SO/AC Reports ICANN - San Francisco Friday 18 March 2011 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay, ladies and gentlemen. We're ready to begin. Thank you. So this is the part of the ICANN program where the chairs of the major components of ICANN report to the community on activities since the last report, particularly on the activities here in San Francisco. And the first, again, alphabetically, for the convenience of the chair, is from the At Large Advisory Committee. So I call on Olivier Crépin-Leblond to deliver the report of the ALAC. Olivier. >>OLIVIER CRÉPIN-LEBLOND: Thank you, Chair. And good morning. So I'm going to go through quickly a few slides that we've prepared. Peter, I draw your attention on the first page of the document, we have met here between -- well, all 29 members of our group have met, and we had officers from the five Regional At Large Organizations, of course, the At-Large Advisory Committee, and representatives of all the ALS structures. And I draw your attention to all of the meetings that we have in our reports, quite a few that came down. There was a very well-attended NARALO showcase that took place, and they highlighted the diverse North American Regional At Large Organization, and Dr. Vint Cerf presented the keynote speech on amplifying the voices of civil society. And nine At Large Structures gave overviews of their activities and achievements. As far as policy work is concerned, the At Large improvements project is nearing completion. The four At Large improvement work teams have made significant progress since the Cartagena meeting. And move to the -- And we have -- they have focused -- the work teams have focused on their final implementation proposals, and the work teams are on schedule to conclude their work by approximately the end of March. ALAC and the GAC have agreed to develop closer relations to outreach activities. We have discussed common interests between the ALAC and the GAC, and to strengthen ALAC and GAC relations. It was agreed to hold ALAC and GAC sessions at all ICANN meetings and to begin regular written communication between the two advisory committees. The At Large Standing Working Group established a -- established and identified emerging challenges to At Large and to address them. And we will be going through that a little bit later on. And there was also a statement of the ICANN community on the ICANN geographic regions review. In fact, this was a statement which we thank the AFRALO and AfrICANN for timely preparing it and developing and adopting the statement of the African community on ICANN geographic regions. A bit further on in the report, I draw your attention to the number of ALAC members and At Large members who participated in Cross Constituency Working Group. We participated in Registrant Rights Charter Group, amendments to the RAA, post-expiration domain name recovery, and there's a whole list on there that you can actually click on when you look at our report. As a means of increasing knowledge and capacity within the At Large community and to engage effectively in the ICANN policy development process, eight At Large community calls took place between the 38th ICANN -- sorry, the 39th ICANN and the 40th ICANN meeting. And those were on community briefing on IPv6 and community call on interim report of the Internationalized Registration Data Working Group. Of course, the five Regional At Large Organizations have been extremely busy. And one of the things that we then also worked on, if I can go to the next slide, is the At Large improvements. As Ray Plzak mentioned a bit earlier, we are nearly completing all of our work, and the only remaining work that is required is the translation and interpretation processes, strategic and operational plans, accurate cost methods, and consumer representative input. All of the other work has been completed, and reports are in preparation as we speak. So this should be released in a few weeks' time. And, finally, I wanted to have a note of thanks, the members of the ALAC and regional leaders would like to extend their appreciation and recognition to the ICANN staff that support us. And that includes Heidi Ullrich, Matthias Langenegger, Seth Green (phonetic), Gisella Gruber-White, and Marilyn Vernon. They have been providing us with 24/7 support. The earth is surround -- [ Applause ] >>OLIVIER CRÉPIN-LEBLOND: -- and sometimes we don't sleep, and they don't, either. And I could also add that Matthias Langenegger is leaving us and. We really appreciate the work he has done and, well, the 24-hour support he has done since 2008. [ Applause ] >>OLIVIER CRÉPIN-LEBLOND: Finally, I just wanted to mention one more thing, which was the JAS, Joint Applicant Support Working Group. I know there has been much emphasis on the JAS and much demand from the board to get this process moving. And I was yesterday on a meeting, 15 members plus some members of the GAC who came as well to see how progress was going. And I must say, it's moving forward swiftly. Thank you. [ Applause ] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Olivier. Are there any questions of the chair of the ALAC? Ray Plzak. >>RAY PLZAK: Thank you, Peter. One just quick comment on the JAS Working Group. The board really, really wants to see the final output of that. As many people are aware, it has played well -- has played a role in the GAC advice meetings that have been going on for this past couple weeks. And so we think that work is very important. And we really are looking forward to getting that final report from you. >>OLIVIER CRÉPIN-LEBLOND: This is noted. And thank you for your encouragement. >>BRUCE TONKIN: While Peter is distracted, perhaps I'll ask a question. My name is Bruce Tonkin. Just a question. This week, I know there's been a lot of discussions on new gTLDs. I was just wondering, is ALAC expecting to make a further statement in the near future on that? We're just interested in terms of timing. >>OLIVIER CRÉPIN-LEBLOND: Yes, we are. And we are working on a summary of our positions. >>BRUCE TONKIN: When do you think you would have that done by? >>OLIVIER CRÉPIN-LEBLOND: It's in progress. And we'll -- as soon as we can. As soon as we have it ready, we will make sure that we will send it in over to you. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Seven to ten days. Try to get it done in seven. That would be great. [ Laughter ] >>OLIVIER CRÉPIN-LEBLOND: I was trying to avoid that so as not to have that number. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks very much. Any further questions of the chair of the ALAC? And seeing none, we move to the next report, which is from Louie Lee, the chair of the ASO. We pass the talking stick to Louie. >>LOUIE LEE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the ICANN board, esteemed colleagues of the ICANN community, and the Internet community at large, since the last time I gave the ASO report in December 2010 in Cartagena, Colombia, I can't think of a significant event in the I.P. addressing world whatsoever to report on. [ Laughter ] >>LOUIE LEE: Not a single one. Thank you. Okay. A ceremony was held on the 3rd of February in Miami, Florida, where IANA issued the last IPv4 address blocks to the Regional Internet Registries. Subsequently, the IANA IPv4 free pool is exhausted. This week, the ASO Address Council held a workshop that included an IANA update from Elise Gerich and an NRO update from John Curran. It was well received by the audience that attended. And I thank the members of the ICANN board who managed to attend this workshop. And we sincerely hope that we can increase board participation in the future workshops. I'd like to offer a few highlights from this session. Now that the IANA IPv4 pool has depleted, the Regional Internet Registries are left with their final existing inventories. Demand for the resource will determine when the RIR IPv4 pools actually deplete. We do expect the pools to begin depleting before the end of this year. The outreach activities have been based on the idea that IPv6 deployment is essential to the continued growth of the Internet. Running dual-stacked, to enable both IPv4 and IPv6 on the same networks is the ideal solution for organizations