ICANN|ARCHIVES

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the afternoon session of the ICANN Public Forum held 27 June 2002 in Bucharest, Romania. Although the captioning output is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

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ICANN Public Forum
Bucharest, Romania
Thursday, 27 June 2002
Afternoon Session

Contents:

Internationalized Domain Name Committee Report

Governmental Advisory Committee Report

Evolution and Reform

Open Microphone

VeriSign Wait-Listing Service

Proceedings:

>>Vinton Cerf: Ladies and gentlemen, we will begin in about two minutes' time with the IDN report.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to call the meeting back to order again. And perhaps we could close the doors to avoid noise.

Internationalized Domain Name Committee Report

I'd like to call upon board member Katoh-san to give a report of the Internationalized Domain Name Committee.

>>Masanobu Katoh: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My name is Masanobu Katoh, currently chairing the ICANN Internationalized Domain Name Committee.

I'd like to very briefly report where we are. Actually, we are finishing, as promising, our work in the last several months. And here is the table of contents of my report for today.

In the Montevideo meeting last year, the ICANN board created this IDN committee. And this is the committee following the original ICANN board working group on the same issue, IDN.

This is a list of the members of the committee. We have ten members working very hard during the last several months.

As you can see from this list, most of us are, you know, born in countries in the world where, except for two, because of some encoding question or problem, some of their names are listed only by ASCII, but they are non-ASCII names, too.

This is a time line. As I said, starting in March 2001, ICANN board created IDN working group in Melbourne. And after they finished the final report in Montevideo, we created this IDN committee. And here we are finishing our report.

As we speak, our report to the board is being posted by some technical reasons, it's not posted, but it was supposed to be posted yesterday. And I’d like to go through very quickly about the report we are going to make for the board.

During the last several months, we focused on several issues, including those five areas of issues. And I’d like to go again quickly over these issues.

The first one is IDN.IDN keyword issue. As you remember, at some point late last year, there was some speculation about some bin practice using key word technology for the DNS-like businesses.

In general, ICANN and our committee strongly support the use of a key word. It is very convenient and useful for the Internet environment. But in this kind of practice, using dot notation as a key word for domain name businesses that would invite a lot of user confusion. Therefore we showed a strong concern for the potential use of such business practice.

In the next paper, which we call the permissible code point, we communicated to IETF during the – their process of formulating IDN protocols or standard regarding some permissible code for the implementation of IDN, and more specifically, the – currently, the Unicode, which lists many characters and signs to be used for our, you know, computer purpose, there are many things which may be confusing if it's implemented as a part of the IDN domain names.

For instance, there are line and symbol drawing characters, symbols and icons that are neither alphabetic nor ideographic characters, such as typographical character dingbat. Well, you go on --

>>Vinton Cerf: This is --

>>Masanobu Katoh: You find very interesting marks and signs and so on which may be very confusing.

>>Vinton Cerf: Is dingbat now considered a technical term in the vocabulary?

>>Masanobu Katoh: Well, it sounds like.

Anyway, we've been communicating to IETF on these issues and they are studying further on this issue.

For your information, IETF is coming to the very final stage, I understand, on their formation of the standard. Yet we are still waiting for their final, you know, decision where they are going from there.

The third area of our study was something we call non-ASCII TLD categories. Before I describe 6 different potential non-ASCII TLDs for consideration in the future, I’d like to go very quickly about the possible steps process, where we should go from here.

Implementation of non-ASCII TLD is not very simple issue. As I said, IETF has to finalize the standard first. And then this board, well, you should expect that once IETF is going to finalize their standard, you, board of ICANN, including me, will be under strong pressure whether and when we should proceed and adopt non-ASCII TLDs. There is a strong demand in the world, request for non-ASCII TLDs and we have to face such strong pressure, which may come very soon.

But even after that decision, if we decide to move on, we should go through root zone implementation testings and also do selection of registry operators, like we did for the new ASCII TLDs. And also, we should conduct a series of registry-level testing and deployment. And this process takes a long time.

Coming back to the 6 categories of possible non-ASCII TLDs, we identify the first, something semantically associated with geographical unit. For instance, – well, this is something similar to ccTLD, using the international or – either language or character sets.

And the second one is something semantically associated with languages, such as Arabic in the Arabic language.

The third category of non-ASCII TLD is something relating to the cultural groups or ethnics. In the previous two categories, we have, for instance, country names or something regarding basic language names.

But for those names like in Kurdish or Swahili, they are not specifically relating or associated with special regions or special language, but there may be some, you know, request for using such non-ASCII TLDs.

The fourth category and the fifth category is something very similar or familiar to our previous practice. The fourth one is something semantically associated with existing sponsored TLDs, such as dot museum equivalent in their – you know, different language or character sets.

The fifth one is something related to the unsponsored TLDs, dot com equivalent in Chinese, Japanese, and so on.

And the last one, this is catchall, everything, all possible, you know, things, combining all possible non-ASCII TLDs.

Here is a quick chart of those six categories. And as you see, it is a challenge to decide to pick up a particular language or a character set for all of those items. Even the first one, which is the TLDs associated with geographical units, well, likely not, we have ISO 3166 defined as the country code by two or three letters. But still we're using some other language than ASCII. You may face very difficult political question, what is the specific country names, and who decides on this.

In other categories, there are many difficult questions on what is the right, you know, definition of those names and who is the right community to decide on those names, and so on.

So as I said, there are many challenges on the selection of those names, too. And this is a quick summary of the comparison of the current ASCII TLDs to those 6 categories of potential non-ASCII TLDs.

On the first two areas, sponsored and unsponsored TLDs, clearly, there is a question, policy question, whether we should give any preference to incumbent registries. And in some other areas, we have many other considerations we should, you know, think of.

In this paper, what we call non-ASCII TLD paper, we analyze in details pros and cons on when you are selecting those 6 different categories of non-ASCII TLDs. And I hope when you are considering in the future about those non-ASCII TLDs, you go through those, you know, suggestions about pros and cons.

And on behalf of the entire ICANN IDN committee, I’d like to thank all ICANN community or Internet communities for giving us very useful input on those materials. We went through a long public, you know, comment period. Actually, some of them are very short. And thank you, you know, for giving us a very quick feedback on those papers and all those comments listed on the ICANN web site.

The fourth paper is something we call registry selection process paper.

If ICANN is going to decide to adopt some non-ASCII TLD in the future, what kind of element, what kind of issues we should consider as a part of the selection of registries.

We, naturally, we found not just elements, we found important for the selection of ASCII TLDs are very, you know, true for this area of non-ASCII TLDs. So we need to first think about the technical competence, and we should evaluate the support from the relevant communities and, you know, so on.

This is the, you know, element, you know, we compared it to the current TLD selection process.

And I’d like to go very briefly on those points.

First, technical competence.

Here probably we should, you know, think more about some, you know, factors, how the registries can meet additional technical requirement such as the capability of encoding and, you know, so on for the non-ASCII environment.

Also, they have to have some better communication with ISPs and so on for the education of the very complicated use of non-ASCII TLDs.

The relevant community support. This is something you find very difficult in some of the categories of non-ASCII TLDs, how we define the relevant community for the support of a certain language or certain ethnic groups and so on.

But we do need their help when we are deciding the non-ASCII strings as well as the proper registry operating for such non-ASCII TLDs.

Thirdly, we think it's very important to continue to find out the commitment to TLD service and trusteeship obligations in this area, too.

And, lastly, it is probably essential for ICANN and ICANN board to have independent evaluation panels on many complicated, you know, issues regarding non-ASCII TLDs.

And lastly, I’d like to, you know, mention very briefly about UDRP review.

We found that non-ASCII TLD review probably increasing our opportunity for cybersquatting and therefore we hope that ICANN's UDRP review working group would take this non-ASCII possibility as your – part of your consideration of when you are doing the UDRP review.

Now, the last part, recommendations.

Through our activities during the last several months, we still think that we should very carefully examine the issue of non-ASCII TLDs, as we heard in many places that the use of non-ASCII TLDs is very, very helpful for many people in the world, for the better and more, you know, convenient use of the Internet. But at the same time, we have many technical and policy challenges here which we have to solve one by one.

So I urge the board to take all of those issues very carefully and take some time to, you know, consider all these issues.

And, secondly, for that purpose, too, the committee recommends ICANN to establish some expert group, ongoing expert group to give you advice and try to facilitate the policy development and many other, you know, discussion on IDN in the future.

And that's it. And, again, on behalf of entire IDN committee, I thank you, all of you. And I’d like to add, this is the committee we met the deadline of the original schedule we set ourselves.

