GNSO Working Group ICANN Meeting Sydney, Australia 20 June 2009 >>AVRI DORIA: Please find your seats. We're going to try and start this in a minute or two. Okay. Good morning. We're going to start the first of our two days of meetings. My name is Avri Doria. I'm chairing the GNSO Council meetings. One of the things that I've been questioning myself about is the going around and everyone giving their names at the beginning. I think it's a good idea, and then I realized that half of the people that will be here later in the day aren't necessarily here now. However, having thought about it and realizing why change what we do, I'd like to ask people to first go around the table, introduce yourself, and give your affiliation, just so we have that, and then I want to remind everyone that as we talk throughout the day, to please reintroduce yourself, or at least give your name and such, so that the record of people speaking can show it. So Marilyn, can I ask you to start with introducing yourself? >>MARILYN CADE: I'd be happy to, Avri. My name is Marilyn Cade. I am a member of the broader business community. >>CLAUDIO DIGANGI: My name is Claudio DiGangi. I work on staff with the International Trademark Association. We're a member of the IPC. >>ALEXANDER SCHUBERT: My name is Alexander Schubert. I am CEO of dotGAY LLC and I will apply for dot gay. >>GREG RUTH: Greg Ruth, ISPCP constituency. >>TONY HOLMES: Tony Holmes. Chair of the ISPCP constituency. >>TONY HARRIS: I am Tony Harris with the ISP constituency. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Kristina Rosette, IPC. >>JIM BASKIN: Jim Baskin, from Verizon. >>OLGA CAVALLI: Hi. My name is Olga Cavalli. I'm a NomCom appointee in the GNSO. I come from Buenos Aires. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Jeff Neuman with NeuStar with the gTLD registries constituency. >>MARIKA KONINGS: Marika Konings, ICANN staff. >>TIM RUIZ: Tim Ruiz with GoDaddy and the registrars constituency. >>DAN HALLORAN: Dan Halloran with ICANN staff. >>CHUCK GOMES: Chuck Gomes with VeriSign and the registry constituency. >>AVRI DORIA: Avri Doria, a NomCom appointee. >>EDMON CHUNG: Edmon Chung, dot Asia, registry constituency. >>ZAHID JAMIL: Zahid Jamil, BC constituency, business constituency. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Mike Rodenbaugh, business constituency. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Philip Sheppard with the business constituency. >>MARGIE MILAM: Margie Milam, ICANN staff. >>LIZ GASSTER: Liz Gasster, ICANN policy staff. >>ALAN GREENBERG: Alan Greenberg, liaison from the ALAC. >>TERRY DAVIS: Terry Davis, NomCom appointee. >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Eric Brunner-Williams, CORE. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Liz Williams -- no relation -- business constituency, and I'm a member of the nominating committee. >>WERNER STAUB: Werner Staub from CORE. >>AVRI DORIA: I'd like the people that are sitting in the chairs there to take that standup microphone and just sort of pass it around. You don't have all to go queue. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Rob Hoggarth, ICANN staff. >>KEN BOUR: Ken Bour, also ICANN staff. >>JULIE HEDLUND: Julie Hedlund, ICANN staff. >>PETTER RINDFORTH: Petter Rindforth, FICPI, member of the IPC. >>MICHAEL YOUNG: Michael Young, Afilias. >>ALAIN BIDRON: Alain Bidron, France Telecom and ETNO, member of ISPCP. >>FRED FELMAN: Fred Felman, MarkMonitor. >>FAISAL SHAH: Faisal Shah, MarkMonitor. >>BYRON HENDERSON: Byron Henderson, dot travel. >>CHINT LIYANAGE: Chint Liyanage, Ph.D. student at La Trobe University. >>TOM DALE: Tom Dale, Barton Dale Consulting. >>ROD RASMUSSEN: Rod Rasmussen with InternetIdentity and here with the anti-phishing working group. >>JAMES BLADEL: James Bladel, GoDaddy. >>BOB HUTCHINSON: Bob Hutchinson from Dynamic Ventures. >>SCOTT PINZON: Scott Pinzon, ICANN staff. >>JARKKO RUUSKA: Jarkko Ruuska, Nokia. >>RITVA SIREN: Ritva Siren, consultant. >>KAREN NORTHEY: Karen Northey, BT. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. I guess that's the end of it. Do we have anybody on the phone? >>STEVE METALITZ: Yes, this is Steve Metalitz from Washington with the intellectual property constituency. >>AVRI DORIA: Oh, welcome, Steve. Anyone else on the phone? Okay. As is the case in the past, and it's an open meeting and people are allowed to speak other than just in the council. What I'll normally -- what I've normally done is looked at people's hands and I can do that around the table, but honestly I cannot see a third of the people, at least, that are over there [indicating], so I'd really suggest that if we have people that are in those side seats that are going to want to speak, they should just queue at the mic, so that I know, because otherwise I just won't know. So sorry about asking people to queue, such an EITF thing to ask people to do, but still... Okay. What I wanted to do first is just go through the agenda. It's been -- for the first two days. It's sort of been gelling over the last couple days. It's shifted around a couple times. I think what's up here on the board is the current, so for today, we're going to start out with the bylaw discussions, and essentially what I've asked Margie to do and will switch on the screens later is to take that merged set of bylaw changes which have the last ones that we worked on in the committee-of-the-whole team, and was merged with the ones that were received from legal counsel, and just go through them and try to walk through the changes and try to accept them as we go through. You'll notice at the end of the second of -- of tomorrow, there's another chunk of time cut out for bylaws discussions. If we don't finish today, or if there are any controversial issues today, what my approach are be is to get the people that are in discussion about them to sort of talk to each other over the next day or two and see if we can't come back to those tomorrow to get them decided, because one of the things we do want to do is try and take a vote on recommending these changes to the board on Wednesday, if we can. Then 11:00 to 12:30 is set aside to talk about the IRT report. There will be IRT members certainly from the council and others in the room to talk through it. I guess some staff hopefully will be here, too, that are -- can explain to us what's happening with it in terms of the DAG. Then 12:30 to 2:00, there's a lunch session on GNSO scope and consensus policy, and basically this is the result of -- I had had a couple questions, both from new council members over time and also from others of what exactly -- please explain what's in scope and what's not in scope and how do we know. And so I had asked staff for some help in sort of laying that out, and this presentation is the result of that request. So I don't know if this is the first time it's being given, but it's one of the early times, so it's both a refresher course for those of us that think we know, and for those who truly know it's a chance to review the course. And of course if you have no idea goes it's a really good place to start. Then from 2:00 to 3:30, we come back and talk about progress on resolution of over-archdiocese issues. Then there's a discussion on geographical names at the first and second level. We've -- most people are probably aware of the letters to the GAC and the response and such. Then there be a session on ongoing gTLD activities, including updates to DAG2 which Kurt will be giving, and then at the end of the day, there was a travel drafting team, face-to-face meeting with ICANN staff, and like the rest of the meetings, it's open but it won't be a council meeting. It will be a travel team meeting. And that's today. Now let me go to tomorrow. And those will be all in this room. Basically, it was considered that most people would want to be here for most of these discussions, and nobody really wanted to schedule a parallel meeting. Okay. So then tomorrow there's an early morning session which will be the inter-registrar transfer policy Part B brainstorming session, so that will essentially be a -- I guess at the moment there's still a team -- the charter for them is scheduled for Wednesday. 9:30, policy process Steering Committee discussion which is one of the sub-teams. Or, no, that's actually the whole committee will have a meeting, and that will be chaired by Jeff. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yes. >>AVRI DORIA: Then there's the PPSC policy development process work team, which is one of the sub-teams of the PPSC, will have a meeting. Now, on -- you'll see that there's basically two -- there will be parallel sessions and maybe it would have been better, actually, if I'd brought up the other -- hold on a sec. Well, that's okay, I'll go through it. This is in one room. Then in this room also, there will be preparation for the GAC, ccNSO, ACSO, and Board meeting. Basically a working lunch where we go through the agendas and the plans for those joint meetings. Then the PPSC working group work team meets after lunch. Then we come back to the GNSO Council restructuring, specifically the bylaws, and if we're finished with the bylaws, perhaps any other issues, see if we can get some update on what's going on with steering group charters and constituency charters and such as that. Then there's the GNSO/GAC meeting planned where specifically the topics of names at the second level is what's -- but basically there are issues there. And then there's the board, staff, and council dinner. Parallel to that, there will be, at 9:30 in the morning, the IDN group, followed by the operations Steering Committee communications coordinations work team, chaired by Mason. Then a working lunch. Yes. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Is this -- is there an Adobe connector at this meeting? Southbound is asking me? >>AVRI DORIA: I don't -- I think it could be. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: They said the URL is not working. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. We didn't actually specifically set one up for this meeting. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Okay. Thanks. >>AVRI DORIA: And we didn't prepare any documents to be put in it because although we could possibly think about setting up one for -- not for this first session, but for the ones when we have Kurt's presentations, maybe that will be useful, if we can. I -- I don't know how hard it is to set those up, but I didn't ask in advance. So there's the OSC, GNSO Council operations work team chaired by Ray, and then after that, there's the constituency operations work team chaired by Olga. And those will be parallel sessions on Function Room 2 level. So those are the two days. I'm not going to go through the agenda for the rest of the week at this point. It is all posted. We'll try to keep to those. Now, I just got a request from the -- what was it? The board participation committee. I'm not sure I have the name right. That wanted to find a time to come in and talk to us about documents being ready two weeks early issue and get our take on it and such. I'm not exactly sure where I'm going to fit that in, but there's a request to try and fit in them coming and talking to us at some point, so when I figure that out, I'll let people know. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: (Speaker is off microphone). >>AVRI DORIA: Exactly. You know, I made that point. And I was very ashamed of myself, so thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Sure, I don't mind. So that's it for the schedule. Any questions on the schedule? I'm not going to go through the rest of it. Yes. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Our open council meeting, if I remember correctly, is scheduled at the same time as the board public participation committee, and if it would be at all possible to perhaps coordinate with the folks who are leading that, so that whatever breaks we have may allow some of us to kind of pop over for five or 10 minutes, I think that would be appreciated. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. This is Wednesday? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Yes. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. I'll look at that and see what -- okay. So in which case what we should probably do now is go to the -- switch from my machine, which I guess was "B" to Margie's, which I goes is -- I don't know. Either "A" or "C." Okay. To her machine. Sorry, I didn't know whether it was "A" or "C," so I don't know if I asked the right letter. Okay. While we're getting that set up, first of all, I want to thank everybody on that committee. We had meetings every week. We did a lot of work in between. It's this one, yeah. I don't know if she's ready yet. And we came to, I think, a lot of agreements. I mean, a lot of them were sort of helped along by the board's SIC helping us or making their decisions, but -- so -- and then I'm very appreciative of legal counsel also being willing to do an edit pass through it, so that we knew that what we were doing was correct. Are we ready? >>MARGIE MILAM: Yeah. >>AVRI DORIA: One thing I'll recommend before we see that up there is that any of their changes, the legal changes that were essentially cosmetic, should just be approved, and that we not worry about those, but I'd like to walk through each of the changes as we go through. >>MARGIE MILAM: (Speaker is off microphone). >>AVRI DORIA: The previous one was bigger. Okay. So the first set of changes, I guess they deleted having the proposed bylaws there, which is quite reasonable and just actually talked about articles, so that was a deletion that seemed to make sense. And then after that, most of the changes I had, the first set were all formatting changes, and people, please let me know if I'm wrong. The first substantive change I had was in E, Point E down the page, so you can actually just go through and accept as we go through. And please let me know if any of the formatting changes, and if I miss a -- >>MARGIE MILAM: (Speaker is off microphone). >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. The first substantive change was a change -- and it was really not all that substantive. Okay. There is basically changing "NomCom" to "nominating committee." That change happened a number of times and I'm suggesting that those -- is there any objection to accepting that change all the way through? I wouldn't think there would be. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Avri, I'm not objecting to that. I've just noticed what's probably just a typo we've missed. On the very first point 1 of Article X, a number of constituencies doesn't quite make sense. I think there's a, if any, that doesn't need to be there. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. So basically going to Point 1. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Article X1. >>AVRI DORIA: Right. Article 10A, a number of constituencies, if any, which should have had another comma if we were having the clause, organized within the stakeholder groups. Now, I think at this point before actually deleting it, it was to not presuppose -- yeah, the comma definitely needed to be there if the phrase is there at all, and I thought that this "if any" was to not necessarily preclude in the bylaws at this point a single constituency identified with a stakeholder group. I don't know if we want to remove that, but I suggest -- I mean, I'm understanding you to suggest we remove the "if any" clause. Correct? >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Yes. >>AVRI DORIA: I'm wondering if there's any discussion or concern with that. I mean, because there were some of the constituencies, as I understood, were perhaps arguing for an identity between constituency and stakeholder group. Yes, Chuck. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thanks, Avri. Chuck Gomes. Yeah, the -- and we may not know the full answer in terms of how to handle this until we get feedback from the structural improvements committee with regard to constituencies and constituency roles within the stakeholder groups, et cetera. I think there is the possibility that there may be stakeholder groups that at some various times may not have any constituencies. I'm not sure that that's precluded if we remove dot -- "if any," but my leaning would be to leave it there. >>AVRI DORIA: Alan and then Tony. >>ALAN GREENBERG: The way I read that is if you -- if the "if any" were to be exercised, that would mean the GNSO has no constituencies, not a particular stakeholder group. So -- >>AVRI DORIA: Oh. >>ALAN GREENBERG: -- since there's probably no chance of that, you could delete it. That's the only way I can read that semantically. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Me too. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thank you. Tony? >>TONY HOLMES: I didn't read it the same way as Alan, and maybe that needs some discussion, but I would support Chuck. I think at this time, I wouldn't support removing that. I'd rather leave the words in there. >>AVRI DORIA: Philip, you still have your mic on. Are you willing to leave it? Does it matter? I mean... >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Well, it doesn't make grammatical sense or logical sense to me but, I mean, you know, if that's how we want to start, then let's carry on. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Okay. >>MARGIE MILAM: So leave it? >>AVRI DORIA: Leave it. Thank you. But the comma belongs there. Certainly grammatically the comma belonged there. I think it makes grammatical sense. Okay. So then the next one was an addition and is back at E. So we've accepted the "nominating committee" as opposed to "NomCom" and is there any objection to accepting that everywhere we run into it? I didn't think there would be. Okay. The next one was a parenthetical "as described in Section 5 of this article" and then a link to be added. Any objection to that parenthetical phrase? Okay. Then let me see. The next one was the -- was in the next line, correct? There was a comment entered on that one, on the "no." And the comment read: "Should the following limitation be included: No more than one officer, director, employer of a particular corporation or other organization including its subsidiaries or affiliates shall serve on the GNSO Council at any given time." And that was a question. Would someone like to talk to that recommended addition? Yeah. >>DAN HALLORAN: So this is something that Sam Eisner and I have worked -- Sam Eisner, I don't know if you know her, is a new addition to the ICANN legal team and she and I worked on some comments to these bylaws, and she suggested this comment. She noticed that it was in the old bylaws or the current bylaws, but it seemed to be missing here and we didn't know if that was intentional or -- but it -- so it was just a suggestion to look at that again and see if you want to keep that rule or if you intentionally were getting rid of it. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Any comments? Yes, Marilyn. >>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Avri. Marilyn Cade. I'm -- I just -- it was in the old bylaws and it was, I think, considered very important when we first included that, but my -- and I think it definitely needs to remain, but I thought -- and this would be a question for legal staff -- it's not just any individual representative. It is also any individual entity, is it not? Because we would not, for instance, want my company, mCADE LLC, a micro-enterprise, to be able to hold multiple seats, nor would we want other corporations or other groups to be able to hold multiple seats. So I think just to ask the question of the legal team, that it would be no individual representative and no single entities -- now, I'm not - - you know, because otherwise we're going to have the thing we tried to avoid from the beginning, and that is capture by having an entity or organization be able to hold multiple seats. >>AVRI DORIA: I -- Marilyn, I'm not sure I understood what you meant. That -- how is entity -- it says, "Of any particular corporation or other organization including "-- oh, you understand? Because I didn't understand this, so thanks. >>DAN HALLORAN: I think Marilyn is just agreeing with what we were suggesting, which is, why did you get rid of that provision. >>AVRI DORIA: Oh. >>DAN HALLORAN: Maybe, Margie, if you could import the comment from the provision and put it in like a bracket, so everyone could see what we're talking about. If you go to it, what is it, page layout, view or something? You can see the comments. >>AVRI DORIA: Yes, Tim, while that's happening. >>TIM RUIZ: I think to me, the difference is, is that -- it depends on how the membership of a particular constituency or stakeholder group is constructed, so I think the text that's being suggested is probably important, because I could see situations where it could be kind of gotten around. If the membership is based on -- on an entity or an organization, then we still need to have that -- that language as far as an individual goes, who may be -- or individuals who may be from the same company or organization. So I -- I agree with Marilyn but I also agree with the language that's being suggested. We need to have it covered both ways. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thank you. I guess it's because I'm not a lawyer. I don't understand what Marilyn's language adds to what's already there, and it's -- perhaps I'm not the only one understanding it, but... >>MARILYN CADE: Avri, could I just clarify? I wasn't so much proposing language as I was trying to clarify the intent and make sure that it addressed the concern that I was raising. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. And does this address that concern? Because I thought it did. I thought this was sufficiently inclusive. Kristina, you were going to comment. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I'm good. >>AVRI DORIA: Oh, okay. Yes, Dan. >>DAN HALLORAN: So I think Marilyn is saying the language she's looking at in the screen doesn't but the comments does. >>AVRI DORIA: Oh, the comment, okay. >>DAN HALLORAN: The current bylaws says if GoDaddy were also an IPC, it couldn't have two GoDaddy reps on the council. >>AVRI DORIA: I understand. And the language that you're suggesting here would suggest that? >>DAN HALLORAN: Yes. >>MARGIE MILAM: (Speaker is off microphone). >>AVRI DORIA: Yes, I guess I could see it because I was -- there it is. It's down in the bottom there. No more than one officer, director -- I'll read it from my screen. No more than one officer, director, or employee of any particular corporation or other organization, including its subsidiaries and affiliates shall serve in the GNSO Council at any given time. Does anyone object to re- -- yes, Tim. >>TIM RUIZ: No, I don't object to that. I just -- and maybe it's speculating hairs, but using GoDaddy as an example, you know, it may not be an employee, director, or officer. It could be a consultant or someone else that's representing them. And so through that process, that entity could still end up having more than one seat on the council. So I'm just saying it's not -- you know, it can't be just one way or the other. I think it needs to say both. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. >>TIM RUIZ: Both the -- because the language that's being suggested, no more than one officer, director, that's fine. But then I think the current language that says "no individual representative," I think it's -- you know -- >>AVRI DORIA: Oh, yeah. No -- yeah. >>TIM RUIZ: That needs to stay in some form in order to make it work in both ways. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. It's, again, me playing philosophical, as opposed to lawyer, so I'm not quite understanding. That seemed to be totally different. That seemed to be talking about the same person being in two places at the same time, as opposed to a company's representatives, and your thing that you were mentioning would seem to need the addition of "no more than one officer, director, employee, or consultant for a company should be" -- would seem to be what would need to cover your issue. If you want to go beyond employee. You know, or employee full versus -- I don't know. But that -- So first of all, on the other question, does anybody object to adding this sentence back in? Okay. So please -- have you -- yeah. Add that one in. So that would be a sentence before that. Before this one. You should just be able to cut and paste. But no, type it. Please. Don't let me stop you. >>MARGIE MILAM: (Speaker is off microphone). >>AVRI DORIA: Employee or consultant -- I'm not sure "or consultant" actually covers it exactly, but -- >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Probably agent or representative would be better, in this context. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thank you. I knew there had to be a proper way of saying it. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Agent I think sounds plausibly legalistic. >>MARGIE MILAM: So instead of "consultant," you want "agent"? >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: "Agent," yeah. >>AVRI DORIA: Please. Yes. >>JEFF NEUMAN: I hate to extend this conversation because it's -- >>AVRI DORIA: Please make sure you give your name. >>JEFF NEUMAN: In U.S. law, agent -- consultants usually have a contract that specifically say they are not an agent of the company. So you have both words in there. A consultant is not an agent in U.S. law. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. So then put both words in. As I say... >>CHUCK GOMES: Remember to give your name when you talk. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. And I would also like to remind everyone to use the mike when you speak because partially the folks doing the transcribing can't hear and also because it is being streamed. Okay. So the next one is then -- okay. So "no more than one officer, director, employee, agent or employee or consultant." >>MARGIE MILAM: All right, got it. >>AVRI DORIA: And then the next comment was -- okay -- was on the GNSO Council is as diverse as possible and practical -- practicable. Is that just a change of word "practical" to "practicable"? Is "practicable" is a word? >>JEFF NEUMAN: It is a legal word. >>AVRI DORIA: It is a legal word? Okay. And it means what "practical" means? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Practical. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thank you. Any objection to putting in "practicable" for "practical"? Okay. And then it went on, "including considerations of" was a -- let me see. I'm trying to figure out the exact change here. Can you make that one wide again? I'm sorry. >>MARGIE MILAM: That's fine. >>AVRI DORIA: Sometimes that format helps to understand the change better than the format I'm using. So "including considerations of" is an addition there. That seems to be just a -- is there any issue with accepting that change? Okay. Moving on. The next one there was a change in language and it read "there may also be liaisons to the GNSO Council from other ICANN Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees from time to time," then the deleted "who shall not be members or entitled to vote to make and to second motions or to serve as an officer in the GNSO Council but otherwise shall be entitled to participate on an equal footing." And that was deleted and what was added was, "The appointing organization shall delegate, revoke or change the delegation of the liaison on the GNSO Council by providing written notice." Okay, "by providing written notice to the chair of the GNSO Council and to the ICANN secretary, liaisons shall not be members of or entitled to vote, to make or second motions" -- make -- "to make and"? >>CHUCK GOMES: Something is confusing. >>AVRI DORIA: The "and to" is deleted "or to serve as an officer in the GNSO Council. Otherwise, liaison shall be entitled to participate on equal footing with members of the GNSO Council." So there was a rewording. Yes, Kristina? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I have a question whether or not we are intending the appointing organization shall not only have the ability to designate, revoke or change, da-ta-da, or that they may do so by providing written notice. If that's what we mean, then we need to stick a "and" in there. >>AVRI DORIA: I think that's what we meant. I think we meant the "and." >>CHUCK GOMES: Don't we need an "or" there instead of -- "and to" should be "or to?" >>AVRI DORIA: "Or to second motions." Is that correct? An "or" would be fine. So we accept the deletion, and we accept the addition. Except that we have to add in the addition, if I understand, "the appointing organization shall" -- oh, no. So "shall designate, revoke or change" was okay, Kristina? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Yeah. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Then we accept that deletion. And please, if I say we accept or are rejecting something and I got it wrong, shout out before it actually happens. This was really just -- >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: (Speaker off microphone). >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. The following deletion there is -- yes? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: But what you want to do is in the sentence that starts with "the appointing organization," what you want to do is after the word "council" insert "and shall do so" by providing written notice, blah, blah, blah, blah. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, thank you. Okay. We're inserting "on the GNSO Council" -- please give the wording again, Kristina. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Sure. After "on the GNSO Council," earlier on in that line, you want to insert "and shall do so by." You already have a "by" there, but... >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. And then you can accept the rest of that addition and the deletion afterwards. Okay. And you can accept that one also. >>DAN HALLORAN: Dan Halloran from staff. Now you got two "shall's" there so it sounds like there's two obligations. And I think the first one isn't really an obligation, like the appointing organization is not obligated to change its designation. >>AVRI DORIA: That's a "may." >>DAN HALLORAN: The whole idea of the sentence was to say if they are going to do it, they should do it by providing notice to the council and the secretary. >>AVRI DORIA: So that would be a "may," right? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: That was my original question. Do we agree it's both or just one? >>DAN HALLORAN: I agree it needs to be cleared up, but I wouldn't put both "shall's." >>AVRI DORIA: The first "shall" should return to a "may"; is that what you're saying? Confused. >>DAN HALLORAN: The organization does have to designate -- when it represents its representatives, it has to do by in writing to the council and the secretary. That's the whole idea of this sentence. >>AVRI DORIA: So the second "shall" is not needed, you're saying? >>DAN HALLORAN: I don't think it is needed. >>AVRI DORIA: You are fine with removing it? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Yeah. If it is only intended to accomplish that one purpose, then absolutely, that was my original question. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, sorry, I didn't understand. >>MARGIE MILAM: Shall I make the "shall" a "may" and make the "may" a "and do so"? >>AVRI DORIA: No, no, it would just be "by providing." It would go back to the original language. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Avri, before we leave that, we have not gotten at the beginning of that sentence that we are designating a designation, which seems a little bit tautologist. >>AVRI DORIA: So revoke or change? >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: We probably don't need "designation." Don't we just mean the liaison? The appointment of its liaisons? The selection of its liaisons? >>AVRI DORIA: So delete the "the" and the "of." Yeah, thank you. Okay. The next one we had was the addition of an "and" in 2. Subject to the provisions of transition, Article 20 and Section 5 of these bylaws. Any objection to the addition of that "and"? >>DAN HALLORAN: Sorry, Avri. We need to insert an "or" between "make second." You missed one line up. >>AVRI DORIA: Oh, okay. We said that but then -- yeah, okay. Thanks. Probably want to save it where you are doing it. >>MARGIE MILAM: I will clean up formatting later. I just want to get the words. >>AVRI DORIA: The next one, as I said, was in 2 and is an addition of an "and." Any opposition to the "and"? Okay, 2, accept. Going down. The next set seem to be all format -- formatting. We get to, in which case -- it is the paragraph that starts "in special circumstances such as but not limited to meeting geographical or other diversity requirements defined in the stakeholder group charters where no alternative representative is available to serve. No councilmember may be selected to serve more than two consecutive terms," and then, "in which case a councilmember would serve one additional term." Oh, comma. "In which case a council member may serve one additional term," and that would be an addition there. Yes, Marilyn? >>MARILYN CADE: Sorry. That might answer my question. My question was, so in the past when we've had -- say, for instance, someone leaves, there are still a few months left on their term -- >>AVRI DORIA: That's in the next sentence. "For these purposes, a person selected to fill a vacancy in a term shall not be deemed to have served that term." Any objection, though, to the "in which case, a council member may serve one additional term" being the additional phrase there? >>STEVE METALITZ: Avri, this is Steve Metalitz. Might I suggest you may want to say "in such a special circumstance" because it is not clear what you are referring to with "in which case." >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, any objection to that change? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Then the next change was one sentence later. "A former council member is," the word added was "former." It had been just "a council member who has served two consecutive terms must remain." But, of course, at that point, they are not a council member. They're a former council member so the addition of the word "former." Any objection to that word? Okay. Then the next section, next change is in Section 3. And this is -- is this all just formatting? Trying to figure out what was the change here. This is an addition? Okay. So the added language is "a vacancy on the GNSO Council shall be deemed to exist in the case of a death, resignation or removal of any member. Vacancy shall be filled for the unexpired term by the appropriate Nominating Committee or stakeholder group that selected the member, holding the position before the vacancy occurred by giving ICANN's secretary written notice of its selection. "Any objection to the addition of that sentence? Okay, thank you. Sorry, Alan. >>ALAN GREENBERG: Not an objection, just a question of what does it mean? In general, a Nominating Committee ceases to exist once its makes its appointments, doesn't it? >>AVRI DORIA: No. I believe the Nominating Committee stays in effect for filling interim positions. It doesn't do anything if there aren't any, but it does remain in seating until there is another one. And then -- >>ALAN GREENBERG: Okay. >>AVRI DORIA: Yes? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Again -- >>AVRI DORIA: Name. >>JEFF NEUMAN: I just had a conversation with Dan. I think in this instance and maybe in some other ones, I'm just kind of wondering why it is the ICANN secretary as opposed to the GNSO secretariat. Why is this something that rises to the level of an officer of ICANN that you need to send written notice to them as opposed to just making it less formal? >>AVRI DORIA: Dan? >>DAN HALLORAN: Yeah, I think it is kind of a global issue. Probably in a lot of places it says "ICANN secretary." I don't know that it hurts, but I think you might also want to say GNSO secretariat. I don't know that the ICANN secretary needs to know every time one constituency is changing a rep or something. >>JEFF NEUMAN: This is Jeff Neuman. What it probably was is just someone copied from the bylaws for the board and just cut and pasted here. There are similar provisions in the ICANN board bylaws. >>AVRI DORIA: So you're recommending that it be changed to the GNSO secretariat? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yeah. I don't know of an instance where any of these changes should be the ICANN secretary. It should be just be GNSO secretariat. Okay. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, thank. You, any objection? Sort of accept that is as a global change for these things as they come through. Point out any others if you see them. Procedures. Okay, the next change is "procedures for handling stakeholder group appointed GNSO council member vacancies. Resignations and removals are prescribed in the application stakeholder group charter." And then delete "or Nominating Committee charter approved by the board." Okay. Any objection to that change? Okay. Moving on. Then we have a paragraph on -- an added paragraph on, "A GNSO council member selected by the Nominating Committee may be removed for cause, stated by 3/4 vote" -- okay. I'm losing it reading it too far away. A GNSO Council member selected by the Nominating Committee may be removed for cause stated by a 3/4 vote of this article of all members of the GNSO Council." Now, that one is problematic given the -- other than sentence structure, the bicameral issues. So that one is a problematic addition. It should be 3/4 vote of both houses. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Avri, it's Liz. I just wanted to -- what's the problem you are trying to solve on that paragraph? >>AVRI DORIA: That paragraph is there -- >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Sorry. Just can I finish? >>AVRI DORIA: Sorry. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: There are two concepts to me that I think are not self-evident. One is the notion of for cause. Anyone who is outside of a normal operating environment, in a legal sense, would not understand what "for cause" was. So the general users of these provisions are ordinary people who don't rely on legal terms. So an explanation of what "for cause" does in the conversation would be helpful. And then the reason why it sticks out for me is the Nominating Committee provisions here -- so is it a thing that needs to revert back to the Nominating Committee because if a Nominating Committee member is removed, then are you asking the Nominating Committee to appoint another person? If that's the case, then how? Because this does have transitional questions associated with it. So it reads really badly, first of all. And then -- so the way to fix that is what's the question we want to solve? And then do it in simple language. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. I think the question that needs to be solved is how to remove a Nominating Committee-appointed person. I think once that Nominating Committee person is removed, the second question, it reverts to that previous paragraph that says if one is removed, if one dies, if one for any other reason doesn't continue, the Nominating Committee is asked to provide another person which has happened in the past. I mean, I was a Nominating Committee person that was put in by a Nominating Committee midterm because someone got elected to the board, so it happens. So that would be the how you remove them. The how you put them back in was already covered. That doesn't answer, though, what does "for cause" mean. >>TONY HARRIS: Just a question. I think if you modify this and put in "of both houses," wouldn't that mean that each of the two houses have to have -- has to have 3/4 votes? >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. >>TONY HARRIS: So you are not considering the whole -- >>AVRI DORIA: That other clause of both houses -- of the whole council -- "of all members of the GNSO Council" would have to come out. >>TONY HARRIS: So, in other words, one house might have 100% approval to request this and the other one could block it effectively? >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah, right. >>TONY HARRIS: Okay. Just so I understand. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: It is putting a high barrier to getting rid of someone. I had Tim and then Jeff and then Alan. >>TIM RUIZ: I don't recall that we discussed what happens if -- the Nominating Committee appointee that's being removed was assigned to one of the houses and has a vote. So if that vote is removed, then we've kind of imbalanced the houses and how do we deal with that until the new appointee is selected? >>AVRI DORIA: That would be a different issue, yeah. Okay. Jeff? >>MARGIE MILAM: You could probably clarify that by having the vote exclude the person -- >>AVRI DORIA: There was two questions. One of them, yes, it would exclude that person. But I think the point was being made, is that once that Nominating Committee person is out of that house, then a balancing vote -- the purpose that it served inside the house was a balancing vote. That balancing vote is now gone and how does that affect anything else was, I think, the question. And that's hard. Okay. Now I had Jeff, then Alan, then Dan. >>JEFF NEUMAN: So I think you might want to think about that issue that Tony had raised. If a Nominating Committee member is assigned to one house and 100% of that house wants to get rid of that person because they are just doing an awful job, not showing up, for whatever reason "for cause" is, how that's defined, the other house can gain that and say, "I like the person giving them hell" and vote for it. There is some gaming that could be done there. I'm not sure if 100% of one house wants the person that's assigned to that house out for cause, I think that should have some weight -- I am not sure the other house should even have a say in that. I'm just saying think about it because there could be some repercussions there we're not addressing. >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. I think, though, it could happen both ways. The gaming could happen in either direction. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Right, sure. A house could gang up and say, "We don't like that guy or gal" -- >>AVRI DORIA: Disagreeing with us. >>JEFF NEUMAN: -- "because they are disagreeing with us." I think you need to think about it. If there is really a for-cause -- >>ALAN GREENBERG: (Speaker off microphone). >>JEFF NEUMAN: The second point is if there is for-cause. This subject to approval by ICANN board, I would add "which may not be unreasonably be withheld." I don't like these blanket approval-by- board statements and then just no accountability for that. I think that they should not unreasonably withhold any kind of approval like this. >>AVRI DORIA: The question I would ask is, "unreasonable withheld" is as difficult to define as "for cause." >>JEFF NEUMAN: It is a standard. It is a recognized standard. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, thank you. Alan? >>ALAN GREENBERG: A couple of things. Regarding Tim's statement that if the person is removed and things are unbalanced, we can't stop people from dying so those situations happen on occasion and I think we have to live with it. In terms of for-cause, I'm the one who originally put that in in the committee whenever it was, a year and a half ago or something. It was put in because it gave the board the ability to say "the house is ganging up on that person because they don't particularly like them and, therefore, they are trying to remove them without a real business cause and was left undefined very specifically for that reason, essentially giving the board ratification -- the ability to reverse the removal if they didn't feel there was valid -- a valid case against the person. So I like the way it's worded right now. It gives the board the ability of stopping capricious action. On the other hand, it says the council can act. >>AVRI DORIA: Are you objecting, therefore, to the addition of "which can't be reasonably withheld"? Because your example seems like it would fit into a reasonable withholding? >>ALAN GREENBERG: If a board decision saying that house or council is acting capriciously because the person is objecting to what they say but not acting out of bounds, we're now changing the definition of "for cause" with the definition of "reasonably withheld." I don't think it makes much difference either way. >>AVRI DORIA: You wanted to respond directly to his response? >>TIM RUIZ: Not really respond, just clarify. That's true. And I think that's why we need to maybe address that question at some point because it does have an impact. It changes the threshold, basically. If there is a vote missing, for whatever reason, death, removal, whatever -- >>AVRI DORIA: But it is not really a case with this particular -- >>TIM RUIZ: We don't have to necessarily address it here, but we should say something. >>MARGIE MILAM: Can I say something? "Unreasonably withheld" seems a little weird in the context of a board approval. They have got their fiduciary duties, whatever standards typically under corporate law apply, and I don't know how that works when you have written in the bylaws that it cannot be unreasonably withheld. They will do what they need to do to exercise their fiduciary duties and you wouldn't want this to get in the way of that. >>AVRI DORIA: Dan, you were next in the queue. >>DAN HALLORAN: Few points. One I agree with Margie on that. Jeff, I understand your point. That's more when you are a negotiating a contract between two parties. You want to stick that in to make it clear that they can't just arbitrarily or for bad reasons withhold it. There are all kinds of places in the bylaws where it says -- something is subject to approval by the board or subject to approval by the council, and they are sort of internal actions and you kind of presume they are acting in good faith and following their own bylaws. So I don't think it is a huge deal, but I think it is kind of unnecessary there. So the main things I want to first say this isn't a new thing. This is in the current bylaws. You can already remove a NomCom appointee for cause. We were just suggesting you might want to stick it back in or check if you were taking it out on purpose. I would agree you would have to change it to do the houses, but I think it should be -- you already talked about this. I think it should be the vote of each house and then make sure you get rid of the thing about "all members of the council." Just to clean up that thing, put it in brackets or something. >>CHUCK GOMES: A simple way to do it is maybe to move "of both houses" down to that other section "of all members of both houses." >>DAN HALLORAN: You want to make sure you don't lump everybody together and have one vote. >>MARGIE MILAM: "Of each house"? >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. Liz? Sorry. You are not finished. Sorry. >>DAN HALLORAN: The "each" you need is one line up. There you go. >>MARGIE MILAM: You don't want me to move it? >>AVRI DORIA: "Of each house of the GNSO Council." >>DAN HALLORAN: I would get rid of "of all members" just to avoid confusion. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thank you. Liz? >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Just a question for Dan, in a sense, but also how this would actually happen in practice is the Nominating Committee appointees are appointed for a year. >> Two years. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: And they're swapping houses? >>AVRI DORIA: No. The way it's said here -- what's being asked is that the -- and this is not this year's Nominating Committee but a future Nominating Committee will appoint specifically to a house or to homelessness. [Laughter] I'm sorry. I will continue calling it that. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: I was just trying to work out whether this problem could be solved by time rather than a bylaw change. But if it is a two- year time frame, it is too long so there is sufficient time for misbehavior or death or destruction or whatever to have a significant negative effect on the group and it is not resolved by time. If there was a rotation -- >>AVRI DORIA: There is no rotation. Basically, what's -- >>LIZ WILLIAMS: You are still stuck. >>AVRI DORIA: What's been recommended is that a Nominating Committee -- that the Nominating Committee specifically appoints -- that's one of the changes that was accepted by the group a while back, that specific appointment to a specific house or to lack of house. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: So then the change that you've just made about each house is actually very important so that each house has the choice. >>AVRI DORIA: Of approving the change. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Yeah. >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. I'm going through. I have Liz. I've got Philip, Kristina, Chuck, Zahid. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Thanks. It's on this point about the barrier for removal. I thought that when we first addressed this -- we are really looking at the logic of the relevant house taking a vote in terms of the relevant Nominating Committee representative. And now we're clarifying that indeed the studies state Nominating Committee will be appointing to one house, the other house and then homelessness. It would make sense, would it not, for the relevant house -- for the housed Nominating Committee people to take that vote and the other house to be silent on that and for the whole council to take a vote for the homeless Nominating Committee -- >>AVRI DORIA: It is hardly to be dispossessed if you are homeless. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: But it makes sense. That's the relevant body to whom they are attached. That would seem to be the logic we would want to follow given the designation of nominating people to houses. >>AVRI DORIA: I will put you back in the queue, Alan. >>ALAN GREENBERG: It is just a clarification of his. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, clarification. >>ALAN GREENBERG: When you say a vote of whole council for the homeless council, do you mean a single vote or a weighted vote? We avoided single votes -- >>AVRI DORIA: I assumed he meant of both houses. >>ALAN GREENBERG: Okay. >>AVRI DORIA: I think, by and large, the people on the council always mean both houses when they are talking about a whole council vote. That's sort have been my assumption all the way through. When we have gone bicameral, there isn't a vote that's cameral. I have Kristina. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I was just going to suggest because I understand the concern that Margie and Dan have raised, if whether you could put some kind of temporal requirement in there for board action because obviously if the person's performance has been problematic enough that there is a vote to remove them, that whole process is essentially rendered moot if the board doesn't get to it for several months. I realize that, of course, you can't mandate very specific time frames, but to the extent that we could be a little bit more precise and impose promptly or something like that, I don't know, Jeff, would that solve your concern? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yeah, that would help. I just don't know how that fits in with board meetings and things, right? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I know. That's why I was -- >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yeah. You're right. That's going to be a good amount of time -- there is no immediacy. I don't know if there is an emergency board -- Dan, is there a way for board to make emergency action by e-mail? I don't know. >>DAN HALLORAN: You could just put in "as promptly as feasible." >>AVRI DORIA: "In a timely manner"? What was your phrase? >>DAN HALLORAN: "In a timely manner" would be fine. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, subject to approval by the board in a timely manner. Let me go through the queue. Chuck? >>CHUCK GOMES: I'm coming back to what Jeff commented on, and I think Philip was addressing the same thing. It seems to me that there is some value in letting the house that's impacted for a voting Nominating Committee appointee to make the decision rather than both houses. Now, in the case of the non-voting rep, that's where you definitely need a vote of both houses. But I don't know, is there -- do people agree with that, that maybe it would be better to -- for the voting NomCom reps? Let the house -- and have a high threshold, but the house that makes -- that is impacted by it can make that decision without the other house. To me that seems reasonable. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. What I'd like to ask -- and I'll go through the queue. I've got Zahid and then I've got Alan. I'd like to ask people that if they object to making the changes as recommended by Philip, you know, get in the queue. Otherwise, you know, we can change the phrasing and think about how the phrasing would go. >>TIM RUIZ: (Speaker is off microphone). >>AVRI DORIA: I'll put you down. Sorry, I didn't have you. I have now Zahid, Alan, Tim. Did I have another hand? Go ahead. >>ZAHID JAMIL: Yeah. I'm just trying to get clarification on why did we need to put in subject to approval by the ICANN board? Is that something that traditionally is done or what was the reason for putting that in there? >>AVRI DORIA: I believe it was put in there -- I think somebody mentioned it earlier -- oh, it was Alan -- Alan, why don't you answer? You're the next one in the queue anyway. >>ALAN GREENBERG: My memory may be failing me, but my recollection is that the July group last year decided to do it to say NomCom appointees on the house can be removed by a 75% vote of that house, and I requested that the board approval be put in -- or at least supported it -- to make sure that it wasn't capricious action. So I do believe if we go back to the report we did a year ago, we'll find out that at that point we did say "of one house." I happen to like the two houses better, but my recollection is we added the board approval to make sure it wasn't capricious action of one house. >>ZAHID JAMIL: So I think I'm -- what I'm understanding is that this is not some -- this is not a power that the board has on its own. This is a power that we are sort of, as a council, giving -- in the bylaws giving to them, saying, okay, if supposing we do go ahead and remove someone who is a NomCom appointee, then please could you take the final action in this case. Then coming back to what Jeff said earlier, there's nothing to bar us imposing or suggesting procedures for the board to follow. So if we say, you know -- use the language say they cannot unreasonably withhold that, it's possible to do that. There's nothing barring it. And secondly, there should be a time limit, as well as Kristina said. So I'm -- you know, I'm not completely -- either in my situation, we take out the board approval altogether or put in a mechanism where things become very clear. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thank you. I've got Tim and then Mike. >>TIM RUIZ: Just a question and then I'll comment on the change that we've been talking about, but if in this transition period or this time period between when the vote takes place to remove the NomCom appointee and when the board approves it, during that time frame is it assumed then that the NomCom appointee would continue to have voting rights within that house until confirmed -- the removal's confirmed by the board? I think that should probably be clear, so there's no -- it doesn't become an issue. And then secondly, just, you know, we were talking about whether one house should be able to approve it or it would take both houses and about the gaming. You know, I think that works both ways. I can't see a situation where a house would likely block the removal of an NCA, just simply because it wouldn't be a good move politically, or however you want to put it. So I don't really see the need for it to be both houses. But if we're going to go that route, then I certainly don't understand why we have to have the board approve it. >>AVRI DORIA: I've got Mike and then what I'm going to suggest doing is that we stop this discussion and I'm going to look for a couple volunteers to go and re-craft this one a little so that we can come back to it tomorrow afternoon but go ahead, Mike. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Yeah. I mean, just re-reiterating the point I think Zahid was trying to make which is that today the board has no role in the election of councillors or in removing councillors. Why are we now adding in a board approval to removing a councillor? It's just complicating things in my mind. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. So can I have a couple of volunteers that will get themselves together and sit down over coffee and re-craft the paragraph and send it out hopefully by the end of today? I've got Alan, I've got Olga -- okay. Thank you, Tim. I've got Alan, Olga. Anyone else from -- Margie will sit with them. Okay. And see if you can't -- I mean, you've heard everybody's comments. See if you can craft something that meets them and we'll talk about that one again Sunday. But keep going through about -- >>CHUCK GOMES: Yeah. So they need to get it done before Sunday. >>AVRI DORIA: Right. So if you could get it done, you know, hopefully during coffee breaks or whatever, today, tonight, and then so that we have it to look at during the day tomorrow. And Avri, are we clear, the changes we're going to try to make is making it a house decision for the housed nominating committee and getting rid of the board approval section? Is that -- >>AVRI DORIA: Those were two of the strong sentiments, but the people part- -- >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: That's the consensus we're -- >>AVRI DORIA: Well, I don't know. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: -- reaching without objection? >>AVRI DORIA: You should probably participate in the group and helping reach that consensus, if you want to help make sure that viewpoint is represented. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: I thought that was the direction of the change. I wanted a clarification on that. >>JEFF NEUMAN: With one addition, right? And that is, if it's the one that is not -- is homeless, then it would be both houses. >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah, right. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Yes, yes. >>AVRI DORIA: Right. I think there's still discussion on the board. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: I think we're there. >>AVRI DORIA: I think people that feel strongly about this, having heard the discussions, should work together and bring back something. Okay. Let's try and -- we got about 10 more minutes. Let's see if we can hit some more of these. This one... Okay. So this one gets marked for further work, and four, we still had -- >>MARGIE MILAM: We're still waiting on that one, right. >>AVRI DORIA: Well, I'm not quite sure. Are we waiting on the SAC for that one or are we sending it to the board with the placeholder? I believe we're sending it to the board with the placeholder and then the board will deal with the placeholder. Is that a correct assumption? >>STEVE METALITZ: Avri, could I get in the queue on this. >>AVRI DORIA: Please. Go ahead. You've got the head of the queue. >>STEVE METALITZ: Thank you. I just wanted to point out that however -- if the council is going to vote on these amendments, it should do so in a provisional motion or something like that, because we really should be approving ultimately a comprehensive set of amendments, and there are two places, at least, in these amendments where we're waiting for a decision by the board. This is one of them, and the other one is in the last section of the transition article, Paragraph D, dealing with noncommercial representation. And it's the clear sentiment of our constituency that we should not be approving or giving final approval to bylaws until the board acts on those two issues, both of which, in our view, were fundamental to the whole restructuring plan. This one and the question of noncommercial representation. So I just wanted to get that on the record that -- that any action that the council takes, depending on how the motion is fashioned, it should be some type of provisional approval because we really should be voting ultimately on comprehensive amendments. >>AVRI DORIA: Well, actually, we don't actually have approval of bylaws. We just have recommended changes to bylaws. Approval of bylaws is actually something that the board does, not us. So -- >>STEVE METALITZ: You were talking about having a motion -- >>AVRI DORIA: Right. We have a motion making our recommendation for changes. And -- >>STEVE METALITZ: Our view from the IPC is that we should not be recommending changes except on a provisional basis. You know, we could say this is fine as far as it goes, but there are two issues on which, at least as of now, we are waiting for a decision from the board, and until we get a decision from the board, which may or may not have been delegated to the SIC, we shouldn't be approving the full set of amendments. Or shouldn't be recommending, I should say, the full set of amendments. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Well, that's something that I think will probably come out in the vote for the motion. And I -- you know, the -- there basically isn't a -- is a motion which will have this text, and that -- that's something that can come out in the motion, and we also discussed the notion of putting forward amendments that we would vote on before -- for the motion, if that was necessary. Did I have any hands on this one? I've got Alan. Okay. Alan, go ahead. >>ALAN GREENBERG: Although I agree in theory with what Steve is saying, my recollection is on this particular item, the board said since we don't have the board review completed and we don't know if there's going to be one seat or two, and if there's only one seat, the discussion is rather moot, let's wait until we know. But that discussion -- that decision may take a long time to be made. Another year or two. And we can't necessarily wait for it. I think we should be putting something in there saying assuming there are two seats, then this is what we would like to see, and if it revert -- if it goes back to one -- if a decision is made for only one seat, we're back to square one and have to have a talk about it. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Yes, Philip? >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Regardless of the outcome of Alan has described, I think it's still the case that as Steve describes, we would be wise, at best, to make the provisional nature of any vote we take clear, because we haven't seen the full text and if it takes six years later to see the full text, then fine. That's the board's decision. But I think we should still make it clear that we're not approving something that we haven't seen. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. But then I -- I'm having trouble understanding exactly how we would do that. I mean, one possibility is to not make a recommendation on 4, and basically to remove 4, have an amendment to say, "Remove 4 from the proposed bylaws and just not send any recommended language on that," and then also if, you know, a group of constituencies wanted to propose that some other paragraph be taken out of the proposal, then that would be. Because I think we can approve 80, 90% of it easily without conditionalization, and then there's this paragraph and then I guess there's the paragraph later that, you know -- so I would recommend that we think about actually removing this paragraph from -- you know, and propose that as an amendment. That we amend the motion by, you know, removing recommended changes to Paragraph 4 here. And if somebody wants to propose an amendment, to propose removing -- and I don't have it in front of me -- whatever paragraph and clause one wanted to remove, and then we could vote on those two amendments separately, remove those clauses from the bylaws if they succeed, and then proceed with the bylaw recommendation. Yes. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Another alternative is to just make it a little more vague, but leave it in. Just say the council shall make selections to fill its seats on the ICANN board by written ballot and the procedures are defined in the council, and that should be -- that should be totally non-objectionable, right? And then it's still in there. >>AVRI DORIA: In fact, if we took out the placeholder -- the placeholder was a proposal from Steve, I believe, and that -- you mean, just remove that? >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Remove that and just say we make selections to fill its seats -- or seat or seats -- on the ICANN board, period. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. You mean period or the GNSO Council should make selections to fill its seats on the ICANN board by written ballot or action at a meeting. Election procedures are defined in the GNSO Council operational rules and procedures approved by the board? >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Yes. >>AVRI DORIA: Steve, would you be okay with that? >>STEVE METALITZ: Well, no, because I think if it was made clear that a condition of the restructuring was that these seats would be filled in a certain way. In other words, that each house would get the chance to -- to select somebody for the board. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Chuck? I'm sorry. >>STEVE METALITZ: I think it's also not a good practice to -- I mean, I think that the method of selection of other members of the ICANN board is more clearly spelled out in the bylaws, so I would -- I would -- I think we need to have this in the bylaws. I hear what Mike is suggesting. But I think this is a fundamental issue and we need to flag in some way that we're not giving a recommendation on this topic until the board decides. We could decide that question, but the board decides that. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Chuck? >>CHUCK GOMES: Yes. Well, I agree with Steve that this is a fundamental issue, and it was in our -- in our deliberations on the restructure plan. But we did, in our recommendations, give specific directions and it -- it was that the contracted house would fill seat 13 and then the non- contracted house would fill seat 14, so I wouldn't agree that the order wasn't a part of our recommendation because it was. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Gee, it's almost 10:30 now. We haven't gotten as far as I had hoped we would get on these. But we don't have our next person. Okay. Yes, Mike. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: So what -- are we planning on having a vote to approve these recommendations on Wednesday? >>AVRI DORIA: At the moment, there's a motion on the table to approve them. We need to approve them within the next two weeks, three weeks. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Why? >>AVRI DORIA: Because we need the bylaws to be set in place, basically scheduling backwards, a thing I've gone through a couple times in terms of the schedule -- >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: From Seoul, you mean? >>AVRI DORIA: -- that in order to have the new council seated in Seoul, we need the board to be able to approve the bylaw changes at its meeting at the end of July in order for the board to be able to vote on them at its meeting at the end of July, they need a month. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Okay. Well, but the fact is that these aren't ready for a vote, obviously. I mean, there's not a single document showing what all of the changes will be because we're now making changes again today. Constituencies haven't had a chance to review this. There's just no possibility that we could vote on this on Wednesday. We -- I think we -- I know we in the BC would exercise our right to put it off to the next meeting. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. What I would like to try and do, and one of the things I've talked about is, as opposed to -- scheduling a special meeting for next week before -- basically so that it was still possible to send them forward. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: These are obviously critical bylaws, right? I mean, and we need to have time for the constituencies to see what it is that's being proposed and have discussion. >>AVRI DORIA: Right. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: That has not happened. >>AVRI DORIA: But we've also been discussing them for many months. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: No. A small group has been discussing them for many months now. >>AVRI DORIA: It's been a council -- it's been a committee-of-the- whole of the council with everyone free to participate and to be communicating back and forth as constituencies. It hasn't been a small drafting team. It's been a drafting team, a committee of the council with other members of constituencies as -- as wished. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Okay. But there's a lot of moving parts in here that are still moving even today, and unless there's one baked proposal on the table that the constituency could review as a unified document, there's no possibility that we could vote on it. And we haven't seen that document yet. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Well, the document has been on the table for a long time. Yes, there are changes that are now being added again at the end, but I -- but I think to say that the document hasn't been on the table is not quite accurate. The document has been on the table for a long time. We then went and got some extra comments from legal counsel. I understand that you'll exercise your right to not vote, but I do think -- or to not vote on it now, although this motion has been on the table for several weeks, and we're trying to close some last edits. We need to get a decision on it even if it's a negative decision. We need to get a decision on it before the end of the month. If we can't decide on votes by the end of the month, we're basically sort of saying that, you know, we can't get the new bicameral seated even by Seoul and that's sort of problematic at this point. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: It's not problematic to me. It's got to be done correctly. You know, you can't just rush something like this through, and that seems to me what's happening. >>AVRI DORIA: I -- okay. Yes, Tony. >>TONY HOLMES: Well, just to add some support for Mike, I agree that whatever we're going to vote on, it still needs to be something that's out there and we've had some chance to discuss it within the constituencies. That is not the case, and I don't see the point of just voting when we know that we're going to get a negative vote. It's far better to give -- give us the time needed to pursue this, and there's a lot of integral parts in this. I agree with that as well. So I'm in the same camp as Mike on this. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. I understand. I got Liz. I would like to say, though, that this has been on the table for a long time, but yes, Liz. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Avri, looking to see if we can solve problems rather than extend things forever, because there are some significant risks with not having -- significant external risks with not having a council sorted by the Seoul meeting, and perhaps -- and I understand what Mike's trying to do. He wants to -- to be precise and to make sure we have the right thing. I think what needs to be done is identify where there are areas of only disagreement, so narrow it really down very, very tightly, and have a big list of things that are agreed upon that don't need to be discussed ever again and hone in very, very focused -- on a very focused way on what needs to be resolved and then only do those things. >>AVRI DORIA: Right. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: It stops the constant revision and discussion and sloppy -- sloppy -- not sloppy meaning poor quality, but sloppy discussion, because Mike's exactly right, the moving parts keep shifting and they are related to each other. >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. I actually don't think the moving parts have been shifting. I think the moving part -- the placeholder regarding names and selection has been a pretty fixed block for a while. One of the things that was the intent -- and I don't know if we're going to succeed at it -- was that by tomorrow's meeting, we would have gone through this. And I'm still hoping we can go through this and have the solid document. There still is the constituency day before that for a last check on that, assuming that the constituencies have been following through on this work for the past months, since it has been on the table and it has been on the agenda for a while now, for the Wednesday meeting. It seems to me to sort of say we haven't had time when the motion has been out there for two weeks, the whole council's been talking about it for a month, and there is a constituency day still ahead. To say we don't have time when the pressure of the schedule has been something that has been repeated often is problematic. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: To say we have constituency day is fine, but there's not that many members of our constituency that are here and our processes are in the BC, if there's any debate, I mean, this could take weeks for us to agree on whether to approve these or not. And we've never still today -- we do not have a document saying, "These are the proposed changes," because we're still changing it on the fly this morning. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Yes, Kristina. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Regardless of -- I mean, I happen to agree with Tony and Mike, but even if you disagree, the fact remains that at least from the perspective of the IPC, there are two fundamental issues that are outstanding, and frankly if we're going to talk time, they've been on the table for the board since that small group locked themselves away after the Paris meeting and came up with a solution. So we're going on now, almost about 10 months. >>AVRI DORIA: Right. But -- >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: So -- >>AVRI DORIA: But one of those is we're trying to change the decision we gave in July, as it was quite clear who was doing seat 13, who was doing seat 14, as of the meeting in July, and it's basically been a movement afterwards to change that. Also, the seat designations were decided in July and it's a motion that's been put through now to try and vary that. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: And the support -- the IPC support for that proposal was contingent on certain conditions having been met that have not yet been met, that will not and cannot be met -- >>AVRI DORIA: I think that that's debatable whether they've been met or not, but that's -- >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: -- in the next couple months. But I'm just making -- so that you're clear, regardless of whether the constituencies, the IPC has had a time to discuss this -- >>AVRI DORIA: Not for seat 13 and seat 14. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: -- that there are, from the perspective of other constituencies, outstanding issues that will not be resolved by Wednesday. >>AVRI DORIA: Certainly not for 13 and 14. I mean, the issue of 13 and 14, the issue has not changed since the July meeting. That -- that -- that is the case. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: And that is not the issue that I've been talking about. >>AVRI DORIA: Right. Okay. So that's one of the two issues that's being brought up as a blocking issue. Now, on the other issue, was that IPC condition listed in the -- I don't believe so, but anyhow, okay, that's obviously an open discussion, and I also thought we had -- we had talked about various things, but I believe the board has already given us their decision on that one, that basically the board -- there was an IPC appeal to the board and the board came back with an approval. >>STEVE METALITZ: Avri? >>AVRI DORIA: Yes, I've got a hand from Eric, I've got Tim, and I've got Steve. >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Thank you, Avri. Eric Brunner-Williams from CORE. I happened to miss what the two objections were from the IPC. Could you state them in about a minute? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: The IPC wanted to ensure that the allocation of assignment of board seats as between the two houses was, in fact -- in terms of the recommendation that came out of that group was, in fact, preserved; and second, that the allocation of six seats to the noncommercial stakeholders group was dependent on that group fulfilling what, in fact, the BGC had identified as an issue and problem with the representativeness of that group, and it is the view of the IPC that that representative issue has not yet been resolved. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. But the board did give us a response saying they would not do a re-reallocation of the seats, when we asked SIC for the decision on that, they did give us -- and this was in response to your appeal. Tim. >>TIM RUIZ: Just a question about the -- >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Avri. >>TIM RUIZ: -- the board seats. So what is the question that we actually posed to the board or what's the question we wanted them for the -- >>AVRI DORIA: The question was we wanted to switch who got to choose 13 and 4. >>JEFF NEUMAN: And they said no. >>AVRI DORIA: And they said -- no. They actually said we're not going to get into that one at the moment because whether there's one seat or two seats is really dependent on the board review and, therefore, they avoided that issue for now. That one they did not give us an answer on. >>TIM RUIZ: So we're asking -- >>AVRI DORIA: We wanted to -- basically there was a recommendation from the users -- from the commercial users' house stakeholder group members saying that they wanted the seat that was elected next year, as opposed to the seat that was elected the following year. >>TIM RUIZ: Oh, okay. >>AVRI DORIA: And I forget which was 13, 14. I'd have to go back. >>TIM RUIZ: So did we ask about whether there was -- so we haven't asked whether we'll -- the GNSO will still be allowed two seats regardless of how they switch -- change the board. >>AVRI DORIA: We were assuming two seats but the board review could change that. I had Tim. Oh, yes, Steve. Sorry. And then I have Philip. >>STEVE METALITZ: Yes, thank you, Avri. This is Steve Metalitz. On these two points, first, I think the -- if I'm not mistaken, the board hasn't even answered the question of whether each house would choose a seat. >>AVRI DORIA: Correct. >>STEVE METALITZ: Or it would fill one seat. So there is an issue about the order, but the threshold issue of will one house get to fill one seat and the other house get to fill the other seat hasn't been resolved. They just haven't decided that yet. Secondly, on the representation on the council, I think the question that the structural improvements committee answered is not the question we're talking about. They said, "No, we will not reallocate seats." They did not answer the question of how the six seats allocated to the noncommercial stakeholder group would be filled. >>AVRI DORIA: Right. >>STEVE METALITZ: And that is -- that is the multiple issue that's before us. >>AVRI DORIA: Isn't that a charter issue, though, between the board and that stakeholder group and I thought that we had pretty much -- >>STEVE METALITZ: It has to be made by the board, I agree. >>AVRI DORIA: And it's between the stakeholder group and the board, and -- and so I don't understand how it affects the bylaws, that there are the six seats and it's the stakeholder group's charter with the board that determines how those are chosen. >>STEVE METALITZ: Avri, look at the -- at the third-to-the-last paragraph in your document. >>AVRI DORIA: The transition paragraph. >>STEVE METALITZ: It describes how three seats will be filled in the transition article, but it doesn't say how the other three seats will be filled. So that's an open question. >>AVRI DORIA: Right. And the rest of it is taken care of by the stakeholder charter. That's -- I mean, that's the case with -- >>STEVE METALITZ: That's a decision that has to be made with the board. >>AVRI DORIA: Between the board and the stakeholder group in their charter. >>STEVE METALITZ: If you're saying we have no interest in this fundamental issue that we insisted upon as part of the -- of the restructuring, I disagree. We do have an interest in this. It is up to the board. The board hasn't answered this. And all I'm saying is that I agree with you that probably 90% plus of this could be recommended now, but I think we need to make it very clear that we're not giving the final recommendation until we see -- till the board acts on these two issues, which is, as Kristina has pointed out, they've had before them for many, many months and for whatever reason, they haven't answered. >>AVRI DORIA: Yes, Chuck. >>CHUCK GOMES: It seems to me that we should make it very clear to the board, and in particular the structural improvements committee, that these two issues may be showstoppers in terms of seating a council in Seoul, if we do not receive answers very quickly. >>TIM RUIZ: Avri. >>AVRI DORIA: Yes, Tim. >>TIM RUIZ: From my viewpoint, that has to include what decision is going to be made about the size of the board and how that's going to affect the board members that the GNSO will be selecting. If it's down to one, that is a huge issue in my view, because again, that gets to the -- you know, the whole bicameral structure and one of the reasons why we went to that. So if the board's going to be reduced in size, the GNSO needs to maintain the ability to select two of those seats. And it's not about representativeness; it's about participation. And if we can't participate equally in that -- in this bicameral model -- then in my mind it brings into Question the whole system altogether. So I don't know if this being communicated and how others feel about this, but I think that's something that we as a council, I would like to see us communicate to the board very clearly. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thank you. Any other comments? Yes, Marilyn. >>MARILYN CADE: Avri, it's Marilyn Cade. I have a question. I'm aware -- I may have missed something. I'm aware that there was a board review proposal to change the size of the board, but at the public meeting in Mexico City that discussed the board report, there was strong opposition by the community to changing the size of the board, and when I read the public comments, I don't discern -- I know I count differently than some people do, but I don't discern community support for changing the size of the board. Can I ask what -- you know, why we are now talking about the possibility that the board would change the number of seats that the council would elect, and if that is, in fact, a situation, is the council and the various constituencies intending to express their view, again, in the public forum about such a recommendation? >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Yeah. I think the only reason we're talking about it is because as part of the response that we got back from the board, they merely said, "We don't know what the ultimate outcome of that decision's going to be." They didn't sort of say, "Because we think it will be one or we think it will be two." We basically got a response saying back, "Listen, this is still under discussion. Therefore, we cannot give you an answer on your question because we don't know the answer to that question." Yes, Chuck. >>CHUCK GOMES: And they just recently posted, as most of you know, a document on the board review, and they still haven't addressed that issue. >>MARILYN CADE: So my -- so my question is: The board may not have a decision on that topic, but it -- this is a bottom-up stakeholder- driven organization, so if the GNSO Council has a view about the idea of whether it would be fully represented by a single board member, has the GNSO Council put that view forward? >>AVRI DORIA: No, I don't think we have. And perhaps we want to but so far no one has put forward a discussion point saying we should until now. So that's a different issue. Okay. Now, it's quarter to 11:00. At 11:00 we were going to start talking about the IRT. We can either quickly go get cups of coffee or we can try to -- one thing I would like to ask, is there any objection to asking Margie to accept the rest of the -- I mean, the rest of the format ones so they are out of the document and we can go through and to accept the rest of the NomCom to Nominating Committee ones so that that part of the blue-marking of the document can -- because at the moment, the document looks a lot more marked up than it is largely because of formatting changes. So any objection to her doing that before we next talk about this? Then we have a group of people that are going to go work on the language of the two issues -- I mean, of the one paragraph dealing with how to get rid of an unpopular NomCom appointee. And that's about it. So, yes, Philip? >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Sorry, Avri. I wasn't on the list. I just wanted to say formally that the objection that you've heard from the IPC was one that we and the ISPs have formally supported in a resolution that we've sent to the board which is still unanswered. So there is not just one constituency. It is all three of us -- >>AVRI DORIA: Right. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: -- behind that. And we've had dialogue with the SICs since, and they are still thinking about the issue very seriously but you have not yet come to a resolution. So it's outstanding and actively being thought be. So we are trapped in that timing issue. >>AVRI DORIA: I think the issue I was making on it is that I did not -- I still have trouble understanding it as a bylaws issue. And as the bylaw -- what was the bylaw issue to the SIC was whether there were six or fewer seats. And the question of how they were allocated, yes, rests upon your appeal but also rests -- is something that I thought was centered in the stakeholder group charters and it's not in the bylaws. The bylaws doesn't discuss anywhere how any of the seats are elected by any of the stakeholder groups, and to single out one stakeholder group and to say "but we want to talk about how their seats are designated in the bylaws" is just -- seemed to me different than the treatment that we were according all the other stakeholder groups. Certainly, it is in the stakeholder group charter. Certainly your appeal is one that's still being discussed. I just didn't see it as a bylaws issue but as a stakeholder charter issue that still opened the community review and board approval and everything else. It's just -- does the bylaw get blocked because of a stakeholder charter issue? And that was my only issue. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Yes, it does is our view. >>AVRI DORIA: I understand that. Okay. Yes, Tony. >>TONY HOLMES: Just a quick question, Avri. When do you actually intend to pick up on this discussion? >>AVRI DORIA: Again, Sunday at the end of -- tomorrow, I think. What time is it on the schedule? I got to look at it. Quarter past 3:00. >>TONY HOLMES: Okay, thanks. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Do people want to grab a cup of coffee and drink before we go into the IRT discussion at 11:00? Okay. Thank you. Break. [Break] >>AVRI DORIA: It is an Australian rule, if we don't start our breaks on time, they will take our coffee away. It is also an Australian rule, if we don't start lunch on time, they take our lunch away. So we have to get started on time because otherwise we get no coffee, we get no lunch. That is in the record now, correct? I will turn meeting over to whoever is doing the presentation. >>MARGIE MILAM: Should we have Zahid do it? Do you have the presentation up? >>AVRI DORIA: Zahid, you are going to start with the presentation? Okay. When we come to points of questions and answers, do you want to handle the queue of people asking questions or would you like me to do that for you? How would you like to proceed with this? >>ZAHID JAMIL: I think we would be happy to let you do the queuing. What we are intending to do is have the presentations a lot of substantive stuff and take questions at the end. >>AVRI DORIA: Including clarifying questions. Okay. Thank you. In which case, are we ready? >>ZAHID JAMIL: I got it. >>AVRI DORIA: Who is putting the slides up? It is still connected to you? >>MARGIE MILAM: Is it the one you sent out this morning? >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. As soon as the slide shows, Zahid, the floor is yours. >>ZAHID JAMIL: Great. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This a presentation on behalf of the IRT, which is the Implementation Recommendation Team, set up by the board -- the ICANN board. We will look at the recommendations on right protection mechanisms today in the new gTLD. This is a summary. My name is Zahid Jamil. Can we, Margie, go to slide 6 first because I would like to introduce the team. These are the members of the IRT. If I could request them to stand up and we'll just go through the list. Can all the members of the IRT in the room stand up? I promise I took their approval before I did this. And there is one here. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks a lot. If all of you could identify yourselves. Thanks. The IRT team is someone from Denmark, a lot of people from the U.S -- that's Number 4. There's me from Pakistan; someone from Argentina, Hector Manoff, Number 6. You will see someone from Israel at Number 10; France, David Taylor right here, and from Mexico, Kiyoshi, et cetera, so there is a pretty fairly diverse team of individuals there. There were representatives also from the registry, Jeff Neuman; registrar, Jon Nevett, and the ex officio members for them from the IPC. Could we go to Slide 2 now. The agenda for the presentation today will follow three basic points. We will look at the IRT mission and the modus operandi. Two, we are going to look into the specific recommendations, the substantive recommendations of the IRT. I will just read out a few of the major recommendations. The first set is the IP clearinghouse, we will explain that, the globally protected marks list which was previously sort of known as a reserve list, the IP claims. You will have the URS, the Uniform Rapid Suspension system, the post-delegation dispute resolution mechanism, recommendation with regard to thick WHOIS being implemented in the new gTLDs, the expansion of tests for string comparison during initial evaluation also. And then we are going to discuss why is the IRT itself moving further and what are the next steps beyond the IRT report and recommendations. Thank you. The IRT was basically set up by the ICANN board. At the last meeting in Mexico, a board resolution was passed by the ICANN board which sent out says, We are comprised of an internationally diverse group of persons with knowledge, expertise and experience in the field of trademark, consumer protection or competition law and interplay of trademarks and the domain name system to develop and propose solutions to the overarching issue of trademark protection in connection with the introduction of new gTLDs. That's basically what IRT looked at. Next slide, please. Going to talk a little bit about the experiences and the reasons and what it was -- the problems that were faced by the IP owners and why this was the necessary. Domain abuse is part of the IRT report. Domain abuse is a business with lower overheads, no barriers to entry and few risks. This is something that's identified by the IRT report itself. In the WIPO reports, it's been stated that 8% increase in the UDRP cases in 2008 was noted. 27,000 domain names disputed since 1999 have taken place. All the five brand owners on the IRT, the member of the IRT, face at least one new domain name infringement each and every day. Next slide, please. They have experienced registrar failures. We've seen that happen. We have seen termination and compliance problems -- especially compliance problems of contracts between registries and ICANN. We've seen some ccTLDs registries being systemically abused, not just the gTLDs. Serial infringers, we have seen them falsify WHOIS data and details. They hide behind proxy registrations, is one of the things that brand owners are very concerned about that we really cannot get to the person who actually is trying to register domain names. And paper click is being used as an abusive form by using proxies. Consumers get confused and then sometimes get cheated so there is a lot of phishing, et cetera, and cybercrime that's linked to this. Cybersquatters play the system. I'm going to move now and hand over to J. Scott for the next slides. >>J. SCOTT EVANS: So as Zahid said, the IRT was constituted in the meeting in Mexico City and the IPC was charged with putting together the members of the IRT, which there was a process between March 12th and the 23rd. You see there a timeline. It was very compressed. The timeline was given to us by the board of directors. Our first face-to-face meetings were in Washington, D.C., April 1st and 2nd. We had an initial draft report which was published for public comment on April 24th. May 11th was a consultation with entities that had put forth comments to the draft applicant guidebook and so they were asked to come. There was a broad range of people that were invited. There were -- the Internet Commerce Association was invited. Trademark owners such as Verizon. Dispute resolution providers such as Nominet was there. The WIPO came. So there was a sundry group with diverse interests that were asked to come and present. One reason that these people were identified is because they had all put together concrete proposals put forth when they had made comments to the DAG. The final report, as you all know, came out May 29th. I believe the current deadline for comments on that is July 6th. It has been extended so that folks would have time after this meeting to consider their comments -- their public comments. We are having some other consultations that will occur. One is July 13th in New York City. The second is July 15th in London. And then there are going to be some informational consultations in Hong Kong and Abu-Dhabi. Those consultations, just so you know, are not completely IRT focused. They will be on the four overarching issues of which the IRT proposals cover one of those issues. Next slide. This is how we worked. We had weekly two-hour conference calls for two months. We broke into small work teams. These teams had additional calls, sometimes multi-week calls a week. There were thousands of e-mail. We had two face-to-face meetings. And those meetings went from 8:00 to 6:00 every day, along with keeping us locked in for lunch. We had one full day of consultations with the entities that I have mentioned forward -- in the previous slide. We reviewed comments from the -- from all of the comments that were put forth on DAG1 and DAG2. We looked and read all of those. We also reviewed all the comments that we received to our April 29th - - or April 24th version. Even though we had a cut-off date, we considered comments that kept flowing in even as we were meeting in San Francisco. And we amended those proposals and issued our final report on May 29th. Next slide, please. We had a group of guiding principles that we set out in our D.C. meeting, which here they are. You'll see what the harms that are being addressed by the solution. Will the solution scale? Does it accommodate territorial variations and trademark rights? Does it confirm -- conform to the extent of actual legal rights? Does the solution work in light of IDNs? To what extent can solutions be gained and abused? And when we say that, that test was applied to both overaggressive trademark owners as well as overly aggressive speculators. Is it the least burdensome solution for everyone involved? Is it technologically feasible? How will the solution affect consumers and competition? And what's the costs of the solution? And who would pay that cost? So those are sort of the checklists we used. The final proposals are grouped into five areas. The first is the IP clearinghouse globally protected marks list and IP claims and standardized sunrise. The IP -- you will hear about these in more detail. The IP clearinghouse is merely a centralized database for the gathering of information with regards to trademarks. You will see that it is broader than trademarks when we drill down to the actual details, but that's -- it reduces the time and expense for both registries, registrars and trademark owners in trying to gather the necessary information to run RPMs or prelaunch RPMs. The globally protected marks list, this was an idea again that came out of some white list or reserved names list as they were called in the draft applicant comments that we saw to the guidebook. The very strict eligibility requirements that we are still working on putting together, to be very clear, this is not a famous marks list. This is not a well-known marks list. This is a mark -- these are objective criteria, not subjective at all, based on numbers that we believe make you a globally protected mark. The IP claims is a prelaunch notification to trademark owners and to applicants on the second level. It only has to do with identical matches. Standardized sunrise is merely just a -- it's just a minimum level of sunrise protection. It's the floor, not the ceiling. So that those that come up with innovative and creative solutions they believe are beyond that minimum level are certainly free to do so. Next slide. We have the Uniform Rapid Suspension System, or URS. This is an immediate take-down for the clearest, most undisputable cases of infringement. And there are -- again, this will be addressed more particularly in the slides. We have a post-delegation dispute resolution mechanism. This came out of the fact that the first DAG had a placeholder for this. In February, WIPO put out a proposal. We looked at that proposal as one of the charges of our group because it was one of the proposals of rights protection mechanisms that was already in the ether, so we looked at it and came up with our version of that we think is best for everyone. Next slide. Then we came to the conclusion that there should be a thick WHOIS model for all new gTLDs and universal WHOIS for all generic top-level domains is something we believe should be explored. We talked about and looked at the algorithm method. We saw a lot of comments. We believe that using the algorithm as a way to knock out top-level domain streams was a mistake. It should just be used as a tool that identified those strings that required further consideration, and you would do an aural and meaning analysis to those that are identified by the tools. So the tool is only a tool. It is not a mechanism. And we truly believe based on things that we ran in the room that this will push more applications into the system than it will deny because we ran a great deal of example; and it was very, very preclusive, the tool was. It identified things that none of the people in the room felt were necessarily problematic. So I think I'm turning it over next to the next presenter, which I think is Kristina. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Next slide. I'll be talking about the IP clearinghouse, the globally protected claims list, and a little bit about standardized sunrise. It's important to understand from the outset that the IP clearinghouse is a database, it's nothing more than that. It's something that we proposed as a centralized mechanism because in the past, trademark owners that have wished to participate in rights protection mechanisms that have been offered by new gTLDs have found themselves in the position of having to submit over and over and over and over again to each of the different registries through their various registrars the information and documents necessary to participate, and a number of the public comments called for a more streamlined process to do this, and when you think about going from something like seven new gTLDs on to something like 500, you can imagine what kind of nightmare, frankly, you're dealing with at multiple levels of that system. So the clearinghouse is intended to be a central entity with which all the new gTLD registries and possibly the registrars -- depending upon how it's structured -- will interact. We anticipate and we recommend that the clearinghouse have functionality relating to the globally protected marks list, the IP claims process, and the URS. It will be an information repository for specific information collection and data validation services. In terms of the principal features of it, data will be submitted by trademark owners either directly or through a registry or registrar for a fee. The clearinghouse will be responsible for validating that data not only initially, but also annually. Trademark owners will also have interim obligations to update the data as circumstances warrant. They gain a new portfolio, they lose an infringement action, they have no longer have rights to a tuck mark, et cetera. We anticipate that in terms of structuring how the data gets into the clearinghouse and what the -- the legal structure is, this was a subject of extensive discussion and what we ultimately decided was that the trademark owners that wished to participate must grant a nonexclusive royalty-free and sub-licensable license to that data to ICANN, which will, in turn, then grant a sublicense to the entity that's operating the IP clearinghouse. Access to and use of the data will be severely restricted and limited solely to the purposes for which it's collected. We understand that this is potentially a very valuable commercial resource, and a competitive resource, and it's important -- it was important to us that we make sure that no one have a position to abuse that. We believe it must be an outsourced entity, not something operated directly by ICANN. And we also think that the entity that operates it must not be one that is currently in a direct contractual relationship with ICANN. We've recommended that there should be an initial contract term of five years, with an option to renew, obviously subject to performance, and that the unusually contract must be awarded pursuant to an open, competitive tender. Anything else frankly would undermine the integrity of the clearinghouse. Equal access will be required. In other words, the IP clearinghouse will not be able to deny access to registries. Next slide, please. In terms of the additional features, we also expect and will require that the IP clearinghouse should be able to function on a 24/7/365-day per year basis, so that it is constantly available. It must be scalable, able -- and what we mean by that is not only able to accommodate records of identical marks owned by different parties -- for example, to the extent that there are multiple parties that own rights in the same mark, either in the same country for different goods or services or across countries for different goods or services -- that the data needs to be structured in such a way as to recognize that, and that it can recognize certain limitations on marks, whether it could be something that at least in the U.S. might be subject to a concurrent registration, that it would identify the classes of goods or services for which the mark is registered because that's obviously scope on the protection of the mark and that's something that needs to be reflected in the IP clearinghouse so that it can be carried over to the various rights protection mechanisms. It's also important to us -- and we spent a fair amount of time on this -- that it should be able to accommodate all types of registered marks, including those that contain or list of non-Latin markets, which was particularly important to us as ICANN moves forward towards IDN gTLDs. The IP clearinghouse must be able to deliver fast, accurate information and do it in a standard format, which is a primary reason why we recommended that the IP clearinghouse, that there only be one. We understand and did read several comments that were submitted on the first draft that suggested that there should be more than one. And the concern that we really had is that it really must be a standard format for all of these functionalities to interact. And the more players you have in that, the greater likelihood for deviation. In terms of the cost to the trademark owners, it was our recommendation that those costs be reasonable, and that the costs of including a trademark owner's entire portfolio should not be prohibitive. In other words, if the cost of adding information on a per-mark basis is so high that no -- that a trademark owner with an extensive portfolio would essentially be priced out, then there's frankly no point in doing it. Next slide. The globally protected marks list. This was, I think, among -- based on the comments that came in on DAG 1 and DAG 2 this was the single most frequently proposed solution, although with a twist. The comments that proposed it proposed it in the form of a reserved name list, so that names would be completely taken out of the root, or a white list, and it was the conclusion of the IRT that that type of system was neither fair nor feasible. What we also wanted to avoid, keeping in mind what we were trying to do -- in other words, to try and have some system that would allow for those marks that really were truly globally protected -- to provide them some additional protection, simply because as a practical matter, if you got global protection, you've made a significant investment in your mark, and that should be reflected versus someone who may only have rights in one country or a couple countries. What we ultimately decided, because we did not want to go down the road of the famous and well-known marks list was to come up with what we deemed to be very objective criteria. Namely, that you would have to meet these certain numerical thresholds in order to participate. And we believe, frankly, that the eligibility requirements should be strict. This is not something that every mark owner is going to be entitled to, and there are a number of mark owners that aren't really thrilled about that, with you that's not what we were charged to do was, you know -- it was not our intention to come up with a trademark owner wish list. So where we are now is that the requirements are that the ownership must be by the trademark owner of a certain number of trademark registrations of national effect, for the applied-for globally protected mark that have issued in at least a certain number of across all five ICANN regions with a minimum numb of registrations in each region. For those of you who read the first draft, we'd originally recommended ownership of 200 registrations in 90 countries and decided that if we were really going for globally protected marks that we really needed to focus not so much on the number of registrations, which may, in fact, be important, which is why we have a placeholder for t with you more importantly on the number of countries. . There was extensive discussion within the IRT about having data points against which we could measure, and as a practical matter, it simply wasn't possible to accumulate that data and have it stripped of identifying information, and what I mean by that is that the folks on the IRT didn't want to know who was going to have how many registrations in how many countries. We don't know who is going to be eligible beforehand or not. It was very important to us that we not know. It's my understanding that ICANN staff is currently working on that information collection, and that should be available soon. All the trademark registrations must have issued by the date on which GPML applications are first accepted and must be based on trademark registration applications filed by November 1, 2008. This was intended to avoid gaming by folks who might try and, if they really want to make the investment, to try and go out and file new registration applications for the sole purpose of getting it on the GPM. This is a recommendation that we noted in our report, in terms of the dates that if it's adopted we would suggest that the dates be tweaked in future rounds, obviously. And finally, the third requirement was that the second-level domain for the GMP's principal online evidence but [inaudible]. One of the requirements that we did drop, in recognition of the comments that came in on the first draft, was a requirement of a certain number of second level domains in a certain number of ccTLDs. That was a requirement that after having read those comments we decided was something that we could -- we could afford to drop, and it wouldn't impair the integrity of the recommendation. Next slide. GPML will have protections -- different protections at the top and the second level. At the top level, they will be in the pool against which applied-for strings are accomplished for confusing similarity. They're simply being add to do existing TLDs, reserved names and other applied-for strings. In other words, to the extent that ICANN has reserved for itself and its current contracted registry parties that privilege that this privilege to also apply to the owners of GPMs. If the applied-for string is an identical match or confusingly similar to the GPM, it should fail the initial evaluation and the application should not proceed unless and until the applicant participates in a reconsideration process and that process is determined in the applicant's favor. This is a new provision. We think that all applicants that fail the initial examination on this ground -- string confusion -- should have the opportunity to request reconsideration. So whether it's a finding of string confusion against an existing TLD or a reserved name or GPM, we thank that option should be extended to all applicants. The request for reconsideration is going to be the opportunity to provide additional information. I mean, to clarify, not to provide additional information. So it will really be, to the extent that there's information that's contained in the application that would allow the panel to conclude, for example, that the applicant may, in fact, have legitimate rights in using this TLD, if that information is in their initial application, then that may be a basis on which they prevail in the reconsideration process. If it's not in there in the first place, they're not going to be able to add it. If they do prevail on their request for reconsideration, based on some such representations, whether it's about scope of rights or certain restrictions on use of the TLD, we feel very strongly that that restriction and provision should be then incorporated into -- if the applicant is ultimately successful -- the registry operator agreement, which would then, in turn, trigger the post-delegation dispute resolution mechanism which one of my colleagues will be talking about. In terms of prevailing for the request for reconsideration, we believe that the standard should be that the applicant has to demonstrate either that the applied-for TLD string is not confusingly similar, so as to be likely as a matter of probability and not mere possibility to deceive or cause confusion, or that it otherwise has legitimate rights to use the applied-for TLD. Much of the language in that standard is language that's already in the DAG, and we've just tweaked it a little. Next slide, please. At the second level, it's our recommendation that the GPM marks be subject -- that initial blocking -- initial blocking -- of domain names that are an identical match to a GPM be provided; that the applicant for such a name can still register it if they want to participate in a dispute resolution process and demonstrate that its use of the applied- for domain name would not violate the trademark rights of the GPM owner. Given that we didn't see the point in reinventing the wheel, it was our recommendation that the standard be applied -- be the one that's currently in the UDRP for determining whether the domain name registrant has a right or a legitimate interest in the name next slide. The IP claims service would apply to all registered marks that are not GPMs, so GPMs are not going to have both. They'll have one, and IP claims will be for the other. Under this service, which was closely modeled on the RPM used by dot biz at its launch, the registry will provide notices to potential registrants of domain names that are identical matches to marks that are in the clear house and the owner of that mark will also get a notice someone else [inaudible]. It's a notice. It is not a block. The registrant can proceed with registration if they opt to proceed after having acknowledged that they've received notice, that they make certain representations and warranties about their intended use the domain name, and acknowledgments of what the ramifications are for breaching those reps and warranties. Next slide. Before we get into on you the URS will work, I'll just talk a little bit about standardized sunrise. It was our view that one of the things that has been difficult for trademark owners in the past is trying to keep track of what each sunrise -- what each registry operator's sunrise procedure has been, what the requirements are, and the like. So we thought that it would be appropriate to make recommendations for if a registry elects to use a sunrise process, that there be certain minimum requirements, that that process meet. Principal among them being that they would have to insist that trademark owners -- that there be ownership of a registration of national effect, that had issued by the date of the registry operator agreement and that was applied -- and that that registration had resulted from a trademark application applied for before the date that ICANN had published the list of applications received in whatever the particular round was. And that the -- it be a strict identical match between the mark and the sunrise participation, and that there also -- that this be something that's documented in the IP clearinghouse and that there also be a standardized dispute resolution process where a third party wishes to pursue a claim, that the sunrise registrant was not, in fact, eligible under the process. So I will now turn things over to my colleagues colleague. >>RUSS PANGBORN: I'm Russ Pangborn from Microsoft. One of the biggest issues that brand owners have been voicing concern about the rollout of the gTLDs is the potential of the increase in volume of enforcement necessary at the second level, much more so than at the first level, and in looking at this, the IRT recommended a uniform rapid suspension system that would try to address these concerns. The aim of this is to give a fast, cost-effective means for taking down the most egregious abuses of domains in the system. It would require a -- it is not -- let me first state that this is not something that is intended to be a replacement for the UDRP system. This is something that if successful for the brand owners would result only in the freezing of a specific domain through the duration of its registration. Again, it is clearly in those cases where there is abuse at issue. The initiation of the -- the process would go through the filing of a complaint that would be a form complaint that was appended to the IRT report. There are two methods through which you could do this. If you participated in the IP clearinghouse, then you will have your information in that database and it can be fed into this system. In the context of a non-registration -- or I'm sorry in the case of no preregistration, you would also be able to pursue this simply by filling out the form, but not having the streamlined benefits of having participated in the IP clearinghouse. The form of the complaint would require the complainant to include the WHOIS information and a snapshot of the Web site that is the offending domain. Once the complaint is filed, the chosen domain dispute resolution procedure, as chosen by ICANN, would, within 24 hours, notify the registrar of the complaint, at which point the registrar would freeze the Web site. And by "freezing," we talk about not allowing it to be transferred. We're not talking about shutting it down within 24 hours. At that point, the registrar would notify the -- the registrant of the complaint by e-mail, and then subsequently follow up with a certified letter to the registrant, also notifying them of the complaint and then a second e-mail a week later would also go out. These three attempts to try and get notification out there is to ensure that notice would be had by the registrant. Once that initial notice had been issued by e-mail, within a 14-day period, we would then have the answer deadline for the registrant. The registrant, of course, would have the ability to state his case as to the lack of the infringing nature of the domain. However, if in that 14-day period there is a default, the registration would be frozen -- the domain would be frozen unless and until a default answer submitted, and we have built into the process the ability -- anytime during the course of the registration of that domain, a registrant can file that answer, at which time the Web site would go back up and the process would continue, where examination would happen. In the course of examination, the -- the dispute resolution provider would be looking at whether or not the domain was effectively identical or confusingly similar, whether it -- the registrant lacked any legitimate interest, and whether or not it was registered in bad faith. And again, using the "bad faith" definition that exists with UDRP as it exists today. If those factors are found, then, in fact, the domain would be frozen for the duration of that registration. This is, of course, an appealable process. Ultimately, if the complainant or the registrant succeeds, the other has the ability to -- to appeal that. Alternatively, we are not looking to undermine any other existing processes that are in place for the complainant, so if a complainant wanted to bring a separate UDRP action de novo, that available -- that option is still available. And again, in the context of the URS, the complainant would not be getting ownership or transfer rights of the domain to them. That is something that is reserved for either a court action or the UDRP. Again, also the complainant has the ability to go to court, as does the defeat or the -- the registrant in this particular case, if they do not succeed. The costs of any appeal would be refundable to the successful party. One last thing I wanted to point out about this particular process is our concern about abuse of the system. We were, again, represented by brand owners and by registry and registrar folks in the IRT and had some very good discussions about concerns about abuse on both sides, and so one thing that we had built into the URS was the ability for us to shut down abusive trademark owners who file abusive complaints, and in the -- in the system we had said if a trademark owner were to file three abusive complaints it then they would be shut out of the system for the period of one year. And with that, I'll turn it over. To David. >>KEN TAYLOR: Hi. David Taylor with Lovells. So I'm going to confer the post-dealings dispute resolution ran where this has come from. Well, again, it's from the numerous public comments which we saw calling for such a mechanism, and also WIPO. They put together a proposal back in February to tackle breach of rights protection mechanisms and a bad faith intent to profit to profit from infringing domain names. So what was our wish with this? It was to limit the possibility of using the system but really to limit it to systemic abuse by bad actor registry operators. We're not aiming here to go after registry operators which have a few domain names in there that are infringing, it really is going after the bad actors and making sure there's a mechanism in place to deal with them. There was also a suggestion that trademark owners should have more of an active role [inaudible] to trigger the mechanism, so the way it works is that under the post-delegation mechanism, a third party can submit a claim to ICANN and it prepays a fee to do this. This fee can be refunded later on if it's -- if it's a worthwhile case. ICANN investigates this, and decides on whether there's been a material breach or not. If there is a breach, then there's the various enforcement mechanisms as contained in the applicable registry agreement and ICANN must utilize these. These can be the monetary sanctions, suspension, or termination of a contract. If it's unresolved, then we'd go to initiation of the post-delegation procedure and we'd go through an investigation by a neutral party and where it's a neutral party, we'd be having three-member panels, which is one of the things. So next slide, please. What are the applicable disputes? Well, it's where the registry operator's manner of operation or use of the TLD is inconsistent with its representations in its TLD application, and where the operation is likely to cause confusion to the complainant's mark. Or it's where the registry operator is in breach of specific RPMs, rights of protection mechanisms, as it's specified in its own agreement and such breach is likely to cause confusion. Again, with the complainant's mark. Or where the manner of operation or use of the TLD itself exhibits a bad faith intent to profit. Now, here again, from systemic registration of domain name registrations therein. And again, here where there's identity or confusingly similar to the complainant's mark, where it takes [inaudible] impairs the reputation or creates a likelihood of confusion. Next slide, please. As for the decisions, well, the panel can fund for the complainant and provide a certain remedy. The panel can find for the registry operator and provide a remedy. The panel can find for the registry operator and also state that the complaint was without merit. Here, we're looking at without merit being an abuse of the procedure, i.e. the brand owner themselves was seeking paragraphs to harass the registry operator or whatever. That would then be defined without merit and there would be a penalty fee applicable. The panel may also find for the complainant and decide that the defense was without merit. The enforcement tools, again, the panel recommends to ICANN the same section -- the same remedies as we said earlier, monetary sanctions, suspending pending cure, including the suspension of accepting new domain name registrations, looking at group liability where we've got serial misconduct by registries when they're affiliated with other registrars and registries. And here we've got a balance put in if the - - the complainant would be barred from further filings if it was found without merit on three separate occasions. As for the fees, we've put in there some model fees. Basically, we're looking at a penalty fee which is meaningful to deter abusive claims. We've suggested here in the areas of 10, $15,000 but these are purely suggestions. The main thing is that it's a meaningful amount, and so we may have a loser paying a certain amount and without merit there. So that's me, and I'll hand other to the other concerns. >>ZAHID JAMIL: Yes. Hi. With regard to WHOIS, the recommendations, the issue that the IRT looked at was basically not having enough information with regard to the registrants and how to go after them in other forums, et cetera. So even in this, it would be difficult if there wasn't an available thick WHOIS. So the proposal was that there should be a central registry level database created. The registry agreements should include an obligation that all registry operators for the new gTLDs must provide registry-level WHOIS under the thick WHOIS model currently in place. For instance, in the dot info and dot biz registries. In addition, it was also recommended that there be a universal WHOIS, something that the -- that ICANN actually could set up, and the recommendation talks thoughts were an immediate exploration by ICANN to look at setting up a central universal WHOIS database to be maintained by ICANN. Next slide, please. The next issue was with regard to the algorithm that was already provided for and recommended in the DAGs, and the IRT recommended that analysis of the string flagged by the algorithm should also include aural and commercial impression, which means it wasn't just a visual match but beyond visual, it should [inaudible] meaning. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Given the time frame that we're working in, it was very clear to us, as soon as we got through all of the public comments that had been submitted on DAG 1 and DAG 2, which the boardman dated that we review first, that there were going to be a whole lot of things that were important to a whole lot of trademark owners that frankly we just weren't going to have the time to get to. So we made at the outset a strategic decision to really just focus on the five items that have now found themselves to be proposals. But we did want to make clear that there are certain things and other recommendations that came out of those comments that we wanted to make clear, that we thought merited further consideration and frankly if we'd had more time, we probably would have developed recommendations on them. And this is kind of a condensed list of those. The first being the development of universal standards and practices for proxy domain name services. The ability for applicants, including dot brand registries, to include more than one character string in an application, meaning, for example, if they're applying for a particular TLD in ASCII, then to also include in the same application perhaps that same string in Arabic or Cyrillic or Kanji, so that you don't have to go through the entire application process again. Third, to afford community and dot brand TLDs the same authority as currently enjoyed by certain sponsored TLDs to select which registrars access the registry. And finally, to include a provision that would require, quote- unquote, charter enforcement or eligibility dispute resolution processes, where the TLD applicant has specified in its application that the registration -- that the TLD is intended for a particular community and that registration will be restricted to that community. So of course, you know, there were many additional proposals that we simply didn't have time to get to, but these are ones that we think would merit further consideration. So I think we'll now open the floor to questions. Avri. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. I have one name on the question list already. Adrian. Who else? And then I have Chuck. I -- okay. I see Liz. Who do I see? Richard. Okay. And Philip. Okay. And Tony. Phil -- Eric Brunner-Williams. Okay. And Amadeu. Okay. It's a good list for now. Oh, and Wendy. And there's another hand in back I do not see and then I'll stop for now. Who was the behind? But anyhow -- okay. Adrian first, though. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Thanks, Avri. Adrian Kinderis. First of all, I'd just like to say congratulations to the team. I think you did an awesome job in tackling what is a tough, tough task. But my question is about the -- first question is about the clearinghouse. And if this is in some documentation somewhere, please just direct me. I won't take up too much time. But who -- who owns -- who is responsible for the clearinghouse? Maybe I can start my question there. And I'll have a follow-up, depending on that answer. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: The intention is that it would be developed or that it would be operated by an entity external to ICANN that is operating under a contract with ICANN. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: So ICANN would -- sorry. So ICANN would provide a tender as such? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Absolutely. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Okay. So they would then be contracted to ICANN. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Correct. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: So IIC would pay for it? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Indirectly, yes. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Indirectly? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Well, I mean, in the sense that the trademark owners -- well, I guess -- I don't know that we actually got into how the money would flow, but the -- the bottom-line principle is that trademark owners are going to have to pay some cost for participating in the clearinghouse. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: So -- >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Let me add to that -- >>FABRICIO VAYRA: In doing the recommendations we actually did suggestive costs so say we put out intent of saying the costs should be non-prohibitive to brand owners but I think the intent was that in the tender out to the vendors, it would then be determined what exactly needs to be done to actually have the brand owners when they pay in actually paying for the system. Now, that's not -- it's not out of the question that ICANN, you know, as part of their overall infrastructure possibly supplement pay some, but the real thought is that the applications into the clearinghouse would be the main payment for the system itself. And that's why we shied away from putting a dollar value, because we can't tell what it would actually cost to run the system. We can just tell what the intent is. >>AVRI DORIA: One thing -- I'd like to remind people to give your name before you speak. >>FABRICIO VAYRA: Fabricio Vayra from Time Warner. >>JEFF NEUMAN: So Jeff Neuman. I think just to answer, as well Adrian's question. The task is really ICANN's task, and ICANN -- the thought by the group was that it be more -- like a subcontractor arrangement with this clearinghouse provider so ICANN would oversee everything that the clearinghouse provider does. We have some language in there about -- which I think you might be getting to next about the data within the clearinghouse, so there is some provisions in there that talk about the data is owned by the -- obviously first and foremost by the people who submit the data in, and then it's a real strict license to that clearinghouse provider to only use the data for the limited purposes of the clearinghouse. So I think that's kind of where you were going. But also, it was left open to -- for the potential bidders for this clearinghouse to propose different pricing mechanisms and models, so maybe it's a lump sum. Maybe they propose a lump sum payment. Then they could do it for a fixed annual fee. Or maybe it's per mark, in that we didn't kind of want to go into those models as they were saying. >>J. SCOTT EVANS: And just one point we want to stress because we keep talking about trademarks. The IP clearinghouse, in the provision, says it should be set up so that it can accept any rights, so that if there are those registries that want to recognize rights beyond trademark rights, such as in dot eu, there are some particular rights that are -- Europe has for like family names and business names, that they wanted to include, that the database be able to take in, not just trademark information but additional rights information so that it -- all it could do -- all it is, actually, is a funnel of the information back to the registry. So it's just a collector, an aggregator of information that registries can plug into and then fill whatever rights protection mechanism they put in place. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Yeah. So I guess I'm looking at also just from a commercial entity, being in the registry business myself, you know, trying to work out, you know, is this something I would want -- if you understand -- to see whether it's commercially viable, because obviously it has to be. You're running some infrastructure, you know, that's going to go around. So I'm just kind of computating, you know, the commerciality of running this clearinghouse from a -- from a -- >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Chuck was next. >>CHUCK GOMES: Let me start off by a process question here. Would we be better off sticking, for a little bit, to one of the topics, like Adrian started the IP clearinghouse, and getting all the comments on that, and then moving to the others, or is everybody okay with jumping around. >>AVRI DORIA: I think we only have a half hour for people to ask their clarifying questions WebSphere -- I mean, there's going to be many other discussion points, so I think people should ask their questions when they get on the list and then go from there. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. Here goes. I'm going to cover three areas. I'll start off with the IP clearinghouse. How would registries and registrars be indemnified for using the clearinghouse. And what would be the source of funding for that indemnification? The -- depending on how it operates, I guess one question is would a registry be required or -- and/or a registrar -- to query the IP clearinghouse database every time a registration is done? What -- what happens if the IP clearinghouse is down? Do all registrations have to stop? We're talking with some fairly serious implications in those sorts of things that I think need to be addressed in that regard, because they could have significant consequences. And maybe I'll pause there. I have two other areas that I want to address, but maybe I'll pause there, in case there are any responses. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I can take those, and I would also just note, for those of you who may not have a chance to have your questions answered, there will be briefings by the IRT at every single constituency meeting on Tuesday, as well as the session on Wednesday afternoon is devoted in half, I think, to the IRT. So getting to Chuck's questions, starting first with indemnification, I think ultimately that is going to have to be a contractual issue between ICANN and the clearinghouse provider. It was, again, kind of keeping in mind that -- that we were trying to kind of set out the most concrete proposals we could in the time we had, that was not something - - although we talked about it, we didn't have the to be able to get into really specific details. It was the general tenor of our discussion that registry operators that did, in fact, design their systems to communicate properly with the IP clearinghouse, et cetera, that there was really -- and did, in fact, follow whatever the process was, that that should, in fact, be considered to be a mitigating factor in terms of any liability for that registry or registrar. Realize that's not a specific answer to your question, but that's as close as we got good to that issue. In terms of how often they would have to query, absolutely they would have to query for every registration. That would -- that's implicit in the IP claims process. That's implicit in the -- >>JEFF NEUMAN: (Speaker is off microphone). >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Okay. Well, Jeff's going to jump into that in a second. And in terms of what happens if it goes down, that was frankly something that was operationally, to the extent that we talked about those level of details, it was our kind of general understanding that there would be backup systems in place, such that frankly it wouldn't really happen. But I'll turn it over to Jeff on the queries. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yeah, I think, Chuck, 2 sounds complicit from your question that you're assuming the clearinghouse system would work with a realtime registration as opposed to the preregistration sunrise periods that have been done in the past have all been not realtime necessarily. In other words, the validations never occur at the exact moment that someone tries to registrar a name. So that's a question really for a registry when they implement it, if they want to try a realtime system with a hookup to the IP clearinghouse, that would be something new. In theory, they could try to do that. It almost sounds like your question is assuming that realtime connection where something needs to be validated initially. I'm not sure that's big of a concern. >>CHUCK GOMES: Isn't the clearinghouse, though, intended to be used for multiple purposes, not just sunrises? That's the way I read it. It would go well beyond sunrise periods, or am I misreading that? >>JEFF NEUMAN: It can be used as a registry wants to use it. If there is a way it could work out something with a clearinghouse provider, could do an ongoing basis to validate other types of rights, other authentication mechanisms, in theory it could be used for that. But really most of the uses that were talked about of the validation rights would mostly -- and people can jump in -- is really in a prelunch mechanism like a sunrise or an IP claims-type thing. Unless you chose, and then you are going to talk to the clearinghouse provider to see what they can and cannot handle and then design your system around that. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. That's it. Go on? By the way, let me throw in one real brief comment. My own recommendation would be is that you avoid using the term "universal WHOIS" and use "centralized WHOIS." They are two very different concepts historically. Universal WHOIS being -- including ccTLDs. And I think those of us that have been around for a while think that may not be something that will happen. So that was just something a little side comment. Let me go to the URS. And the final report talks about there being this standard page being posted. And it is not at all clear to me how that would happen and what authority would be given. Registries certainly don't have any control over the content of registrant pages. In fact, we don't even have a relationship with registrants, whether we're thick or thin. Who would give the authority there? Now, some registrars do hosting services, but some names aren't using registrar hosting services. So where -- how does the authority flow to post this web page? How would it be done? It's not something we as registries could do. I certainly could speak that. Sometimes a registrar might be able to, and sometimes they wouldn't. And the same thing with regard to the WHOIS record, is that expecting a change in the WHOIS requirements there? Does it require a new EPP status because, as I understand it, there is not one EPP status that could be used to literally do what you are calling freezing. It might be a combination of statuses. There are some complications there that I'm just raising. I don't expect questions to all of these -- answers to all of these right now. But those are really important issues and maybe the more important one is that posting of that special Web page. I'll pause there if somebody wants to respond to that. Otherwise, I will go on to my last thing. >>J. SCOTT EVANS: I think it was our -- I mean, the entire relationship between registrant and whomever they deal with is a contractual one. So, therefore, your answer is if this is a requirement that ICANN says that those that participate within new gTLDs will have to have contractual provisions that cover these issues - - so in other words, the registrant contract with whomever they buy from will have to give who they are buying the name from the ability to redirect that page in the event there is a URS decision that's negative to them. Similar to the way it does with the UDRP, the contract says that you as a registrant with whomever you deal with, that the contract says that if there is a UDRP decision against you, you agree here that we have a right to comply with that decision. And it would be a similar contractual frame. >>CHUCK GOMES: That part I understand, J. Scott. But when you're actually talking about posting a page, the registrar may not have any connection there at all to do that. If they're hosting the services, they could do it. But if they're not the hoster of the services, it may be an ISP or just a Web hosting services provider. It is something that needs to be thought through. There are plenty of cases where the contracted parties wouldn't have any ability to influence that even if they agreed to do it if they had the power. That's what I'm pointing out. Okay? >>FABRICIO VAYRA: Fabricio from Time Warner. We had extensive conversations about this and what EPP was and what standards. It was definitely thought out. I think you get the concept of what it is that we're trying, and I do think that further work needs to be done on it. Maybe the answer is throwing out there that maybe it is the registry who has to point -- I mean, these are all -- I think it does need to be fleshed out. But what's important really is the concept -- the ultimate intent, and there was definitely tons of conversation about it. We understand there are technical requirements around this. >>CHUCK GOMES: That's all I'm doing, is pointing out this is an area that needs some work. So that's fine. Last of all, on the PDDM, this bad-faith intent to profit is terribly broad in terms of -- and open. And it seems to me that registries could easily be forced into responding to allegations of bad faith and go to considerable expense and time in responding to those. So it seems that there's a really big hole there in terms of this bad-faith intent. And I know your intents were -- it was very clear that you were trying to bound it. I'm not sure you succeeded in that regard. It would be very easy to abuse it, and you have procedures for dealing with that. But in the meantime, registries are having to respond to go to expense and time and so forth to do that until somebody shows a track record of abusing the system. And I think that's -- that's a problem that's probably pretty hard to solve. But -- and I'm not necessarily looking for a response here, just pointing out that I think that that's a pretty big hole there on that particular process. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Liz, you were next. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Thanks, Avri. Liz Williams. Kristina, just a couple of questions. With all of the suggestions that were made, is it your expectation that all of the suggestions would be adopted and that they are contingent on each other? So you can't pick and choose one or other of the suggestions that you've made? First question. If so, then were all of those suggestions applicable in all national jurisdictions that cared about trademarks? And I was interested to hear about Chuck's sort of implementation questions. So those two first. Then I have got two others that I just wanted to seek some clarification on. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: It was absolutely the intent of the IRT that all of these recommendations be interdependent and adopted as a group. And, in fact, it is part of the reason that in the report we refer throughout to this as a tapestry. And part of the reason it is important is that there were certain decisions that were made or not made about directions to go with some of these because of recognition that there was another provision. Let me give you a particular example. When we got comments back on the first draft, most trademark owners said for GPML, well, having an identical is great but I want to be able to have either typographical variations or the nouns associated with my mark because that's where I'm going to get typosquatted, et cetera, et cetera. And we spent hours talking about, Can we do this? How do we do it? How do we say it? What are the unintended consequences of it? And we ultimately decided that we weren't going to go that direction. And a big factor in making that decision was the fact that the URS is available as a backstop to catch those particular names that might go through as the second level. So in that way, you can see kind of how we were trying to intend to make sure that everything balances out. And in terms of applicable on all national jurisdictions, that was certainly the intent. I mean, we obviously didn't have the time, the resources or the personnel to do any kind of international legal survey. But that was also part of the reason that it was so helpful to have folks from different legal systems available on the panel. So that was certainly our intention. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Avri, would you mind if I just asked my two remaining questions because they are related? Is that okay? I can hold them off because I know there is a long list. >>AVRI DORIA: Chuck did it. >>J. SCOTT EVANS: It is the Chuck rule. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Thanks, Chuck. Good job. The two supplementary questions were if it is the intent to implement them as a tapestry, then the analysis of the integration into the evaluation process was really important, so whether that had a bearing on the timing and the cost and the practicality of evaluation. And then was there any intention -- because some of those mechanisms that you described were not an integration of a new gTLD. They are issues at the second level, and then there would have to be a staged integration of applying those things to TLDs who are actually operating. And then was it any intention to have a review of the effectiveness or the validity of the proposed tools at some point post-evaluation to make sure that they are actually appropriate and actually worked and were actually not overly burdensome to one party or another? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I'll let others speak to the first question because I don't want to be the one hogging the mike. But the second point, absolutely. And, in fact, you'll see in some of the footnotes in the report where we've acknowledged that we perhaps did not go as far as public comments called for, that we specifically said, Here's an area where we think it's important that there be some -- two, three years out, some examination as to, did we achieve what we intended to achieve? Did we get the balance right? And so the first question? >>LIZ WILLIAMS: The first one was integration in the process, whoever is going to take -- I noticed Kurt was sitting there, but he's now not sitting there. >>AVRI DORIA: They had to go off to some meeting. They'll be back. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Then hold it off because it is their impact, if you want to hold it until later. >>ZAHID JAMIL: Just following up on what Kristina said -- sorry, my name is Zahid Jamil, member of the IRT. One of the footnotes, 19, if you read that, it specifically mentions there will be review of the effectiveness of many of these measures. One of the discussions in the GPML was whether this should be at the second level just an identical match of the GPM or should we also have associated names attached to that GPM as well. And it was decided maybe not at this stage but maybe subsequently. So that's in the footnote, and that gives you an example of where review has been called for subsequently after the first initial new gTLDs are issued. >>J. SCOTT EVANS: Just so everyone is clear, there's going to have to be some evaluation on effectiveness because this is a compromise. There are people on one end who don't like it because they are in a business that have profited of the ambiguities that we have now, both good-faith actors and bad-faith actors who don't like it. And there are trademark owners who think it has not gone far enough because it is not harsh or restrictive enough. So whenever you come to a compromise, it is always best that you put into that a fact that you are going to go back and look at the effectiveness and see that some of the critics who had problems, if it is implemented, if, in fact, their criticisms were valid or not and if there needs to be adjustments made so that the compromise continues to do what we want it to do which is provide balanced solutions. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. So I had Richard next. >> RICHARD TINDAL: We had three questions on the GPML. Could we go to the slide that lists the benchmark threshold of all of the GPMs? So the principle here is I think the RPM should not expand existing rights under law. Our understanding of trademark law in the U.S. and many jurisdictions is that there is a posting -- a post- infringement enforcement approach to trademark law. Or said another way, I've got the right to infringe and then the law says that the trademark owner has the right to come after me. So with respect to the GPML, we see that as breaching this fundamental threshold requirement that the IRT has spelled out in that the GPML seems to create a pre-usage approval burden as opposed to a post-usage enforcement of the mark. And so my question is, does that creation of a pre-usage approval burden on a registrant, does that, in fact, bridge this threshold requirement for all of the RPMs? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: No. [Laughter] And the reason is twofold. First, the right to infringe, I would respectfully disagree with that interpretation of trademark law. In fact, in any country that has substantive examination of trademark registration applications, there is going to be a preregistration evaluation which in many countries is based on simply an intention to use a mark, not an actual use. There's going to be an evaluation of whether or not there is, in fact, a likelihood of confusion. So first off, I disagree from that perspective. But, second, that is a big reason why we wanted to make sure that marks that go on this list are, in fact, globally protected. In other words, the global scope of protection is so broad for these marks that it really eliminates to the extent possible the possibility of saying you're giving protection globally to a mark that is perhaps only registered in a quarter of the countries of the world. That also came into play in what we've proposed. At the top level, the GPML, there is a right of reconsideration. That's something new. That's simply not available in the current evaluation. And that was something that we thought was an important protection; that if you are, in fact, going to extend that string confusion analysis, that you do it in such a way that there is a safety valve. In fact, there is a fairly detailed footnote that identifies some of the circumstances under which we think applicants could overcome and could prevail with that request of reconsideration. At the second level, it is an initial block. It is not a permanent block, no appeal. We have some very clear ideas of the opportunity for applicants to ensure they do, in fact, have an opportunity to use that domain name. So I think with this particular mechanism, we've done frankly a good job of making sure we're not going beyond the scope of protection and the scope of legal rights. I mean, if we were to sit here and say there should be examination for -- initial examination and no opportunity for reconsideration, then perhaps I might agree with you. Similarly, if we were to say that the GPM at the second level meant that no one except for the trademark owner could ever register an identical match -- and it is identical matches -- then, again, I might agree with you but we were very careful to make sure we were very balanced about it. >>J. SCOTT EVANS: I think one of the things, Richard -- this is J. Scott Evans from Yahoo. One of the things you have to take into consideration is that all trademark systems have an ability for a prior rights holder to object prior to anyone establishing rights in the mark in a registration system. Unfortunately, domain name registration does not have that ability. So the fact that the two don't jibe, we put the burden on a trademark owner to come forward, go through the ICANN clearinghouse, meet all the recommendations so that there's -- we're trying to -- because registrars don't want to have a -- it's a balance. They don't want to have someone register a name and have a period of time when trademark owners could then come forward and complain before it registers. So we are giving you a tool whereby it's done, and the party that believes that they're interested enough in the name and have rights in the name have a mechanism to say, Trademark owner, you shouldn't have this block. And so the parties and the registrar's left out of it. The registry is left out of it. >>FABRICIO VAYRA: Richard, Fabricio from Time Warner. We heard these comments a lot. From what Kristina and J. Scott have mentioned, clearly our intent isn't to establish rights that aren't there or to expand brand owner rights. The two issues we hear a lot are one class of service and the other territory. And class of service, obviously we've tried to deal with that by the rebut. So obviously in the case of a brand where it's very narrowly tailored to certain class of service, it wouldn't take much to rebut. I could come in and say, I want to use it for this. It clearly does not infringe this class of service, and you have got the domain. On the jurisdiction territory question, we obviously left open our description that somebody who wants to have even more restrictive mechanisms could do so. So in the case where you might say -- or a registry might say, I don't think the jurisdiction issue has been addressed and that this overly extends rights during sunrise period, you actually could make it more restrictive and say, "Listen, I don't just want to do the GPML. I only want people that have rights in say, Germany, because I see myself as a German-focused registrar, registry." At that point, you could actually deal with that problem as well. We actually welcome people to put even more restrictive mechanisms, say, in sunrise that would apply to trademarks. >> RICHARD TINDAL: The key data element that's missing from the report with respect to GPML is the number of trademark registrations in the number of countries. That's been omitted from the final report? So given that that number is entirely subjective, in fact, arguably arbitrary, how will any of us decide what that number should be? >>J. SCOTT EVANS: Right now we're going to tell you what that number could be. The problem is in the short amount of time we had, we didn't have time to draw that data together. So it was either not have a proposal out in time for the GAC requirement of having things out three weeks before a meeting and meeting our deadline as the board did it or getting that data point. We are trying to collect that data as we speak. Unfortunately, that requires that we rely on relationships with other service providers that we have because we don't have this data ourselves. We are having to get it. >> RICHARD TINDAL: Understood. But I think that's heart of the problem. You are taking a reverse an engineering approach. You are saying Coca-Cola, how many marks do they have and then you are looking at Microsoft and then you are looking at Yahoo. And then you are looking at the data for those brands and then you are going to reach conclusion about where the cut-off should be. My point is you are making a judgment already about which brands should and should not be on the list and then you are setting the criteria based on that. >>J. SCOTT EVANS: We don't know -- as Kristina said, one of the things we've taken great pains to do is to not know who owns the trademarks that are being evaluated. We don't know who it is. We don't know if it is Coca-Cola or if it is Microsoft or if it's Yahoo because we are not going to them. We're using an outside vendor that's using a list and then they're providing us just with, Here are -- of the mark we looked at, here are the matrices, the number of regions, the number of countries and the number of registrations they have. We don't know who that information belongs to. >> RICHARD TINDAL: When the data is available for that list, someone is going to make a cut-off point that says this mark on the list is in and this mark is out. How will that decision be made? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: We are never going to get down to the detail of which mark is in. We don't want to -- that's not a decision we want to make. The decision we are going to make is what's the minimum number of countries you have to have registrations in, and within each of the ICANN regions keeping in mind that, for example, in ICANN land, North America has, you know, eight countries. Well, only four of those actually have trademark registries. Kind of slicing and dicing that data is something -- that's the data we are going to slice. And we won't know until after the fact who applies -- who falls within it and who doesn't. >> RICHARD TINDAL: That's my question: How will you decide where the cut-off is? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: What we are planning to do is once we see what the dispersion is, figure out what will be the acceptable median and mode. Personally, I would say anybody who doesn't have -- I mean, personally, anyone who doesn't have registrations in 75% of the countries, that's not a globally protected mark. >> RICHARD TINDAL: I think that's the heart of the problem. That's your personal opinion. I think there is going to be thousands of personal opinions, and I don't think we'll be able to reach a conclusion. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: That may be, but I think we need to see the data first. >>AVRI DORIA: At this point, we have sort of moved beyond asking clarifying questions to having a discussion and we only have about seven minutes left. >> RICHARD TINDAL: Okay. I'll cede. >>AVRI DORIA: Philip, you're next. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Thanks. Just quickly on the issue we just discussed, a number of my members who are trademark owners globally also discussed this issue and they didn't feel, in fact, a conclusion that you are trying to reach now is impossible. I think some reasonable attempt has already been made of that in the draft and that's being revised. So I don't see it much as a problem at all. I had two quick questions of clarification really. One on the IP clearinghouse. Obviously this needs to be kept up to date, but the recommendation in the report is annually rather than anything perhaps like two years or three years. I would like a discussion in terms of the practicality of annual renewals on that. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: We realize that it's not something that is going to be -- we realize that it is going to be an obligation on the trademark owner. The validation is going to occur annually, but there will be an ongoing obligation on the trademark owner to update the records in the event of new registrations, in the event of registrations that expire and lapse. It was our thought that as a practical matter, anything less frequent than annually could really skew the protections that would be afforded given how we see the functionality of the IP clearinghouse playing out. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Can I add to that? I think it was kind of the analogy of the WHOIS. You require registrants annually to confirm that that's their information. This is kind of a corollary to that. Now we are requiring annually trademark owners to confirm that that's their information. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: That's reasonable and parallel. Same question was on the globally protected marks list. You mentioned identical or confusingly similar. One of my members raised a question in terms of does "confusingly similar" also work for names that sort of contain the mark but may be clear from that? Was it your intent that domain names that would contain the mark but wouldn't be identical to the mark would count for that confusing similarity test as opposed to confusing similarity to the mark itself, if you understand my question? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I think I do, but I'm not 100% sure. So if you could give an example. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Let's take Lego is in the room. Lego might be confusingly similar. Say the domain name is Lego bricks. That contains the name Lego. Would that pass the test of confusing similarity in the way it's being thought of? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: The confusingly similar with regard to GPMs only comes into play at the top-level analysis. So in that context, yes. At the second level, it is limited to identical. Again, this is the very extensive debate we had once we saw comments on the first draft. Do we extend it? How do we extend it? Ultimately, we said, no, we are not going to extend it. It will just be identical and people will have to rely on the URS. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Tony, you were next and you may end up being the last. >>TONY HARRIS: That's a very bad role to play actually, but I will try to make it very short. I have just a question and then a very brief concern, which is only a couple of sentences. Speaking as a perspective new applicant for a new gTLD, I'm a little confused about the concept of the GPML, the globally protected marks list. If you are a new registry and you institute or implement sunrise proceedings, I'm not too sure what I would do with the GPML, with the list. It says here you block -- initial blocking of domain names that are an identical match to the GPM. That sounds like a reserved names list, which is okay, but is that forever? I mean, what do we do with that list? When we open sunrise proceedings, I'm not quite sure how we interact with that list. What does it do? What are we supposed to do with it? Those names are not available. They're not available forever. The owners of the names, they are not obliged to buy them. I've read the document, and quite honestly I'm not objecting to the concept. I just can't understand it. And there's concern -- I will get rid of that so we don't have to do it later. It just seems that the scope of change as proposed and the discussion and approval would appear to be a threat or severely delay the implementation timeline that ICANN has announced. And without discussing the fact that they're valid points, it would seem to require quite an effort to get all these things implemented if they are approved. So the question is still on the table. >>J. SCOTT EVANS: I guess the comment with regards to the GPML is it does not relate to the sunrise period at all. The clearinghouse that has the information of who is on the GPML list and also has any trademark owners rights are all the same. And it would be those other trademark rights that the clearinghouse would give you in your sunrise provision. But as for the globally protected marks, they're not going to be involved in the sunrise because they are blocked. Identical marks are blocked, and they are blocked not just for the prelaunch mechanism but forever. Just like ICANN is blocked. Just like IANA is blocked. >>JEFF NEUMAN: I'll just respond. Hey, Tony, it is a reserved name. It's a reserved name on a list forever, essentially, but yet you're right, registry operators are going to have to work out some mechanism by which the actual owner of that name can come to the registry and get that name. So there does need to be a mechanism to do that. That wasn't proposed in the -- in the draft as far as the mechanism to do it. There are ways it could be done. It's been done in a number of TLDs that have launched that have reserved names for either -- like a number of ccTLDs have done it, have reserved it for national -- dot us, for example, we did it for U.S. agencies, right? We had to put it on a reserved name list and block it, but then we developed a mechanism for those true owners to come us and get them. So there are different ways that you can actually do it, but it's intended to be easy on the registry operator, as far as it's just a reserved name list. It's blocked just like any of the other reserved names would be. >> (Speaker is off microphone). >>JEFF NEUMAN: What's that? >>RICHARD TINDALL: (Speaker is off microphone) -- for jumping out of the queue, but this is not what the report says. The report says that if "time," for example, is on the GPML, that if there is another trademark holder for the term "time" that that other trademark holder has equal rights in the sunrise process to the GPML. In fact, that other trademark holder could be the GPML holder during sunrise, depending on the sunrise methodology. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Correct. I don't see that actually disagreeing with what I said. >>RICHARD TINDALL: (Speaker is off microphone) >>JEFF NEUMAN: We could talk about the mechanisms, Richard, but you're right -- well, just -- sorry. The point is that during a sunrise period, a trademark owner could get that name. We could talk about mechanisms after this. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. I apologize for all those who are on the question list who did not get a question. We've now overrun the -- the 12:30, but I understand that this is going to come up, as it was said, in every constituency and in every meeting, and I -- and I do apologize. I probably should have held everybody to just one question. I didn't. >>LIZ WILLIAMS: Avri, can the questions be submitted to a central place for those people who missed out and to any other questions that were raised? >>AVRI DORIA: I don't know. Is there a place that one could submit questions to a central place? >>J. SCOTT EVANS: I would suggest -- Margie, can they submit it to the -- isn't there a Wiki set up for new gTLDs, and they could submit it there, and then -- >>MARGIE MILAM: I think so. >>J. SCOTT EVANS: I believe there's a Wiki set up for new gTLDs, and I think IRT has a section on there -- >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. If there's a specific section for IRT -- >>J. SCOTT EVANS: -- and I would suggest that if that's available, that's where you do it, and we will look at staff and try to address them. Also, please come to the forum on Wednesday, where we are going to take additional questions, and we are around -- members of the IRT are around all week and we are happy to speak to anybody about anything that you may want to bring up. >>AVRI DORIA: So again, I apologize for cutting the question list. We now basically -- there's a -- I guess there's a council meeting lunch and presentation, but we have to go somewhere to get our lunch. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: It's just outside. >>AVRI DORIA: Oh, it's just outside. So I guess we have to go outside. Now. Before they take it away. And then we come back in here and then we'll have a presentation on picket fences and consensus policies and what's in and what's out and how to recognize the difference. Thank you. And again, apologies to those that didn't get to ask their question. [Lunch break.] >>AVRI DORIA: Are we ready? Okay, so this session is basically going to be the progress of resolution on the overarching issues other than, of course, the IRT issue which was covered in detail on its own. And we've got various staff members in to give presentations and Kurt will tell us about it. One thing I should point out is there will be one of the pieces will be covered by somebody on the phone a little later but go ahead. >>KURT PRITZ: Yes, we have two presentations. The first discussion is about potential for malicious conduct, and that's the question of whether multiplying the number of top-level domains will also multiply malicious conduct as part of the presentation we define what malicious conduct is. Greg Rattray who is right behind me is managing this effort as part of the new gTLD program in addition to his important duties as Chief Security Officer for ICANN. So Greg's going to present on that. And then after that another -- another set of issues that Greg is managing has to do with the root zone scaling study. And the majority of that work is being done with SSAC and RSSAC and they've contracted with Lyman Chapin who many of you know well to coordinate that work. Lyman's on his way here and made reservations and learned about this opportunity to present a little too late to be here in person. So he's about halfway here and will be presenting by phone from the LA airport, so Los Angeles airport. So we're coordinating a presentation that you can look at and listen to Lyman. So unless there are any specific questions for me I'm going to come back and join you in a little while and turn this part of the conversation over to Greg, if that's okay. >>AVRI DORIA: First (Speaker off microphone) and then we'll do questions. >>MARIKA KONINGS: (Speaker off microphone). >>AVRI DORIA: Questions at the end or do you mind being interrupted with questions? >>GREG RATTRAY: I don't mind being interrupted. This first one, potential for malicious conduct you'll see in the brief that we're working with the antiphishing working group and they've just as of yesterday posted a significant -- >>AVRI DORIA: Oh, yeah, you have to speak into the microphone. >>GREG RATTRAY: Okay. Well, I do want to mention that we've been working closely with the antiphishing working group on malicious conduct group in this effort on the malicious conduct. And Rod -- Rod - - Rod Rasmussen, not that much of a tongue-tier -- go ahead and raise your hand -- is here. He's the principle lead of the piece that the APWG did related to this topic which just got posted yesterday. So you can also get it online as we go through this. Karen, how we doing on slides? It's got the Sydney logo on it. Because of that, it's big. >>AVRI DORIA: I passed it over. >>KAREN LETZ: I've got it in, it's just not -- >>AVRI DORIA: We can just get it to switch to you. So that says C on it, is that B? What's the little tag on the -- >>KAREN LETZ: B. >>AVRI DORIA: It's B. So if we could have B. >>LYMAN CHAPIN: Right. Margie, the other thing I've got it on thumb drive. >>MARGIE MILAM: I think (Speaker off microphone). >>GREG RATTRAY: Whatever is easiest. Which computer is driving that projector? Margie, did you know that you can be the driver for that? Let me just give you the thumb drive. >>MARGIE MILAM: R. >>GREG RATTRAY: There we go. I think we're ready. Again, my name is Greg Rattray, I'm the chief security advisor for ICANN. Another person on my staff, the director of security operations in ICANN, Jeff Bickers, has been doing a significant amount of the coordination also on this effort as one of the four overarching issues. Again, what we're talking about is the potential for malicious conduct. I will cover the three relatively straightforward topics on this slide so why don't we just head on into it. So, you know, the words "malicious conduct" could be construed to mean a lot of different things. We very -- have very early in the process after we identified the four overarching issues wanted to focus on criminal activity, i.e, phishing to conduct financial fraud, identity theft, spread of malware, establishing botnets is what is being handled in the potential for increased malicious conduct in this portion of the overarching issues and as we try to understand the issues related to new gTLDs and what we can do to deal with those issues. It's distinct, you know, I say distinct from trademark protection as we try to manage, you know, issue identification and resolution. You know, trademark protection is, you know, has to do with intellectual property and civil lumbar, you know, I am not a lawyer so I've got to be very careful when I get too far down that road, but, you know, in my mind, you know, because of the differences, there's different processes for determining what's at issue and how to authorize response if it's appropriate. However, I do have to say, as we start to work on new gTLDs there's going to be certain remediation steps that will be considered, you know, a crucial factor in any of these situations is identifying -- quickly being able to conduct registrars and registrants about potential, you know, activity, whether it has -- whether it's, you know, hurting a brand name, you know, or a violation of intellectual property or potentially malicious conduct. So in some ways I want to say you don't want to overly, you know, distinguish the fact that only certain things will be talked about in the malicious conduct construct in -- versus the trademark but in general we're trying to distinguish the two in that regard. It's probably a reasonable time now just to stop and, you know, ask if anybody's got a question, you know, regarding that distinction. >>AVRI DORIA: I see none. >>GREG RATTRAY: Okay, good. Next slide. So to -- the main focus on the brief is really to talk a little bit about, you know, what we've received so far as we've identified this as a -- as an overarching issue and so we've gone through and I believe Kurt went through, you know, the process by which we've analyzed the comment on the applicant guidebook. You know, version two. That analysis included identification of those issues that fell into the malicious conduct area, that's certainly all available as you've seen, I think it was posted on 31 May. It does talk about some potential areas for implementation, I have a slide that addresses those areas. There has not been really comment via the overarching issues Wiki that's been established for the purposes of, you know, soliciting comment on these overarching issues. There have been of late, and we know forthcoming, some relevant SSAC reports that will -- you know, that provide information that is relevant to how we might think about remediation. There's an SSAC Advisory 38 registrar abuse contract and there's a forthcoming draft SSAC report which is pretty far along, I believe the intent is to get it out within a couple of weeks on DNS redirection and synthesized DNS responses. And that one, we believe, will -- you know, it's not done, so I'm not going to speak for the SSAC but if as drafted, it's approved, it does recommend that you do not allow synthesized DNS responses, I think, in the new gTLD space. So I see these all as input to us about both what our issues and what our potential remediation, to deal with those issues as we work on the new applicant guidebook. Outreach to involved group. We did not constitute an IRT process for this overarching issue but we have been working with a number of groups, significantly the antiphishing working group as I mentioned as well as the registry Internet security group. We've also talked with -- we haven't received as much feedback from the FIRST, the Forum for Incident Response Teams, which is the global coordinator, at least, association of the computer emergency response team community. And members of that community will be here for the panel that we have on Wednesday afternoon to talk about what the issues are from their perspective. We've also received some pretty significant engagement in the last few weeks from the banking and finance associations, basically the U.S. based banking and finance associations. Though they recognize that, you know, this is an issue where they're going to try to bring in some more international participation. I could go through what those acronyms are, BITS, the ABA, is probably the most apparent one, the financial services, information analysis center and the financial services technical coordinating center if we want to go into who those associations are, they're all working together in a pretty accord 1998ed fashion but they have identified that they want some -- you know, they want to help us address specific concerns, obviously, gTLDs related to banking and finance are going to be, you know, a special target for malicious activity and they want to make sure we understand their perspective on, you know, how those things might have to be addressed. We have public consultation here. There's the session on Wednesday afternoon, I believe it's 4:00 or 4:30 to 6:00. You know, after another IRT session earlier on Wednesday afternoon. And I believe Kurt discussed, you know, the planned international consultations, New York, London, Hong Kong, I think it's Dubai, am I correct on that? >> Abu Dhabi. >>GREG RATTRAY: Abu Dhabi scheduled for July and August and this issue will be among those discussed in those consultations. Any questions about where we were getting input on this or where we have received input so far? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I was just wondering to what extent some of that -- the ongoing outreach might be more internationally directed? >>GREG RATTRAY: So, you know, I think the intent is to try to get, you know, through the July and August consultations, some of that to occur. Our engagement with the FIRST community is actually -- has actually been a little international and the representative is a woman who is associated with Malaysian CERT who is going to come along and we know the Hong Kong CERT's going to participate in the session in Hong Kong, you know, so in -- and rod, I might ask you to speak a little bit as to how much the APWG efforts have been international. I wouldn't know specifically who you guys tapped for that. >>ROD RASMUSSEN: The subcommittee that has been looking at this is -- all but one person is U.S., however, APWG in general represents as a worldwide body. And we had our last meeting in Barcelona, this was discussed there. I might also add, I was just at the messaging anti- abuse working group meeting in Amsterdam and they had a whole special dedicated to the new gTLD process and are working on formulating a response as well. And that's definitely a very international composition of basically ISPs around the world and people who use e- mail and messaging systems on both sending and receiving side. So they're going to be putting in a response as well, I believe. >>AVRI DORIA: Tony? >>TONY HARRIS: Yes, my question is a little generic probably but it relates to the subject we're looking at. Is there any consideration being -- going on about the obvious vehicle for most of these activities which is spam, because I'm we seem to be chasing the effects but the cause is always there, as long as you have spam and the volumes that spam handles, I mean, you're just going to be putting stops on a few roads but they're going to get through somewhere with spam, they get to the people, they get to the Internet users, and that's -- I think that's the basis of the whole problem because I've heard, you know, comments that having new gTLDs will increase the opportunities for cyber crime but I could also say, well, if we have new, another billion Internet uses which is the catch phrase today we will have another billion potential victims so maybe we shouldn't let them get on the Internet. I think, you know, some -- somebody should think about the obvious medium for all of this which is spam. That's what they do, the phishing with and practically everything else but who's attacking spam, that's my question. >>GREG RATTRAY: So I guess I could partial it a little bit. You know, the extent to which spam is a, you know, continuing challenge for security on the Internet and the domain name system, you know, has a role in that, you know, this effort is not focused on that specific problem but, you know, there's a number of continuing problems that, you know, will exist in the new gTLD space just like they exist in the existing area, you know, so this effort is not, you know, focused on the spam problem. I think you rightly identify the fact that, you know, to the extent to which phishing is conducted through e-mail and spam, you know, then, you know, some of the things that Rod's report suggests, you know, will have us consider remediation methods that would go after entities in the new gTLD space that were conduct -- you know, pushing spam in order to conduct malicious conduct, does that make sense, I can probably restate that if that -- >>TONY HARRIS: Yeah, I think I follow you and I understand this is not about spam, I just brought it up because it seemed to me that at the bottom of everything we always have that as a medium, that was my only comment. >>AVRI DORIA: Thanks, I have Mike and then Adrian. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: It's Mike Rodenbaugh. It's absolutely true that spam's a huge problem, but remember, there's a lot of other ways that people are luring users to bad Web sites these days, right? IM, Facebook, driveby downloads, just go to any Web site. So it's overly simplistic to assume that spam is the vehicle all the time. But anyway, I was going to ask -- it's going to help me understand where you're going and maybe I'm jumping the gun a little bit but what is the proposed output from your effort here? >>GREG RATTRAY: Well, at the end of the day, the output is, you know, changes to the applicant guidebook that would set, you know, new requirements on, you know, applicants and the registries that are operated if they're stood up that should address some of these concerns. Now, we're still more on the identification of concern phases than the engineering of the remediations, though, in the potential areas for implementation that came out in the comment on the applicant guidebook version two, we did start to say these are some of the remediations considered and those I think are the next slide or the slide after that so we'll get into that a little bit. Is that good? >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Yes. >>AVRI DORIA: Adrian? >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Adrian Kinderis. Sorry, just a point of clarification, who is the registry Internet security group? >>GREG RATTRAY: That was started by -- I believe PR and Afilias. Is anybody here -- >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: I think, then, you mean the registry Internet safety group. >>GREG RATTRAY: Is it safety? Okay, I misnamed it. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: That's the end of my queue. >>GREG RATTRAY: Okay. Why don't we go to the next slide. So here are, you know, here's, you know, to the comment on what are the specific sorts of remediations being considered. In the comment on the applicant guidebook 2, or version 2, there's probably three or four pages' worth of different comments that were provided on that version of the APG. They really went to kind of two major themes, the need to leverage outside expertise and the need to develop standardized remediation approaches, there wasn't a lot of specific approaches considered. In that document we identified the six steps listed here as things that we, you know, believe we are going to need to consider. Creation of security-specific TLDs, standardized rapid takedown procedures. And we know that that's going to be a fairly hefty effort to try to understand what might be implemented there and how to implement it. Heightened requirements for registrar accreditation. The applicant background checks, amendment of WHOIS practices. Some of these things were also suggested in the potential changes for to implementation of trademarks, including basically the same exact list of WHOIS practices under consideration for the two. And then removal of glue records for deleted registrations since we know at times phishers use that weakness in order to conduct their activities. Any questions on this one. >>AVRI DORIA: Actually, I'd like to ask one question and it comes up. When you talk about change in WHOIS practice and such, is that something that would be made in your mind directly in the DAG for the new gTLDs or is that something where you would recommend going back through a policy development practice for WHOIS practices and how would you see something like that happening, how do you see sort of things that amount to policy changes happening if they come out of the recommendations. >>GREG RATTRAY: So I believe, and there's others in the room from the policy team that can also probably speak to this as well, the specific things mentioned in the amendment to WHOIS practices are the acquiring of thick WHOIS of the new registries and implementation of IRIS databases to facilitate understanding of WHOIS information in different languages. So for that regard, you know, I believe they're not policy changes, they're basically, you know, implementation, you know, requirements that are, you know, might be different for a given -- it will be -- there won't be options left to the registry about those sorts of things so those are the two specific things that are identified. >>MARGIE MILAM: Those would be more specification type things, right? >>GREG RATTRAY: Right, not policy. Others in the room are much more steeped in the ICANN policy process but this is an implementation sort of thing. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. >>GREG RATTRAY: So, again, we do have Rod Rasmussen who is the lead of the group that put their input together from the antiphishing working group. And so you can see they identified three types of issues and I think that was a really pretty insightful approach which is as we stand up, you know, new gTLDs you're going to have some things that emerge because of the nature of new gTLDs and how they're -- you know, potential for how they're operated. Kurt, when he opened this up, you know, focused mostly on issues of scale. You're going to have more gTLDs and therefore more issues that come from the fact that the space is larger and people who have to deal with malicious conduct try - - may have more to do, more potential places where bad things can happen and there's an issue of scale there and then there are a whole set of longstanding issues related to how gTLD registries, you know, and the system is operated that will continue to exist in the new gTLD space. So the report, I think it's 15-20 pages long, you know, provides a perspective on all of the different issues that are identified after those three major headings. It is marked very -- very vigorously on the front as a draft. You know, it is still under consideration by the Internet policy group, if I've got that -- within the AP -- or the Internet policy committee within the APWG so, you know, because of this meeting and our desire working with them to get it out so it can be discussed here in Sydney, they gave us permission to post this draft yesterday so it's up there for everybody to look at during the course of this week Rod's here, he's here today to answer questions if we have them right now. He's a panelist on the Wednesday afternoon panel and he's also speaking at the abuse of the DNS session on Thursday so to the extent that you want to interact with Rod and there are other members of the community that are part of the APWG effort here. I certainly hope that we get as much discussion about those -- that report, and we've also encouraged the APWG to really focus in their final draft on suggesting remediation measures for the issues identified in the report, and we believe that that will be a major portion of the report. Rod, if you would, you know, any other perspective on the report? >>ROD RASMUSSEN: I just wanted to reiterate what you said there, we don't have 100% consensus on all of the issues there, but I think we're pretty darned close. We did have representation from both the security community and the domain registrar community and the domain registry community on our subcommittee that was doing this so we were trying to do a good job of balancing the concerns of the overall community and various issues that are going to come up along with being practical about what can actually get implemented. There's a lot of different types of issues that we've raised here. We'd love to get more input from the ICANN community in general as to -- some of these are fairly esoteric, actually. And maybe fairly new to some folks in this community. So we'd like to get reactions and feedback as we drive forward on providing some recommendations, we can look at things like policy recommendations, best practices recommendations and just kind of operational implementation recommendations as well. >> Where did you say it's posted. >>ROD RASMUSSEN: I asked for it to be posted on the APWG Web site and it hasn't gone up yet. >>GREG RATTRAY: On the Web site, I believe, if you click on new gTLDs it's pretty apparent on the first click -- you know, it's one click beyond that. It's on the Wiki related to new -- >>ROD RASMUSSEN: One other thing I was going to add. One of the other things we were going to try and do too, this is a really kind of a long laundry list at this point, we're going to try and prioritize some of these issues here as well. For instance, a BGP attack, that's a fairly esoteric thing, versus a organization like the Russian Business Network being granted a domain registry operator's license. That's an extremely serious issue as far as we're considering it in the APWG. So we're going to try to rank order those at least in some respects. So that as you are considering these within the ICANN community, you can know what are the real high priorities and what are kind of, you know interesting but not necessarily earth-shattering issues. >>AVRI DORIA: A queue with Tony and Kristina, so Tony. >>TONY HARRIS: Kristina first. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Rod, do you anticipate that as that consensus process goes forward there may be changes to the report and if so could I ask that those be posted? >>ROD RASMUSSEN: Yes. I anticipate that there might be some changes on the margin. We're really doing this as two separate reports, the first is just the issues report. I think that we're pretty darned close on that one, there might be a little bit more as we put it out to the wider committee within the APWG that may tweak that a bit but we'll put the final one up on that as well. And then the second report would have quite a bit of -- I would imagine that's going to be -- probably and ago Gus weigh do to the registrar best practices document we put out last year and we'll have a set of principles as best practices that most of the people in the APWG would -- there's a broad consensus for and then there are some others that might be a little bit more contentious because we do have representation from different perspectives, wildly different peps on how to handle security issues and things like that. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you, okay, I've got Tony, Amadeu and then Tim. >>TONY HARRIS: Yeah, Rod, I was interested in your comment on BGP takeover attack of a TLD zone. I mean, BGP is something I hear next to my office every day on the Argentine Internet exchange, where they're working with the exchange of traffic or Internet traffic and have there been any historic events that -- has this happened, or are you just worried it might happen with an incautious new registry? Excuse my ignorance. >>ROD RASMUSSEN: Yeah, there's -- and actually, within the report there's the reference to the actual demonstration as to how this kind of attack would occur with references to where it was brought up at -- I believe it was a black hat conference, a NANOG conference within the last six months or year or so. So I recommend going to that directly to get to the details. There have been BGP attacks, and in fact, quite a few of them, so it has happened. I don't know that it's happened to a registry. But the same principle that has been used to attack and used extortion and other things done by the criminal element can definitely be done in this context. So it's definitely something you want. This is more of a awareness issue and running security procedures within an registry. But if you're standing up a new registry, something like this is an attack you might not expect or even know about so we're trying to raise the awareness on the issue. >>AVRI DORIA: Amadeu? >>AMADEU ABRIL i ABRIL: Okay. I have a comment and a question. The comment is regarding the presentation we had. I'm really concerned about some expressions saying like, "Oh, we're in this phase of studying what are the issues, not the solutions," and, "oh, the goal of all these is to find -- you know, find the issues, find the solutions and they introduce that in the guidebook." Whereas, not everything can be used to delay the guidebook forever. And the -- these concerns remind me a lot of the concerns that IPC had before IPC existed in '96, '97, '98. That is, we have a problem, we have a current system, and there are no workable solutions. Many of these things, fast-flux or rapid suspension or whatever, have to do with the current TLDs regardless of the number of new TLDs. So it's not directly related to that. What's directly related in that's an important mechanism that we need to fix in the guidebook because, if not, it will be much more difficult to solve afterwards is the question of having a workable rapid suspension for, you know, the most urgent things and most common things that we can't agree on how to do with that. Especially if you're going to have a rapid suspension mechanism for trademark procedures, we need to do something that's at least compatible or workable. And here, I think that the APWG had already something very good in the proposal that is being working on with dot Asia from the -- I would say complainant side. What was lacking at that part was a world solution from the registry to registrar side. That was not the problem in that draft because it was only addressed to a single registry, so that was okay. But it did not scale very well to many TLDs and especially with 500 new TLDs, whatever. My question to Rod is whether -- in the last draft I didn't have the chance to read in my plane here, you saw things like, for instance, indemnification system for registries and registrars that finally need to make the decision to suspend the contents of their customers with whom they have a legal binding contract that may have a legal consequence for them if there is a mistake at some point. It might happen at some time. [Off microphone.] >>GREG RATTRAY: So, Rod, I would have you address that last point related to the APWG work on takedown. And then I think I'll probably respond to a couple of the other broader points that were, you know, brought up at the start of the -- my first part on the longstanding issues here -- and I realize they are longstanding issues -- one of the reasons here is that at the last meeting in Mexico City, I had several potential new gTLD operators come up and ask me about all the different security mechanisms they could install in their new gTLDs to make sure they had the safest new gTLD out there. So that section there is probably going to be largely about satisfying those curiosities and hopefully seeing some implementations. On the rapid suspension process, the APWG is moving forward on that. We have a whole -- actually, I'm going to be discussing that I think Wednesday at some session. I'd have to look at my calendar. And we're actually getting all the documentation and all that kind of stuff put together from our various members and from some contractors. So we should have those issues on scaling as part of that in that next rev of documentation that comes out. And that will hopefully come out within the next month or two at the most. We're moving forward on that as quickly as we can right now. APWG is an all-volunteer organization. We don't have a lot of staff or things like that to do things like this, so we're dependent on our members to push this stuff forward. So I don't have the -- I don't have quite the resources that other organizations have at driving this stuff. But we're moving forward quickly on this. >> AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Tim? >>TIM RUIZ: I wonder what the next steps are or what the intent as well is for all of this work. I mean, we've got the IRT, which is a considerable amount of material and things to consider. And we've got the work going on with the malicious conduct, another considerable amount of material to consider and issues to consider. My concern is that in -- but, you know, there's still this goal to get TLD -- TLDs out and get that implemented by early 2010, first, second quarter of 2010. What I am worried about is that policies or whatever you want to call them find their way into this draft applicant guidebook that the community just in the whirlwind of what's happening here isn't able to fully consume and consider and actually comment on. And, you know, the stuff just finds its way through simply because we can't all keep track of it. What's the intent here from this malicious conduct work? Is it just a best practices document? Here are some suggestions? Or is there really an intent that some things are going to find its way into registry agreements that registrars who want to offer those TLDs are going to have to agree to in order to offer them. Or is it just, you know, here's some good ideas at this point? I don't see how there can be any time left to say here's some requirements that are going to be imposed on new gTLDs. >>GREG RATTRAY: That's a good segue to the next slide, which is the way forward, I believe. So, Tim, I -- we are certainly going to consider both best practices and requirements, right? I mean, the timing for this would be that those requirements, you know, would be identified in the next draft of the applicant guidebook. I have -- basically, everybody who works in the ICANN environment right now knows there's so many things in play at the same time that there is an issue of -- you know, due consideration of all these new -- the IRT work, if specific mitigation measures are, you know, suggested here, that the community needs to digest the implication of those, if they are requirements. You know, it's been -- I think we made pretty clear that in the overarching issues the idea is to get the issues identified, suggest to the community, you know, suggested mitigations as part of the draft guidebook, you know, process, and have the dialogue about whether those are the right, you know, steps. And you know, take, you know, the -- use the normal process in order to do that. >>TIM RUIZ: Just give you an example of why -- from a registrar's perspective, one thing that comes to mind -- I'm sure there's many, many others. But, if -- indemnification ought to be something you're seriously thinking about with any of these requirements. Because, if a registry comes to a registrar, at least with Go Daddy, says here's what we have to agree to. And we have to completely indemnify the registries the way the agreements are written now. and we have to implement these requirements. If it puts us at risk, you know, those registries are going to have a very difficult time finding registrars who are going to assume those risks and sign up. So that's one thing to consider. But from the applicant's perspective, today we're talking six, eight months from now starting to submit applications for TLDs, today they don't know what the heck it is they're going to have to agree to yet. It's still a completely open question. When is it going to be settled down enough that they have something to count on, they have something to tell their investors, they have something to really plan for? You know, a lot of money is being spent here. And yet we're still spinning around talking about some pretty major requirements that can be very expensive, very risky for them to implement. And yet it's still an unknown. At some point it's got to stop, and things just have to move forward so that people know what it is that they're actually going to be doing, what they're applying for. [Applause] >>CHUCK GOMES: Tim, your point is well taken. And I think that point, at least as we have defined it in the new GTLD recommendations from the GNSO, at the latest, has to be the final DAG when the board approves it. And that's why we had established -- recommended a four month -- minimum four-month communication period after that to make sure that there is some time there. But -- so is that enough? Who knows? You're right. It's -- there's so many things. It's tough for even those of us that are well engrossed in it to keep on track of everything. So I think we have a point in -- and, hopefully, by the time we get DAG3, it won't change too much after that. Although, there will be some changes even after that. And that's why your final guidebook will be the point, I think. And I don't know how you get around it any differently. Because a lot of these things are critical things to consider. But your point is also well taken that we've got to be very careful that we don't impose requirements. It's one thing to impose best practices, as you indicated. But we have to be very careful not to impose requirements that haven't been properly vetted in terms of their consequences. And that includes secondary consequences that could be very troublesome when we actually get down to having to perform them. >>GREG RATTRAY: I mean, I don't think there's a response to that. You guys are providing perspective on the speed at which this is occurring and the challenges, if the mitigation was to consider new requirements, you know, how the challenges that are presented by that. So -- I will brief the slide. I kind of did to a little -- some degree already, which is we do have the planned consultations. We want to have those consultations focus on mitigation approaches, not issue identification again. The work of APWG and others. I think we've got a pretty fulsome set of concerns. I was going to make a comment that, again, a good aspect of how the APWG structured their thinking, which will probably be reflected in our approach to looking at remediation, is those things specific to the new gTLDs stand up as opposed to the continuing issues that are going to plague all TLD operations. Again, we got to work with the banking and finance on some specific concerns they've raised. And, again, that -- the next version of the applicant guidebook will be the place at which, you know, these things are specified, you know, the extent to which we do that. So I think that's it. If there's further questions -- >>AVRI DORIA: Are there any further questions? Comments? Okay. Do we have Lyman at this point? Because it is just the 45, 46 mark, so I was curious whether we had him or not. [Off microphone] >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, great. So, yeah, if you can let him know. Lyman, are you on the phone? >>LYMAN CHAPIN: Avri, yes. Bill Manning and I are here. Sorry. I had the mute button on. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Hello, Lyman. Hello, Bill. Did you have slides? Okay. Thank you. >>LYMAN CHAPIN: No, we do not have slides. >>MARGIE MILAM: We do have something. >>AVRI DORIA: Speak into the microphone to him, so he can hear you. >>MARGIE MILAN: I have a pdf from you, a root scaling study overview. Is that not -- >>LYMAN CHAPIN: If you think it will be useful, we can put the slides up. I can certainly talk to those. But -- >>AVRI DORIA: Visuals are always helpful. >>LYMAN CHAPIN: -- available at this point on your end or not. >>AVRI DORIA: Margie's got them. >>MARGIE MILAM: I got them. >>AVRI DORIA: Visuals are always helpful. Okay, you're on. >>BILL MANNING: We're on. They have the visuals up. >>LYMAN CHAPIN: Thank you. We'd like to take a few minutes to describe where we stand with a study of the effects on the root server system of essentially several different things that are going on at the same time. The one that has prompted the study which has been commissioned jointly by SS and RSSAC is the Internet introduction of new gTLDs to the root. At the same time that we're pursuing that initiative, applicant guidebook, so forth, we're also deploying DNSSEC and signed delegation and also adding indemnification versions of TLDs, gTLDs, and potentially also new gTLDs. And we're also looking at adding support for IPv6 access both to servers within the root servers and to servers throughout the domain name system. All of those things happening together, the ICANN board by resolution last February asked SSAC and RSSAC to initiate a study on the effects of the system on doing these various things, some of which have greater effects than others. Move to -- do you have the slides? >>AVRI DORIA: Yes. >>BILL MANNING: I'm going to go through the packet. >>LYMAN CHAPIN: So, essentially, what I've just done is I just -- I mean, to what was contained on slide two. It also contains URL pointers to, you know, the material that directly concerns each of the four things that -- so, if you move ahead to slide 3, this gives a sense of the kind of study that we're conducting. What we're trying to determine is not so much what should we look out for, in other words, what is like a system. What we're trying to do is to build a model of how the system operates starting with a baseline of how it operates today so that we can then, essentially, look at what happened to each individual part of the root server system, make changes to any of the variables -- the number of entries in the root system, if root zone is updated. [off microphone] ought to be able to show what will happen. It's important to recognize the effort to put on a data driven and analysis-driven objective of the study, not just simply how much is too much or -- those are all -- those all end up after you have really understood what the -- will show that -- and then it will be a matter for -- >>AVRI DORIA: Can I interrupt a second? Are you speaking into a phone or a speaker? Because it's breaking up here, and we're having trouble picking up what you're saying. So, if you're speaking into a speaker phone, if you can speak directly into a phone, because we've been missing bits and pieces because it has been breaking up. >>LYMAN CHAPIN: Okay. Is that any clearer? >>AVRI DORIA: Bunches. >>LYMAN CHAPIN: Can you hear me more clearly if I speak into the handset is directly? >>AVRI DORIA: Yes, we can hear you more clearly. I don't know if you can still hear me, but we can hear you more clearly as you speak into the handset. >>LYMAN CHAPIN: Okay. I'll do that then. I also hear the same interference. I'm not sure what is on the line, but I'm hearing it at this end as well. If we move ahead to the fourth slide, this simply summarizes the status of the work so far. We assembled the study team in early May of this year. The announcement and opening of the public comment area happened about three weeks later. And all of our work is expected to be completed with the delivery of a draft report at the end of August. That 31 August date was chosen very deliberately so that it will, you know, appropriately feed into the public review and comment cycle leading up to the ICANN annual meeting in late October in Korea. We have -- do you have -- I'm not sure if the version of the slides that you have is five slides long or six slides long. If it is six slides long, then you have an additional slide I can talk to. If not, the last slide simply gives the e-mail address to which public comments can be sent and posted to the Web site. If you don't have the additional slide, I think probably the most useful thing would be for both of us to entertain any questions that, Avri, that you and the council might have at this point. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, thanks. We don't have a 6th slide. We have the 5th slide with the address, as you suggest. >>LYMAN CHAPIN: Okay. >>AVRI DORIA: So, unless you want to speak to a slide that we don't have, are there questions for Lyman and Bill at this point? Yeah, okay. I see two. I see Chuck and then Marilyn. >>CHUCK GOMES: Hi, guys. A quick question, Lyman. If I understood you correctly there, is it accurate to conclude that the root scaling study won't be done until Seoul, in other words, won't be done in time for DAG3, which is estimated to be produced in September? >>LYMAN CHAPIN: The draft report will be completed and published and available by the end of August. There -- the -- the expectation with respect to Seoul is that the results of the study and any comments on those results that accrue after the delivery date at the end of August will be available for the board at their meeting in Seoul. The idea being, of course, that the results of the study are intended to be useful to support decision making and that the board would be able to take advantage of those results in considering how it wants to move forward and -- in particular, with respect to the new gTLD program. I'm not sure -- I assume that, even though the report would technically be a draft at that point, that the preparation of the third draft applicant guidebook could certainly take the results of the study into account. >>CHUCK GOMES: That's helpful, thanks. >>AVRI DORIA: Marilyn? >>MARILYN CADE: Thanks. It's Marilyn Cade, Lyman. Thank you for this presentation. I'm still struggling with a question that I had asked you individually. And I'll just ask it, for the record, again. I understand that the board asked for what I would consider relatively narrow terms of reference which focuses on the root zone scaling. But I'm, as you know, interested in the implications of these changes on the Internet ecosystem providers of tier 1s and ISPs, Web hosting companies and others who actually run the Internet, not those who distribute unique indicators or who are the directories of unique indicators. So could you say a little more about how you would see taking input from that category of the folks who actually build and run the Internet? >>LYMAN CHAPIN: Yes. That category is, as you described it, is a category that is, you know, is very much on our list of people who we want to talk to and people that we understand we very much need to talk to in order to have anything like a complete picture of, you know, how the root server operates but also how it affects the way in which people actually use the Internet. And so we will be making every effort between now and the completion of our work to talk to as many people, you know, would have that perspective as possible. Given the amount of time that we have available, we -- you know, we can't do nearly as much of that as we would like. But we're certainly going to do as much of it as we possibly can. There's a very important distinction that I think we need to make. And it doesn't really relate to the scope -- you know, the narrowness of the scope of the question that the board asked. It goes more to the difference between the effect of some of these things that we're contemplating on the operation of the root server system as a system and all of the other pros and cons and overarching issues and so forth that surround the question of, you know, how and under what circumstances and with what concerns and trepidations and safeguards and so forth we should be adding new entries to the root zone. And there is a large number of issues that we are aware of and that, as we go along, we're, you know, we're trying to document and record as much as possible that don't fit very well within the mandate that we've been given by the SSAC and RSSAC to look pretty specifically at the effect of all these things on the operation of the root zone. So I think what we're going to see at the end of this study we're going to have some what I hope will be very useful results that will help the community to make decisions and to have a, as I called it a fact-based an analysis-based discussion of some of these issues. But we will also have what I am imagining at this point will be a fairly long list of things that remain to be done. Additional work that might need to be done or additional -- or even additional studies that might need to be undertaken in order to completely understand all of the ramifications of some of the actions we'll be undertaking. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Are there any other questions for -- >>LYMAN CHAPIN: And the interference is getting really bad, so I'm having a hard time hearing, Marilyn, I'm sorry. >>AVRI DORIA: That wasn't even Marilyn, that was me, it was Avri. >>LYMAN CHAPIN: I can't hear because of the interference. >>AVRI DORIA: Exactly. So I was just checking to see if there were any other questions that anyone had at the moment. If not, I want to thank both of you for taking some of your break time between flights to do this and wish you happy flying and see you tomorrow morning. Or -- >>LYMAN CHAPIN: One thing I did want to ask is if -- if you expect to consider any of these issues during your agenda tomorrow and if so if you would like either or both of those to be available. >>AVRI DORIA: I don't think we have them on the agenda tomorrow but I'll -- I'll get back to you if there is anything but I don't think so. But we had a whole different set of issues on the agenda for tomorrow so I don't think so. >>LYMAN CHAPIN: Okay, very good. >>AVRI DORIA: But thanks a lot. And safe trip. >>LYMAN CHAPIN: Okay, thank you very much. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, thank you. >>LYMAN CHAPIN: Good-bye. >>AVRI DORIA: Bye. Okay, where we are at the moment is we essentially had another bit of time before Kurt comes back to do the talking of geographical names. So I'm wondering whether there were any other issues that it was worth using this half hour for. For example, I mean, one issue that I've sort of heard come up and then I'll open the queue is sort of trying to understand to what degree any of these solutions coming out of overarching issues are indeed issues, policy issues, that the council needs to look at, wants to look at, wants to come up with any positions on the GNSO wants to come up with any positions on. And is there something to discuss there. And, you know, several times people have said, well, doesn't this come back to the GNSO for discussion? I've had various discussions. And my first answer has been, "no," you know, we made our recommendations and the board approved them and they're going through implementation and then people have come and said, well, wait a second, these are policy issues. So it's the sort of question I wanted to put on the table and find out whether there is any work that we need to put on our agenda in terms of dealing with any of the possible policy implications of these recommendations that are coming out of overarching issues or geographic names. I had Kristina, I had Alexander, I have Tim. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I actually was just going to point out that there was a fourth overarching issue and if, in fact, we were going to be getting an update on that. >>AVRI DORIA: Perhaps when Kurt comes back. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay and then Alexander? >>ALEXANDER SCHUBERT: What Kristina just said. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. >>TONY HARRIS: I don't want to presume, but looking at the ICANN Web site, there is a report published by a consulting -- two consulting companies on the fourth overarching issue which WAS THE economic justification, if I remember correctly. I believe the reports are already out. In case anybody wants to see them, okay? >>AVRI DORIA: So, yeah. When Kurt comes back, I don't know that he had had it specific but certainly, you know, we can ask him to give an update on it unless someone here would like to do it in his stead. I didn't think so. Okay. Alexander? >>ALEXANDER SCHUBERT: Alexander Schubert. Dot klc (phonetic). I don't know whether it's the right question but the number of registry operated domain names, is it an item that could be interesting? Because some of the new gTLDs may consider to run a broad part of the generic names base by the registry instead of auctioning them off, and in the past I believe there was something like 50,000 names that had been allowed to operated by the registry and maybe someone creates a system that needs more names operated by the registry. >>AVRI DORIA: Marilyn, you had a -- >>MARILYN CADE: I have a question for clarification. I'm not aware that registries operate second-level domain names. There are situations where registries have proposed in their contract to for instance dot mobi had a unique approach to allocation to a certain group of names, but I'm unaware, as a matter of fact, I am fully aware, as one who helped to write this into the initial separation of registries and registrars, that registries do not, as ICANN does not, operate second-level domain names. So I need some clarification. >>AVRI DORIA: Were you talking about reservation of names at second level or were you talking about actually running them. >>ALEXANDER SCHUBERT: Yeah. >>AVRI DORIA: Talking about reservations. >>ALEXANDER SCHUBERT: No, me? I'm talking about operating. I mean, if you look at the existing new top-level domains, there are a bunch of new top-level domains already existing, right? And they all have a problem with their generic name space and so it's grabbed and held by speculators. And maybe some of the new gTLDs come up with another system on how to use the generic name space and if that name space has more than 50,000 names then there's maybe a problem. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Yeah, I think what Alexander is saying, it may help to use a concrete example but correct me if I don't have you correct, Alexander, I think what he's saying -- so let's take, for example, dot golf. They want to reserve generic names like new york dot golf, like frisbee dot golf, whatever, and then either run them themselves or run them through partners. My view of the current DAG is that there's no impediment to that. >>AVRI DORIA: It's not addressed. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: I think it would be perfectly acceptable. >>MARILYN CADE: Can I get back in the queue? >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. Is this on the same topic? Because I did have Tim next in the queue. >>MARILYN CADE: It is. I just would suggest that we should probably defer that question to the legal counsel and if there -- just because -- it's my understanding, having been on the policy development process at one time but not at the -- obviously, at the end, I'm not sure that the new gTLD process -- new gTLD process was intended to throw out some of the existing legal parameters that existed in the -- in the registry contract in terms of certain divisions or requirements, so perhaps we could just refer that question to the legal counsel and whether it's covered by existing ICANN policy or practices and whether it -- the fact it's not mentioned in the DAG means it's not addressed. >>AVRI DORIA: Jeff, you wanted to add something to this? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Just to clarify Marilyn's point. You mean operating names other than going through a registrar? 'Cause as a trademark owner and a business, we have a number of domain names that we have but we have to register through registrars, you're talking about names that are utilized by the registry operator that never have to go through a registrar, right, that's what you're talking about. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Yeah, yeah, that's what he means. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Want to clarify that for the transcript or people reading it because we are allowed to have domain names. >>AVRI DORIA: Tim? >>TIM RUIZ: I think the current -- this isn't what I wanted to comment on but I think the current draft guidebook allows registry to be its own registrar to up to 100,000 domain names. So if that maintains -- and I don't understand what Alexander's asking about would necessarily be a problem, that's my thought but -- >>AVRI DORIA: I think he was asking whether 50,000 was the limit. Now you've just said that it's 100,000. Yeah, that's what it says. And even beyond that, I mean, right now a registry could -- has to register its names through a registrar, you can't register them itself. So -- yeah, so -- >>AVRI DORIA: Mike, you wanted to ask another question on this? >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: I guess I was just going to follow up with what Marilyn was saying. I think clearly the new TLD guidelines were designed to consider new business models, including this kind of business model. I think this scenario was discussed during the new TLD deliberations at least once, but I'm sure several times. And there was simply no policy recommendation to maintain those rules and so they're not following through into the new documents. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thank you. Tim? >>TIM RUIZ: So your original question was, you know, within these overarching issues are there things that we should be discussing as a council, is that -- >>AVRI DORIA: That was sort of the first question I threw out because in some of the earlier discussions I got -- and then people have come up to me and asked the question specifically so that's why I was throwing it out, yes, are we supposed to, are we meant to, do we need to... >>TIM RUIZ: Yeah, I think it's a very valid question. I just don't know if there's an answer. Because myself, I don't completely understand, you know, what the direction is or what the intent is by the board in regards to some of the work that's being done. It seems to me that the intent is that it doesn't come back to the council, that these reports are done, there's community discussion, and then the board makes some decision. If that's the case, then we're kind of -- we're kind of out of it at this point. If that's not the case, you know, it would be good to know but -- >>AVRI DORIA: Well, let me add, actually from what I understand of the process, it's actually the board will be giving, I think it was called, a sense of the board on these issues. But, actually, won't be making a decision on them and that basically there's the community comment, there's the sense of the board and then there's the implementation team, including, I believe, what it thinks needs to be included based on the sense of the board and the community comments and then the board approves a whole package at the end of the game. Or the end of the process. Not to call it a game, because that's a word full of meaning. But one of the questions has been -- so, no, the GNSO is not seen in this loop at all, but several people have asked should the GNSO be in this loop at all. And, of course, one of the places where the GNSO can be in the loop is decide to make comments. Even if it's not taking apart a specific policy process, the GNSO can say, listen, we're going to discuss such and such, go to the constituencies and make a statement. As a GNSO. And so it's a question that I ask almost every time there's -- there's something is, is there something that we should do -- I've got three people, and then -- I've got Phil, I've got Jim, and I've got -- you want to add -- stop me from going on, please -- no, I sort of explained myself, yeah. >>DAN HALLORAN: Just wanted to jump in the queue at some point to say, I was listening carefully the conversation and I think we'll go back and look carefully at -- you know, there is no new version of the proposed basic agreement for the registries that we've come out with since whenever that was before Mexico. So it sounds like some of the, you know, people need more clarity on what may a registry do, what can a registry not do in terms of reserve names, managing its own names and we'll go back and look at that. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay thank you. Okay I had Phil, Jim, and then Marilyn. >> Is there a microphone. >>AVRI DORIA: There's the portable or there's the standup one. >>PHIL CORWIN: Phil Corwin from the Internet Commercial Association, and on this issue of the GNSO role going forward we would urge that the GNSO have a very meaningful role because -- let me speak, and let me use the IRT recommendations and report as an example, although I think this could apply as well to the GO names and what's going on between the board and the GAC and other issues. Taking one element of the IRT report which is the URS or as I would call it the URSP, I think it's every much a policy, a proposed policy as the existing UDRP is a policy and while some -- while the IRT believes it would simply supplement the UDRP at new gTLDs, our analysis, it would largely displace the UDRP. We have very substantive concerns about it in terms of reduced due process for registrants, lack of really a meaningful appeals process, lack of effective sanctions for complainant abuse and really -- and also would establish an overarching policy of we're going to have one set of rules for new gTLDs and -- as opposed to the existing set of rules for infringement complaints that incumbent gTLDs which we've disagreed with from the first, we've thought there was a need, while we recognize trademark interests with issues with the current UDRP, registrants do too, and we've been urging since early this year to have a comprehensive UDRP reform process. We think that the URSP and other recommendations of the IRT are very substantial new policies, and they would be the policies at the majority of gTLDs within a area or two when they come into existence. It may not be the majority of domain registrations at first but certainly the market of gTLDs and to allow them to go into effect without any meaning policy making review and role by the GNSO would set a very troubling precedent wherein, while it may be the IPC this time, it could be a different constituent next time, where they raise concerns and ICANN says we will allow you to form a short-term ad hoc group which you in a -- in essence control the agenda and the membership. And it will issue policy recommendations which will go into effect without GNSO review and the GNSO is supposed to be the body that makes policy for gTLDs. So we would urge that the GNSO speak out and assert a meaningful role going forward on this. Thank you. [ Applause ] >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Okay, Jim? >>JIM BASKIN: Jim Baskin from Verizon. I'm not sure whether the comments we're getting into were explicitly on the four issues but I think they do bring up some good things. And my question is if indeed the new gTLDs that are going to be proposed in this next round are to be allowed to develop new and different and un- -- not previously used business models, does that, then, pretty much automatically mean that the existing gTLDs under their current contract provisions will at some point in the near future also be able to utilize any new business model that becomes approved for any new gTLD? I believe the contract provisions do basically say any existing gTLD cannot be disadvantaged -- I'm not sure what the contract part is -- but basically, everybody gets everything anybody else gets. So I assume then, and I'm asking, would any new business models flow, then, almost without any restriction to the existing gTLDs? >>CHUCK GOMES: Well, I don't have the language in front of me right here but I suggest you look it up in the agreements. I know that in our agreements, there is a provision that -- that there's some comparison to comparably placed registries, TLDs. It doesn't mean, for example, to use a very simple example, that dot com's going to get what dot museum gets. You know, they're very differently placed. So I suggest you take a look at that. It's not quite as broad as you express there that we, you know, in -- in that regard. But the agreements are all accessible and you might want to take a look at that and see how that's worded. >>JIM BASKIN: Yeah, thank you. I wasn't sure if the agreements worked as broadly as I suggested and that's why I asked and you've given me some good feedback, thanks. >>AVRI DORIA: Jeff, you wanted to add to this? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yes, just to agree with Chuck. I mean, it's -- you've got to look at this in specific situations. I mean, you always see people who make postings saying, well, if so and so gets this then it's automatically part of dot com, I don't think that's the true, it's absent substantial cause or something like that is the words in the actual provision. You know, look, we're all about increasing competition and leveling the competitive playing field. And if there's a new TLD that's allowed to do some new business model that for some reason was prohibited in the old regime, then you've got to do a competition analysis. And is there a substantial reason why that wasn't allowed and is now being allowed and can you look at the old -- the existing TLD -- for example, dot biz we're an existing TLD but we have less than 2% of the market. The concerns of dot biz being able to introduce a new business model would be a lot different than let's say dot com which is a lot of percent of the market. You know, so the answer to your question is it depends, right? So I see all the time if new TLDs aren't price capped, then, all of a sudden dot com's not going to be price capped. I see that I can't tell you the number of times we see that posts, that's just not the case, that's not what the language in the agreement supports. There is a competitive or a competition analysis that needs to be done. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Marilyn, I had you on the list. Did you actually want -- 'cause I wasn't sure. >>MARILYN CADE: Yeah, I did. Could I just suggest that when we talk about the GNSO policy council submitting comments that we're very careful to use that term? The GNSO policy council? The GNSO itself is the Supporting Organization. In order for the GNSO to develop a position, I think we'd have to have a fairly complicated process that allows the constituencies themselves to figure out how they're going to put forward a, you know, a position, take a vote on it, et cetera. And they do have a mechanism, of course, to do that on policy proposals. But there is also a timing factor of being able to do that. So if we're proposing a statement from the GNSO policy council, but a call for a GNSO position, I think -- that's actually very time consuming to develop. >>AVRI DORIA: Yes, ma'am. I think, though, and I think Jeff will comment on this slightly, is that the distinction sometimes gets a little blurrier and the ability of the council to perhaps send a comment without going to the constituencies may be more limited than one can actually pinpoint. Jeff, would you like to add to that? >>JEFF NEUMAN: It would be a lot stronger. I believe that the GNSO Council should never issue a statement without going to the constituencies first or allowing their input in their -- I mean, I -- I -- people on the council knows this and my own constituency knows this, I was very annoyed at the fact that the GNSO Council responded to the GAC letter on geographic names and that didn't go through full constituency reviews. There was a drafting team that was put together but it was -- at least maybe it was my faulty expectation, but my expectation was like any other drafting team, when they draft something, at that point then it goes to the constituencies so they can all review. Because everyone and every constituency can't be a member of every single drafting team. So I kicked myself because I wanted to provide input on it but I didn't have the time to be on the drafting team and then all of a sudden the drafting team comes out with a statement and then within a week, I think almost -- I think it was less than a week, on Monday, and then on Thursday or Friday the statement is submitted. And I know the GAC only gave us a week which is an abomination because these are the same people that require at least three weeks to read a document to comment on it and they give us a week and we just accept it without going back to them and say, are you nuts? But the main point is I don't think the council should ever make a statement on a policy decision without going through the constituencies. 'Cause we didn't elect -- maybe I'm speaking only for the registry constituency -- but I know we didn't elect our councillors to come up with substantive policy decisions without consulting us. >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah, and this is a discussion that we have also on the table for Wednesday and one of the things that has come up is a discussion between consistency with a policy that's already gone through the process versus whatever. But -- so it's definitely one where we have a whole bunch of variable -- various viewpoints on at the moment so it's an open discussion. Yes, Philip. >>PHILIP SHEPARD: Certainly, in the recent example when the BC shared Jeff's discomfort with that particular policy statement which is why we as a constituency did a very short consulting and decided, in fact, to abstain on the issue, made a point to abstain, because we felt it was appropriate at that point. We're not quite as black and white, I think Jeff, as you are, in terms of elected representatives should never speak on behalf of those who elect them. I think we tend to feel that there are times and issues where it's appropriate that your elected representative does so do, but I also understand, of course, that from users perhaps in a group where there was greater commonality of purpose as opposed to a group who were competitors, there's a great difference in that. And that needs to be recognized also in terms of the ability of council in terms of consulting. And on the issue I think that brought us to this question, my feeling is anything that could be done at the GNSO Council level would be so top level and anodyne as to be useless compared to the aspiration I think that was behind the question which is wanting much greater in-depth consultation which I think is essentially a -- not a bad idea so long as we accept the many months of delay that that would inevitably cause. >>AVRI DORIA: . >>JEFF NEUMAN: (Speaker off microphone). >>AVRI DORIA: Sure. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Phil Corwin, are you still here? Ahh. So let me ask you that question. So you think -- so you said you recognized the issues that trademark owners have. And you said -- so you said that these issues should be looked at, they're a policy process. So is it your view that the new gTLD -- is it your members' view that the new gTLD process should be delayed a couple of years until all these policy issues should be -- could be figured out through former PDPs? >>PHIL CORWIN: It is my view, and I don't want to be -- you know, the question is a leading question. We're not advocating a multiyear delay, but we are concerned that a process has been put in place which addresses one group's problem with the existing UDRP and gives them an opportunity to do so in the context of this new gTLD launch while we believe has not fairly included the registrant point of view and I hear many complaints all the time from registrants with the UDRP and new types of abuse that they feel that they're subject to. And I do believe that when you look behind the veil, I don't want -- and I want to make sure that -- that no one characterize my statements in any way personalizing this to any member of the IRT 'cause I believe they try to do the best job they could under the circumstances. They saw a process, a train speeding down the track, which caused them considerable concern, and trademark interests articulated their concerns in a very vocal way and got the board to announce in Mexico City that they were that they were authorizing the IPC to create this group which they essentially control it, I mean, I don't want to say it's a sham in any way but when you look behind the veil there's not a huge degree of difference between the IRT and the IPC and the IPC was certainly in control of the agenda and the membership of the IRT, and we wouldn't permit any constituency to recommend major policy changes and have them implemented for some or all gTLDs without going through the regular GNSO processing yet that seems to be what's going on here. So I don't want to be in the position of saying we advocate multiyear delay and I have members who say -- who have said we should just oppose all new gTLDs, period, and I've said that's not a sound position, nor would it be an effective position, frankly. But I think just as -- the trademark owners saw a train coming down the track that they didn't send out of the station or doesn't make the designation and thought they'd be harmed by it. We now see, in reaction to their concerns, major -- I don't think you can really argue, again, some might, but what the IRT has proposed in the URSP and I would call it P, because I believe it displaces, really replaces substantially if not entirely the UDRP and new gTLDs, we don't want to see policies implemented that, in our view, are one side have not taken our registrant concerns into adequate account in the recommendations. So I think they've been in a difficult place now we find ourselves in a difficult place. The process has put a lot of people in a very difficult place. And I don't know -- I can argue process, and I can argue substance. And we're not trying to be a road block to new gTLDs. We think there's a need for the introduction of new gTLDs in a sound and uniform and understandable format. Nobody wants a replay of dot.xxx. But we feel compelled, as we see what's going on and we see a train coming down the tracks at us, and we rightly suspect that, if these IRT recommendations are adopted in whole or in part that there would be calls in a fairly short time -- I would guess no more than one or two years -- to say it's worked so well with the new gTLDs, let's impose them at the incumbent. I know, Jeff, when I made that statement at the IRT in San Francisco, you were in agreement. I think we should all recognize what's going on here, which is we're seeing major policy proposals for what will be the majority of new gTLDs proposed and possibly adopted without going through the normal process. And -- >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay, Phil. Let me cut you off there. We're actually now a little bit past our break time. And we only have a 15- minute break scheduled. We don't have to take a break. But for those of you who need one, we have learned that the Australians don't give us much leeway with regard to breaks. So I want to point that out. Now I have two people in the queue, I have Kristina and Kathy. Is there anyone else that wants in the queue? I would, just for the sake of those who may need a break, I would ask that the remaining comments be as brief as possible. Thank you. Kristina? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I just want to make several points, for the record. First, it was the ICANN staff and the board that identified the trademark protection issues were an overarching issue. And it was the IPC that decided to actually try to propose a solution to that. So it is not the case that the trademark community said, "This is what we're going to do." We put ourselves in -- we, basically, offered ourselves up to, if you add the dollars up, to about half a million dollars worth of free legal advice to ICANN to try and get some solutions so we can move this process forward. And, obviously, you and I can have -- can agree to disagree on the process. But the board resolution itself set the agenda for the IRT, and we followed that to the T. Finally, they made that very clear to us. And, to the extent that you have a dispute, I would suggest you take it up with them -- that these are implementation recommendations. And, finally with regard to the URS itself, there was a question posed to you in San Francisco as to whether or not you had suggested changes, suggested revisions to the URS to address some of the concerns that you'd identified. And at that point you weren't in a position to present those because you hadn't had a chance to discuss them with your members. But I would hope that by now, six weeks later, you've had that opportunity. And, to the extent that you do have suggestions for identifying deficiencies, I would encourage to you articulate those. I think it's -- at this point it's incumbent on the rest of the community to, instead of just shooting holes at it, to come up with some constructive criticism. If you see a problem, identify the solution. >>CHUCK GOMES: Just to interject here, I have had the understanding that the comment period on the IRT will probably be extended a week. Has that ever happened? Do we know? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Yes. Until July 6th. >>CHUCK GOMES: July 6th. So everyone should be aware that there is a public comment period open now to submit comments. And it's very have important that we do. Kathy? >>KATHY KLEIMAN: Yes, but only the first two days will those comments be considered. I'm sorry. It was odd to find out that there was a 30-day comment period on the draft where only the first 10 days were being considered. I'm Kathy Kleiman. I'm a co-founder of the noncommercial users constituency, coming back to the ICANN arena after a few years. I wanted to address Jeff's question about delay and whether registrants are seeking delay by asking for further evaluation of the IRT report. And the answer is no. Registrants don't want delay. At least in the noncommercial constituency we've been waiting for new TLDs for a long time. We'd like to see them come forward. But not with an IRT report that, by its own admission, included trademark owners, registrars and registries, but not registrants. It really does need to be evaluated from a registrant perspective and from a concern of what the harm is to registrants, what the rights are that some of us worked so hard to put into the UDRP, what's been stripped out by an express process that doesn't have the same due process and notice. And, yes, so, to the extent that things need to be reviewed, we should be doing that. But also the delay that would come from setting up the IP clearinghouse, the delay that would come from setting up the global marks list. We should think about that. That is going to delay the new gTLDs as ICANN takes on charges and mandates beyond its mission and scope. So, when we think about delay, not just who's asking for evaluation but what we're asking for evaluation of is something we should think about. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you, Kathy. Jeff, can you be brief, please, so we can give five minutes or so for a break. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Phil's absolutely right in the sense of you should absolutely be thinking about a URS or anything like that in terms of all gTLDs. Because I think you're right. If it works, if it's deemed to work, then certainly people are going to ask for it in dot com, net, biz, and all those. You should think of it in that term. The second thing is: The frustration I have a little bit with what I'm hearing is I know I put words -- it was a very leading question about delay. But the real question is: I keep hearing people say I recognize that trademark owners have an issue. And then a lot of thrashing a lot of the proposals that are being made. But I'm not hearing a lot of solutions as to how you would solve the issues which you have admitted are issues. And that's -- and I'm a registry. I was the lone registry on the IRT trying to come up with ways to implement some of the concepts. But, you know, so I'm trying to present solutions to -- I do see the trademark problem. And I think a lot of us see the trademark problem. And, unless you can provide concrete solutions, then all I'm hearing is, "I know you've got a problem, but I don't really care to deal with it or I don't know how to deal with it so just don't deal with it." And I'm trying to figure out what it is. Sorry, took too long. >>CHUCK GOMES: That's okay. Thanks, Jeff. Let's take a 10-minute break. We are going to need to get -- there are two sessions remaining. The next is geographical names at the first and second level. It's probably going to be mostly on the second level. And Kurt will be giving a presentation on that. This is a very important issue because we're meeting with the GAC tomorrow at 5:00, and this is the topic of discussion. And we really need to in the GNSO have a good feel for where we're at on this. We may not all be on the same page. So I encourage good participation in this session so that we know before our meeting tomorrow with the GAC where we stand. Thank you. [Break] >>CHUCK GOMES: The next session is on geographic names. For those that aren't aware of the issue, the GAC recommendations with regard to geographic names was different than the GNSO recommendations that were sent to the board for new gTLDs. And there's -- >>CHUCK GOMES: The next session is on geographic names. For those that aren't aware of the issue, the GAC recommendations with regard to geographic names was different than the GNSO recommendations that were sent to the board for new gTLDs. So if you can please stop the conversations, I would appreciate that, okay? As I previously stated, this next session is on geographic names. And there are two applications of geographic names, at least two ways to break it down. One of them is geographic names at the top level, and we certainly need to find out whether we're all on the same page now of the people that are here with regard to the top level, but also there's the second level and there's been some recent correspondence between the GAC and the GNSO, in fact, the letter that the GNSO Council sent in response to the GAC request was the one that some controversy was discussed just a few minutes ago so that's the topic we're going to talk about, I'm going to turn it over to Kurt Pritz who will be -- first of all, be giving us a quick presentation on the GAC's position, hopefully most of us know our own position but we can talk about that as well and Kurt, I'll turn it over to you. >>KURT PRITZ: So I think the theme of this presentation is the smaller the font on the slide the more important the material is. So pay attention to the indented stuff, as I work through the slide. So you might remember in Mexico City that the board discussed and then resolved to take some action regarding geographic names. And the resolution essentially said that the board was essentially in agreement with the treatment of geographic names at the top level, meaning -- meaning that the treatment -- meaning what was in the guidebook, the second version of the applicant guidebook. But then it did give some very specific direction. It asked the staff to tighten up the definition of what was a country name or a territory name in the guidebook, i.e., what name should be afforded protection, be required to get a priori approval from our government. Tighten up that definition. There was also a sense in the guidebook about regional names, such as names of continents. And the board asked for greater specificity in defining what support was required from the countries in those regions in order to get, say, a continent name or regional name. And then, finally, the board said you know, we haven't really straightened around the protection of geographic names at the second level that the GAC advice, in the form of the GAC principles on new gTLDs discussed, you know, a broad scope of protections at the second level. And the guidebook was silent and had no protections at the second level -- so asked ICANN to write a letter to the GAC and say, essentially, what I've just told you, that we're in agreement with treatment at the top level but not at the second level. And write a letter to the GAC, see what they want. And then they asked the GAC to report preliminarily and finally back in April and May. So that was the board resolution. So that's -- the work that's been done and the work we're going to talk about here is what's been accomplished in that time. So where were we in Mexico City? That's good. No, you're at the right place. I was going to say 6500 feet. So in version 2 of the guidebook, country or territory names required approval of the relevant government along with the application if geographic names required that a priori approval if it was a meaningful representation of a country or territory name, it was a subregion name listed on the ISO 3166-2 list, it was a capital city, or if it was a city name where the applicant said this is the name of a city and we're representing that city. So those four things. And it also said regional names such as continent names required the approval of a substantial number of relevant governments. So to reiterate, the board said, you know, the definition you have of meaningful representation is kind of vague. And it -- and the idea that the approval be by a substantial number of relevant governments is vague, too. So could you please tighten up on those things? And I don't remember the -- that's fine, Margie. I don't remember the definition of -- the definition of meaningful representation off the top of my head. But I do remember one part of it was, you know, if it was part of a country name listed in the ISO list. So there wasn't a lot of specificity there. Thanks, Carla. So we've -- so the definition of what a country or territory name is has been considerably tightened, and the vagueness has been taken out to a large extent. So what does it say? It says, if you look at the ISO 3166-1 part 1 list, it is found in there. It's either the long form or the short form of the name. And it would be the translations of those names. It would be the alpha-3 code which is on the 3166-1 list. There's also a list of exceptionally reserved names, and I forget how many there are of those. I think it's in the teens. Is Kim here? Yeah, it's in the teens. And then, if you look at the list, I got the document here. There's also a column of remarks. And the remarks often start with -- "often referred to as" or "principal islands:" So it has another -- another list of geographical names there that are very specific. So that's in that list. And then finally, if you look at -- if you go through that whole list and all those long and short form names, you'll see some -- well, we call them separable names. So, for example, there are several like Bosnia and Herzegovina, several island groups where there's two -- Saint Kitts and Nevis is an example of those. So we took those and created a list of 26 separate names. There's also Russian federation, so we took that and made Russia. But, like I said, that is a list of 26 names. So anybody should be able to look on that 3166-1 part 1 list and find long form and short form names, alpha-3 code, another list of exceptionally reserved names and the names in the remarks column under some of them largely island groups. >>CHUCK GOMES: Can I ask a clarification question? Let's not make this a comment period. But, if there's a clarification question for Kurt, we'll take those as he goes through the slides. Mike? >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: What do you mean by "permutations of the names above"? >>KURT PRITZ: So, instead of Russian Federation, Federation Russian. Instead of United States of America, America United States. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: What about in espanol? >>KURT PRITZ: Or translations short form and long form name. >>CHUCK GOMES: And is that translations in any script, any language? >>KURT PRITZ: Yes. Eric? >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Thank you, Kurt. Eric Brunner-Williams, CORE. In 3166 there are code points which are colored purple in the ISO 3166 decoding cable. These are code elements which are not used at the present stage. Are they excluded from the list of reserved -- we've got the exceptionally reserved list included in addition to the officially assigned code elements. I guess my question is, Kurt, the -- there's more in 3166 than that subset, which has been delegated to territories or nations. Have we clarified that the unoccupied portions of 3166 are excluded from assignment? >>KURT PRITZ: So the two-letter codes are all reserved. And the three-letter codes, I think, are not. >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: The -- a lot of the two-letter codes that are not assigned to territories -- for instance, let me take one. >>AMADEU ABRIL i ABRIL: I be for international world. >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Union of Countries Under the European Country Patent Convention. That's the long form for EF. Are we taking that portion which is also in 3166 and -- there's a dozen of these. The patent -- >>CHUCK GOMES: Can you continue to speak into the mike, please. >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: I'm sorry. There's a dozen of these, the intellectual property organizations who have longer names than just the two-letter code points in 3166 alpha-2. >>CHUCK GOMES: Are you looking at a page? >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Yes, I am. >>CHUCK GOMES: Which page are you looking at? Oh, you're looking at -- it's a pdf, right? >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: No, it's actually the ISO's decoding table that I'm looking at. If you had a Skype window up, I could send it to you. >>KURT PRITZ: So that's not in the part 1 list, right? It's in ISO- 3166-1 -- >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Yes. >>KURT PRITZ: -- publication. >>CHUCK GOMES: So does that answer your question? It's just the part 1 list that's a subset of the whole thing. Does that answer it? Thank you. And keep in mind for those that may not recall this, that right now all two-character top level domain names are not allowed. So that part is covered in kind of a broader requirement, even though this duplicates it a little bit. >>KURT PRITZ: Margie, let's go on. Regional names is the -- I don't have the link here. But it's the U.N. list of 49 regions. So there's, you know, continents are part of that. There's the Americas. There's northern Europe, I think, is a region. So the definition has been tightened to require documented support from at least 60% of the countries or territories identified as being in that region in the U.N. list. And, in order to be accepted as a TLD, no more than one objection. And you might guess that the idea there is not to give one country veto power over an application. So that's it for the -- that's it for the top level. Amadeu, did you have a question? >>AMADEU ABRIL i ABRIL: Yes, one short question. Why alpha-3 now? >>KURT PRITZ: It's a list of three-letter codes in the country list. >>AMADEU ABRIL i ABRIL: No, no, I know. But why have you added this now? >>KURT PRITZ: I think that in the IDN discussion and the country name discussions that we've seen about applications that countries -- some TLDs representing countries are going to be applying for three- letter codes. So to distinguish those three-letter abbreviations as country codes. >>AMADEU ABRIL i ABRIL: Will this be applied retroactively? For instance, VeriSign will need to get a letter from the DNSSEC Islands for the -- >>KURT PRITZ: No. >>AMADEU ABRIL i ABRIL: Why? >>KURT PRITZ: Yes. Jim Baskin. On the three-letter codes, for the longer names, full names and the short names, you said that the translations through other scripts are all covered. Now the three- letter names, is there anything similar? >>KURT PRITZ: No. It's just those three-letter codes in English, in ASCII and Latin. >>WERNER STAUB: What about the three-letter codes that people really see? Nobody knows about the three-letter code that is the ISO three-letter codes. But they know the three-letter codes of the sports federations, which are different. And the -- you know, does it really make sense to exclude strings that nobody knows about and people don't use them? They have no confusability problem. >>KURT PRITZ: Well, does it make sense? So there's -- so there's confusability probably with some of them and not all of them. And in some regions they may use those three letter codes and they may not. But it provides a bright line rule that is, you know, is -- can be put out there for applicants that's easy to follow and makes protections in places where that might be warranted and really decreases the number of available names just slightly. >>WERNER STAUB: It's not a question of the number of available names, I believe. It is we shouldn't think quantitatively but qualitatively. And it might be the right name for a given community, which happens to be have assigned by an unknown committee that some people didn't know they've been assigned that name. >>KURT PRITZ: Right. I think that's an excellent point. And, as you know, in ICANN we're continually casting about for rules that are clear and also rules developed by others that are independent of ICANN and in a position of authority. So, you know, I think your point is a good one. And in balancing that, we thought that using the name published by a different authority would be the best. >>DAN HALLORAN: Just to follow up on that briefly, if I can. That's an excellent comment. We can add, like, another bullet in that list -- -- the list of FIFA country codes. It's an externally developed list. I don't know much about the list. But, if you've got a comment like that, please submit it. We were scratching looking all around for lists compiled by others. >>JIM BASKIN: Jim Baskin. I'm not sure which way those comments were going, whether it was a matter of somebody -- let's say the NFL, the National Football League in the U.S. It's a three-letter abbreviation. But, if the letters NFL happen to fall in that three- character list, even if it's -- I don't know what, that means that the NFL couldn't do anything. But then I think I just heard that the possibility of adding three-letter abbreviations into -- or having another list to protect organizations that have three-letter abbreviations -- and I'm not sure whether they meant to be different things or whether they were actually different things. >>KURT PRITZ: Dan, did you want to comment on that specifically? >>DAN HALLORAN: Just to clarify what I was saying. What I understand Werner's comment was, if you look at ISO 3166 alpha-3 code for Switzerland, it's SHE. But, if you watch World Cup soccer matches, it's always SUI, I think. So he's saying, if we're trying to prevent confusion, we might want to look for lists that correspond to things people are actually familiar with. So, if we're trying to reserve a country code for Switzerland, we might want to reserve SUI instead of SHE or in addition to CHE. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. Jeff? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Also, just to follow up. The IRT had recommended that anyone who is reserved, you'd always give an opportunity for the person that's applying or anyone that's applying to show why they're not confusingly similar to that. So, for example, I noticed in the three letters, you have GEO for Georgia. Well, it's dot.geo. And I know there's been proposals before for dot.geo. And, if they came forward and had the same proposal, which is a geographic-based TLD, I don't think anyone in their right mind would think there's any kind of confusion with the nation of Georgia. So is there anything built in the process or is the GAC silent on it as to whether there should be some review process where maybe it's initially kicked out this reconsideration, just like the IRT said with the globally-protected marks list that there's some process where the applicant can come forward and say, "Yeah, I know it's on the list, but come on. There's no confusion here." Is there any thought to that? >>KURT PRITZ: Did you want to say something? >>DAN HALLORAN: I think the answer is right now the draft that's written is too bad, so sad. Geo is Georgia. You need the permission of the country of Georgia is how I understood what we have written now. I took that as a comment to change it. >>CHUCK GOMES: So it could be -- they could request an exception. And, if they got approval from the country of Georgia, that would be acceptable? Is that what you just said? >>TIM RUIZ: No. >>DAN HALLORAN: Not exactly. I think what Jeff is proposing if you wanted to run dot.geo, you could come to ICANN and say: "I don't even want to ask the country of Georgia. I want to run dot.geo because it's, like, about the earth and maps and stuff. So please except me from the requirement to get the support of the Georgian government. You could, following these rules, go to the governor of Georgia and say, "I want to run dot.geo for earth domains." The only requirement here is that you need the approval of this country. Doesn't have to be necessarily for Georgian Internet uses. >>CHUCK GOMES: Now I'm confused, because I thought that's what I asked. So there is a process whereby a bidder could go to the country and get approval and that's acceptable. Okay. So you threw me off when you said "no" to my question. Okay. That's fine. >>JEFF NEUMAN: My proposal is that, if someone could come forward and show there's absolutely no likelihood of confusion between the proposed use of that TLD and the three-letter code, that you let -- ICANN let that go through. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. Tim? I'm sorry. I forgot my queue here. I had Mike Rodenbaugh next. Tim, you're in there. And -- >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Go ahead, Tim. Jeff asked my question precisely. >>CHUCK GOMES: All right. Edmon? >>EDMON CHUNG: It's sort of similar to Jeff's question but on a different breath, I think. I'll take Asia as an example. Continents. There are situations where -- I mean, there are countries or territories that are not very participating -- you know, not really participating a lot in the ICANN situation. And, if we take dot Asia, for example, since our operations started, because of the structure, we've been able to reach out to areas like dot.kz, Kazakhstan, tj, Tajikistan. But before which it was very hard for us to get their attention and get their participation in the process. So, if you're talking about 60% -- let's take Asia as an example where there are 73 ccTLD regions or given that, 60% would be a very large number. And, also, you know, I would probably question whether 60% is participating in the GAC or ccNSO for that matter. In that sort of situation wouldn't it be beneficial, given, of course, the structure to take a look into the application itself and the applicant and what it intends to do in terms of outreach even post the delegation to give sort of consideration there? >>CHUCK GOMES: Kurt, just a process question. I had suggested that we hold off on comments and just ask for clarifying questions right now. But are you okay with what we're doing right now? Would you rather wait on the comments? >>KURT PRITZ: Yeah. So we've just finished the discussion on the top level, so I think this isn't a bad time to answer questions. And so the balancing there is really trying to create a bright line rule. And perhaps the bright line rule is a different number for each region. You know, there's 49 of the regions. And some of them have very few countries and territories, and some of them have a lot. And there's balancing about, you know, some regions it looked like you needed -- you'd rather have 100% or a higher percentage and some regions where it's a low number maybe less. But even that becomes somewhat arbitrary. So we're trying to create a bright line rule. And also I think about -- you know, as we talk about this process, processing applications and trying to put metrics around, you know, the promise of outreach. So dot Asia is a good example, right? If you -- I think, you followed through on that -- and that's what's going to make the TLD more successful is now that you've got your place on the stage as a TLD, that's what you're saying is that's given me another arrow in my quiver to get people interested in what we're doing. It's sort of a chicken and egg thing. But for an evaluator to look at applications and try to base their merit on, you know, statements like that are tough. So I think, as part of the comments to this, you know, if there's a way to propose an objective -- more objective manner about evaluating the applications for regional names, that would be good. That's hard. >>CHUCK GOMES: Tim. You're taken care of. Good. Dirk? >>DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: Dirk Krischenowski, dot.Berlin and dot.zone. I think with a quick view on the alpha-3 code list, I think Apple will not be very amused to ask the state of Macau if they want to apply for dot.mac, for example. And I found out in a quick look that a couple of German companies with three letters will also be not amused if some other countries using their codes or reserving their codes. So this looks like a, more or less land grab, which is done here by geographical names, whoever did this. And for this, if we discuss the three-letter codes reserved, then we should remind on Hewlett Packard, which filed a comment requesting for dot hp, which is not used in the two-letter code. So, if the countries go to the three letters, why shouldn't -- if countries go to the three letters, why shouldn't companies go to the two letters? And there are a couple of two-letter interested companies like 3M, for example. >>CHUCK GOMES: Kurt, did the GAC specifically request the alpha-3 codes, or was that a staff suggestion in that regard? >>KURT PRITZ: I don't know. >>CHUCK GOMES: That would be good to know. As we're talking about this. I have in the queue right now Richard, Kristina and Marilyn. Is there anyone else that wants in the queue? Okay, Mike, I have you as well. Let's go ahead with Richard. If you're in the back there, if you would please go to the mic and be ready when you're coming up, I'd appreciate that. >>RICHARD TINDAL: So we're generally okay with this top level stuff. But the piece that we think has got -- creates a lot of unpredictability is the "in any language" provision. So the way we understand it, let's say Canberra is the capital of Australia. And that's reserved. But it's also reserved in any language. And so, according to Google, there are some 7,000 languages. And I'm sure Eric will tell me that's wrong and there's probably 20,000. So -- >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Let me Google for it. >>RICHARD TINDAL: An applicant has no idea, really, how Canberra is represented in those 7,000 languages. So, for example, in one language the word for Canberra could be car, c-a-r, for all we know. We think that creates a lot of unpredictability in that, if I apply for car and that happens and the geographic names panel finds that the Finnish word for Canberra is car, not only am I rejected, but I think I lost 30% of my application fee at that point. So we're going to provide some written comments in this. But our thinking is that perhaps there's a solution here where, if the language association with the country in question or the city or whatever, is so peripheral -- let's say it's Finnish and it's the Australian capital -- that there be some mechanism where the applicant can sort of make a case like, you know, I know car is Canberra in Finnish. But nobody in Australia cares about that, and I don't think the Finns care. >>[SPEAKER OFF MIC] We do care. >>RICHARD TINDAL: All right. They do care. The Finns care. Someone take that down. So, nevertheless, I think there needs to be a mechanism in the event that some sort of waiver can be sought if the parties are okay with it being such an obscure relationship between the applied string. >>KURT PRITZ: So you're saying that if there's -- well, let's just start with the capital cities but like capital cities and subregional names and languages that are -- I'm trying to figure out how to word the -- well, we started with the languages recognized by the U.N. but there's six languages. And so there are country names that are very commonly known that's not a U.N. language. And so for country names, you know, and then for the subregions and regions, we went with their -- every language. But then what Richard is saying is, you know, you can have a language that would never, you know, a language geographically and culturally removed from Australia that might have a word for Canberra that -- >>RICHARD TINDAL: Yeah, it could be phone for all we know. I think limiting the languages is problematic because it's just so hard which languages are relevant to which countries. Rather, we're thinking perhaps there's some mechanism we can say this is a common generic word in English, let's say. And it happens to be in your 9,000- mile-away language, this can be -- can we work something around that? But having to go do that government and get their approval to do it, that's going to be tough. >>KURT PRITZ: Yeah, so I understand your point. I also think it's limited because, you know, all these different languages are in different scripts other than Latin. So it's not going to be that -- it might not be that big of a problem. But I also understand there might be a way to carve -- to make sure we don't have 7,000 times the hundreds of names we're talking about here. >>CHUCK GOMES: Adrian has a follow-up on that. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Actually, your last statement was exactly where I was going. It adds a third dimension when you start using scripts. Because not only Canberra be car in ASCII in someone else's language. But now, because you get all the pre-reserved scripts of Canberra anyways, it now starts multiplying and multiplying. >>CHUCK GOMES: Now, Richard reminded me of an important point. Please submit your written comments on these points that you're making. They're documented in the transcript here. But it would be very useful, I think, for staff, as they look at these issues, that they be documented. So please put those -- put those in as you have opportunity. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: When are they due? Is there a public comment period open on this? >>KURT PRITZ: We're open and transparent. Yeah. So this is in the excerpts. I'll talk that about that in the next publication, but excerpts of the guidebook as a strawman for how this would work. >>CHUCK GOMES: They're adding excerpts on an ongoing basis. So you have to keep your eyes on that and watch for that. Each of those has a specific comment period. So that's important. Margie, could you move that back up to the top level, please, so that we don't get confused? Especially that's the one that has the categories there. I'm going to ask a general question in that regard in a little bit. Kristina, you're next. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I just wanted to clarify that at the second level that you are in fact talking about at least what we referred to in IRT land as identical matches and that you're not talking about typos, you're not talking about phonetic equivalents or permutations et cetera, et cetera. Is that right? >>CHUCK GOMES: Let's wait on the second level. We're on the top level right now. We're going to get to the second level as quickly as we can. Okay? Marilyn? >>MARILYN CADE: Thank you, Chuck. I spend a good deal of my time working with sovereign states in a variety of international organizations. And I am very familiar with the concerns that national governments have about their identity and the confusion that can happen when citizens suspect or when citizens expect an online site to be, in fact, operated by a government and may ascribe the content on that site to be a statement from the government. So I actually think, from my experience and hearing from many sovereign states who have a fairly strong opinion about their responsibility to their citizens, that this looks like a really significant compromise. There are some states, as we talked about before in this range of meetings, that are very liberal about the use of their name. The United States of America might be one of those. But there are other states that are very, very clear and even have laws that prescribe, if you get a business license in that country, whether or not you can call yourself the X business with the province name versus X business using the country name. So this looks to me, Kurt, like we've seen, actually -- we've made a lot of progress. And there's a lot of moderation reflected here. Do you have preliminary feedback from the GAC? I heard your presentation. But, since the GNSO Council will be going into a dialogue with the GAC, do you have preliminary feedback from the GAC? I also notice that we have two new members of the GAC who do have national laws related to the use of their country names. >>KURT PRITZ: So without speaking for them, the board gave the sense that they were -- they were recognizing that there was more or less consensus about our approach at the top level. This represents somewhat of a narrowing at the top level because we've -- we're not using the IDN fast track sort of broad definition of country name and made it more narrow. But still I think the -- well, while you'll hear from them directly tomorrow, there is a sense that the combination of this and the discussion of second level names, we have, as soon as we get done here, might represent a compromise, but, you know, that's not - - not for me to say. >>CHUCK GOMES: Mike? >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Pass. >>CHUCK GOMES: Philip? >>PHILIP SHEPARD: Just going back on the languages issue. It's my recollection, I may be wrong, it was so long ago, that when we discussed languages on this issue in the GNSO development work, we discussed an agreed -- and agreed upon the official languages of the country which could be one or many in the case of India. And I thought also early discussion in the GAC was that same group of languages. So I'm surprised of this extension to all languages going beyond indeed the UN set which is a sort of a subsidiary argument, don't recall exactly when it went up. Is that where the GAC request is now because I wasn't aware they had gone to all languages and precisely the -- I think the difficulty with that is exactly what we heard earlier is that we're moving from the certainty of lists, which is good, to complete uncertainty, which is bad. >>KURT PRITZ: So, again, this is my -- this is my understanding. The previous definition of meaningful representation of a country name included the ISO list or part of that name and some other categories. And then also, in the official language of that country, which meant it's either part of an official language list or it was -- or the applicant in the fast track process say it was used in that -- you know, it was used in that country so it's a self-certification by that country that that was an official list. An official language, I'm sorry. >>CHUCK GOMES: We're going to have to move along. >>PHILIP SHEPARD: Which is fine now but why are you not talking about this concept of all languages? >>KURT PRITZ: Well, because in the previous version of the guidebook or the suggestion here, it was limited to the six U.N. languages and the official language of that country, and there are a lot of comments that there are several -- there are many names that were commonly used by countries or well-known translation of country names that wouldn't be protected there. >>PHILIP SHEPARD: Oh, you're trying to capture that. >>KURT PRITZ: Yeah. >>PHILIP SHEPARD: Okay. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. Going on, then, to Jeff. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yeah, so I'll just expand on the last question, I asked -- circled around. So I tried to write down what I would -- kind of a standard, I mean, it sounds like -- coming up with a list is just an impossible task. Which languages. And it seems ridiculous in a number of situations. So with the standard I kind of came up with is look, by the nature of the application a reasonable person would not make the association between the geographic name and the TLD string, the application should be allowed to proceed. I think it's that simple. >>KURT PRITZ: So send that in but a person situated where. >>JEFF NEUMAN: No, if by the nature of the application a reasonable person -- oh, where that reasonable person is. >>KURT PRITZ: Yeah. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Anywhere. In other words, if I have an application for dot car and I pay you $185,000 and I put forth a 1,000--page proposal on cars and everything about cars and this is what I'm going to do with it then it's hard -- if an evaluator looks at it what evaluator is going to go you know what, I don't know that looks like. >>KURT PRITZ: You know, I was thinking like in Carland or wherever that place is they're not using Latin character, they're using something else so, you know, you don't get to exclude a name because it's the Latin translation of their language into some, anyway, I understand what you're getting at, and so I think that concept needs to be developed a little bit more. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Right. >>KURT PRITZ: Because we sit around and we think of that and we can poke holes. >>JEFF NEUMAN: The car one is made up. But dot GO is -- someone applied for. And if someone looked at that application back in 2000, you can go back as a record of it, I don't think anyone in their right mind would say, wow, that looks like they're going to take advantage of the country of Georgia. >>CHUCK GOMES: Kurt has limited time and we need to cover second level. I have two more people on the queue on this and then one general comment before we move to the second level. So -- >> (From the Telephone) Minutes remaining, if you would like to continue this conference, please press star one now. >>CHUCK GOMES: So let's go to Adrian now. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: I'd like to continue the conference, so please -- [ Laughter ] Can I start by asking a leading question? And I'm going to go somewhere with it. Why can't we register two-letter TLDs? Please answer and I'll come back to you with something. Let me do it, let me answer the question then for you it's because a new country may one day be one? Hatched? Whatever, and you may need to utilize those two characters, correct? >>KURT PRITZ: Or they're interpreted as ccTLDs or they've been reserved and it's been decided they've been reserved. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Right. So why -- I think it's a slippery slope that when you go to three letters, so now they want to look to reserve three letters that are meaningful, so what happens when a new country gets born, hatched, whatever it is, now, you know, past -- post- delegation and someone's infringing on this new country? Number one. And number two, I hope that this isn't retrospectively applied to existing TLDs because, you know, I don't know whether Colombia represents themselves when they play soccer as dot com. >>PHILIP SHEPARD: Comoros, actually. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: It was what? >>PHILIP SHEPARD: Comoros. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Comoros. Well, there you go. >>PHILIP SHEPARD: (Speaker off microphone). >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Hopefully that has some substance and we'll certainly submit that as a comment, but, yeah, I'm struggling to see how three letters are going to give us any traction here. >>CHUCK GOMES: Tim? >>TIM RUIZ: There was a -- thought I had it on -- similar to my concern, too, just that, you know, and I think it might have been touched on already, but at several of these three-letter codes could be actually trademarked or they could be prior rights, you know, would that prior rights holder have an opportunity to apply for that? According to the way it's written right now they wouldn't. But the question that I have, though, is: if this goes through this way, can the country represented apply for that three-letter code as a TLD in -- through the process, and if they can, what kind of agreement is expected to be signed with them given their response to signing something for the IG -- the fast track IGNs? Are we looking at, you know, the possibility of additional ccTLD space now based on three- letter codes? >>KURT PRITZ: So a country, the way it's written, a country or anyone could apply for one of these three-letter codes and provide the approval of the relevant government. So -- and then -- and then receive that as a gTLD and operate -- operate it, you know, using a registry agreement with ICANN. Under the fast track process, that has a different definition of country name, and country can apply for an IDN ccTLD but it's not an ASCII, right, so it's a three-letter code that would be in non-Latin -- a non-Latin -- non-Latin characters right now and they could get an IDN three-character TLD but it wouldn't be one of those three-letter codes. So this has to be a gTLD with a gTLD contract and it would have to have the approval of the government. >>TIM RUIZ: Okay, well, that's what I would hope. I'm just concerned that there will be a movement, whatever you want to call it, the other way, that, you know, if we reserve these, and that there will be another attempt to kind of widen the ccTLD space under the kinds of terms that we're going to be doing the IDNs or the current ccTLDs are done under. >>CHUCK GOMES: Now we're going to wrap up on top level, no, that's it on top level right now because we've got to get to second level and Kurt has a limited time. But I do want to ask all of you to be prepared for our lunch meeting tomorrow when we're -- we have an hour and a half scheduled, including lunch, to prepare for the meeting with the GAC. And one of the things that we need to try to get a good handle on before the meeting with the GAC at 5:00 is where we, in the GNSO, us on the council, stand with regard to the latest recommendations in the draft guidebook. Now, it seems very clear to me that there's huge concern or at least concern by a lot of people on the three-character areas. I would also throw out the question not to discuss now because we're out of time on this one, but are we okay with the rest of the restrictions with regard to top level, only top level's what I'm talking about right now, we need to discuss that tomorrow, Avri and I were in a breakfast meeting with Janis this morning and he really asked us "are you guys okay with the -- with what is on the table for the top level?" I'm hearing that we're not with regard to three-character. Are we okay with the rest of it? Think about that, be prepared so that we can talk about that tomorrow. And at this point I'll let Avri take back the chair position and let Kurt pick up on the second level presentation. >>KURT PRITZ: So with that in mind that's more fonts, more important, the first bullet is really largely a quote from the board resolution except I've added the word "implementable" because in -- in responding to the GAC principles ICANN wrote a letter to the GAC and said these suggestions at the top level are very difficult to implement, either they're subject to rules or ICANN doesn't have the power or, you know, the we would be providing very vague input to applicants. And so GAC members' input south on implementable options to resolve the outstanding implementation issues, GAC principles, I'm sure it's everybody in this room that read the GAC letters that came out of that in May and April came back with a proposal that at the second-level names be reserved and could -- the letter says "could potentially be released using a method similar to the dot info process" for names but this list of names is considerably shorter than that on the dot info list and is pretty bright-line. So the list of names that would be afforded protection are the 3166-1 short form names in English only. Then the UNGEGN technical reference manual for names. And that list is the name of the country in English and then the name of the country in the official languages of that country and its specifically on the -- it's specifically on the list and there's another one that it's the United Nations member states in six official languages. So the links to those things are in the posting that shows how this would be implemented in the guidebook if we're accepted. So an example of this, to try to get a handle on what the scope is -- Margie? You've been resting for too long. So for Latvia, the list would be this list of names and no others. So the ISO 3166 list is Latvia, the UNGEGN list is those three names are on the last time vane list written exactly like that and then the U.N. member states in six official languages are those -- one, two, three, four, five, six, right -- in those languages that it's sort of gray but you can see what the languages are. So if you think about what the total reservation would be, you know, it's 200 times that or something like that, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, eight times 200, so 1600 so, you know, 1500-2000 names, something like that. So anyway, the issue -- the -- what the proposal there is, is that those three bright-line lists that, you know, can be -- you know, ICANN can probably publish that list for all of the countries on the list. So that's the whole second--level proposal. So if you want to go back -- and that's really kind of the end of the presentation. Can you go back, Margie? Thanks. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: So I think everybody has to realize that basically we're talking about the most valuable domain names in any TLD and taking those off the table in every new TLD forever. It seems to me like it's an extraordinary outrageous land grab by the GAC. That has no real basis whatsoever, in fact, I mean, I've never ever seen a study that illustrates that consumers think that country name dot com or country name dot anything would be owned and operated by that country. It just -- you know, every time the issues come up under the UDRP the countries have lost. Every time the -- it's come up in court, the countries have lost so I just don't see it. Also, it really viscerates a lot of the new TLD business models that I'm aware of. So just take, for example, dot Ebay or dot yahoo that we've talked about a lot. One of the main reasons to do a TLD like that is to geographically segregate the TLD, which you just simply would not be able to do under this proposal. I think the same thing goes for any number of generic TLDs, just take dot travel as an obvious example, what if they couldn't have country names in dot travel? What's the point? So I just don't know how much thinking has really gone into this from the GAC and I'm wondering if they've had any evidence to support their request here. >>AVRI DORIA: Thanks. I have Dirk and then Eric and then Marilyn and then Kristina. >>DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: Dirk Krischenowski on behalf of our (inaudible) business dot zone. As probably some people might know, we have run a road show on the dot brands topic together with the German Internet Association and the German Trademark Association in major cities in Germany the last weeks. And we talked a lot with big companies on various things. One thing was many of the German companies think that especially country names like U.S.A. dot Siemens or China dot Siemens are very valuable to structure their name spaces. So that's a problem for companies applying for their dot brand, if they wouldn't have the chance to register or their country subsidiaries with good names. So that's an important point. I suggested this to some GAC members as well. And I think -- I hope we'll have a good discussion on it, and in the end the country names are not reserved in the new TLDs especially for the brand TLDs, it's very important, and major companies will come up with this issue in the future. >>KURT PRITZ: So without taking sides, this, for example, reserves one form of a country name in English. So -- so I don't -- you know, I think there's many forms of country names in English. I don't know if - - I don't know if this prevents what you're trying to do as far as the geographical identifiers for a -- you know, for a TLD. >>DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: For sure, this really prevents a good use of country names within dot brand TLDs. So it would be excluded for many companies, then. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, I've got Eric, Marilyn, Kathy and then Richard. Oh, you wanted -- hmm. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: (Speaker off microphone) never mind. I had asked a question about second level when we were talking about first level. >>AVRI DORIA: Oh, okay, sorry, so I'll put you on the list? And you wanted to add a response. >>DAN HALLORAN: To clarify what Kurt was trying to say to Dirk which is it wouldn't reserve usa dot siemens or gbr dot siemens or fra dot siemens, it's just those -- the full name of the country in English, not the three-letter code, for example, or a nickname for the country. >>DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: Okay, U.S.A might be a bad example, but China or Australia or Brazil or whatever would be reserved in any language. >>KURT PRITZ: No, not in any language. >> What? >>DAN HALLORAN: Right, but not bra or chn or other ways that Siemens to break up their name space. That's all Kurt was trying to say is there are other ways to divide it up besides using that exact name. >>AVRI DORIA: Eric? >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Thank you, Avri. Eric Brunner-Williams from CORE. I just wanted to make a quick comment taking exception with Mike's unqualified comment about a value for all policy models. His statement apparently applied to every possible TLD operation. There exist policy models where there is no correlation between size and value, thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Marilyn. >>MARILYN CADE: Thanks, Avri. Marilyn Cade. I think maybe my comment has been overtaken by events. When a country has a national law that covers how its name can be used, most legitimate companies who want to do business in that country choose to abide by the national laws. So many government -- many companies, whether they're global companies or national companies, will want to abide by the national law. Many countries do not have a law that is specific about how their country name can be used, some do. My understanding at the time that dot info and dot travel were launched is that they both did agree to accept a list of country names. So certainly they're -- and that -- thereof a process by which countries put those names on the list. I also would just say that I think Dan's clarification is correct, as I understand it, that what you're proposing is the use of the standalone word that is the country name, not necessarily the use of the name of a country such as New Zealand sailboats might or might not be objectionable to the New Zealand government. But New Zealand might be objectionable to the New Zealand government if it were just that string that were being registered, right? So this is just the string. Not the string as a modifier? Can you just clarify that? >>KURT PRITZ: That's correct. As a second level label, the whole second level label. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Kathy? >>KATHY KLEIMAN: I had a question for Kurt. In the future dot food, are we saying that turkey dot food is reserved for the country? >>AVRI DORIA: Yes. >>KURT PRITZ: Yes. >>KATHY KLEIMAN: I object. [ Laughter ] >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Richard, did you want to -- okay. >>RICHARD TINDAL: So I think we have to be realistic about the politics of this. I think what's on the table right now is a reasonable compromise and if we fight this I think it's going to drag this process out a long time. And I think that there are lots of derivatives that you can get that really achieve your objective so you can't have France dot travel but you can have French dot travel and you can have go to France dot travel and you can have a whole bunch of derivatives, it's just that word in the local and the six languages. I understand the Turkey-food example but the reality of this, in my opinion, is that we're not -- this is going to be a long, long battle if we fight this one. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Kristina? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I think Richard and I finally agree on something. But I wanted to get clarification from Kurt that just so that there's absolutely no question that we are, in fact, talking about the true identical no phonetic equivalent, no typographical error, no adding an article, just straight-on identical? >>KURT PRITZ: Right, that's true. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Okay. >>AVRI DORIA: That was the end of my queue. Anyone else? Okay. Back to you. You want to. >>CHUCK GOMES: Yeah. Another thing, too, as I understand it, is, is that there is still the exception process where a name that's restricted in one of these ways could be used with the approval of the government. So there's also that option that's there. Am I correct on that, Kurt? >>KURT PRITZ: That -- yes, mostly. I think it's up to the original registry for developing a process for releasing the names that are similar to the info -- info process. >>AVRI DORIA: Jeff? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Just a question. So we were talking about, you know, nothing would stop you from using a two-letter or a three-letter dot country, I'm sorry, dot TLD but you can't use a country name. Does the GAC know this? I know they didn't ask for it in their letter but I don't want this to be another example like dot info, where they didn't ask for it and all of a sudden the TLD launches, and they realize, oh, crap, we meant to protect that. I mean, has this been -- has the GAC affirmatively said that we don't care about those two-or three letter -- or anything, or is this something we're hoping to keep from them and they don't recognize it? [ Laughter ] Yeah, they're right over there. I don't mean that in kind of a gaming way. My part is that if the GAC later finds out about something -- [ Laughter ] >>ROBERTO GAETANO: (Speaker off microphone). >>KURT PRITZ: So let's take Kristina's question as adding complexity. So somebody asks -- somebody applies for a name that's very close to a country name. And that gets put into the root. Then if somebody's -- seeks to release that second level name, now it's the country name, now it's confusingly similar to the one that -- no, that's not -- this is second level, never mind, I'm going to take that whole line of discussion back. No, so I think there's been a circulation of this proposal was made without speaking for GAC members, was made in an April -- you know, an April preliminary report and then was made again in a subsequent report in May. And the gravamen behind it was to create something that was implementable understanding that implementability and bright-line rules were a difficulty with some of the proposals in the past that it was limited to this. >>AVRI DORIA: You wanted to respond? >>JEFF NEUMAN: I would say, yeah, Kristina's -- that example's hard to implement but a two-letter dot TLD is not, you know, I'm just worried that all of a sudden things will go forward, people will fly for it and then they'll go wait a minute, I meant to exclude that too and I just want to make sure we're all on the same page. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Richard? >>RICHARD TINDAL: I thought the two letters were all reserved at the second level. I think they are. >>DAN HALLORAN: In the draft proposed base agreement you have to reserve all two level -- two letter -- all two-character labels, but it has the same language about you may propose release. Here (indicating). >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: But to propose -- >>AVRI DORIA: I've got -- >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Oh, just a question on this. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, you had a question. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Yeah, it's right on this -- now, I've forgotten it, damn it. >>AVRI DORIA: It will come back to you. Eric. >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Thank you, Avri. Eric Brunner-Williams from CORE. Yeah, I wanted to point out that A5 is not a country code and neither is K9 or 4U or -- you know. When we talk about two- character reservations we're talking about something significantly larger than I 3166, it would be helpful if we're talking about 3166 or we're talking about two-character sequences in the -- thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Anybody want to comment? >> (Speaker off microphone). >>KURT PRITZ: So the way it's written now is all two-character names are reserved but if you want to make that comment it would be a good one. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: So all two-character names are reserved at the second level but the TLD operator can make a proposal to release some or all of them and that's not going to require any government's approval, is that correct? It's just going to require ICANN's approval? >>KURT PRITZ: Well, I can tell you how it's worked in previous applications that what we're -- and I don't know where this is written and Dan and Karen know, so they can clear up my ambiguity. But what we're seeking to avoid is confusion with country TLD -- country TLDs or country names and so the proposals have been written in a way that state this is how we're going to release these names so it's not confused with a country name and in most TLDs that's not going to happen so that's why the two-letter names have been released. >>AVRI DORIA: Anyone else? I think you've exhausted the questions on that. Okay. So just, basically, again, this is part of the discussion we're having with GAC tomorrow where, you know, we go in. One of the things that we need to look at, which we looked at last time in terms of the top-level domain and so it applies also to the second level, is there's a difference, there's a bunch of views. This is something that there's a lot of views on, but is the GNSO interested in whether it be the council or the full GNSO, interested in taking an action on or where we're at on it. So that's something to, you know, think about to bring in tomorrow but to also talk on constituency day. But there's two levels to this is do we -- are we in a position to make a GNSO statement on this? Or are we representation a variety of individual viewpoints of members of the GNSO but we have not necessarily achieved a coherent position on it? So, as I say, this is the topic of the discussion tomorrow, but we need to be aware of what strength that has within the GNSO. Any other last comments on this? Okay. If not, then we take a short -- >>KURT PRITZ: Can't we just go on to the next thing? >>AVRI DORIA: Sure, what's the next thing? Okay, yes. We just go on. Sorry. Just open the doors. It was freezing this morning. >>AVRI DORIA: It started out cold this morning. I knew it would warm up. I knew we could do it. Okay. So yes. We just go on to the next thing. Sorry. Thank you for reminding me. [Off microphone] >>KURT PRITZ: So I have a set of about 14 or 15 slides that describe the work that's occurred since Mexico City and then very briefly what the next steps are. So I thought I'd go through that. I'm feeling cooler already. Thank you, Kim. And what happened? We went on to the next slide already. And so you know, what have we done since Mexico City? We posted the public comment analysis where we took and we've taken the public comment made and repeated the exercise that we did between Cairo and Mexico City. We posted applicant guidebook excerpts, not a full version of the applicant guidebook. And I'll talk more about what that is and why that is. Some additional papers to explain the analysis and the guidebook excerpts in the form of explanatory memoranda and some independent papers. And so then how do we get home from here at the end? Thanks, Margie. So here's what we posted. We posted the comment analysis. And -- which was, you know, we separated out by category and subcategory. The guidebook excerpts -- I'm going to talk more about those two things. These explanatory memoranda. One about three-character strings and whether that restriction should be relaxed for certain scripts that have a lot of words in less than three characters. We published a description of the research we did with regard to morality and public order standards and standing that was asked for some time ago. We talked about a potential post-delegation enforcement mechanism for community TLDs. A paper that discussed whether there should be a requirement for registries to maintain a thick WHOIS database and then a better description of the predelegation testing that will occur after an application is approved but just before it's delegated into the root. And we already talked quite a bit today about some of the other things. IRT, preliminary and final reports were published, preliminary and final report from the GAC. And geographical place names was published. An economic analysis was published. We have -- on potential malicious conduct, we have reports from the anti-phishing working group, and the gTLD registry security group. So -- >>AVRI DORIA: Can I interrupt you one second? Something that came up earlier when we had gone through all the other overarching issues were questions about the fourth one that we didn't cover, the economic analysis. So do you have something on that in here in? >>KURT PRITZ: Not really. The economic analysis is posted for comment and -- >>AVRI DORIA: And that's that? Okay, fine. Kristina, you brought it up. I didn't know whether you had any further questions or comments that you wanted? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: No. I wanted to make sure that there wasn't anything else kind of looming around out there about that one. >>KURT PRITZ: Marilyn, do you want to ask a question now about that? >>MARILYN CADE: I do, Kurt. Thank you. I'm quite interested to see in your list of comments, since there were a number of comments received on the economic report, that you've singled out one particular comment to provide a detailed response to. Should we expect a detailed response to all of the comments that you received on the economic -- on the Carlton report? >>KURT PRITZ: No. >>MARILYN CADE: So should I then interpret that since there was a specific detailed response to one of the comments, that there should be further dialogue and discussion? >>KURT PRITZ: Yeah, of course you should. And I think that, you know, the response to the -- to that other report, you know, that was a very detailed in-depth report and where, you know, where all the other comments were, you know, briefer. So I don't think that's incongruous or doesn't make sense that that report was taken seriously and there was a separate -- you know, a separate comment to it. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. >>KURT PRITZ: Go back, Margie. I forgot where we were. Okay. So then let's go on. So the guidebook excerpts, why did we publish that? First, it's thought that publishing the third version of the guidebook without addressing the -- what have been labeled overarching issues would not be appropriate. It would be sort of an indication or would be taken that the -- those issues weren't being addressed, that we're moving ahead without considering them and answering them. But we did want to demonstrate that progress was made in many of the other areas where we had public comment. That comment was considered, and changes were made in the guidebook. I also want to make the point that just because things are in the guidebook doesn't mean they're done. You know, the whole guidebook is a proposal, right? But I think that it's a really effective way to point up the discussion is to put something in black and white in the guidebook as if it would be implemented. So, for example, the geographic names discussion, we've talked a lot about geographic names here today here and elsewhere. And I think, if we were left with the GAC report and other papers that have been written, everybody would have their own conception about how that would result in a guidebook writing. So the idea is put it in the guidebook. And that really brings up what it would be in black and white and sharpens the discussion. So, again, the guidebook is proposals. But it's intended to sharpen the discussion. So that's sort of a why we did the guidebook excerpts. Sort of a version 2.1 or something like that. But we wanted to be able to move the discussion forward in areas where we were prepared in time for this meeting to discuss that. So those are the sections that have changed -- the technical string requirements, geographical names. There were changes to the evaluation criteria, dispute resolution processes a little bit, comparative evaluation criteria, and some aspects of the registry agreement. So I'm going to talk about those in a minute. But those were the excerpts that were posted. The comment analysis is, again, trying to demonstrate that all of the comments were read very carefully. And they were categorized, you know, grouped according to category and then carefully considered. And, as a result, many changes to the guidebook were made. So it's really hard to make that sort of subtle point in this 200-page document that hits you over the head. But there you have it. You know, it's meant -- you know, it was a ton of work done by a lot of people. But it's meant to indicate that the comments are taken very seriously. >>AVRI DORIA: Kurt, I just want to point out that in one of the working groups I was working with when it came time to respond to comments, I used this as a worthy example that they should follow. >>KURT PRITZ: Thank you. So what changes did we make in the guidebook? With regard to the technical requirements for which strings would be acceptable, that stayed essentially the same. It was reorganized and clarified, and we updated the IDN draft references. And there was a tiny bit more conservative, but, you know, you could have -- if it wasn't red-lined, it would be a tough contest to try to find that. I think an issue for the community that needs to be taken seriously and with alacrity is the three-character requirement. And that is -- there's serious comment from the Chinese, Japanese and Korean community that their TLDs, their availability of TLDs to them is somewhat hobbled by the three-character requirement. Balancing that is the -- you know, a history of standards and protocols that require three characters and opening the door to two characters can be sort of a slippery slope. So I think -- especially for, you know, the GNSO, that -- that represents that soon to be very large gTLD community, that's a discussion that needs to be had in the next several weeks and the technical experts associated with that should take part in it. Next? So -- >>AVRI DORIA: Mike, you wanted to ask something? >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Yes, I don't think I understood you correctly. You said that two-character labels are a problem now and that's why you don't do this? I mean, obviously, all the country codes are two- character labels. >>KURT PRITZ: Right. So the issue is -- and I'm, like, the worst person to be discussing this. I'm sort of a technical eunuch. But in Chinese, for example, many, many -- you know, there's one-character and two-character words that, if you require a three-character TLD, it's more than one word. And so whether there should be some way for those scripts to register, you know, less than three character names. Understanding your point about the restrictions around country codes we just made 15 minutes ago in the other presentation. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Right. Okay. But it just sounded to me like you're saying there's a technical reason why you can't have two character names. >>KURT PRITZ: No, there's not. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Yeah, obviously. >>KURT PRITZ: We've added questions in the evaluation criteria and the applicant guidebook in response to the initial versions of an APWG in public comment to ask more questions about the background of the applicant and their backgrounds. And also not in the guidebook but for consideration is that there's going to be background checks associated with the application. And then, under security and DNSsec, the APWG report made those two suggestions about strings that might be vulnerable to a significant abuse or that, you know, to put people on notice that DNSsec might be -- may not be required now but it's going to be. Next. And then other revised applicant questions, we've made the proof of legal establishment in good standing more flexible. We aligned the questions on community-based applications to align better with the comparative evaluation criteria to make it easier to evaluate. We defined with more specificity the requirement for a financial instrument to ensure ongoing registry operations in the event of failure. And something about geographic names at the bottom there. Oh, so we asked -- you'll remember in the GAC letter, too, it was requested that registries could provide additional protections for geographic names. So, while it's not scored, there's a question asking applicants what protections they -- what other proposed measures they might have for protection of geographic names. In dispute resolution, we've clarified the standing requirement for morality of public order. That's been -- that's been a debate for some time now. So that allows, essentially, anyone to file an objection for an objection for morality and public order purposes and that, as a cover to the objection and dispute resolution process, ICANN will create a filter to block frivolous objections at the outset to save cost and time. For a community objections and standards, we made the language more clear. And we also amended the complete defense to community objections somewhat in order to assert for those of you who have read up on your community objection criteria. And standing requirements. If you satisfy -- if the applicant satisfies the standing requirement to object, then the applicant has a complete defense to the community objection. And it wasn't stated but seems obvious that only a community-based applicant could assert that defense. So we put that in the guidebook and that -- the applicant had to affirmatively prove up all the elements of that defense. So that was clarified. Quite a bit more material on the independent objector role and how that role is tailored and narrow and limited. Comparative evaluation. So we've got a team that just tests names all the time. That's all they do. Not really. But every week they test a set of names. So we've resequenced the criteria to make them more logical, amended the scoring somewhat and made it more -- I think it's pretty darn objective. But, again, testing will continue to try to -- to try to hone that test. And the scoring has been changed so that 13 of 16 rather than 14 of 16 is required to pass. And that was just -- that's set up there as a trial balloon but was done after, like I said, a ton of testing. And by a ton of testing, I don't mean a lot, a lot. I mean hundreds of names. I mean to really run through that evaluation for each name takes quite a bit of time. So -- quite a bit of that was done. And the registry agreement, there's the -- after public comment and a paper that discusses it, you can see how a requirement would look like to maintain a thick WHOIS database. So ICANN in its explanatory memo, indicates that -- well, indicates support that there should be a requirement for registries to maintain a thick WHOIS database and why. And we've already talked about geographical names. So I don't want to talk about that. Or that. How did that get in there? And that's where that went. I was wondering why it wasn't in the other presentation when I sent it out. I put it in the wrong presentation. So what's coming up? So to get home on the overarching issues, a series of consultations is set. And there's a primary focus on trademark protections and also malicious behavior because they overlap to a certain extent. And so it was anticipated from the start, before really the IRT was formed, that there would be a series of consultations to get to a set of solutions on trademark protection issues. And so it was thought we'd have three consultations -- one in Asia, one in the Americas, and one in Europe. And so that is -- those three consultations are this meeting in Sydney, the meeting on Wednesday, and then a consultation in New York and a consultation in London. And so earlier today you heard from the IRT and their proposals. And it's intended that, you know, this discussion has, you know, the IRT and that proposal as sort of a first among equals but would also consider other proposals and discussion of the proposals on the table with the idea that at the end of these consultations, we have for a guidebook draft a set of trademark protections to be adopted. And then approach to -- and an approach to helping ensure that there's not a multiplication of malicious conduct when there's a multiplication of TLDs. And then, in addition to that, there's other outreach events scheduled that are going to discuss these issues, these -- these overarching issues. In Abu Dhabi in early August and also in Hong Kong. And we'll also discuss new gTLDs, IDNs and policy work by your policy support staff at ICANN. So, if I was clear at that -- about that, that's good. And so what's the timing of -- what's the publication of materials going forward? That's not how you spell caveat, is it? So the caveat is, of course, that this is subject to public decision as is all of this. It's -- you know, the beauty and the hard part of the ICANN model. So the root zone scaling study is a preliminary report is scheduled to be published in August of 2009. And you heard from Lyman today. In addition to that, we look towards our resolution of trademark issues and malicious behavior issues by that -- in that same time frame so that the third version of the guidebook could be published in September. That would incorporate the work on the overarching issues and also incorporate feedback from the work that's up to here and comes through here and the public comment periods for the guidebook excerpts and all the explanatory memo and everything else that's been posted is July 20th that public comment period closes. So then we look forward to -- go back. Then we look forward to publishing a draft -- no, a final version of the guidebook, not a final draft version of the guidebook in December 2009 after we incorporate feedback through the Seoul meeting. So the draft version 3 of the guidebook, the comment period would end essentially shortly after the Seoul meeting, allowing the publication of the final guidebook in December. That's it. >>AVRI DORIA: I'll take a queue. I have Adrian. I stuck myself on it. I have Tony, I have Kristina. Start with that. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Thanks for the update, Kurt. I didn't see -- well, I didn't see you mention, but I saw a paper on predelegation testing come out the other day. And can I raise a point on that and a note that -- I don't think Kim's in the room, so he's probably a good guy to throw this out. But can you speak briefly about the persistence of ICANN with the self-certification? Certainly, the requirement -- self-certification of your technical capabilities? Just to me it seems that you get such a strict technical requirement to let, you know, at the last bit that you're actually going to self- certify that you're fulfilling these requirements seems to be a little loose. And I could strongly suggest that ICANN flex its technical muscle there. >>KURT PRITZ: Yeah, I thought we got away with that some and so I'll take that comment and go look it up. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. My question was a quick one. In terms of the grading in the 13 out of 16 points, one of the questions I've had, is all this done in integers or when they're doing their gradings are there 13.5, you know, 'cause it was out of a scale, if I remember correctly, of four on each of the categories. Is it integer grading or is it someone could get a 2.3? >>AVRI DORIA: So it could be an integer grading but multiple graders. >>AVRI DORIA: I see. So you do end up with a whole number in the end? >>KURT PRITZ: No, so you -- >>AVRI DORIA: A real number, I mean. >>KURT PRITZ: Right, right. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, thank you. Okay, I've got, then, what do I have after -- oh, yeah, Tony and then Kristina and then Richard and then -- >>TONY HARRIS: Yes, I have two short questions for Kurt. When you say the final application guidebook will be published in December, and I'm crossing my fingers here, my heart's beating furiously. [ Laughter ] That means on that day, the 120-day warning period begins and at the end of 120 days I can show up at Admiralty Way with my proposal is that correctly understood? >>KURT PRITZ: Or even sooner if, you know, if you think about a communications period being launched in the very near future. And so what we want to do is satisfy the GNSO requirement that this process be adequately communicated to all regions and I -- you know, I -- just to blurt it out, I think there's been feedback from this group that that four-month period can be started before the final guidebook is actually published. >>TONY HARRIS: Great. And the second question is I had to step out of the room briefly, I don't know if there was any mention, has the question of the application fee been reviewed, is that set in cement or do you think there may be some consideration in reducing that? The application fee of $185,000. >>KURT PRITZ: Right, so, the area of uncertainty left in the application fee are the costs of the panels. So, you know, we've put quite a bit of effort into estimating what those will be. But we're in the process of receiving real proposals to perform evaluation services and so if those costs are markedly different from what we thought the -- you know, what we estimated, then, that would affect the application fee. And it's a substantial portion of the application fee so it could. >>TONY HARRIS: Thanks. >>AVRI DORIA: I've got -- okay, so I now have Kristina, Richard, Edmon, Marilyn. Kristina? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I have a very specific question. In the analysis of public comment under registry-registrar separation there's a note that ICANN is essentially adopting for discussion the delve nation of affiliation recommended in the public comment and has opened for discussion dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. I couldn't find that definition of affiliates. Where is it? >>KURT PRITZ: I don't know. I don't know. I'll have to look. I mean, I thought it was -- I thought it's there somewhere. Huh. >>KAREN LETZ: Somebody proposed it. >>KURT PRITZ: Yeah. >>JEFF NEUMAN: I think it wasn't in the contract, that's when I supplied some language as a comment. >>KURT PRITZ: Right. >>JEFF NEUMAN: But I -- >>KURT PRITZ: Which we encouraged and it's not in the agreement? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: (Off microphone.) Jeff's definition or -- no, nothing I'm seeing. >> Pretty much Jeff's definition, right? >>KURT PRITZ: Yeah, that's what I thought that's what it was. So anyway, I thought it was Jeff's definition, and I thought it was in the agreement, Dan's looking. But if you didn't see it, then it probably wasn't there. >>DAN HALLORAN: Yeah, We didn't publish a new version of the agreement so it wouldn't be in the agreement yet. So I don't know. It's in the comments, I don't know if it's in -- you're saying it's not in the analysis? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Well, it doesn't identify which definition that was put forth in public comment was accepted. So without having that, without having the agreement, it was kind of hard to figure out what the definition is. >>KURT PRITZ: Okay, thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Richard? >>RICHARD TINDAL: So the issue of community and comparative evaluation is very complex, I think. So I think that there's going to be a large variety of interpretations with the way that the criteria and the scoring is currently is as to who would get community and who wouldn't. I think it's very, very complicated. I know a broad range already of people who have completely different views on the same scenario as to whether it would happen or not so if that's the way it stays, I think it would be very, very useful for all of us if the hypothetical example scenarios that the staff have developed and run were made available to people so that we can see what the staff are thinking about this issue. >>KURT PRITZ: Ha! >>AVRI DORIA: Did you want to comment more than giggle? [ Laughter ] >>KURT PRITZ: Well, no, I agree with everything Richard said about the complexity of it. And as we go forward we'll try to make the questions and the measurements more objective. Gee, the -- as we -- as we -- I'll share that, as we work through scenarios, you know, we build scenarios that are a couple paragraphs long. And we anticipate applications that are pages and pages long. And so when we run through those scenarios and we have differences among those who are participating in the testing, we have the ability to talk back and forth about, you know, what our assumption was. Well, you know, when I read this, I made these set of assumptions and that, you know, would theoretically be in the flesh (phonetic) dot application somewhere and somebody else wouldn't. So, you know, as you can imagine, you know, I'd be very concerned about publishing a scenario that says the application for a dot something or other, you know, as -- as analyzed by six of seven testers would be found not to meet the community-based standard where, you know, some unwritten change to the, you know, application would actually, you know, change -- change how the scoring would go. So it's -- you know, I'll see -- I'll ask, but, you know, I just see it as being, you know, sort of provocative to publish that. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Edmon? >>EDMON CHUNG: Yeah, yes, you anticipated my question about the three-character situation with the IDN TLDs. I guess it's good and there's progress that we have now a separate document talking specifically about it. From the excerpts that are posted, it doesn't seem to have much thing addressing it except that, "as appropriate" was added to the line, I realized. Does that mean that ICANN is perhaps looking for something like another implementation recommendation group of some sort to answer this question? What's -- you know, how do we -- how do we eventually address this issue, is the staff eventually going to be doing it or what is ICANN -- >>KURT PRITZ: Well, I think staff would -- staff will continue to investigate this through others so I think you're right, I think it is a panel of people who know what they're talking about and understand the complexities of trying to make rules around this why, you know, why one script would be allowed to register less than three-character names and another not when, you know, many scripts have words that are less than three characters and writing those rules in a way that clearly identified, you know, how the door was opened and closed. So I think there's a lot -- there's a lot of depth to this area that I don't understand. So anyway, I think there needs to be a group convene to study this and try to develop a solution for it that satisfies the criteria for making a bright-line rule that doesn't open the door to other exceptions as countries -- or as proponents would -- would request so yes. >>EDMON CHUNG: How could I volunteer to be on that group? >>KURT PRITZ: You could. I don't understand exactly how it's formed yet except even here in Sydney, we've had a discussion about it among many -- many interested parties that discuss the formation of a group and if there's one formed it will be formed in some public sort of way, I'm sure. >>AVRI DORIA: It's hard to imagine him not being on such a group. Marilyn? >>MARILYN CADE: Thanks. Kurt, I guess I was a little taken aback but perhaps you could reassure me. As I understand it, looking hard at the four overarching issues there are a number of studies that are not complete. And in particular, the issues that have to do with the implications of the simultaneous introduction of large numbers of gTLDs, IDNs, IPv6 and DNSsec not just on the root zone but there is on those entities that actually run the Internet, that those implications are being studied and we don't yet have the output of those studies. So, you know, while I think it may be optimistic to forecast that everything can be done by a date certain, I think it's also very responsible of all of us in this room to be appropriately cautious so that people don't go out and misinterpret or think that they've been given assurances. And I keep seeing the efforts of the ICANN staff to be very responsible and point out that this is still work in progress, things are not done yet, but I just think, you know, I'm -- I'm -- I've been through the introduction of many products in my past history and many services and I'm cautious about thinking we're done until, in fact, we get the results of the additional work, particularly on the technical side. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Okay, I've got Terry. Okay I've got Terry and then Mary. Anyone else. Terry, go ahead. >>TERRY DAVIS: I just want to second what Marilyn said. I know a lot of us who are operating large DNS services have concerns. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, Mary. >>MARY WONG: So on behalf of NCUC and the other members of the community, thanks to Kurt and the staff for providing the additional memorandum on the morality and public order research that was carried out. For now I just had one question, and I'm not sure if anyone here can answer it but with respect to the countries for which research was done on morality AND public order, can you give us some insight on why those particular countries were picked? >>KURT PRITZ: Well, we wanted to put a country in every region, so that was done. There was availability of legal expertise in those countries so that -- that research was commissioned, those legal memos were commissioned by attorneys in those countries, and I don't -- you know, I don't know how -- you know, there were countries with essentially free speech rights. And the question was about, you know, how are those -- you know, in each area, how are those rights limited? So I think there was some common sense put to, you know, which countries -- you know, which areas of research would bear the most -- I don't know. >>MARY WONG: Thanks, just an interesting list of countries for those who haven't seen it. So, for example, in Europe it's France and Switzerland. In Asia it's Hong Kong, Japan and Malaysia. So we could see the geographically diverse nature of the countries selected; we were just curious as to why particular ones within those regions. But we can probably talk more about that offline. Thanks. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you, any other questions? >>CARLOS SOUZA: Carlos Souza from NCUC. Just a quick follow-up. Reading the new explanatory memorandum on morality and public order, just a suggestion. It is one of the requirements for objection, the incitement to a promotion of discrimination based upon race, color, gender, ethnicity, religion, national origin. As discrimination nowadays has a lot of debates regarding positive discrimination and that would not be a bad thing. That's a debate. But I know there's some countries that positive discrimination are not loud. And I know there's a huge debate about quotas and selective systems. Just a suggestion for us to think about maybe changing discrimination for prejudice or any other word that has a harmful connection to the word and not -- neutral word as discrimination, okay? >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Any other comments, questions? Okay. And that was it for, okay, because I didn't want to accidentally say we were done, again, when that wasn't the case, having done so once before. No questions? Thank you for the various number of presentations and questions and answers. [ Applause ] Just about to finish this session. There will be another one at 6:00, which is the travel drafting team. But there were two things that I wanted to cover first. For the AC/SO meeting on Monday, I still do not have a person from -- I don't think I have one yet from the commercial stakeholders' group or the prospective so I don't have one from there I'm not sure I have one from the registrars, I may, but I need to confirm that. I don't. >>JEFF NEUMAN: The problem is, is that it runs at the same time the registrar-registry cross ownership issue and that you're going to have registries and registrars out so it's going to be difficult for you to get. >>AVRI DORIA: Anyone. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Probably. >>AVRI DORIA: In which case we do have one volunteer who was available to -- I mean, basically I went looking for someone from every one of the stakeholder groups. >>JEFF NEUMAN: I think actually Mike, who volunteered, actually withdrew. >>AVRI DORIA: I understand. He hasn't -- what I'm talking about is Olga did put her name on a list as being available to participate in that, but I'm still trying to find three or four people. So at the moment I do not have three or four people. And I do need, certainly, one from -- I've got one from the noncommercial users. I do not have one from the commercial users. And if we don't have enough people from registrars and registries, perhaps we can put yet another one, either from noncommercial or commercial. The other thing I wanted to bring up before closing this session is tomorrow morning at 8:00, 8:00 to 9:30, there's an IRT PB PDP brainstorming session that is basically looking for as many people that are interested in the issues there as possible and they're actually offering breakfast as an inducement to convince people to come and brainstorm at the beginning of the morning. Yes, Richard. >>RICHARD TINDAL: (Speaker off microphone). >>AVRI DORIA: Right, it's the transfer policy, sorry. The interregister transfer policy and the set of issues that are going to be in that BDP. So basically to talk about those issues. Sorry to use an acronym without explaining. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: It would be in the GNSO glossary, tell him that. >>AVRI DORIA: Is it in the glossary? I'd have to check to see it's in the glossary before saying it's in the glossary, but yes, go to the glossary. If you happen to be awake and looking for a free breakfast and wish to contribute, especially if you wish to contribute, but do think about joining that so that there's enough brains in the room to actually have a storm. I'm going to shut up now. [ Laughter ] Thank you for the day. See you tomorrow. Those people that are here for the travel -- GNSO travel policy, et cetera, that meeting will start in about 20 minutes and I understand there will be a changeover of transcribers. Thank you for today. [ Applause ] And thank you for the technical that has been better than often so thank you very much for that and we're done.