GNSO Improvements. 25 June 2008. Paris, France >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. We've only got an hour here, so while people are filtering in and such, I'd like to start inviting people to come up to the microphone to -- even if all the councillors aren't here yet, the transcripts will be there. They'll be read. It will be discussed. And, oh, good, we've got some board members with us this time, too, so they'll be able to hear the comments. The main purpose of this session -- and it's really got two purposes -- it was originally scheduled for GNSO improvements discussion, and that can be either on the plans in front of the board, if people have things they want said and they want on the record and some board members will hear, but also comments on the GNSO improvements top-level plan that the planning team has put together and that will be going out to public comment probably today for action at a future council meeting. Probably our next meeting, though I don't know exactly when that is yet. So is there anyone who wants to start first at the microphone? Once the microphone is empty for too long, the meeting will be over even if it's before 2:00. Okay. I'm not seeing anyone at the microphone. I've got the statistics back up there that were an object of discussion from before. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I was afraid we would have no one. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yeah. Thanks. Well, I was thinking if the queue is -- was empty, that maybe the councillors can -- not to put them on the spot, but everybody had their own constituency meetings yesterday. Perhaps they could share with us what happened at their meetings, if there were conclusions, and maybe so the rest of us aren't surprised when they go up at the public forum to the board and make their statements, "Well, why not make some statements here and now when we could actually maybe comment on them before it even gets to the public forum." >>AVRI DORIA: Would you even be interested in NomCom people's, individuals, even though we didn't talk to anybody. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Absolutely, absolutely. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. I have no problem with that, and if council members and such want to take you up on that challenge, it's fine. Of course you could speak to one of the constituencies, I'm sure. >>JEFF NEUMAN: I'll save that. I think we've designated either -- I can't remember if it was Chuck or David to speak on our constituency's behalf. >>AVRI DORIA: You couldn't have done that to Chuck. That would have been cruel and inhuman. >>JEFF NEUMAN: This was before the voice started to go so... >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. I was going to say -- [Audio cutting in and out] >>CHUCK GOMES: -- do that frankly, for a couple reasons. I'd probably rather just do it once in the -- in the public forum because it's the board that has to act on this, and I don't know how -- if we have any board members here. Oh, yeah, we do. I think I saw one of them at least. Thanks, guys. >>AVRI DORIA: You know, two chances to convince them of the point of view. >>CHUCK GOMES: Yeah. If the constituency wants me to read the statement that I have prepared for the constituency, I'm okay with that. Again, my preference would be to do it during the public forum. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thanks. At the microphone. >>DAVID MAHER: As the chair of the registry constituency, I'll allow Chuck to save his voice. We want his voice to be strong for the board. I would like to address a -- the council with a couple of points that, like Milton, I was there at the beginning of the GNSO, the DNSO, and the concept which I think is sometimes lost track of is that this is a bottom-up consensus-building group. That's explicitly stated in the ICANN Web site, and the question of voting to me is an important one. I -- as Chuck pointed out, there -- the proposal for restructuring still includes voting, but to turn voting into a way for the various interest groups to enforce their views on policy, I think, is a big mistake. It's the antithesis of consensus building with a bottom-up input from the affected parties. And I hope that the existing balance that is now a weighted voting, which I don't think is necessary but it would be preserved if you have contracted parties and non-contracted parties, is the way to go. Another issue that I think should be mentioned is that one of the arguments I've heard is that regulatory bodies always vote, but ICANN is not a regulatory body. It never was. It is not. And it shouldn't be. I've had vast experience with regulatory bodies in the United States government, in particular the Federal Communications Commission. Regulatory bodies always wind up in court, and the last thing in the world that ICANN needs is more lawsuits. And one way to avoid having lawsuits is to build consensus. We really need to find the best procedure to do that, and voting is not the answer. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Any comments from here? Anyone else at the mic? >>MARILYN CADE: My name is Marilyn Cade, and I actually want to make a comment and ask the council a question. I'm not suggesting you respond to the question, by the way. I just want to ask a question for all of us in the audience and for you. You know, listening to all of us talk, I think I can find an area of commonality, regardless of the position on restructuring or anything else. The one area of commonality that I do think I discern is an interest in making more informed policies. The question may be what constitutes "informed" and we may differ on that, but the question I want to ask all of you, since the GNSO improvements -- at the time of the council self-evaluation and report, there was a significant focus on improvements on process, PDP, et cetera. The Patrick Sharry evaluation reinforced and restated and expanded a focus on some