Thank you very much.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much, Katoh-san. And let me say publicly that you and your committee have done a fine job of working on an extremely complex topic.

It's clear from your report that there is still a considerable amount of work to be done, both on the technical side and on the policy side.

I wanted to make one observation about the IETF work, as I understand it. The intent is that all of these non-ASCII representations would be transformed by a mechanical process into ASCII representations before they actually get into the domain name system itself. So the actual strings that would be compared and moved around in the system would be – would be ASCII strings that had been mapped from their original Unicode encoded form.

That may help a little bit on the technical side. But it leaves open all of the issues that you raised with respect to which strings would be permitted and which ones would be a problem.

So we – I take your point that we will need continued advice in the policy formation. I think that we should act on that.

Are there any questions from the other members of the board for director Katoh-san?

Are there any questions or --

Are there any questions or issues from the floor?

Okay. Well, I think we accept your report with great thanks. And I think we look forward, with some trepidation, to the continued challenges of introducing these new strings into the Internet.

Thank you very much.

(applause.)

>>Vinton Cerf: At this point in the agenda, I have scheduled a report from the government advisory committee. And I would like to call upon its chairman, Paul Twomey, to present the report, and, no doubt, communiqué from the governmental advisory committee.

Governmental Advisory Committee Report

>>Paul Twomey: Thank you, Vint. And thank you, members of the board and the community.

I noticed that we have half an hour allocated to our session. And we're going to need every minute of it. So let me get started.

I'd like first of all on behalf of the members of the governmental advisory committee to first of all express our thanks to the steering committee, the local committee for this meeting, and to the government of Romania for what's been a spectacular setting and I think a spectacular piece of coordination.

The governmental advisory committee would particularly like to note its thanks and amazement for being in a hotel like this with an organization like this where people kept serving us sandwiches at 10:30 last night and kept a room open until 2:30. Normally in hotels they kick you out at 9:00. So we were very impressed. It passed our test.

So I’d like to start by sharing with you a communiqué, because we always start with a communiqué. And then I would also then like to move on to a statement on ICANN reform and evolution.

For aficionados, this is actually the first time this is a different opening program. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers met on the 24th, the 25th, and the 26th of June in Bucharest, Romania. The attending GAC members, which included representatives from 36 national governments, distinct economies as recognized international fora, and multinational treaty and other organizations, had useful discussions on ICANN and related DNS issues.

I point out to the board this is our equal highest participation rate in a meeting for the governmental advisory committee, it equals the number of participants we had in Accra.

Booting on meetings in Brussels and Canberra, the GAC dedicated much of this meeting to the development of a formal statement on ICANN reform.

This confirms that the process communicated to the ICANN board and community at the Accra meeting, the GAC statement on ICANN reform is attached as an appendix to this communiqué.

And I will come back to that. But if I can proceed with the other items on the communiqué.

First item is dialogue with ICANN and the ccTLD community.

The GAC welcomes its participation in the productive joint meeting held with the ccTLD constituency on the 25th of June. In alignment with the call from the evolution and reform committee of ICANN for GAC to participate in a dialogue with ICANN and the ccTLD community, the GAC notes that this meeting, I would suggest that you read "in this meeting," the GAC and ccTLD community agreed to establish a small group to define segments of the globally diverse family of ccTLDs, including ccTLDs where the administrative contact is based offshore, just as an example of those segments, with a mind to establishing a number of joint working groups to reflect on what steps might be taken to improve the interactions between ICANN, local governments or public authorities, and the ccTLDs.

Second point relates to the process for release of dot info country names. The GAC discussed the implementation of aspects of the board's resolution regarding the dot info country names. The GAC considers its appropriate – for the release of their respective country names in dot info be December the 31st, 2003, with the possibility of the GAC considering the need for extension to this deadline prior to its expiring.

And if I could just share from my personal perspective, much of the concern reflected in that need for possible extension is a desire to ensure that communities in developing countries and governments and public authorities in developing countries, who may be slower to the task, are actually not precluded by setting of that particular deadline.

Ipv6, considering the strong demands and the growing interests for ipv6, the GAC strongly encourages ICANN to provide a session to share the status and direction of ipv6 with the Internet community at the upcoming shanghai meeting.

Finally, consultation process.

For the GAC to perform its role as ICANN advisor, the GAC needs to be given adequate time for deliberation and reflections.

This includes receiving relevant documents in a timely fashion, consistent with generally accepted government practices and procedures which involves consultation with various levels of government and public authorities.

Also, for this consultation to remain effective, there is a need for precise terminology to be used because many Internet terms are not well understood and are subject to interpretation.

The GAC warmly thanks the government of Romania and the sponsors for hosting its meeting, and will hold its next face-to-face meeting in October of 2002 in Shanghai to coincide with ICANN's next round of meetings.

Before I go on to the very serious stuff of ICANN reform, if I could just share a small story, particularly for those here from Romania.

Many – some of you in this ICANN community know that occasionally at these meetings my five-year-old daughter emerges as a topic as discussion.

I wanted to share with you that she rang me this morning to tell me that her first tooth has come out.

And I said to her, "Eloise I’m in this wonderful country and they've got these wonderful castles like fairy castles." And she said, “Daddy, that's where the fairy will come to get my tooth." So she's always here in spirit.

If we can now move to the statement on ICANN evolution and reform.

And I think we had this text available.

It's up.

To be truthful, Vint, I’m wondering if there are any questions from the board on the communiqué before I move to the reform statement, because it's some 35 or 40 paragraphs.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you for asking about that.

Are there any questions?

I would just draw your attention to several typos that are in the communiqué.

The word "confirm" probably should have been "conform" and so on.

Take this off-line, but before you finalize the document, I offer a few comments.

Are there any questions from the floor?

In that case, we will go on to your interminable presentation on the subject of ICANN reform.

>>Paul Twomey: Okay.

The GAC reaffirms its statement of March the 2nd, 1999 endorsing the principles behind the creation of ICANN, and commits itself to work through ICANN to contribute towards its reform.

The GAC notes that the production by the evolution and reform committee of ICANN, "ICANN: A Blueprint for Reform," and makes the following observations on this and previous ERC documents.

It should be noted that some members of the Governmental Advisory Committee have requested that statements of explanation or disassociation with aspects of this statement be expressed in the attached annexes.

So if I can move to it.

ICANN Mission Statement and Core Values.

With the addition of the following italicized phrases, the GAC is satisfied with the proposed mission statement and core values.

Moving to the mission statement, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is the private-sector body responsible for coordinating, at the overall level, the global Internet system of unique identifiers.

The mission of ICANN is to coordinate the stable and secure operation of the Internet's unique identifier systems. In particular, ICANN,

"a," coordinates the allocation and assignment of three sets of unique identifiers for the Internet; that is, as a point of emphasis, domain names, forming a system referred to as the DNS; Internet protocol addresses and autonomous system numbers; and protocol port and parameter numbers.

"b," coordinates the operation and evolution of the DNS's root name server system.

"c," this point is fully italicized: coordinates policy development as necessary to perform these technical functions.

Moving to the core values: In performing its mission, ICANN adheres to these core values and principles:

1. Preserve and enhance the operational stability, reliability, security and global interoperability of the Internet.

2. Respect the creativity and innovation made possible by the Internet by limiting ICANN's activities to these matters within ICANN's mission requiring or significantly benefiting from global coordination.

3. To the extent feasible and appropriate, delegate coordination functions to or recognize the policy role of other responsible entities that reflect the interests of affected parties.

4. Seek and support broad, informed participation reflecting the functional, geographic and cultural diversity of the Internet at all levels of policy development and decision-making.

5. Where feasible and appropriate, depend on market mechanisms to promote and sustain a competitive environment.

6. Introduce and promote competition in the registration of domain names where practicable and beneficial in the public interest.

7. Employ open and transparent policy-making mechanisms that, "a," promote well-informed decisions based on expert advice, and, "b," ensure that those entities most affected can assist in the policy development process.

8. Make decisions by applying documented policies neutrally and objectively with integrity and fairness.

9. Act with a speed that is responsive to the needs of the Internet while, as part of the decision-making process, obtaining informed input from those entities most affected.

10. Remain accountable to the Internet community through mechanisms that enhance ICANN's effectiveness.

11. The majority of the GAC considered that this core value should read: While remaining rooted in the private sector, recognize that government or public authorities are responsible for public policy and duly take into account governments or public authorities' recommendations.

The United States believes that the language in the ICANN: A Blueprint for Reform document posted the 20th of June, 2002 is sufficient and does not need to be amended.

Moving to policy implications, ICANN should engage in policy development to the extent, and only to the extent, as is necessary to enable ICANN to fulfill its mission in conformance with its core values.