that are online today. The moment that a new customer comes online with only IPv6 because there are no more IPv4 addresses to hand out, this new customer, no matter if it's grandma in a town in middle America that just got broadband, or if it's a new Internet café popping up in an Indian town where they've never even had dialup before, will not be able to reach content that is not IPv6-enabled. To mitigate the problem, transition technologies such as tunneling and network translation can be put in place by an ISP or the customer. However, these solutions have yet to fully mature and would likely offer a diminished Internet experience for some time still. In our workshop this week, we made a call to action and offered a series of action plans that can be followed by various segments of the Internet community, including government organizations. In a workshop, we provided an update on the global policy activity. There is recent activity on the global policy proposal that we covered in our last ASO update in our ASO report. If you recall, the global policy for IPv4 allocations by the IANA post-exhaustion is meant to provide a framework to allow IANA to receive any IPv4 address space that is returned and also to allow IANA to allocate that space to the RIRs. I will note that it was abandoned in the APNIC region in the last three weeks and it was subsequently withdrawn from the RIPE region this week. As an alternative, the APNIC community reached consensus on a new global policy proposal. The global policy for post-exhaustion IPv4 allocation mechanisms by the IANA was proposed as a simpler means to also allow IANA to receive and allocate IPv4 address space. The authors feel that this proposal addresses the issues that were contentious points in the two previous global policy proposals. Since my last ASO report, a number of regional and global policies have been introduced, discussed, adopted, and abandoned. Currently, the number of policies being worked on is 47. This is up by five policies from the last time we took a snapshot, in December 2010. While the numbers are arguably inflated in that the same one or two global policies are active around five regions, it does accurately reflect the amount of work that the global community is taking on for policy development. Participation is easy. You do not even have to be residing in the region in which you'd like to participate by voicing your opinion or introducing global -- introducing policy proposals, whether it be global or regional. To end this report, I'd like to alert you to the upcoming world IPv6 day, scheduled to happen just before the next ICANN public meeting, in mid-June of this year. Many major Web sites and major content delivery networks are joining ISOC for the first global-scale trial of IPv6. The goal of this test flight day is to motivate organizations across the industry, Internet service providers, hardware makers, -- excuse me -- operating system vendors, and Web companies, to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out. Details are available through a link on the ISOC Web site at www.ISOC.org. And to end this presentation, I'd like to offer thanks to our secretariat at ARIN and also to the ICANN staff, most notably, Olof Nordling. Thank you. [ Applause ] >>BRUCE TONKIN: Thank you, Louie. Peter Dengate Thrush has asked me to take over the chair temporarily while he deals with an important matter. Are there any questions? We have Ray Plzak. >>RAY PLZAK: Yes. Thank you. Is this okay? Yeah, okay. Louie, thank you for that report, and thank you for reminding the board to come to these sessions that you conduct, because they are very important. I have one quick question for you. There have now been, by my reckoning, three different global policy proposals to deal with the ICANN -- the IANA pool post-exhaustion. And every one of them has floundered to some extent or stumbled a little bit. Can you highlight where the sticking points appear to be. >>LOUIE LEE: Not only were there three. There were -- ended up being five total versions between the three of them. The second points in the first one include a mandatory return when addresses are returned to the RIRs. The -- Sorry about that. The -- In the first proposal, the mandatory return was not seen by one region, one community members of that region to -- one region and community members there, was not seen as a requirement they feel like they should follow. So they changed that to be a possible return to IANA. So at that point, it was seen as not the same global policy that was discussed at the other regions and subsequently received an abandoned status. However, it has -- versions of it since it was adopted remain in the RIRs' adopted list. So should sometime in the future that one RIR change their mind and adopt the first version that was adopted around the world, then it can become a global policy proposal. So the status of abandoned is premature, I would say. The second one attempts to remove the issue of returning address space to IANA and simply talk about just when it's returned, there is a pool, and that it can be reallocated. There were some calculations that need to be done of how to deal with the return. And these calculations to some extent take into account the soft landing policies that would preclude the address space -- those address space blocks from being accounted for in figuring out whether an RIR is justifiably ready to receive address. There is contention around the world on whether the amount that was laid out in that version is fair, to be precise. So in the one region where it was abandoned recently, not RIPE, APNIC, there was an alternate proposal put in place at that time, and for that reason, since I was attending that from remote, I could -- it seemed like to me for that reason it was abandoned to -- in deference to the new proposal. The new proposal is written to be simpler and easier to calculate to bring back. But during discussions, they identified some changes that need to be made, thus a second version is now being circulated around the world. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Thank you. Yes. Next question. >>NAOMASA MARUYAMA: Yes. My name is Naomasa Maruyama. I'm from JPNIC. I have one question about the inter-RIR transfer policy. So that is, I think, a -- you are discussing about that. And think about if all the RIR accepted the intertransfer policy, I anticipate, some kind of brainstorming I had that the -- I can imagine some kind of fear scenario that as the -- some company, major company in the United States or some -- in Asia will make a fake application in African region and use the money to transfer the address space to the United States or Asia. That is some kind of, I think, a little bit unfair activity. And the consequence of that -- I don't want to see that kind of a thing. But if it happens, the consequence of that will be some African country or GAC representatives of that country will seriously be angry and blame ASO or NRO or ICANN. That is the -- I think something we have to avoid. Have you discussed such kind of thing already? >>LOUIE LEE: Yes, there is much discussion to have the inter-RIR transfer policies in place. And if that is in place, that would include activity by all five RIRs, then it would simply preclude any global policy, you would think, that would be needed for IANA to redistribute address space. But first, we do still need a global policy in place, because the address space from the legacy blocks could be returned directly to IANA, so it won't hit the RIR system. But to follow on your question specifically, the inter-RIR policies, some of them are being talked about to put in where they talk about whether another RIR that they would transfer with has a compatible assignment strategy. And beyond that, companies that would -- may look to get address space from a region they do not operate in, which is exactly what you're asking about. The RIRs do have the -- the RIR staff do have procedures in place to try to vet out whether a application is true in that they are really operating in that country. Of course, emerging companies are going to be seen with a magnifying glass to vet that out. I'm sure that is not a full answer