changes in that area. The London School of Economics report had a focus -- a significant focus on improvements in that area. So my question for all of us is: In that aspect of the work, which we used to call low-hanging. I'm not suggesting it's not controversial, but... In that aspect of the work, do we feel like we have enough understanding of the kinds of support it's going to take to support the community in making more informed policy? And by that, I mean there's been a discussion supported by the GAC and elsewhere about starting policy development processes with informed, neutral white papers that are not only well-written but involve economic analysis and are written in a neutral way before we get to the stage of turning to the parties within the constituencies or the council. And I'll just go back to my question. If there -- just thinking about making informed policy -- because I think that's -- I kind of thought that was consistent with the point David was making -- do we have a good enough grasp ourselves on the kinds of resources that are needed? This is not a delaying tactic. That is the kind of question that you could ask because we're still finalizing the budget, that is the kind of support you could ask for in the current budget. >>AVRI DORIA: I'll ask other people's answer. My first answer to that was: That was part of the work that I thought that the standing committees were going to sort of initiate within, you know -- you know, that the groups that were working on this stuff were going to start with figuring some of those questions and answers out. So I'd be really surprised if anyone had the answer today, but maybe someone does, but I figured that was part of the process that we were planning to start, once we knew what the decision were, or what the low-hanging contentious non- is. You know, so does anyone want to tackle that question at the moment or are we just killing time now because we really don't have people that want to make comments? Yes, Tim. >>TIM RUIZ: Yeah. I don't know about responding to that particular question, but I would like to respond to Jeff's request. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. >>TIM RUIZ: The registrars constituency hasn't changed its position. It issued a statement in support of the Board Governance Committee's recommendations as they stand, and that has not changed today. And I think that, you know, some concern has been expressed over if those recommendations aren't approved at the board meeting this week, that at the very least, some amount of time is given for public input and comment on any other recommendations that are going to be considered by the board. So that's the position that the registrars have taken on the point. I think my own point, and one that I made earlier today in the council meeting prior to this, was simply that a request that as much effort is put into the -- redefining and improving the policy development process that has been put into the fight over votes over the last few days. Again, the GNSO Council, the goal has been that it's not to be a legislative body, it's to be a management body, to manage the work of policy development processes. If that's the case, then much less focus should be put on who gets what votes and much more attention on how we're going to modify and improve the policy development process. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. No microphone. Anyone at the -- >>MILTON MUELLER: I have one. >>AVRI DORIA: Oh, okay. Milton. Milton at the microphone. >>MILTON MUELLER: Just a quick response to Tim. So if we shouldn't worry so much about votes, does that mean that you're willing to accept the joint users proposal for the new division of the council? >>TIM RUIZ: The registrars support the Board Governance Committee's proposal, or recommendations, as they stand. >>MILTON MUELLER: I know that you do, but we shouldn't be quibbling about the votes, right? So maybe if they voted for the joint users committee, you -- you'd support that? >>TIM RUIZ: I can't say that. If there's going to be a change in the recommendations made by the Board Governance Committee, then they should go through a similar process of review and opportunity for comment by the community that the committee's recommendations did in the beginning. >>MILTON MUELLER: So then we would be spending another few months quibbling about votes, wouldn't we. >>TIM RUIZ: That's the choice of those who are quibbling about the votes. >>MILTON MUELLER: Well, it seems like it's your choice too. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Yeah. Okay. >>CHUCK GOMES: Can I respond to that as well? >>AVRI DORIA: Certainly. >>CHUCK GOMES: In the case of the registries, I can tell you, Milton, we would not support the 666, but if we were, as a community, to come up with some compromise that met a good percentage of the needs, we would consider that, but like Tim said, if there are changes made, it's reasonable -- and I wouldn't mind if the board put something like that on the table, but we would need time, then, to consider that, all of us. Not just us. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Well, in the silence, I guess I'll speak a NomCom personal opinion on -- a personal person's. Not a NomCom's; just an appointee's view on it. First of all, in terms of whether it's votes or not votes, there will be discussions, there will be deciding on chairs, there will be deciding on agendas, working group charters, any amount of work. So -- and everyone has pretty much acknowledged that there will also be votes. So, you know, we're not going to do away with votes completely. We're going to elect chairs, we're going to, you know, do various things that will always require votes and I think everyone has sort of admitted that. As a personal view, I've always sort of liked the notion of parity that I've seen between -- in the original formulations of the contracted parties and the others with the NomCom having it. So I've actually -- and especially, you know, something that has been made, I don't know, very clear to me that there's sort of this picket fence imperative that if you're going to be able to change the conditions of somebody's contract, that those people should have, by and large, an equal voice other than perhaps the tie-breakers, to do that. Now, I would like to ask the business constituency on occasion -- and I've asked many of the individuals in the business constituency -- how would you feel about a contract where your client could reach into the contract anytime they wanted to and, whether it's the 555 or the 66 vote, there would not be a way for them to counter that? So basically, reach into a contract anytime they wanted and change the conditions without you being able to negotiate it back? And so to me, I try to look at things personally from a parity point of view, and in this case, the parity between the contracted parties and those of us, whether we be registrants and such, in terms of I've also heard on the issue of should commercial or noncommercials be somehow unbalanced. Again, I apply the parity which says that if you look at the world, both of them are indefinitely large in terms of the numbers of commercial users versus the number of noncommercial users, so it doesn't seem reasonable to me that one would break the parity in that dimension either. So I actually think that the committee did a very reasonable job in the recommendation they came up with. As I say, that's just the personal point of view of someone that doesn't have a vote in the matter. Yes. >>TONY HOLMES: Just a clarification on something you said. You actually believe that the council has the ability to break in and change contracts that easily, do you? >>AVRI DORIA: I believe that the consensus policy within the picket fence is, indeed, a modification of contractual conditions. >>TONY HOLMES: Just a comment on that. I sat in a number of GNSO meetings across the past few days and have been told explicitly by both parties you can't change contracts anyway. >>AVRI DORIA: There's changing the contracts and there's changing the issues that are within the picket fence. You want to comment -- oh, Philip. >>CHUCK GOMES: Can I respond there. >>AVRI DORIA: I think I had Philip and then... and I'll go back to being chair and not voicing my opinions anymore. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Thank you, Avri. I think just to respond to the points you raise in terms of contract change, I mean, let's just be clear. The existing system, subject to a supermajority -- and that may have relevance depending on voting numbers -- binds the board, unless they choose to send it back under certain circumstances, to accepting that consensus policy. There is therein a pretty elaborate process involving bilateral negotiation for that consensus policy to be, if appropriate, transferred into contract, so that continued relationship exists and that whole bilateral process exists. So there is no automatic delving into change, I think, in the way that you described. There's quite a lot of process involved in doing that. One of the things I find slightly curious also about that argument is that we're not talking about competing players in the same marketplace who may have some unreasonable ability to interfere with each other's contracts for competitive needs. What we're talking about is the plurality of users who are saying, "We would like a certain say in the way that our suppliers react to certain circumstances and concerns we have, typically related to making the Internet a safe place for business to occur and a safe place for communication to occur." And it's reasonable as simple as that. And I think all of us -- certainly all the people I know who have been involved in the ICANN process to date and the users community are rational enough to never want to impose upon our own suppliers such unreasonable and egregious conditions that they would find burdensome to apply and then wait a few months, if they were forced into applying them, and they failed in their bilateral contracts -- contacts in so doing, that we as users then got the bills for. We're not that daft and I hope that nobody would be that daft. What we are saying is that where we've seen circumstances that rational, short-term views of suppliers have said, "I understand the problem out there but my bottom line, my shareholders, et cetera, saying I'd rather not do the investment, actually, and if the ICANN process and voting structure, whatever, allows me not to do that extra little bit of investment, then that's good for me and I'll keep on arguing it," as opposed to the greater good in saying, "Well, actually, we believe this is some harm that can be prevented by some contract change, and we'd just like the ability to be able to influence that." And that is, all the requests that we've made and that were manifested in the joint users proposal. It is not the ideal proposal. I'd be delighted to hear back from the board for a counterproposal as to how that philosophy of system could work better. If it's a question of saying, "Well, maybe we would accept something looking like that, but we got to talk about the concept of supermajority and binding, et cetera," great, let's have that discussion. Let's have that talk about changing some of the other parameters. There's no reason to assume that any parts of the existing model which was reformed in 2003 and has proven to have many issues to it, there's no reason to suppose that is perfect in any of its manifestations, any of its implications, any more so than the starting model was. What we're trying to look for is improvement that works towards the problems that we see today. They were in the problems we saw in 1999. They were in the problems of 2003. They are the problems of today. And that's our objective. If the strategy was wrong with the joint users proposal, fine. We welcome a dialogue, huh? But a bilateral, well, we may do this, we may do