And this is the end of the section where we refer to italicized differences between the June 20th text and the position of the GAC.

From now on, it's more openly statements from the GAC.

In considering the phrase "Internet community" in the context of the ICANN reform documentation, the GAC does not mean any specific legal or international entity, but rather interprets the term to refer to all of those who are affected, now or in the future, by the operation of the Internet.

GAC proposal for private/public partnership.

The GAC shares the view put forward in the President's report of February 2002 that a private-sect/public-sector partnership will be essential to ICANN's future success.

This view underlies a number of statements issued by the GAC and in particular, the principles for delegation and administration of country code top-level domains of February the 23rd, 2000.

The majority of GAC members agree that the GAC is the principal forum for the international discussion of public policy issues related to the ICANN mission and domain name system.

The delegations from France and Germany disassociate themselves from this wording, and direct readers to alternate language contained in annex 1.

And I’ll come to annex 1 at the end of the discussion.

The GAC considers that the relationship between ICANN and governments and public authorities is a central one for the ongoing achievement for the ICANN mission.

Funding for ICANN.

Recognizing the potential politicizing implications of doing so, the GAC does not support the concept of governments and public authorities contributing directly to the budget of ICANN, with the possible exception of contributing to the cost of the GAC chair and secretariat functions.

Rather, the GAC supports the principle of payment by beneficiaries.

The GAC suggests that the names and address functions could be possible collection mechanisms for the payment by the beneficiaries.

ICANN must have a mechanism for generating adequate financial and personnel resources to carry out its mission.

As part of the reform process, ICANN must ensure that it has enough staffing to execute efficiently and effectively its decision-making processes and its operational responsibilities, including facilitating policy development by its supporting organizations, management of the technical functions, and support for the work of the root server system advisory committee.

ICANN and its stakeholders must place priority effort on securing a stable funding base for the organization's operations.

Board composition.

The GAC notes that the board composition and selection proposals.

In particular, the majority of GAC members support the chair, or where relevant, the acting chair, of GAC being a non-voting ex officio board liaison.

France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland, however, do not support the presence of a GAC member on the board because it would lead the GAC representative to deal with matters which have no direct public interest implication, create difficulties in discussions about topics where there is no GAC consensus, and be incompatible with GAC independence.

The international treaty organizations do not offer a view.

The delegation of Germany expressed its view that to facilitate and expedite internal coordination processes and keep costs down, the board of a reformed ICANN should be composed of a noticeably smaller number of members than so far.

The GAC would like to see opportunities for broad-ranging dialogue between the ICANN board and the GAC.

In that respect, the GAC notes that the ERC encourages the board to inviolate the GAC to explore ways in which multi-way communication can be enhanced beyond the recommendations contained in this Blueprint.

Board selection process.

The majority of GAC members do not have a strong opinion on the concept of a nominating committee, believing this to be an issue of ICANN's internal corporate governance, nor on the proposition that there be a GAC delegate on the nominating committee.

A minority, including France and Germany, specifically expresses its discomfort with the concept of the nominating committee.

The delegation of Germany raised its concerns that even though the personal properties referred to as selection criteria may basically be unobjectionable, evaluating individuals by such criteria invariably would be highly subjective and, thus, a doubt-raising procedure.

The delegation of Germany believes that this would be all the more so if the nominating committee as the selecting body was not sufficiently legitimated.

The structure and authority presently proposed for the nominating committee would more or less mean replacing the bottom-up by the top-down principle, thereby counteracting the objective of securing wider recognition for ICANN.

The representative of Spain expressed disagreement with the concept of any potential GAC delegate being in the nominating committee.

Malaysia is of the view if there is a GAC delegate, they should not have voting powers.

The international treaty organization members do not offer a view.

That's a bit of a theme, folks.

(Laughter.)

>>Paul Twomey: Not on everything, no, no.

Not on everything.

Otherwise, David would find it difficult to justify his trip.

Because of the risk of politicization, the GAC does not support the selection to the board of staff members of public authority with the exception of the ex officio participation of the GAC chair.

In the board selection process, the GAC stresses the utmost importance of giving full weight to internationalization, transparency and fairness and to maintaining the principle of geographic diversity and representation.

The GAC supports the suggestion that the number of ICANN's regions be reexamined.

Liaison with supporting organizations and advisory councils.

The majority of GAC members support the appointment of nonvoting liaisons to each of the SO councils, and the RSSAC and the TAC and the SAC.

And look forward to discussing implementation issues with these bodies and ICANN.

Brazil supports having regular participation of representatives of the SOs and advisory committees in GAC meetings.

Germany would support a voting liaison on the CNSO.

The international treaty organization members do not offer a view.

Liaison with IANA.

The majority of GAC members support the appointment of a contact point to help provide advice and information to relevant government officials and help with liaison between IANA and these particular government officials when there are delegations or redelegations pending.

This contact point could also provide a focus for advice and information on other administrative issues related to the IANA function.

The international treaty organization members do not offer a view.

Policy development structure and process.

The GAC notes the policy and process proposals.

The GAC supports the expectation that all policy proposals would be circulated to and get comments from all constituencies before board consideration.

The GAC notes in particular the ERC's statement that the GAC should receive adequate notice and an opportunity to comment on all ICANN policy decisions before they are taken.

This notice should be timely.

The delegations from Germany and Spain disassociate themselves from this wording, and direct readers to alternate language contained in annex 1.

The GAC also calls for a mechanism such as an amendment of ICANN's bylaws, if necessary, to allow the GAC to put issues to the board directly, either by way of comment or warning, or by way of specifically recommending action or new policy development or revision to existing policies.

The proposed consultation process should ensure that the advice of the GAC on public policy matters is duly taken into account both at the policy drafting and at the decision-taking stage.

In all cases, ICANN will inform the GAC on how its advice has been taken into account.

There may be policy proposals with public interest implications on which, exceptionally, the views of the majority of the ICANN board are in conflict with the GAC advice.

In those cases, the GAC and the ICANN board will try, in good faith and in a timely and efficient way, to find a mutually acceptable solution.

In the absence of agreement being achieved the board will act according to its own best judgment.

In any case, governments have the right to take decisions in line with their laws in order to protect the public interest.

The delegation from Germany disassociates itself from this wording, and directs readers to alternate language contained in annex 1.

Reliance by ICANN on expert bodies.

This time the international treaty organizations do have a view.

(Laughter.)

>>Paul Twomey: The GAC supports the ERC's call for the use of advice from external expert bodies, especially in the area of interaction with public policy.

For instance, competition policy, consumer protection, privacy policy, and intellectual property protection.

In particular, the GAC believes that there may be opportunities for constructive participation by international treaty organizations.

The GAC will facilitate the consideration by the ICANN board of the advice in question.

With respect to intellectual property issues, the GAC notes that this mechanism was particularly useful in the case of significant beneficial contribution to the development of the.

The board proposes that the ICANN board use the GAC as a resource for the identification of other potential expert bodies.

The GAC is of the view that it would be preferable to institutionalize the ability of the ICANN board to refer specific issues to outside experts for their advice, rather than making use of an appropriate expert only on a case-by-base basis when questions for expert opinions rise.

The GAC recognizes that relevant intergovernmental organizations have a valuable consideration in expertise.

The GAC offers to assist the ICANN board and staff in exploring ways of working with these organizations.

Accountability, the GAC notes the three accountability mechanisms outlined in the reform committee's paper of 20th of June, 2002.

Members of the GAC consider that as well as implementing dispute resolution methods, more attention could be paid to the prevention of these disputes, focusing upon ICANN staffing issues and work processes.

Transition.

The GAC expects that the period between the Bucharest and shanghai meetings will be dedicated to the defining of detailed implementation steps including rewriting of ICANN's bylaws.

The GAC expects to be closely involved in the development of these implementation steps.

The GAC encourages ICANN to consider whether it should continue to operate a registry and a root server.

While acknowledging ICANN's recent efforts to clarify the process steps involved, the GAC considers that progress on ccTLD redelegations still requires strong continuous action.

Further, to this, the GAC acknowledges the commitment of the GAC and the ccTLD community to reflect on what steps might be taken to improve the interactions between ICANN, local governments or public authorities, and the ccTLDs.

That shows the main text of the statement, but if I can please read two annexes to the statement.

And in reading the annexes, certainly for the first one I will point out the references to the subject areas that they refer to.

So annex 1 refers to physical paragraph 9 which talked about public private partnership.

And this annex is wording offered by the delegations from France and Germany.