to your question, and thus there will still be attempts to -- >>BRUCE TONKIN: Might be best to take it offline in more detail, I think. Because it sounds like that's a fairly complex issue. But it's a good question. And certainly I think Louie would be happy to talk to you after the session, if we could go to the next question. >>NAOMASA MARUYAMA: Yes, I will be brief. But -- I think it's a difficult question. But I see everybody here, every constituency in ICANN -- I urge everybody here, all the constituencies in ICANN to seriously think about this issue. >>LOUIE LEE: Of course. And I think John Curran might have a perspective to offer. >>JOHN CURRAN: John Curran, president and CEO of ARIN. I'd like to actually touch on the questions earlier at the mike. ARIN was the region where the return policy, the return addresses that were given up by an organization to the RIR and for the regions, a manned -- in four regions, it was adopted, in one it was changed to be optional. And the optionality was introduced because the community had no problem returning address to the IANA if need-based assignment and transfer policies were maintained per our current RFCs and policies. So the extent that it's going to the IANA and it's going to be issued to a party that actually needs it to expand their network, ARIN was fine. But that wasn't actually assured in the return policy. This actually touches on the earlier inter-RIR transfer. At present, there are policies in all of the -- well, not in all the regions. In two of the regions now, there's inter-RIR transfer policies being discussed. And to some extent, as a community, this is a huge issue to the extent that you have a feeling -- an opinion on this, you need to get involved in the RIR discussions going on. And, again, you can do this remotely, both on mailing lists and online with remote participation in the five RIRs. The question that we face is, are the addresses to be available to anyone who has the money, regardless of whether or not they need them? Are they to be available to networks who actually are going to use them in their actual network and need them to grow for the next six months or a year to serve more customers? Or are they to be constrained absolutely within the region that they're assigned. These are very large questions and need to be addressed not by the ARIN staff or the RIR staff in any region, but need to be addressed by the community based on community-based policy. So I encourage everyone to get actively involved if you have a view on that matter in the five RIR policy processes. Thank you. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Thank you, John. Wolfgang, final question on the ASO. >>WOLFGANG KLEINWÄCHTER: My name is Wolfgang Kleinwächter. I'm from the University of Aarhus. The recent plenipotentiary conference of the ITU has adopted resolution regarded I.P. address policies. And they have now a study group going deeper into the issue. Did you deal with this issue or do we have a position? Or what is your comment on this parallel process? >>LOUIE LEE: If I may defer to John Curran who also has a view and activity on that. >>JOHN CURRAN: John Curran, president and CEO ARIN. I'm also the secretary of the NRO, which is the organization of the five RIRs jointly used for liaison activities, so it's -- Louie heads the policy council of the five RIRs, but when it comes to engaging with other organizations such as ITU and OECD, it is a staff matter. We're actively involved in the ITU IP v6 study group. We've been involved now for over a year. And in fact, we're at plenipot, and involved along with some of the other people in the room here, in the enhanced cooperation language that came out of plenipot in the resolutions like resolution 101. We are continuing to engage with the ITU. We're going to be an active participant in their IPv6 study group. In fact, it's meeting the first week of April and we've already turned in submissions on behalf of the Network Resource Organization, the five RIRs. That study group is broken into two basic threads of thought. The first working group or correspondence group is looking at are there issues with the RIR allocation system preventing, for example, developing countries from getting address space, and we've had that open for a year. We've had no reports. We hold it open, waiting anxiously to jump on any reports of any problems, but we look forward to hearing from some. We have not had any. The second one is a development initiative, to see what capacity- building and outreach regarding IPv6 can be done, and we actually hope to do a lot more work with the ITU in that area. So we are involved in the study group. We remain involved in the ITU. We hope that, to the extent that they want to be involved with us, we can all live up to our agreements. It will be a productive outcome. Thank you. >>WOLFGANG KLEINWÄCHTER: Thank you very much. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Louie. Obviously a lot of -- Sebastien, make it quick because we're running out of time. >>SÉBASTIEN BACHOLLET: It will be quick. It was to apologize not to be able to participate in the ISO meeting this week but I have a lot of remarks from the community that it's very important and welcome that the ISO meet during the ICANN meetings, and I want to thank for this opportunity to interact with this part of the community. Thank you. >>LOUIE LEE: Thank you very much for those comments. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Thank you, Sebastien and thank you, Louie. The next report we have is from the ccNSO, and -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Good morning, gang. Thank you, Bruce. Oh, dear. Good morning. This is a report of the ccNSO. Tech day meeting, we have -- tech day seems to be growing like topsy. It's now a two-day meeting, and it was held this time in close cooperation with DNS-OARC, and presentations raised from using tools to monitor traffic to updates on name server software. Then on Tuesday, the ccNSO members meeting started at -- I'm going to cover just two items that we dealt with. The delegation/redelegation working group report. That final report recommended to the council to undertake as a first step, in looking at delegation/redelegation, the development of a framework of interpretation for the delegation/redelegation ccTLDs. And at its council meeting on Wednesday, the council resolved to create that working group. It's called the framework of interpretation working group, or FOIWG. The purpose of it is to provide IANA and the ICANN board with some guidelines on the interpretation of the high-level policy of RFC 1591, and the GAC principles, and I'm delighted that the GAC has agreed to jointly set this working group up and to work with us to come up with -- to add some color and depth, if you like to the broad-brush statements in 1591 and the GAC principles. Second major item I wanted to just briefly cover is the fast-track review and our IDN policy development process session. The results of the review process of the fast track were presented and the issues were discussed at the ccNSO meeting, and in particular there was a discussion on issues pertaining to string confusion. We had presentations on the IDN ccTLD applications from Bulgaria and Greece dealing with the issues that they've encountered regarding string confusion, and on Wednesday the council requested the IDN ccPDP working group to develop, as soon as possible, guidelines within the framework of the existing rules for the fast track, to improve the predictability of the evaluation process relating to string confusion as defined in the fast track final report and the implementation report. And that working group met the next day and has started that process, and I'm, again, delighted that -- to say that Patrik Fältström has agreed to be part of that, and that Lyman Chapin has also agreed to be part of that as a sort of independent expert. This is very important work because there is -- there are -- there is a need, at this stage, for a little bit of further information on what we think "confusingly similar" actually means in the context of the fast track. One other item. At the end of the council meeting on Wednesday, I stood