that, okay, we've got two proposals before us, none of them are very good, we're going to go for a vote tomorrow," would be a disastrous and shortsighted view by the board. I think our hope is that if the board is not ready to accept our proposal, if there's still more thought needed in terms of analyzing some of the data we've seen, in terms of dialogue on some of these strategies, in terms of picking up some of the very interesting discussion that took place last night in the business outreach meetings with International Chamber of Commerce, Board of Whole Numbers senior people, and there was a very good discussion last evening between them and the board, and they presented a whole series of issues and concerns that business had from these players who have been Internet savvy but ICANN absent up to now, and it was interesting to see the discussion there on the board was the board was in a very listening mode and not in a very talkative mode, and I think that is part of the frustration we see also. Very often, the board seems to be listening and not in good dialogue with us in terms of "I like that idea but here are the issues. Maybe we can move like this. Maybe we could do that." A much more -- slightly perhaps more -- more amorphous dialogue would be more useful than the more sort of a binary, you know, one option or the other, let's do that, et cetera, would be very useful. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. I've got Chuck and Tim and Ute. And Robin. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you, Avri. Wow, that's the strongest it's been. My voice, that is. Let me go backwards here and respond to something that Philip said, and then to what -- something that Tony said. I think I would certainly be comfortable with talking about the parameters that you're -- the other parameters. And I perfectly respect that that's a reasonable thing to do. I would point out in that regard, though, that even if we went, for example, to a two-thirds to pass a consensus policy -- which doesn't actually bother me a lot, except for with regard to the 666 proposal because you've got two-thirds of the users, so that's a problem. Now, back to the contract change, whether it's required on a consensus policy, as you know I'm not an attorney but I think you're right that it doesn't require a contract change, but it is an add-on to what we as registries and registrars have to do that we didn't sign up to up front. Now, I think I'm pretty accurate in saying that nobody at this table, if you were operating your business or the businesses you're a part of, or if you were an attorney representing a client, that you would recommend that you enter into a contract that you don't know what's going to be imposed upon you. That is the big concern, okay? We have a very unique situation in this that I don't think there's a parallel, and that is our concern. So I think, again, back to discussing other parameters or other ways we can deal with this, but that's why we're so firm on that balance with regard to contracted and non-contracted, because it puts us in a very vulnerable situation. We're not asking for an edge. We're not asking for the ability to block or veto. And I don't think that any proposal has that there. And so that's just to clarify on that. Okay? >>AVRI DORIA: I just want to make sure. You're at the line there? Okay. So I'll take Tim, and then the line and then I'll come back to Ute and Robin. So Tim? >>TIM RUIZ: You know, the idea -- and maybe I misunderstood but it seemed like there's some indication that maybe if the board should decide to accept the Board Governance Committee's recommendations on Thursday, that it's somehow a shoulder shrug. You know, that work took a long period of time to do, was well thought out, it's very well done, and although there's a lot of arguments about, you know, problems with the voting structure and all this stuff over a period of time, the report that was released this morning by Denise Michel on the correlation between constituencies voting just doesn't seem to bear out the things that I've heard. In fact, it seems to be a pretty even split across the board, with the exception of perhaps the BCISPC and IPC constituencies and then as Jeff brought out earlier, between the registries and the NCUC. But for the most part, it seems to be a pretty fair split across, as far as how the votes have gone. So I just don't see -- I haven't heard any arguments or seen any evidence as to why we would take the Board Governance Committee's hard work over a long period of time, throw it out and say, "Let's start over and do something different." I think the improvements need to be done. This is a good place to start. Review can occur down the road in the future, but there's just no reason to throw out all that hard work and start over. >>MICHAEL YOUNG: Michael Young with Afilias, but I'm speaking as an individual in this case. I'd just like to reinforce what Chuck was getting at with the issues around suppliers and open-ended contracts. I think it's really important to note that I personally believe that no one will -- and going back to Philip's statements, that no one's actually going to try to impose something upon a supplier that's to everybody's greater detriment. However, I think we've seen historically through policy work, inadvertently there have been burdens put on suppliers in many situations much greater than anyone anticipated. With the best of intentions in terms of the work that the policy was trying to achieve, yet we've entered into situations where in some cases we've even had to go back and reconsider the policy because of those burdens. And, however, this structure ends up being applied with the GNSO. That voice of understanding and reasoning from the suppliers' side, in terms of these implications has to be heard very clearly, I think. >>AVRI DORIA: I have Ute and then Robin. You're both at the microphone? I'm going to go Ute, Robin and then I'll come back to the