The GAC members agree that, at this stage, the GAC is the main forum for the international discussion of public policy issues that may arise in ICANN's sphere of competence, along with the competent international organizations; for example, the ITU, OECD and WIPO.

Due to the evolutionary nature of ICANN's mission, a different organization of government participation on a different legal basis may be contemplated in the future.

The second paragraph of annex 1 refers to GAC information.

And this is the – refers to the issue of information being shared, and the delegations of Germany and Spain offered the following text.

Governments and public authorities are responsible for the pursuit of public policy objectives.

Where ICANN's activities are likely to involve public policy implications, the GAC calls for compulsory prior consultation by ICANN with the GAC.

The GAC and ICANN should seek to define in advance which areas involve such implications.

The final paragraph in annex 1 is offered from the delegation of Germany and deals with the issue of where this conflict, potential conflict, between a board consideration and GAC advice.

When there is an ICANN board majority against a GAC advice, the matter should be further discussed in good faith between the ICANN board and the GAC with a view to reaching an agreement.

Decisions taken by the ICANN board against a GAC advice do not prejudice any steps governments may decide to take in order to protect the public interest.

In all cases, ICANN should inform the GAC on how its advice has been taken into account.

Finally on this topic, I refer you to annexure 2.

It reads, "the international telecommunications union disassociates itself from portions of this document."

Chair, that's the – if you'd like the second stage of this report which is formally the statement, there are a couple of other administrative things but perhaps we can stop now for the statement.

>>Vinton Cerf: Yes, I think that would be a useful step, Paul.

Are there any other questions or issues the board wants to raise specifically with regard to the report from the GAC?

I have one question which I would not necessarily ask an answer for, but something to take back for consideration.

This is the first time that I can recall that a report from the GAC has contained appendices, annexes indicating varying opinions from the various participants in the GAC.

And I think it's not surprising that there should be such variations.

It's – these are all complex.

>>: Louder.

>>Vinton Cerf: Are you having trouble hearing me?

I'm sorry.

I thought I was speaking directly into the microphone.

I believe this is the first time we've seen annexes in the report that indicate some differences of opinion among the various members of the GAC which are communicated to us.

In particular, the question of how one deals with advice that may come from the GAC.

If it comes in a form which is not uniform and if it comes in a form where there are differences of view, I’m not sure I understand how we should treat that other than to imagine that there has to be some resulting discussion with the GAC, which might involve a number of different perspectives that have to be resolved.

So I take it that's the intent.

The only other thing I would suggest for clarification is that in the communiqué, the term ccTLDs is used fairly frequently. Is it intended that that means the operators of the ccTLDs?

>>Paul Twomey: Yes.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you.

>>Paul Twomey: I wonder if I might just making a – without responding to your point, and, I think, basically the board comes to its own conclusions in the circumstances.

But I wonder if I can make an observation as the chair.

As outlined in principle 48 in the outlining principles, the GAC aims toward consensus. But where it is not possible, it's explicit upon the chair of the GAC to explain the range of views to the board.

At the beginning of the founding process of ICANN, one public authority, one government or public authority put forward a green paper for discussion, and a number of others responded at a national public authority level.

And I think the feeling in the GAC was that if for such an important topic as the reform process and structure reform process, that it was actually good night appropriate and not at all a sense of failure that people had different perspectives than the national perspectives.

Nevertheless, the members did as much as possible to try to decide where there was consensus and share that. But I don't think there's any sense in the GAC that having separate views expressed on certain points is any way a sense of failure. We think it's an appropriate way to express the views at an important time.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you. That input, of course, is always valued, even if it does come in various and sundry ways.

I think we have some questions that – coming from the floor.

>>Peter Dengate Thrush: Peter Dengate Thrush.

Could I echo and support Mr. Twomey's – on the success of the first working group between the ccTLDs and the GAC. We look forward to that developing into a productive way of a relationship between our two organizations.

Our view, of course, is that that is a much better way of establishing policy exchanges and discussions than the static, structural solution of a fixed nominee.

We think that the process we have started is likely to be much more productive.

Paul (inaudible), we'll ask the same – we're the only group that has the breadth of linguistic and other diversity. When we change regions, another whole group of countries arrive. And at this meeting, there are, for example, my own government couldn't afford to come. And we have a problem when we reach a policy decision that not only represents the ccTLD members meeting at the meeting. And it's a perennial debate as to how binding such a decision is.

We try and go back onto our lists and say, well, this was the decision of Bucharest, well, this was the decision of Cairo, and give the ccTLDs who couldn't be at the meeting an opportunity to contribute. I wonder particularly in light of the expressions of clearly strongly held differences in relation to the most important issues in relation to reform, whether you're going to open perhaps a list up for other countries who can't be here to subscribe to either the Franco-German position or the ITU position or the majority position so that some clarity or some additional input can be received.

>>Paul Twomey: Thanks, Peter. It's a good point. The first thing, I think, people should be aware of is the degree to which the GAC is committed to doing outreach.

The condition to which the GAC chair and secretariat have communicated to, well, at least 179 governments or public authorities on several occasions about what the GAC does, and issuing up invitations.

We also run a list amongst our members. And we have quite a number of members who don't attend our meetings and participate online or we take information. This will be available.

I think just as is common for governments experienced in any number of organizations, be they formed by international treaty or be they formed simply by agreement, there's a range, as you can imagine, of governments who participate in them many times.

The GAC has a rule in its operation which is similar to other cases, that you have to operate on a quorum process where there is actually a meeting.

So in terms of taking views and conveying them, of course, we shall. In terms of being able to say, "this was the position of the GAC, according to operating principles," which, by the way, our operating principles are basically based on the world trade organization operating principles, we work on the principle that at the meeting, if there's a quorum and the quorum comes to a decision, then that is actually the decision. It's a balance between getting continuous feedback and actually having some certainty at a particular time.

But we take your point.

I would go further, peter, and actually ask for your colleagues' help and assistance in our communication and identification of government officials at the appropriate level in the appropriate countries.

It doesn't want to diminish in any way the interactions and great advantage we can get from our members in the international treaty organizations. But many of your members actually know which parts of governments may well be involved. And it might make it much easier in terms of us identifying the right people. This is a request we've made several times, but I would re-make it in terms of if you think there are people who are the appropriate people to be in contact with, we'd be very happy to know who they are.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you, Paul. I think that's a very constructive recommendation.

Jamie.

>>Jamie Love: Paul, I – as I read your presentation, the GAC is asserting itself more and more in sort of the policy-making arena as far as DNS type things are concerned.

In some ways being inserted between international organizations and the board are --

>> Louder.

>>Jamie Love: Sorry. Can you hear me better now? Is that --

So I’d just like to point out that as far as end user or consumer type interest, we feel like we're being unwelcomed in the normal ICANN process. They're shutting down the forums where there's expressions that they don't like. They're shutting off free speech, eliminating the right for us to elect our leaders, even to express nonbinding votes. You know, they've gone from 9 elected members in the white paper to five in Cairo, to a proposal for 3 being bandied about, down to less on a 19-member nominating committee. An at-large system basically managed by the staff and all top down and like that --

>>Vinton Cerf: Do you have a question, Jamie?

>>Jamie Love: Yes, I do. If you want to talk for me, you can talk for me, but I came a long ways for an opportunity to be here. Most people couldn't afford it because the ICANN board didn't pay their way. I paid my own way to be here.

>>Alejandro Pisanty: Jamie, but is this going to be a question to call to me or is this a question to the committee which will be forthcoming?

>>Jamie Love: This is a question to Paul, rather.

>>Alejandro Pisanty: If it's going to --

>>Jamie Love: Do you want to cut me off like every time today?

>>Alejandro Pisanty: I am asking you to direct it to the right person. To me or to the GAC person?

>>Jamie Love: Yes, yes, and yes again.

And because we have these problems, we want you to pay more attention to civil society concerns and consumer interest. Don't tell us to talk to the ICANN board, because they don't pay attention to us. If you don't notice what's going on, if you're not watching what's happening in the discussion list, if you don't see what's going on, then you're blind and you're not doing your job. If the GAC is going to take the policy thing seriously, you have to tell us where we can go to talk about policy, to talk about competition policy, to talk about privacy issues, talk about all of these kind of things. Because a lot of it's not going to happen in this forum.

If it's going to be you, tell us it's you. If it's going to be, you know, some international organization, just write it on the board which one it is.

But at some point, more and more people are going to try and find out who it is in the governments. These people are taking away our right to vote. We still get to vote for governments in some countries. Certainly in your country, certainly my country.

Because of that, we want to know, who are we supposed to talk to about policy issues when the official, you know, sort of, you know, ICANN governance structure is cutting us off.