down as chair of the ccNSO council and the council elected -- selected Lesley Cowley from Nominet.uk as its chair, and Byron Holland from Canada and Hiro Hotta from Japan were selected as their vice chairs, so at this stage, I would like to pass this across to Lesley, who is the new chair of the ccNSO council. [ Applause ] >>LESLEY COWLEY: Thank you, Chris. We were pleased to note good participation in the ccNSO meeting this week, with over 50 registries attended our meeting, and more than 150 representatives in the room. We were pleased to welcome new councillors. We have four new councillors, and we look forward to working with Roelof Meijer, Victor Abboud, Souleymane Oumtanaga, and Keith Davidson. The latter is to fill the remaining term of Chris Disspain until 2013 in the spring for the Asia-Pacific region. We ended our meeting with a number of thank yous. Firstly, thanks to our very dedicated and very hard-working ICANN staff, Bart, Gabi, and Christina. A thank you to the hosts -- [ Applause ] A thank you to the hosts and sponsors of this meeting. A thank you to Erick Iriarte for his contributions to the ccNSO, and as an observer to the ccNSO council, wishing him success in his further endeavors. We thanked departing ccNSO counselors firstly Ondrej Filip, Mohamed Al-Bashir, and Patrick Hosein for their contributions and service, and finally, but by no means leastly, we thanked and expressed our very deep gratitude to Chris Disspain, chair of the ccNSO and ccNSO councillor for the AP region elected in June 2004, chair of the ccNSO since December 2004, and stepping down on the 18th of March 2011. Today. Thank you, Chris. [ Applause ] >>BRUCE TONKIN: : I'd also just like to say on behalf of the board as well that the board greatly appreciates the work that Chris Disspain has done as chair of the ccNSO back when it was first started in 2003. And believe it or not at that time I was chair of what was the Names Council. Originally the cc's were part of the domain name council as a whole, and so, you know, it's great to have seen the ccNSO start from the beginning and Chris has developed it into a very substantial part of the ICANN organization. So behalf of the board, I'd also like to formally thank Chris for his hard and dedicated work and welcome, Lesley, to her new role. Thank you. [ Applause ] Okay. The next report we have is from the Governmental Advisory Committee. >>HEATHER DRYDEN: Thank you, Bruce. The Governmental Advisory Committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers met in San Francisco during March 12th to 17th, 2011. 45 GAC members and two observers participated in the meeting. The Governmental Advisory Committee thanks ICANN for supporting the GAC meeting and extends its appreciation. The GAC met with the GNSO, with discussion focusing on issues of common interest and how GAC and the GNSO could work together more effectively and consistently. The GAC expressed its desire to explore options for more routine interactions with the GNSO, in line with the recommendations of the Accountability and Transparency Review Team, and agreed to consider how this could be best achieved. The GAC held an informative and valuable exchange of views with the ALAC regarding new gTLDs which identified areas of shared concern and points of agreement in the GAC's scorecard. The ALAC outlined the ways in which they sought to increase participation, particularly by members from developing countries. The GAC and ALAC agree to explore how they could further improve their interactions going forward, particularly in the area of consumer protection. The GAC met with the WHOIS review team to discuss the review team scope and work plan. The GAC expressed a strong interest in the work of the review team and looks forward to further interactions and engagement, including a face-to-face meeting in Singapore. The GAC met with the new chair of the SSAC and the vice chair of the RSSAC and agreed to develop a closer working relationship. This would be taken forward in preparation for a meeting in Singapore. Following the constructive and policy discussions with the board at the intersessional meeting in Brussels, the GAC appreciated the further opportunities to meet in open discussion -- sessions to discuss outstanding issues related to new gTLDs. The GAC also participated in a public session to hear the views of the different ICANN constituencies and noted some additional positive proposals. The GAC presented the board its best current thinking on a majority of the board's reactions to the scorecard issues and will provide additional written comments at the earliest opportunity after the conclusion of the San Francisco meeting. The GAC looks forward to receiving any input from the board that would inform the written comments to the full range of issues and questions raised by the GAC. Following the board's receipt of the GAC written comments, the GAC looks forward to receiving a revised applicant guidebook that indicates via tracked changes how the GAC's advice has been taken into account. In addition to the ongoing work of the JAS, the GAC looks forward to developing country issues treated in the scorecard being fully taken into account in the next applicant guidebook. The GAC intends to continue its efforts to assist ICANN in ensuring that the final implementation program for the introduction of the new gTLDs represents true community consensus. Regarding the exchange with members of the ICANN board on the ICM registry application, in its communique of the Cartagena meeting of December 2010, the GAC reiterated its previously stated position that the Wellington communique represents consensus GAC advice and still applies. Therefore, the GAC would like to inform the board about the following key points of this advice. There is no active support of the GAC for the introduction of a dot xxx top-level domain. While there are members which neither endorse nor oppose the introduction of a dot xxx TLD, others are emphatically opposed from a public policy perspective to the introduction of a dot xxx TLD. Furthermore, the GAC would like to inform the ICANN board that an introduction of a dot xxx TLD into the root might lead to steps taken by some governments to prohibit access to this TLD. The GAC, therefore, calls the board's attention to concerns expressed by experts that such steps bear a potential risk or threat to the universal resolvability and stability of the DNS. Moreover, the GAC does not consider the information provided by the board to have answered the GAC concerns as to whether the ICM application meets the sponsorship criteria. The GAC further shares concerns expressed by others that with the revised proposed ICANN/ICM registry agreement, the corporation could be moving towards assuming an ongoing management and oversight role regarding Internet content which could be inconsistent with its technical mandate. The GAC looks forward to the board clarifying the basis for its 10 December 2010 decision regarding dot xxx. The GAC expects that this was -- would include a response to the substantial objections received from the community and reference to ICANN's role as a public benefit corporation. The GAC expressed appreciation for the significant efforts of the members of the Accountability and Transparency Review Team, for the high quality of its work, and for the very important recommendations published by the team at the end of 2010. The GAC confirms its willingness to assist ICANN in the evaluation and implementation of the recommendations. The GAC supports the ATRT proposal that the specific recommendations related to the role of the GAC and ICANN be addressed through the joint board/GAC working group and intends to take this issue forward at the earliest opportunity. The GAC welcomed the March 9 2011 letter from ICANN inviting GAC comments on the recommendations from the ATRT that refer specifically to the GAC. The meeting of the JWG originally planned for San Francisco was postponed until the next ICANN meeting in Singapore, to permit the GAC and the board to integrate recent developments in the working relationship between the GAC and the board into the final version of the report. The work of the JWG in the implementation of the ATR recommendations remain major priorities for the back. The GAC noted the ccNSO's determination to create a new framework and implementation working group to follow up on the delegation, redelegation, and retirement working group recommendations, and expects to contribute to the efforts of the new ccNSO working group. Mr. Choon Sai Lim from Singapore was elected to the position of GAC vice chair. This decision is effective from the end of the San Francisco meeting. The GAC expressed its appreciation and thanks to India for providing the GAC Secretariat since 2006 and welcomed the new GAC Secretariat hosted by Brazil, the Netherlands, and Norway. The GAC warmly thanks all those among the ICANN community who have contributed to the dialogue with the GAC in San Francisco. The GAC will meet during the period of the 41st ICANN meeting in Singapore. The end. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Thank you, Heather. Obviously, a great deal of work going on in the GAC at the moment. You mentioned in your section regarding new gTLDs that the GAC would be forwarding, I guess, some further written material. Do you have a sense of the timing of that? >>HEATHER DRYDEN: As soon as possible. And then if someone wants to shout "7 to 10 days" from the audience, that's fine with me. Yeah, that's our approximate target. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Thank you, Heather. Ray and then Avri. >>RAY PLZAK: Thank you, Bruce. I won't shout "7 to 10 days," Heather. Referring to the work of the JWG, as the board co-chair we are looking forward to taking all of the events of the last several weeks, as far as the interactions that have developed between the board and the GAC, and looking forward to working that into our final report, and so we think that a lot of valuable experience has been gained and it can only help to make that report stronger. >>HEATHER DRYDEN: Thank you, Ray. That's great to hear. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Avri Doria. I'd like to ask a question. You mentioned that a report of experts on the issue of blocking causing threat to Internet stability and resolvability and I was wondering if that report was something that was available and the reasons and explanation of why that would be the case would be available and I'd also like to point out that global resolvability is already something where there are certain countries that don't resolve other countries' ccTLDs. So I mean we already have the -- so I'd really like to know: Is that report available? The experts' report on the problem with blocking. Thank you. >>HEATHER DRYDEN: In the session that the GAC held with technical experts in Cartagena, they reported to us at that session that collateral damage would result from blocking at the top level, and on the basis of that, we are now exploring ways to work with the SSAC and RSSAC to request further information in the form of a written report or something similar. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Ron? >>RON ANDRUFF: Thank you, chair. Ron Andruff, a member of the business constituency but speaking on my own behalf. I can see you through here. Very vaguely. But I did want just to make an observation. The work that's gone on between the GAC and the board in this past period in terms of trying to refine and get to a place where the community could move forward new top-level domains has been quite extraordinary, and it's been my view that the idea of the scorecard was not so much a plus/minus, zero-sum game, as President Clinton said the other day, but more it was a very, very astute working tool. It was a means to an end. And I do hope that the community, as well as the GAC members, understand that it wasn't about how many points each one got on that scorecard, but rather it was such a great working tool to bring the community together. I don't think there's been a time, in my 10 or 11 years with ICANN, that we understand the GAC members, we appreciate the GAC members, and we recognize that you go back to your ministries and you have to face the music, so to speak, and your ministers look at you and say, "We're sovereign, we don't care what the issues are, just go solve this problem." But you're the only people in government, in anyplace in the world, that understands who we are as a community. And so we really are very, very grateful for the efforts that you go to, the extreme lengths you try to be very diplomatic about the issues that your ministers are pushing on, and I just want to make sure that this moment is counted for the effort that you've done because we've never been closer as a community. So, in fact, in my view, when you go back to your ministers, the big win here is that we really are a very harmonized group. I think the cross-communication at all levels, whether it was at the constituency level or AC level or SO level or down to the individuals, was really remarkable. So thank you very much for all of that effort, and I think the community joins me in that. So thank you very much. [ Applause ] >>HEATHER DRYDEN: Thank you. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Go ahead, Marilyn. >>MARILYN CADE: Thank you. Marilyn Cade. And I have a question that's just related to the -- I would, first of all, be remiss if I didn't say that I myself echo Ron's comments and I know I've heard many, many statements in the halls, the dedicated work, the fact that the government representatives had to spend additional time rearranging their schedules to do the intersessional meetings, which often is ignored. Many others in the community did, but as Ron said, this -- we are much closer as a community in understanding each other than we have been before. I would really appreciate, when the report on collateral damage is available, the business constituency would be very pleased to receive that for further consideration as well. >>HEATHER DRYDEN: Thank you. >>BRUCE TONKIN: So let's focus this session on questions, too, because we are running low on time. So if you could focus a question, please, Wolfgang. >>WOLFGANG KLEINWÄCHTER: Yes. Wolfgang Kleinwächter. You know, I noticed with quite pleasure that the GAC has entered into dialogue with the At-Large Advisory Committee. This is certainly a new component, and when Cerf gave his speech on Monday he encouraged At-Large to move towards the GAC, and I would be interested to hear from you: Where do you see the potential of this or what do you expect, from the governmental side of view, from the At-Large Advisory Committee and how this can contribute to a better understanding among the two groups which are partly rather different? >>HEATHER DRYDEN: Thank you for the question. I think from a GAC perspective, we're wanting to find ways for the two communities to work together more closely. We have different working methods, and different working arrangements, but I think in the report coming from the ALAC, Olivier mentioned a proposal to meet more regularly. But it's more than that. We need to find a way to improve the richness of that exchange as well, and that's what we will be looking to do. What was really of note, I think, for the GAC in that exchange was also this interest or ability of the ALAC to outreach into so many regions of the world, and the GAC is wanting to engage better with developing countries and so it was with great interest that we held that discussion on that topic with the ALAC this week. So we're thinking very much along those kinds of lines. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Okay. Thank you, Heather. The next report, then, is from the GNSO, and that -- we have the vice chair of the GNSO, Jeff Neuman, to present that report. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Thanks, Bruce, and I'm happy to step into Stéphane's shoes, at least for this meeting, although his shoes are a little bit bigger than mine. GNSO had a very active and busy week, and happy to say that a lot of it had nothing to do with new TLDs, but on a lot of other subjects that we are tackling. We had nine sessions and a working lunch on Saturday, including meeting with the new SSAC chair, Mr. Fältström. The contracted party house and non-contracted party house had a number of meetings, and four sessions on Sunday, including a joint meeting with the board and staff, a joint meeting with the GAC, and a session on new gTLDs. We had a working lunch, a very successful working lunch, with the ccNSO on Monday, stakeholder constituency meetings on Tuesday, of course our public council meeting on Wednesday, and a wrap-up session on Thursday. Yesterday. Some of the accomplishments that we had week include an adoption of new guidelines for GNSO working groups, as part of the whole GNSO improvements process, and we had discussions around WHOIS studies. We had discussions around possible amendments to the registrar accreditation agreement, and of course ongoing discussions on prioritization and best use of volunteer and staff resources. As far as ongoing work -- and there's a lot of it -- there's a lot of work on the GNSO improvements, and if you were here for the session prior to this one, the next round of GNSO studies is set to take place in 2013, and, you know, we're still in the midst of the ones that started a number of years ago. So as we said, the working group guidelines were approved at this meeting, at the council meeting yesterday, and they go into effect immediately. There were also recommendations to improve the policy development process, and a proposed final report that's been presented to the community for comment by April 1st, and we strongly recommend a lot of comments on that. There's a final -- final recommendations on statements of interest and proxy procedures, revised global outreach recommendations, and there's also a public comment period that's ongoing I believe until early April. And of course there's a standing committee to track implementation of GNSO improvements that I'm sure will help with the evaluation done on the GNSO in just a couple years' time. Some ongoing projects -- and this is just a list of a few of the ongoing projects; there actually is a much longer list that we can provide at a later point -- there's some work that's been given to us by the board on competition, consumer trust, and choice; work on toolkit of services; and checklists have been received from GNSO groups and they're under staff review at this point. A prioritization exercise, which has gotten some heavy debate during this meeting. And as Peter had referred to earlier, in the last session, about some volunteer fatigue, which is going on amongst the community because there are so many projects. We have already called for an issues report to be created on the current state of the UDRP, and we're happy to say that we're making progress on that, with hopefully a preliminary issues report to be out by the time of the Singapore meeting, and this is taking into some of -- taking into account some of the recommendations by the PDP work team to actually have more discussion on issues reports as opposed to the usual state, which was the GNSO Council would ask the staff to write an issues report, kind of in their own silo, and all of a sudden you'd come out with an issue report. The community is saying that we want to be a little bit more involved in getting better information to help with that issue report, to narrow the scope. There's a discussion paper on creating best practices to help registrars and registries address abusive domain name registrations and recommendations on WHOIS access and fake renewal notices have been discussed with the compliance department to see if there's anything we can do to stop those renewal notices that I'm sure many of you in this room have received. We had a very successful joint meeting with the board where we discussed prioritization and management of volunteer workload, and a joint meeting with the GAC, as you've heard, where we've had discussions on how to continue cooperation with the GAC and the GNSO. I would like to offer thanks, as the other groups did, with all the ICANN policy staff that's assisted us, and I'll just -- I'll name a few and hopefully I've gotten all of them, including David, Liz, Marika, Margie, Julie, Rob, Steve, Glenn, and Gisella and hopefully I've gotten all of them. So thank you very much to the ICANN policy staff. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Thank you, Jeff. Do you have a question, Avri? >>AVRI DORIA: Yes, Avri Doria, chair of the NCSG. And this one I have written, so I'll read it and I'll try to read it slowly. Does the GNSO Council's chair's group see any possibility for the council to reach a consensus between the position by the contracted parties' house to disallow participation by the noncontracted parties in discussions on possible amendments to the RAA and the noncontracted parties' insistence that they have a seat at any discussion on amending the RAA? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Thank you, Avri. I can address that only in my personal capacity as one of the vice chairs and not behalf of the chair's group. But I think there was very good discussion at the policy council meeting on Wednesday. And I think one of the points that was raised was that if we focus on the policies that need to be addressed, such as those from law enforcement and others, that if we focus on those policies as opposed to amending the agreements, I think we can make some substantial progress on ensuring that users and registrants benefit from those discussions. >>AVRI DORIA: Can I just ask -- >>BRUCE TONKIN: I suspect this -- you're a member of the GNSO. So I would have thought this should have been dealt with within the GNSO meetings. But just -- >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. Just does that pertain to my question of seats in the discussions on amending the RAA? Thank you. >>JEFF NEUMAN: So there was -- just for everyone who's not as fully aware of all this situation, there was a resolution that was proposed in the GNSO for new Registrar Accreditation Agreement amendments to be -- discussions to be initiated involving contracted parties and observers, and that resolution was not accepted by the GNSO Council. And so discussions will be taking place between the contracted parties and with ICANN staff on how to address a number of the issues that have been raised in the last several years, including those by law enforcement and others as a result of the work of the working group on the registrar accreditation agreements. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Okay. Thank you, Jeff. If we can now move to the RSSAC report, which will be given by Suzanne Woolf. >>SUZANNE WOOLF: Thank you, Bruce. Ah, the technology is now in place. Sure. I'm here to give a brief update on the activities of the Root Server System Advisory Committee, particularly brief as I seem to be losing my voice. It's been an even busier week than usual in very productive ways. RSSAC exists as part of ICANN's interface with the technical community, particularly root server operators and others involved with the DNS as part of the system for maintaining and distributing the DNS root zone. Traditionally, RSSAC meets at the IETF meetings, because that's where many of our participants and many of our members have roles there. The decision was taken at our last meeting in Beijing in November that times have changed and we need to engage more broadly with the wider ICANN community. So the first step on that was to do a committee meeting and a workshop here in San Francisco. I have been telling people, actually, this was our first committee meeting at an ICANN meeting. And that's not quite true, the organizing meeting of RSSAC was held the last time we were in Singapore, in 1999. So it's been a while. And it's good to close the loop there and be back. So we did our committee meeting, we actually had very good turnout, a productive meeting, very good chance to meet people and participate in some of the other activities here, the ccNSO Joint Tech Day with DNS- OARC, and as the GAC communiqué mentioned, our vice chair, Matt Larson, met with the GAC and SSAC, and some very productive discussions there. And we look forward to more future engagement. The other activity that we did was a workshop on the root server system overall and root zone scaling. We did a current system overview of architecture and capabilities, sort of the high-level snapshot