speak about this
point.  That's why we encourage very well the IDN scripts and we put
it as one of the -- how to say -- favorable points to be supported,
but we cannot address the bundling issue, so thank you.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Alan, you want to say one thing more before I
close?

>>ALAN GREENBERG: Yeah.  Just one comment with relation to what we
were doing here and with relation to what Mouhamet Diop said.

I'm going to say something radical.  We could cancel the new gTLD
program altogether, immediately say it's gone, we're not doing
anymore, we have enough TLDs.  We still need to augment the number of
registrars in Africa and a whole bunch of other problems like that,
and, you know, whether that's an ICANN problem or a community problem
is moot.  That still has to be addressed.

The new gTLDs just exacerbate the problem.  Thank you.

>> Ladies and gentlemen, I'm terribly sorry to have to interrupt this
but we have another program starting immediately and we have quite a
busy morning.  If we can possibly close this session, I would greatly
appreciate it.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS:  Yes.  We are closing the session as we speak.  I
want to thank all of you for coming here.  I want to thank the staff,
especially, in supporting us through this entire process, Gisella,
Karla, Glen, Robb, Seth, and all of them.  Thanks to Kurt Pritz for
supporting us through this process.  They were really, really
supportive of this in putting human effort to get this done.  Thank
you all for coming.  Thank you all for your support, and we hope and
encourage you to make comments on the final report so that we can have
a better product.  Thank you all.  This meeting is ended.

[ Applause ]