>>Paul Twomey: Thanks, Jamie. I don't think I could – I don't think I could say – you've put me in somewhat of a difficult position. Because I don't think I could say anything to the board other than what's in our text. I think there's the sort of statements there about the values that we've put forward in the report which are consistent with many of the things you're saying. I certainly can reconfirm for you that one of the great interests and concerns of the GAC – actually, there's two.

One is very much the point you're talking about when it comes to what we keep referring to as the public interest. I think we see the public interest as being an expansive phrase to include the sort of issues you're talking about. That is a value and a value we – our members promote.

The second point I would make to you was made in open session with the GAC and several parts of the constituency on Tuesday, is that there's a constant warning from the GAC to ICANN, which is, do not become a trade association.

The members of the GAC, I don't think, would be at all comfortable and have actually several times given warning that as the GAC – as the ICANN process develops, if it were simply to evolve into a series of groups and committees representing the supply side or different aspects of the DNS (inaudible) net system, it would lose legitimacy in the eyes of the governments, in the sense it would simply become an international trade association and not have balance around end users and public interests governments think of as important.

(inaudible) is a chair of a group of 36 people who have just gone through three and a half days of intense attempts at common language. So I can't sort of speak beyond my mandate. But I can report to you that in – this is a matter of open record, that that has been a consistent message that has been conveyed by myself in communiqués and in text at meetings I think three or four times in the last two – two or three times in the last four years. It is a message several members have given directly in this process. I know it's an issue that we reconfirmed again on Tuesday in our position. I don't want you to feel the issues you are raising are not issues that are not sympathetic to the sort of interests that governments have in mind, nor do I think you should take away any sort of view that the governments are you – are the things that governments want to see cut out. They are concerned about the same sorts of issues.

I feel a little bit constrained that I can't go beyond what I’ve actually talked about in terms of anything in terms of the reform or evolutionary process.

>>Jamie Love: It would be helpful if you would give us a direct --

>>Paul Twomey: I would point out, again, on – to a degree, there's a limitation where GAC can move as a group versus where members of governments and public authorities can.

I would point out to you that the government of Australia, the government of the United Kingdom both have had open public processes underway concerning this reform process.

And I would interpret as is – well, one could interpret that – one aspect of the American governmental system in terms of action of the congress that there have been hearings in the congress, which is a form of consultation process. I'm not trying to speak for the type of executive. But, I mean, there have been active processes, and members of the GAC have told us also of informal processes with the sorts of constituencies you're talking about in their home jurisdictions. So what the GAC as sort of a committee may actually see to people may be limited because of what it actually is in terms of a structure within ICANN. What its members are doing, I think, is actually, at least in the example I gave you, is actually quite different. And I think that is one of the challenges. And we do try at the GAC level to make that point in our web site, for instance, and other places, we put out all the GAC members, those who attend, and ask people to get in contact with their local governmental member.

That avenue is not closed off. But there are limits of what the GAC as a separate entity can do within the context of a bylaw, in terms of operating in ICANN.

>>Jamie Love: Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much, Paul. Esther.

>>Esther Dyson: First of all, I’d like to disassociate myself from the previous question.

But then I would like to ask the following. I know you made no statement on it, so you cannot.

But within the framework of the ERC document, the Blueprint, it seems it would be possible to create a more formal structure that would deal with public input, otherwise known as the at-large whatever whatever. And we're curious if that even came up in an explicit way and whether you think that's an appropriate thing to have within ICANN, even though you also represent the public in a different way.

>>Paul Twomey: Yeah. Well, let me go back. Because of my position and the text, I can't really answer the second question as to what I – I think would be appropriate for structure, because --

>>Esther Dyson: But was it raised?

>>Paul Twomey: Let's go to the first question.

The answer is, yes, those issues were raised. They were raised fairly consistently throughout our process, which was two intercessional meetings and discussions.

And I would make the observation about the distinctions between recognition of need and perceptions of affected outcome and process.

And it was a wide, varietous conversation. I don't want anybody in the community to go away with the feeling that these issues are not actively in the minds of the governments they're talking about. Nor that per se they think the government alone is the vehicle for some sort of expression of that, although the governments clearly think they have a major role in saying that.

>>Esther Dyson: So the need was raised, and the question is whether there's an effective way to meet that need? Okay. Thanks.

(Laughter.)

>>Paul Twomey: What I have written, I have written.

>>Ramesh Nadorajah: Thank you. I'll keep my question short.

There was a recommendation by the ERC that there be, I think, multi- – I can't remember the words.

I took that to mean that there should be more involvement between ICANN and GAC in terms of the meetings itself.

A good first step has been taken between the ccTLDs and the GAC. Is there any intention to expand upon that? And was it ever brought up to have – well, I suppose what I’m asking is, do we – can we expect GAC meetings to be more open?

(Laughter.)

>>Paul Twomey: You're not a journalist, are you? That's a great question. Ask four questions and ask the one with the stinger in the tail.

Let me answer the first four questions. When it comes to more like a consultation, I think there was a sense of, by some members, that there might be value in actually having that open – more open discussion with the board on some occasions.

I think the cc experience has been a good experience. And I think that's building on. I think let's also not kid ourselves. This stuff is a learning process and it's a trust-building process. If we go back to Santiago, you know, there was a fair amount of hate and fire going on between those two constituencies. Now, that's gradually moved. It's moved for two reasons. I think it's moved because of getting to know and building trust. And, secondly, because the Internet world out there is changing very quickly. As a consequence, the forces have that.

I think similar with the board, the question about being open or not.

We are certainly going to talk about external things driving change because of the whole process of change that Stuart sort of initiated here at ICANN. I think some of the calls by the chair and others about looking at our own processes has got greater sort of urgency now. And the GAC's actually going to have its own process of looking at the way it operates in shanghai.

I keep having to come back to share a problem with you. And the problem I have to share with you is, I don't know how many of you have actually been to international conferences. Sort of where governments come along. What you normally find is you come along, and when the governments turn up, there's some whole list of people one after the other droning on, reading out some long text that nobody in the room wants to listen to. And that's the purpose of the text, so that nobody will listen to it. Because the real reality is, in a hotel three doors down, the deal is getting done in a corridor. That's how things work, the international conference on climate control, cbd, you name it, that's how that system works. Because the ability – it's the ability to do a deal. It's no different in business.

Now, my challenge – my challenge is I’m trying to find more ways of being open, at the same time, not to have – that outcome is not what you want. You don't want that sort of outcome. It's less accountable than the present one.

So as the chair, what I’m trying as much as possible, and other members are agreeing with this, that when we need to be in camera so we can actually talk properly, we can be; but we are trying to increase the amount of time in our meetings that are open to other constituencies and to be more communicative of what we're doing. And this meeting, I think, we had, you know, 20% of our time period was open. We're getting better.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you, Paul.

Marilyn.

>>Marilyn Cade: Paul, the BC has been a strong supporter of private-sector leadership from the days that precede ICANN's launch and continue to do so.

However, we have also been a strong supporter of the need to increase consultation and interaction between the GAC and the policy-making SOs. We have submitted that in writing in some of our submissions. We've said that to you and others in the GAC.

However, seeing for the first time, and I understand that it was developed here, but seeing for the first time a 40-point communiqué with a very high number of changes in the influence and presence of government in ICANN and throughout its various processes, what impact do you see these recommendations, if all are implemented, having on the private-sector leadership?

>>Paul Twomey: You be good.

You will have seen that there was a range – you will have perceived a range of views on special things, on special topics, one after the other, by governments and distinct economies.

However, the key theme throughout all of this document and as a point of consensus is support by the GAC members for a not-for-profit private sector organization operating this function. And that's – that supports --

>>Marilyn Cade: I’m sorry. Could I just ask, is there a key phrase. When you say "private sector entity," does that include private sector leadership?

>>Paul Twomey: I would think that if you were to draw the conclusions from the structural – the structural Blueprint which emerges out of the ICANN statement, that the vast input to the ICANN process is technical and private sector.

If you were to – the reform committee has come up with a series of committees – organizationals and advisory committees going to the ICANN board, there's nothing in this document which says "get rid of the TAC, get rid of this, that, have two committees and this bunch and the government." there is nothing saying that at all. There has been no criticism or statement made about the nature of the input communities. And you can draw your conclusions, therefore, about the comfort with the sorts of people doing that and driving that.

This statement has focused purely upon the issue about how do you express a closer public/private sector partnership.

>>Marilyn Cade: I take that as an assurance from the chair of the GAC that there is support from the GAC for continued leadership of the private sector?

(Laughter.)

>>Paul Twomey: You may interpret it as you wish.

(Laughter.)