of how the system really works. And some status on activities related to the root scaling issues and the advice that we had given to the ICANN board. And, in fact, the root scaling activity has been the main one for the committee for quite some time now. RSSAC was asked with SSAC for advice by the board of ICANN on operational limits to root scaling in connection with new gTLDs and some other changes to the root zone that were then contemplated, including the introduction of DNSSEC, IDNs, and IPv6 addresses for name servers. The advice that we provided last year was very high level, the main points. The limit that ICANN has committed to for new entries in the root zone, which has been -- which was conservatively analyzed as, at most, a thousand a year, from our narrow perspective -- you know, we have a very specific job here. You know, the overall root zone maintenance and distribution system involves many moving parts, and we are responsible most directly for a particular set of it, the root servers themselves. The limit discussed for the overall size of changes to the root zone contemplated for new gTLDs first is determined by factors not related to DNS. It's the processing pipeline for ICANN and IANA. And this contemplated scenario poses no threat to the security and stability of the system. Over the long term, there's some additional monitoring of the system and some additional transparency that would help in maintaining confidence that the risk that we're talking about of disruption of the system to make sure that those risks stay as low as they are now. The first step there to implementing this understanding for RSSAC is to identify some key metrics to characterize the desired performance and possible areas of concern not for the short term, but, again, for the long-term need, to maintain the system at the level of security and stability we have today. So the current status of that as a work item for us, we have a working group. We dragooned some very senior members of the committee to make sure we execute on this commitment to take a look at this. We are working on a preliminary overview document for the committee's consideration, April 15th. Just laying out the factors to implement the commitment we made in our advice to the board. And we expect to have significant progress, you know, some of the big picture filled in, to report in Singapore. The other -- the other commitment we made, if you will, is, again, we play a very small and particular part in the system for generation and distribution of the DNS root zone. And this is overall a shared responsibility to all of the users of the Internet and to each other. So RSSAC is here to facilitate and support interaction among all these parts, particularly between root server operators and ICANN, IANA, and we look forward to further engagement. Thank you. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Thank you, Suzanne. If we can move on to the SSAC report. And pleased to introduce Patrik Fältström, who is the new chair of SSAC. >>PATRIK FÄLSTRÖM: Thank you very much. I will try to catch up some lost time here. So I only have one slide. So first of all, I would like to just mention a couple of briefings that we had at the SSAC meeting. We talked about the -- or presented the registry transition work that we have been working on for quite a long time. It is in the moment at the final stage of SSAC review. This registry transition work has been looking at how to protect the registrants by ensuring the registry services are operational at the greatest extent possible. We all know that a registry or back-end operator or whatever can go away for various reasons. And we're trying to look at how that kind of transition should go and should happen technically to minimize the downtime for domain names that are affected. Source address validation is another thing that we have picked up that we started working on maybe now two months ago or something. It is an update of the SSAC document number 4. It is -- It is about spoofed address -- spoofed source addresses, mostly, on the Internet and what impact that has. We all know that that has specifically impact on the UDP-based protocols, such as DNS in mows cases. The third report is about the DNS zone risk analysis. And that -- that work item is looking at who takes backup of your zone file as a registrant. And there are a couple of cases where it's kind of complicated to know where the authoritative data actually is. And if it is the case that that party loses the data, the question is what the registrant can do at that point in time and also before the event happens to ensure that he can restore his zone file and be able to restore the services. The fourth item that was presented was presented by the previous chair, Steve Crocker. And that is a work item that has sort of been going on since 2009 when ICANN board appointed SSAC Review Working Group. In November 2010, SSAC published operational procedures and has implemented most of those improvements. We are working on the final polishing of that. We also pointed out something that we are happy with, of course. And that is that several of the reports that we have published have resulted in broader solutions and also have been used in a lot of the work that has been going on in other ACs. But one thing that we are still working on and that, of course, as a new chair that I picked up is too try to improve the work that we are doing in SSAC, and work in as efficient a way as possible, which includes more -- even more and broader outreach to the other constituencies here in ICANN. So we have been working quite hard this week to try to both bring SSAC members here and then also bring SSAC members to all the various meetings that have taken place. And I think -- personally, I think I was in most of the group meetings this week. And if neither myself nor vice chair Jim was there, our apologies. One of the things that we specifically are looking into for the meeting in Singapore, which also Heather, the chair of GAC, mentioned, is to once again have a shared session between GAC and SSAC, like we had in Cartagena. We found both groups at this meeting that it was something that we would like to have again. And we think it was sad that we didn't have it this time. There is -- We also met with the WHOIS Review Team. We had a very good meeting. And we also had a meeting with law enforcement representatives, because the needs from the law enforcement representatives is something that, of course, has to be taken into account. There are specifically two items that we have been asked quite a lot this week. And the first one has to do with blocking of DNS. And the other one has to do with internationalization of WHOIS. Let me just quickly summarize what we are doing in each one of those two, because, specifically, the blocking is related to questions also asked earlier today. Regarding blocking, I got the question, when myself and the vice chair of RSSAC visited GAC, and we are on our way in SSAC to try to create a work party to develop a more thorough report on the implications on blocking. Unfortunately, that is, of course, something that if all of you are going to give back information within seven to eight days, then we have to give you information within, like, seven to eight hours. And that is, of course, not really what we can do. The blocking work we will do is norm, -- as it looks now, a normal SSAC report that is brought up and created in exactly the normal way, we are doing all our things in the same kind of process. And I expect that we will have a public meeting briefing on how it's going on in Singapore with the blocking issues. Regarding WHOIS, we -- as I said, we had a very good meeting with the WHOIS Review Team. And one of the things that we see in SSAC, we have been working on WHOIS in SSAC for quite a large number of years. And we're a little bit confused over the confusion. So, obviously, our reports have not had -- has not been -- has not had high quality enough. Maybe the text had high quality, but the message in them didn't really match the needs of the ones that read them. So what we are looking into is if it is the case that we can sort of write a very short, easy-to-read