microphone. >>UTE DECKER: So I'm struggling to come up with something new and original to say on this. I do hear a lot of arguments from the registrar and registry constituencies as to why they should be in control of the policy developments and why it is -- what works best for the Internet committee and the domain name system and I understand they would make these points. I wanted to come mainly back to what Avri said about parity, because that is of course a concept that is tempting in its simplicity, but I think it is important for us at that point to look back at the GNSO Council voting pattern analysis that we have at our screen here, because it is really just not true that we can -- we can let this fall into users and providers, and as you see, the NCUC, for example, hardly ever aligns with what we now call "business interests," the BCISPC and the IPC, so as a matter of fact, the NCUC often votes together with the registries and of course registrars/registries often, but not always, vote together, so I think this concept of parity in that sense just doesn't work out. It is not as if you had two clear boxes of providers on the one hand and users on the other hand and could assume that noncommercial users would side necessarily with business. Business might much more naturally side with registries in terms of market-driven approach more than regulatory approach and so on. So I think this -- the parity concept just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Robin? >>ROBIN GROSS: Yeah, I just wanted to address this fear that we hear from the registries and the registrars that if the users were to have an equal say as the contracting parties, that we would somehow automatically impose onerous conditions on them. But we recognize that those would ultimately be passed on to consumers. Consumers have no interest whatsoever in making it too expensive to be a contracting party or to otherwise discourage new entrants into the market. We want competition. So this fear that we would do that, that we would impose all of these onerous conditions and drive them all out of business just doesn't track logically. The Board Governance Committee working group report would give one single, very small, in terms of numbers business, the same say as all the other world's businesses save one. Wow, that's a lot of power. Similarly, one single, very small business would have the same say as all of the world's noncommercial users under that proposal. Again, this is just not fair, and what we want is parity. What we want is equality amongst the stakeholders. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. I'll go to the microphone and then I've got Tony up here. Anyone else? And then Kristina. >>MILTON MUELLER: It seems like you're still talking as if under the reform, the council would be a regulatory body that would actually issue regulations that would impact the contracts of the contracting parties. My understanding was that the new GNSO would be, basically, authorizing the creation of working groups, giving them a charter and that the policy would be made by the working groups and then have to be passed by the council or somehow possibly even not passed by the council. (Speaker off microphone.) They would have to be passed by the council, okay. First of all, there is a somewhat more limited role for council in this new system. Let me make it clear, just to give you an example, why NCUC and registries have been frequently aligned. A lot of those votes are WHOIS votes, right? And we have been aligned on the issue of privacy. NCUC supported the registries on the issue of renewal expectancy, which was strongly opposed by the registrars. What this new alignment would do would mean that the contracting parties would have to have significant support from one or the other or both of the users groups in order to get a policy through. As it stands now, the contracting parties could, basically, block any policy that affected them, most likely without any support from the users groups. That's the way it looks to us. I know that's not totally mathematically true with the 4-4-4-4, but it is a lot more likely to happen. Again, I am not accusing registrars and registries of always voting together. That's clearly not true either. There is a lot of tensions between registries and registrars. However, we're dealing with a situation where you have a supply industry and you have user groups. And given the limited powers of the GNSO Council as a whole, given the picket fence, you cannot change a contract after it's been written. No matter what the voting distribution on the council is, the contracts are the contracts. You can maybe change the next round of contracts but you can't change an existing contract. I don't -- I don't understand. I guess I don't think that issue is as high stakes as you are making it out to be. What to us is high stakes is any discriminatory approach in which you are saying commercial users are more important than noncommercial users. That's a really hot-button issue with us. It is a question of to what degree do you require the supply contracting parties to get support from the user constituencies in order to get something that they want out of the council. We think that that process would facilitate greater cooperation and stop the potential of a supplier veto of measures that would adversely affect them. There is one other point I wanted to make quickly. Regarding the relationship between registries and registrars, that relationship, the lines are going to blur. We know they're going to blur as we get into new TLDs. Registrars are going to be registries. Some people may be talking about running registries without registrars in special situations. We don't know where that will go. But given that fact, it seems good to have an integrated constituency in which the suppliers and contracting parties are really required to hash out their positions on these issues together. That's our thinking. It is really not about confronting the suppliers in a regulatory sense. We've demonstrated that we side with suppliers on critical issues in certain instances. We are not interested in regulating them in certain instances. We don't want users to be overregulated via the registries frequently, so I think it's just a more cooperative situation to have the tripartite balance. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: I have Tony, Kristina at the Mike and Chuck. [Speaker Off Microphone] I will put you back in the queue. I'm sure someone else -- okay, Tony. >>TONY HOLMES: The timing of my intervention is amazing because I have been involved with ICANN for a very long time and I heard something happen earlier in this meeting, and that was when Milton went to the mike and said "I agree with Philip Sheppard on something." I never thought it would happen. Now I'm going to make it even worse because I'm going to agree with Milton, and I never thought that would happen. So the chances of those things ever happening again are probably gone forever. I have to say that the remark he made about the dimension of registries and registrars becoming somewhat different with the introduction of new gTLDs, I think, is a very significant development that brings a totally different dimension to the whole thing. The other thing that's become apparent to me over the morning is we've had these figures put up which is, basically, pretty raw data that needs to be analyzed more. And I've heard lots of people looking at the data and saying, "Well, this just supports our view." So for me that means as with many statistics, you can interpret it however you want. I think it needs a bit of time to do some real analysis. And let me throw something else back on that line. I've heard a number of references this morning to the figures on this chart for the BC, the IP and the ISP saying they often vote together. Well, if you look at the stats, that's true. But ICANN actually forced us into that arrangement because once you get into a situation where you can only ever get your votes in any form of content that matters because the other side has double votes, you have to have a really good reason to vote against because you take out half of the constituencies if you don't do that and that is not an insignificant issue. And it's one that if the recommendations of the Board Governance Committee go forward, they embed it. Once again, it becomes a major issue. The other point I'd like to make is one of the selling points for the board governance proposal when it was first put forward was that it took away a lot of the issues over voting. And if you've been in this room this morning since lunchtime, you realize that is a total myth. It is not the case at all. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Kristina. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Tony said a lot of what I was planning to say, so if I could, I'll let Jeff go and then see whether -- all right. >>AVRI DORIA: Jeff? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Hi. I would like to make a couple comments. I put them on my Blackberry here. Actually, I'll respond backwards to something Tony said about the arrangement forcing the ISPs to vote in conjunction with the BC and the IPC. I have been around as well since the beginning. Actually, I started out as one of the founding members of the IPC and people forget that because I have turned to the dark side apparently. But if you look at all the stats of the DNSO -- I am just making assertions and maybe we can go back then -- Tony, I think you will find that the stats are identical, if not higher. This is not something you were forced into. And that's when each of the seven constituencies, which if you remember was the ccTLDs as well, was joined in. I think the stats will probably be the same although I will reserve that. If anyone wants to look into that, they can do that as well. You know, I also want to address something Robin said about we're not going to do anything to harm you guys intentionally. And I don't think any of us think that you would do that, or at least we hope you wouldn't do that. But as a smaller registry, I'm here to say that there's a lot of times -- this is actually one of the issues the registries have with the registrars as well. A lot of times policies are set because you're afraid of VeriSign and dot com. You are afraid of what they are going to do. People tell us whether it is on the council, whether it is in the registrar constituency, well, Neustar, we don't think you doing this thing would be that bad. We are really not trying to affect what you do. But if VeriSign did it, that would be a really, really bad thing. So we can't allow you to do it because then VeriSign will think that's precedent and VeriSign will do it. So, you know -- and, again, that causes bad decision-making in my view. In fact, I was in the registrar meeting yesterday where there was a discussion of two proposals that were out there for a single letter domain name proposal. The response was we can't look at those two proposals until we know what VeriSign is going to do. VeriSign doesn't even have a proposal that's posted yet. Those two registries that put forth that proposal, you know, the registrars, basically, said we want to recommend to you, ICANN, that you don't act on anything until we see what VeriSign is going to do. Again, it's not that we think you are intentionally going to cause us harm. But there is a lot of unintended harmful consequences from things that you may think are benign. Another point is that with the ISPs, there is a lot of issues you are getting into now that aren't just registry/registrar issues but they are ISP issues as well, fast flux being one example. I would love to have ICANN under contract with the ISPs to get them to agree to any of the consensus policies and to be bound by those. I know they're going to do their best and there will probably be a best practice. I'm sure they will recommend it on to their individual ISPs to enforce, but it's not something that they're in that position. We are forced to -- we as registries and registrars are forced to adopt those consensus policies. My final point is there's a lot of assumption in this room that registrars are going to be registries and registries are going to be registrars, the line is blurring. That issue is not decided yet. That issue is still under an economic study. I'm not so sure that's going to be the case. So I implore you not to just make the I assumption that registries and registrars are going to be blurred. I know there is a lot of registrars that want to be registries, and maybe some registries that want to be registrars but that is not a decided issue. And for you to make that assumption going into this reform or improvements is not valid and should not be taken into consideration at all. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. By the way, we are not making any decisions. I've got two people -- it is probably good if people stand at the line. I'm noticing people don't know that there are people at the line. I had Chuck and Tim and then I go back to the microphone. And I guess I had Izumi at the microphone. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you, Avri. As a member of the dark side -- and I guess because I am with VeriSign, the very dark side -- I would like to point out that I have also agreed with Milton and Philip many times. But now to some comments on the -- some statements that were made. I'm really bothered by the statement that the contracted parties want to have control. The parity we are talking about does not give control. It doesn't even give half in the structures that are being reviewed. And when I hear statements like parity doesn't work out, I'll give you some stats later in the public forum to show the successes that we have had since parity was instituted, and I'll also point out the lack of success and I'll give you specifics that we didn't have before there was parity. So please give me some examples where parity hasn't worked out. And working out doesn't mean that you always get your way. In a consensus process, you don't. But you try to come up with solutions that hopefully address most of the stakeholders' needs. Several people made statements that are, basically, saying "trust us, we won't do anything that will unnecessarily or excessively harm you as a contracted party." Again, would any of the attorneys here recommend that we enter into an agreement like that? If you would, then I say trust us as registries and registrars and we really do care about our customers so let's rely on that. I heard several people refer to what they want with regard to the structure. One of the things we want is that when statements are put forward by either a constituency or an Advisory Committee is to really have some evidence that that constituency or advisory group is really representative of the group that they claim to represent. We have heard comments in the previous session of the open council meeting that obviously demonstrate that there are, by their own constituencies, that that is not the case in several instances. And, please, I understand and I'm very clear on the constituencies that do a very good job of representing their community. But that is not a universal thing. So we would like to know that there's true representativeness of the broader community and not just an outspoken few. I heard it said that significant support -- that the 66 model would call the contracted parties -- would force them to get significant support from the other contracted parties, if I understood it correctly. That wouldn't be enough. That would only be one-third. Now -- [Speaker Off Microphone] Thank you, Milton. Good. So does the board working group recommendations. It requires to get support from the others, and I'm totally for that. And last of all, back to -- another comment was made on changing contracts. Doesn't matter whether there was a change to the contract or not, there is an add-on responsibility that can be imposed on registries and registrars that was not in there when we signed up. We have said we will abide by that if it is a consensus policy. So it doesn't matter whether it is a contractual change or not. It is something added that we have to do and we said we will do if it is a legitimate process. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. I've got Tim, then I'm going back to the mike and then I've got a couple people here. We've got 11 minutes left, so please make them short at this point. Thank you. >>TIM RUIZ: Tim with the registrars. Just wanted to point out what Chuck just did, that consensus policy is, for all practical purposes, a change to the contract because we're bound to it. >>JON NEVETT: Thanks. Jon Nevett, registrar constituency. I would go farther than Tim and Chuck in that it is a contractual change. There is language in our registrar accreditation agreement that says we are bound by consensus policies, moreover, if you look at some of the consensus policies that have been passed over the last three to five years, there is actual contractual change within the consensus policies that are now binding on us. So I just want to make sure that argument isn't propagating anymore. That any consensus policies are -- you know, build requirements on registrars and registries. Speaking of registrars specifically, you don't have to trust us because there is competition in the space. There is a competitive marketplace and that regulates us. Now, we agree as part of this process through ICANN that we're going to be bound by additional requirements, more so than any other entity that you use to be successful on the Internet. Your web hosting company, your ISP, your Web site design firm, your SCO firm, if you use that. We are required to comply, as I said, with consensus policy. So to argue that because there would be between parity between contracted parties and non-contracted parties and having the status quo vote, if you will, that we currently have continue in the new system, to argue that's inappropriate when we're bound by these consensus policies, I think, is inappropriate. I agree wholeheartedly with Avri's points that she raised earlier and I think she has it right. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Next person at the microphone. I think there were two or three people to the my Krone. It is hard to say when you don't say by the microphone. >>IZUMI AIZU: My name is Izumi Aizu. I am a member of the at-large advisory committee from Asia-Pacific, but this is my personal comment, not the committee's. ALAC has had a joint meeting with NCUC yesterday; and we, just like many other committees, we have joint meetings often. We agree we have sort of mutual interests at the GNSO improvement process. And as you see, with our joint statement, we have overlapping interests with the users, with commercial and noncommercial. However, individual users include non-domain name holders who are not contracted. So the contract-based approach seems to be very difficult for us to accept. We also have sometimes overlapping interests with commercial business users but not always. We have often disagreements with IP constituencies for the privacy with others. So putting the uses in one basket or box doesn't seem to be a reflection of the real-world situation and so we prefer the 66 approach. That's much more reasonable in the large picture. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. >>NAOMASA MARUYAMA: My name is Maruyama. I wanted to give a quick comment to Jeff's speech. It is a little bit late but a short comment. I want to comment that the membership agreement is legally one type of contract. And ISP people -- I think Jeff mentioned about ISPs should have some kind of contract with ICANN. But I cannot -- as a part of the DNSO, ISP constituency already has some kind of contract. I mean, the membership agreement. That is including the bylaws or the rules of the DNSO. And I cannot find any rationale for the ISP to have extra contracts with ICANN. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. I had Tony and Kristina. >>TONY HARRIS: Very short points. I may have misunderstood a couple things that were said. Just in case and to set the record straight as far as how I ISPs are involved in business that has to do with registries and registrars, I might simply point out that something perhaps some registrars in the room might confirm. I believe that ISPs fulfill quite a significant role of resellers of domain names. At least all the members of our association in Argentina do and many others that I know in Latin America. The second point is getting to Chuck's point on is there an example of where parity hasn't worked as it was intended. I think that was your remark. Well, I think there is a very simple one. A very evident one which is any time since weighted voting was implemented, when there was an election of board members, and this is no reflection on what board members were elected, I think they were all excellent, but it was virtually impossible for any candidate to be elected to the board from the GNSO unless it had the support of the registries and registrars. And, normally, they had agreed upon a candidate before the election so they were really rolling out with 12 votes before anybody actually said anything. It is not a criticism. It is just answering -- you wanted an example. I think that's probably a valid one. Okay? >>AVRI DORIA: Kristina. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I would note two points, one in response to your issue one which I think Jeff actually demonstrated in his comments -- I mean, I'm sorry, Jon. It is not as if the consensus policy provision kind of appears magically in the contract one day. It is in there from the outset. It is what -- it is an inherent business risk. And presumably, when each of these entities sign these contracts, the likelihood of such additional consensus policies and what they could potentially be were part of the calculations they made as to the business risk associated with entering into them. So I do think it is a mischaracterization to suggest they kind of appear out of nowhere. The inherent base-level risk is always there. And to Chuck's earlier point as to representativeness of constituencies, I think it should be noted that the joint users proposal specifically calls for further development of the representation and participation within the constituencies. >>AVRI DORIA: Chuck? >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you, Avri, and I'll be brief. >>AVRI DORIA: You have four minutes. >>CHUCK GOMES: It will be less than that. Thanks for that example. I think that ties into what Philip said. In looking at some other parameters, I have actually, in some private conversations suggested we could maybe solve that. A very simple solution would be to have one director elected by the users and one director elected by the contracted parties. To me that's -- that kind of thing is the other parameters you are talking about. Kristina, you're right that when we sign the agreements that we do know that that's in there. But we also sign those agreements knowing that there were parameters around that consensus development process that provided that balance that we're arguing so hard for. And if you take that out, it is a totally different situation. So there is two things we know. We know we will abide by the consensus policies, but we also have had a definition of how that works and part of that was that parity. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. I think that at this point I'll end this meeting. I'm sure the conversation is not ended by any means until the board ends it, and probably not even then. So I want to thank everyone that commented. I want to thank everyone for the meeting. I want to thank everyone for coming back after lunch. Thank you. The GNSO meeting is closed.