(Applause.)

>>Paul Twomey: The reality is, you're going to.

>> It's not fair following Marilyn to microphones.

>>Vinton Cerf: It sounds like it's almost time for a break, doesn't it. I think – I hope this could be the last question in this session, because we are very behind schedule now, please.

>>Adam Peake: Adam Peake from Glocom in Tokyo.

Two quick questions.

You used public policy and public interest. And these are terms that are often quite difficult to define culturally. I know we've had those problems doing work on the at large and trying to put those words into sort of context. It means different things in Japan to what it does in the u.s. and elsewhere.

I wonder if you could help clarify now or later what you do mean quite specifically by those terms and the area that is they might cover.

>>Paul Twomey: Seeing that you asked me and not the GAC, I will give an answer, not a GAC answer.

>> Adam Peake: At some time, would you clarify for the GAC?

>>Paul Twomey: Hear the answer. There is a slight distinction, and they're important.

The public interest, I think, is an evaluation and judgment and expression of those – of what is in the interest of the broader community.

It picks up a lot of the things that Jamie was talking about and which I would describe as being more free-flowing in the policy and political environment of governments. It's something that's being judged on a regular basis.

Public policy tends to have more of a formal process of expressing aspects of that. So a policy-making process is often about producing laws or producing particular frameworks or producing particular policies, while, you know, public interest is something which can be expressed on more of an aspect of day-to-day judgment. But it's a question of degree of the (inaudible).

>> Adam Peake: It may be worth trying to define it from the GAC's point of view, or you'll get back into the problem we had with the ICANN mission of what does – what do some of these terms mean. If you don't define it, then we're going to be arguing about what does --

>>Paul Twomey: There is – you can inverse this and say there is in some respect a reflection of what you are saying. Because the GAC (inaudible) talks quite strongly about applauding the idea of expert advisory groups in areas that relate to public policy. And you'll see the sort of examples that were given are often the sort of entities that are specifically focused in the public policy aspect, actually, the formal creation of public policy. So that's been distinguished. That's not saying the GAC itself doesn't have a role in that. But there's been no description of talking about advice for the public interest. The GAC has seen that very much as part of a role of the members of the GAC.

>>Vinton Cerf: Okay. Andy has a comment. And that should be the last – well, I guess not. Amadeu has one. Please, let's let these please be the last two. Because I really want to get to the next subject. Andy.

>>Andy Mueller-Maguhn: Just a personal question. I saw some difficulties from you answering questions for the whole GAC. And that's why I am asking this question to you as a person and not as a representative of the GAC.

The question is, if that kind of difficulties is also visible for representatives of governments within the GAC speaking for the whole government.

>>Paul Twomey: Sorry. When you say speaking for the whole government --

>>Andy Mueller-Maguhn: Do you have representatives of governments within the GAC? And I, of course, respect, and I see you have, of course, difficulties answering questions for the whole GAC.

So my question is, how is it within the GAC? Isn't it the same way, that GAC or members of the GAC speaking for whole governments have the same kind of difficulty speaking for the whole governments, watching the amount of different opinions within governments, within countries?

>>Paul Twomey: Andy, that's a – it's an issue that governments deal with, have dealt with for about 4- or 5000 years. So they've actually got some protocols for it.

If I can just make this point.

Several members of the GAC arrived at this meeting with ministerial briefs where this issue had gone through right to the ministers. Others came with cross-government supported briefs, with briefs that had been established at high levels of ministries. So there's a process inside for how can you go away anywhere and say, "I’m talking for the government."

As far as governments talking for all governments, I think we've actually dealt with that issue earlier, which is about the nature of attachment.

>>Vinton Cerf: Amadeu.

>>Amadeu Abril i Abril: Yeah, thanks. I will try to keep it short because your statement was very long, and there were lots of questions regarding that.

But I need your help trying to understand something, not only because your English is the most difficult one in the ICANN community. Even our stenos have problem sometimes to follow you, but also because you have to speak this special GAC dialect of English.

In one part, there's something saying that regarding the Blueprint, know that proposals should be sent to the GAC, there is a remark saying that they should be, though, in a timely way, somehow underlined.

Should I interpret that somehow the GAC is considering that this time has not been timely enough and that you would like having more time for discussing these reforms? Or I am completely misplaced in understanding that.

The second question is simple. Is there any difference as "noting with interest" in the past and just "noting" that you are doing today?

>>Paul Twomey: It's a question of degree.

I think nothing and nothing – noting and noting with interest are small degrees of difference.

Your question about timing, I think what the GAC is saying in the communiqué and to (inaudible) in the reform document is partly the other side of the coin of Andy’s question, which is, if government representatives are going to come and say this is the perspective of a particular government or particular groups of governments, they actually need the time to go and have their consultation.

And as you know, government's not monolithic. There's actually lots of points of view. That's really been the basis of that reaction.

As far as the timeliness of the process here, I would say the process here affected to what's been – both in Accra and then again in our statement here, we've actually outlined our view about the timing and process around reform, which I think are broadly consistent with what's being followed.

>>Vinton Cerf: All right. Thank you very much, Paul, for developing such an extensive commentary for us.

We have a lot to chew on, I think. Thank you very much for your report.

You have one more item?

>>Paul Twomey: Yeah, there's just one more thing I should share with the board and with the community.

And I have been asked to communicate this on behalf of the Australian government.

Just to state that the Australian government's actually committed to the orderly transmission of the GA secretariat, GAC secretariat functions during this transition period, and that Australia will hold discussions with some other governments to secure this process as soon as possible. But to inform that you the secretariat function for the GAC will continue to operate in Australia for the time being while these discussions are concluded, and that the chair of the GAC is now in a position to continue to work out the chair's term rather than resigning as of the end of the shanghai meeting. In effect, that actually only means an extra meeting, because the term finishes in March. But that means I will be seeing you in March, I think.

(Applause.)

>>Vinton Cerf: I think I can speak for the board that Australia's generosity and willingness to continue this support is extremely well received and very grateful for it.

And we will work diligently to assure a smooth transition to another form of support.

Ladies and gentlemen, we've now reached the point where we should be talking about the ICANN evolution and reform report I note that we are about an hour later in the schedule. I also committed to the hotel that we would take a break at 3:00, so I suggest that we consider the possibility – it's – what about taking – they really don't want us out there until 3:00 so I think we'll have to start the presentation and stop it at some point near 3:00, and then continue from there.

And I apologize for having to break it up that way.

But if I could call on the vice-chairman Alejandro Pisanty, who is the chairman of the evolution and reform committee, to begin his report.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you're planning to leave the room because you're not interested in evolution and reform, please do so quickly and quietly because we are going to start this report now.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to call the room to order, please.

(knocking on table).

>>Vinton Cerf: The room will come to order, please.

Will you standing with the door open, would you kindly close the door in the back, if we could have the doors close please. Thank you very much.

And I call upon Alejandro Pisanty to present the Blueprint for ICANN Reform, as it currently exists.

Evolution and Reform

>>Alejandro Pisanty: Mr. Chairman, fellow members of the board, fellow members of the ICANN community present here, I am charged very – I’m very honored to be charged – the presenter is also the work on the ICANN committee on evolution and reform.

Which I think condensed in the Blueprint that has been circulated which what we felt was ample time for discussion, more than two days.

(Laughter.)

>>Alejandro Pisanty: Considering the cycle we went through during the process, this is really one more of many tenths of iteration time than we used to, in a very rich manner with input from the community.

I would like to go through this presentation with the following outline, describe very quickly the committee itself, the work that was done, the time line and the effort that has gone into this reform proposal.

To speak a little bit about the way in which the interaction with the community was conducted and the way that – the avenues we opened for listening and for a structured discussion with the community, describe the Blueprint itself and some steps to be taken further.

The committee was formed by myself as the chair, by Lyman Chapin, Philip Davidson, who unfortunately retired from the ICANN board and therefore from the committee before long but left us with very significant input; by Hans Kraaijenbrink and Nii Quaynor.

I would like to note the very ample functional and geographic diversity that this committee has, even being only a committee of five.

There's continents, regions, different SOs, technical and policy people, there's really a wide variety of views included even in this small committee.

And I have to acknowledge very gladly a continuous and extremely high quality and high intensity staff report from Stuart Lynn, Louis Touton, Andrew McLaughlin, and the other part that's very important to acknowledge is this is not only the work of a committee, not only a work of committee of directors plus staff, this is enormously the work of the community.

This is work in which every part of the ICANN community has contributed.

We have been able to input and to recognize a lot of the input that we obtained.

The work we did was based in many ways it's a continuation of the intellectual work, at least, done for the previous DNSO review which had several parts.