umbrella document that sort of lays out some taxonomy, so to speak. But before doing that, the dust must settle a bit after this ICANN meeting and we have to see what we are actually going to do. So we also had a workshop on DNSSEC specifically for beginners. I got a lot of feedback that -- from some people that said, "Oh, we had this beginner's workshop so many times. Isn't it time to take the next step." But believe it or not, the majority voices I heard was, "Now it's really time to have that beginner's workshop, because now is when all people -- when people start to actually deal with the DNSSEC. So now it's really important, because the ones that started with DNSSEC up until now, they are the ones that themselves had interest in DNSSEC. They were geeks like myself, and they actually did it because it was fun. The people that now will start to use DNSSEC are the ones that think it's boring and they don't know how, and they really need help." So expect another session on DNSSEC, given that we get -- managed to get sponsors at the next meeting. And we are happy to get feedback for -- regarding content. The last thing I would like to do is to thank the ICANN staff, Steve Sheng, Dave Piscitello, and specifically Julie Hedlund, that not only helped with the working groups, but Julie has also been absolutely necessary for me personally during this meeting incoming as a chair. [ Applause ] >>PATRIK FÄLSTRÖM: The second out of three thanks I would like to relate to the improvement of SSAC. And I would like to thank Ray, Ray Plzak, and the liaison to ICANN board, Ram Mohan, and Jim Galvin, my vice chair, for all the processes used, document management, et cetera. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Thank you, Patrik. Just a reminder -- >>PATRIK FÄLSTRÖM: Yes. One last thing that is really important for me. This transition would have been impossible if it was not the case that I got help from my -- from the previous chair. And I started to ask people, for how long has this gentleman by the microphone been the chair? And we actually had to do some digging. And, of course, Julie found the information. And Steve Crocker, I would like to thank you for being the chair, handing over to me so smoothly, because you've been the chair since March 14, 2002. Thank you. [ Applause ] >>STEVE CROCKER: Thank you. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Over to you, Steve. Just a reminder that we want to start the board meeting at 10:30. So please be brief. >>STEVE CROCKER: Please be brief. Yes, I get it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Patrik. So that counts up to be a full nine years. And I remember back then, I had hair. And -- Actually, I wanted to return the thanks. This transition has been extremely smooth. Patrik, you've hit the ground running. I had expected to have to stay more deeply involved and help nurture the transition. You just took over instantaneously, and it's been fantastic. So thank you very much for that. And I really think that's a major accomplishment, considering how long I had to squirrel away all kinds of strange things in corners that you'd have to go find out and figure out what to do. The other thing that I wanted to highlight is the -- this SSAC improvements and outcomes, is tied intimately to the formal bylaws mandated review process that is required of each and every portion of ICANN, the GNSO and ALAC and the NomCom and the board and so forth. That was a large sequence of reviews that was kicked off. We were selected to be in the middle of the pack. And with -- I believe with the resolution that is queued up to be passed in the next session, we will actually have completed and be the very first over the line, which is a -- it's a purely bureaucratic accomplishment in one level, and on the other hand, it is a nontrivial big deal from my point of view. There's a whole bunch queued up right behind us, which is also very good. So I wanted to flag that. I think that's a good thing. This was reported to all of you -- well, all five of you who were here, during the 8:00 presentations from the board committees. So I wanted to flag it again. And Ray Plzak has shepherded through the Structural Improvements Committee the whole sequence of those reviews. Thank you. [ Applause ] >>BRUCE TONKIN: Thank you, Steve. Now, the final report in this session is from the ombudsman. And I think if the ombudsman is available, perhaps we could take questions. Because I believe the ombudsman report is on the Web site. And, really, unless, Herb, you happen to think that you need to draw attention to the community. But really offering an opportunity for anyone to ask a question of our new ombudsman. >>HERB WAYE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to take a moment just to address the people in the room. Mr. Chairman, Mr. President, members of the board -- I apologize for my back -- liaisons, ICANN staff, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity to briefly speak. My name is Herb Waye, and I've held the position of adjunct ombudsman for the past five years with ICANN. Since assuming interim responsibilities for the office in February 2011, I am pleased to announce that all complaints that have been addressed to the office have been resolved after brief investigation or referral. I would like to express my sincere thank you to the ICANN staff for their assistance. In the five years I've spent with the organization decoding acronyms, I must state that I am most impressed with the spirit of volunteerism that exists across the community. I would like to read to you from the principles and values statements of a large international organization. And I'm reading them -- and as I am reading them, I would ask yourselves to see if you have observed some of them in the ICANN community. Universality. This organization, in which all parties have equal status and share equal responsibilities and duties in helping each other, is worldwide. Unity. It must be open to all, it must carry on its work throughout its territory. Independence. Is independent, and subject to the laws of the respective countries, must always maintain their autonomy so that they may be able at all times to act in accordance with their principles. Impartiality. It makes no discrimination as to nationality, race, religious beliefs, class, or political opinions. Neutrality. In order to continue to enjoy the confidence of all, it may not take sides or engage at any time in controversies of a political, racial, religious, or ideological nature. Voluntary service. It is a voluntary movement not prompted in any manner by desire for gain. Humanity. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, born of a desire to bring assistance without discrimination. Ladies and gentlemen, I have witnessed you demonstrating many of the same organizational values embraced by the Red Cross. Organizational values that fit nicely into my role as a dispute resolution practitioner, that fit nicely into ICANN's role with the Internet, and fit even nicer with the volunteerism that is displayed by the people in this room and those listening and watching worldwide. You are all here because you care. Because you care, you work together. Because you work together, you develop relationships. And wherever relationships exist, inevitably, conflict will arise. ICANN, to me, is basically made up of three components. First, you, the volunteers -- and I include the board in this group. Second, what I will call the acronym zone, where volunteers meet to decide things. And, third, rules. It is a very simplistic bottle, but when you put the three together, it makes me want to get down into the weeds with this impressive group of volunteers to step in when asked and to help this -- and to help make this organization run smoother for you so that the people who really count, the users of the Internet, get their money's worth. Thank you. [ Applause ] >>BRUCE TONKIN: Thank you, Herb. And we very much appreciate your standing in the role as acting ombudsman at this time. Any -- if there's no further questions, I will end this session now, and we will be reconvening in five minutes for the start of the board meeting at 10:30 a.m. Thank you, all. (Concluded)