And the previous at-large review, which we had studied as it went, as it was done, and particularly with its final results.

And of course, our charge from the board was to start our work on the basis of the paper, "the case for reform" by Stuart Lynn.

Which tells us also this is an effort that was basically, starting February, if you want, but formally this committee was charged in March – in the middle of March.

It's only three months ago, and plus a week or two, that we got our charge.

And this has really been an all-volunteer effort done in a short time and I will attest to the number of iterations.

I'm going into this for a moment because I think it's important for the board and community to know how much and from how many places the results have come.

The discussions of the committee took place through e-mail, not only of the committee but the interactions with the community, through e-mail, through a web-based forum, through a number of teleconferences.

There was a board retreat which we used, in particular, to send the board – to get the sense of the board and find out where it was wishing to go and not to go in the reform process.

So further, we had a large number of published documents from different stakeholders in the community.

This went around the clock and around the world during a period of a few months during which many members of the committee also went through several draining events in their own work lives.

This is a huge effort that has been put upon by people who otherwise were facing layoff restructurings and a number of other sizable events in the work that actually feeds their families.

The way, it's important to hear again, the way we receive the input and elicit the input, because not all of it was forthcoming, was attending meetings, communicating directly with some people, indirectly, and through people like our President and CEO, through people who are already familiar, who served as ambassadors, liaisons, and no other ways to communicate with the key stakeholders in this process.

We think we were successful in establishing a form of structured discussion by bringing out successive drafts of documents, different ways of thinking.

That means not only subjecting our conclusions or finished work to public comment but also to share the reasoning that was going on and having this be a process of collective thought, collective idea production together with the community.

And I think that's been one of the, personally, most attractive and interesting parts of this process, to be really reasoning together with people with diverse interests and views, sometimes opposing interests, conflicts in principles, and yet we were able to do this, different levels of collaboration in successive drafts of the document, to set out specific questions and queries to the community and get a lot of feedback on them.

I would like to acknowledge in particular that we were – it's not only for the particularity of the Names Council, but the way the process is converged between the Names Council and the committee; that there were a large number of teleconferences, and the back and forth between the committee and Names Council as it was with other parts of the ICANN community was very intense, and it came, again through a strong sense of convergence.

It doesn't place anybody in particular.

It's the general sense we get of it right now is that most people know where they disagree.

They know where there's no real point in pressing harder for getting absolutely everything stated the way they like it or built the way they would imagine it, but they are able to live with the result we have, believing that also the process we have started, which will be a process of continuous change and reform in ICANN, not continuous upheaval but continuous gradual change, and continued communication with these people, make them trust ICANN, the way it will work. I'll go over the Blueprint, , briefly because I assume it has been read, but it will be on the published part of the Blueprint and the papers that precede it.

We tried to address some of the most important criticisms that we have been receiving in the last years, and the needs posed by Stuart Lynn with this paper, which most of the community agrees, even if not in the solutions he proposed are not fully, there's almost complete agreement in the identification and prioritization of the problems he posed.

There's a clear definition of mission, and it's not only a mission of what we do or should be doing, but also the core values to which we adhere when we make decisions.

And an explanation which we hope is satisfactory and we've been told by many that it is.

Of how the technical coordination function in each of its steps requires making decisions, and in order to eliminate or reduce opportunities of arbitrariness of these positions, and in order not to proceed in an ad hoc basis continuously, there is the need for, what we will call, policy, which has been clearly defined in the paper also; that is, to have a general framework for this decision-making, particularly in those decisions that have a large, wide affect in the community.

Personally, I have been very concerned about the question of legitimacy, the political concept of legitimacy is all important.

ICANN has to continually worry about this concept.

The concept of legitimacy is one of these cultural things is why do you have different meanings in different cultures and even different political parties within each country and culture.

We worry about legitimacy through representation, through the way that people that feel affected by the process think that they can speak to the process, to this representation of factor of legitimacy which is more traditionally political.

And we also are very concerned, and Stuart was right on the spot by pointing this problem, we may be as legitimate as we want to people who are making us do what we do, but we may not be legitimate enough if we're not credible enough to the people that have to abide by our proposals or the people that have to continue supporting ICANN.

So we have tried to redo the balance between legitimacy as the result of representation and to the very essential factor of credibility.

Correct will come from an effective organization that can keep its business in order, that can do what it has to do in a time that's reasonable for its – for those affected.

And we look to still have an open, transparent organization which can be effective.

The ways to be open and transparent are open.

The ways to be effective are not that many, so we have had to concentrate on being effective and keeping the ways for openness and transparency, instead of starting with a democratic ideal, utopian organization which is open and transparent, but which if it doesn't care for the purposes it serves, it will not be effective enough.

The governance and the structure that are contained in the Blueprint have the following general features.

First is very strong emphasis, and this took us a lot of time and effort to make sure that we wanted this and that we reflected the community's wishes on that to have intermediate policy development by the supporting organizations and the committees.

We see – I will start our discussion on some of these issues myself.

We see with great concern, for example, smaller groups than we have identified, fractions of what we have identified as supporting organizations, attempting to form a supporting organization by themselves, because we believe that that will fractionalize the approach and in the end undermine the idea of the policy develop.

The policy development is not wide enough in the principles that they contain and bring into discussion, then what we will have is finally no intermediate level, everybody coming directly to the board and having the board solve everything.

We don't support that concept.

We want the policy development to come through these supporting organizations and committees.

That's a definite commitment that we have.

Also, it's brought in with the board and that's one thing you can count on that my forecast is that this board will absolutely not budge on the idea that policy development has to come bottom-up through legitimate organizations, and these have to be wide-ranging enough to bring really well-developed policies forward.

There's a board of directors and a nominating committee.

I will comment for a second on the nominating committee concept because it also shows the way ideas and principles evolved during the discussion and during the drafting of this set of documents.

The nominating committee idea as proposed first has been criticized now because it doesn't do nominations for some further purpose of selection or election or confirmation or anything else.

The first ideas and discussion were to have a nominating committee to come up with nominations, proposals of names, and to have someone else who would be, according to many proposals, the board ratifying or designating these individuals for the board function.

This was scrapped in order to have a self-perpetuating board, which was one of the main criticisms we've had not to become a self-perpetuating organization.

I can tell you for every single person sitting up front, it doesn't want to be self-perpetuating.

It wants to be stable, wants to guarantee a quality of operation, but it wants to have a process for renewal and for input of fresh viewpoints, ideas, or what's called fresh blood but I was told in Transylvania it's not polite to use that term, or I would be offering my own in whatever degree of staleness it is already.

So this avoidance of a closed cycle and inbreeding is one of the first changes you see here.

However, we kept this name of nominating committee maybe too routinely.

We are changing the nature and the name of the DNSO, the present domain name supporting organization.

Most of its functions and most of its present components go to form part of the GNSO, which is the generic name supporting organization, which is designed to provide policy input on generic TLD naming issues.

It contains user constituencies provider constituencies, gives formation of new constituencies and it has a major change.

It has been criticized as being overly proscriptive but we think there are reasons for doing this.

The general assembly is to be conceived as a cross-constituency form.

There's no objection on my part and I don't sense any objection on the part of the committee for groups to form that are not in the present constituencies.

There's a lack of individuals, especially individual domain name holders constituencies, which can sort issues which of are interest to individual domain name holders.

There's a number of very generic interests that come together.

There's nothing against the formation of groupings and their expression and self-organization; .

What we do want is to preserve a cross-constituency forum which has been lost in the DNSO, and that's a cause of major pain in the present DNSO; the fact that there's no real space for communicating cross-constituencies other than the Names Council where people actually go and communicate.

It's not that the space is there but that it can actually be used for this communication.

We move the issues related to country coded or to what we will call now country names, of course the specific term will be ccTLD related issues, but it's not only the issues that are of importance for ccTLD administrators.

This organization is called upon to provide input, in general, from the point of view of what happens under country names.

The policy development needed there.

But that will include a lot of issues, and not only the interests of the ccTLDs.

We are being – we are in strong recognition of the work that the ccTLDs do.

Our intensive discussions during these past few weeks have given me personally at least a high recognition of the work and quality of people that are in the ccTLD community.

But we have stated very specifically that what ICANN has to include is not a trade association or a labor union of ccTLD administrators.

It has to bring in the ccTLD administrators in such a way that they contribute to the general policy making and decision-making, and therefore to the coordination function of ICANN.

And we see a value of a holistic organization instead of a fractionalized one.

And finally the ASO which I will be brief about, has been analyzed to be in good shape and we're basically keeping it, and we have been in touch with this community and stating we may have lost touch, and we think we are finding ways to keeping continuous communication to ASO and to tell the ASO what we are telling many others.

Don't be so much concerned about what you would lose by participating in ICANN or what ICANN – what damage ICANN can inflict you; tell us how we can work together in such a way that your contributions to the rest of the people can be better used.

In particular, the ASO has a very strong tradition of bottom-up participation.

It identifies very well who is a key stakeholder, who has to be there in the process and that's one of the traditions we want to see expanded to the rest of ICANN.

There are committees which are the governmental advisory committee which you have seen is calling for the same thing we are calling, which is improved communications, improved forms of participation.

We'll try to make that more later on in – it's more a process than a structure issue, how to make those communications happen.

The root server problem that was pointed out by Stuart Lynn in his paper is still recognized by many ICANN board members.

I can say that – let me be a little bit congenial about it.

It's one of the few points where I can see that Karl Auerbach and Stuart Lynn have expressed very closely related views.

Karl Auerbach is one of the – sorry to speak in the name of someone that's absent, but I think that his voice would be lost otherwise.

He is one of those concerned that the root server operations should be professional, should be paid for, and there should be a contract that can provide even a service level agreement there.

However, all the sense we got from the community, from all sectors of the community, is if it ain't broken, don't fix it.

If it's working well and these people are working extremely well, the community in general, Internet community, not only the ICANN community is very thankful for the effort and the result that the root server community provides, and therefore, don't touch it for now.

The security advisory committee has already spoken here, and I can only say it will have a very welcome role.

It's not only seen for the security aspect but also as a key representative of technical opinion.

There's the issue of a technical advisory committee which is still in the way of being resolved in final form, but which essentially brings two aspects, which is technical advice, per se, and advice on how the technical standards process is being developed.

And the nominating committee.

The nominating committee is designed explicitly and only to select directors and a few other people that have to go into the structure according to the Blueprint.

It's not a super government of ICANN.

It's not a super governing body.

It's only there for designating people.

In a caricature, some people have pointed out it looks like an indirect election, with not that many elections but an indirect process from that community to the board, but which goes over the top instead of through the middle, through the waist.

And in this committee, there are people that are – that come from the following communities: The gTLD registries, gTLD registrars, ccTLD registries, address registries, Internet service providers, large business users small business users.

There's some differentiation here, in order to make sure these voices can really, in turn, make sure that the directors that are appointed will be sensitive to their interests, or – and/or principles.

Intellectual property related organizations, academic and other public service entities, consumer and civil society groups, individual domain name holders, the Internet architecture board and the IETF, the technical advisory committee, the governmental advisory committee.

As you have seen, this is still an ongoing discussion again.

And unaffiliated persons who are known for their stewardship for the capability of representing the public interest in a general worldwide geographically diversified manner.

There's a diagram here – I don't know, Lyman, if you want to present it.

I'll interrupt for a second here.

>>Lyman Chapin: Actually, for simplicity, I’ll stay here instead of crowding around the podium with you.

This picture, I want to thank Alexander Svensson who has done an excellent job, the first after we may 31st and a three-part version after we posted the June 20th Blueprint for reform.

The intent is to give in a single-page overview a sense of what the structure of a reformed ICANN would be.

Necessarily, when you put this in diagrammatic form, you are forced to leave some things out.

But I think the key things that emerge from a picture like this, is first of all, the balance between how you go about ensuring that you populate ICANN's board with a broad spectrum of qualified people versus the way in which you ensure that the operations of ICANN can be successfully pursued.

And one of the things that has been very important to the evolution and reform committee, as we've talked to people in the community and as we've talked amongst ourselves, is ensuring that there is an adequate structure for the support of the people who actually perform from both an operations and policy development standpoint the work of ICANN, what you might call the core mission of ICANN, while at the same time balancing that with sufficient and adequate representation for a very much larger population of people and groups who have a legitimate interest in what ICANN does but are not necessarily direct participants in the things that ICANN actually does on a day-to-day basis.

The specifics on this diagram, if I have been fortunate in putting it together, are precisely aligned with and the same as the description that Alejandro just went through.

What I propose to do is make use of this diagram during a period of question and answer and open mike and so forth, because I think that if we can draw people back to this, it may help to structure that discussion.

I will add one additional item which is not currently part of the Blueprint but which we have been developing in conversations during the course of this week, and I will do so with the prefatory admonition that this is something that has just been – just recently been entered into the discussion.

It is not something that has been discussed fully, even amongst the board as a whole.

Only within the evolution and reform committee.

And therefore, is something that may change in large or small ways before it actually receives the approval of the board.

And that is if you look over on the right-hand side of this picture, we have nonvoting liaisons on the board, and there's the list of the four standing advisory committees that we have in the Blueprint.

And one of the things that is on the table for discussion right now is adding to that list of advisory committees an at-large advisory committee or ALAC which would essentially mimic – or not mimic.

It would parallel in structure the technical advisory committee.

In other words, it would play two essential roles.

It would be available as a resource to pursue specific questions, much as the technical advisory committee is expected to be a resource to the board for pursuing specific technical questions.

It would also serve in an active watchdog role to ensure that at-large concerns are brought to the attention of the board and other parts of ICANN to guarantee or to guard against the possibility that those concerns might be overlooked.

And again, that's very similar to the second of the two roles that we've specified for the technical advisory committee.

The intent – and again, this is still a matter for discussion, but the intent is for the at-large advisory committee to have the same essential characteristics as the other advisory committees.

In other words, it would contribute a nonvoting liaison member to the ICANN board.

It would participate in a liaison capacity in the work of other organizations as appropriate, with the cross-liaison structure we're anticipating for ICANN as a whole.

It would appoint to the nominating committee, delegates to the nominating get, and in most other ways act as an advisory committee in the same ways as we have defined for the other four.

One of the key aspects of forming such a technical advisory committee will be to identify, obviously, the – what it means to be a representative of what the at-large study committee has called at-large structures.

It's very often the case that we see people come forward and claim to be representatives of large or small constituencies, and we believe it's extremely important for reasons of establishing legitimacy and effectiveness and the ability to operate with an understanding of who you're talking to that part of the mandate for the formation of a at-large advisory committee include explicit demonstrations of the extent to which the constituent bodies, the at-large structures of such a committee genuinely represent, in an effective and direct way, as opposed to a in-principle or in-theory way, the interests of the at-large community.

We happen to believe that there is in fact a high likelihood that such an at-large advisory committee can be formed under those conditions. And I’m – I’ll express some personal optimism that we will be able to take advantage of this ALAC structure to incorporate an at-large voice into the – both the policy-making deliberations and also the operational considerations of ICANN in a way that we've been trying to do now for quite a long time.

So with that, I’ll return the microphone to Alejandro.

>>Vinton Cerf: Alejandro, may I interrupt and make an observation that it's now about 11 minutes after the hour. I've been advised that coffee and refreshments are outside, that they will evaporate around – I’m losing track of time – at 3:45.

So may I suggest, if it's possible, that we take a break at this point and we return in 20 minutes, please. And we'll continue from there.

>> 3:30?

>>Vinton Cerf: 3:30.

(break.)

>>Vinton Cerf: Are we ready to begin again? I think we should just get started here.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to reconvene the meeting now.

It looks like a great many people are more interested in tea and coffee than they are in reform. But perhaps they will join us shortly.

Okay, please go ahead, Alejandro.

>>Alejandro Pisanty: Thank you, Vint.

I will go on and try to be – I’m in a bind here trying both to be more or less exhaustive in describing at least extensively the paper, if not in depth, and on the other hand trying to leave the most opportunity possible for the discussion for the public, face-to-face discussion for an important complement to the one we have been having online and by other means up to now.

So coming to the policy point, – coming to the point of policy, and policy development, first, what we did in the paper, as you know, is to define about what is understood in this proposal to be a policy decision or policy development. And that means, first of all, framework for a decision. Second, framework for more than one decision, let's say horizontally, or in time something that will have a more general application instead of being a point-by-point thing.

And also it's not a policy – a policy decision is not a decision that has to do with things like administrative things, things that are not for the public development or for the major ICANN decisions.

To have, then, lasting value and be a guide for future decisions or framework.

The process I have mentioned already, and I will be very brief now, has to be bottom-up, has to be consensus driven. As a preference. We will still have to work out during these last couple of days, we've been seeing that there are still details proposed which we may be able to incorporate into the process that will allow us a better definition of when the board has to intervene and say, okay, this is a process where we didn't obtain enough consensus or clear enough consensus or where there clearly will not be a consensus, and the board has to have the tools to still act in the face of it.

The improvement here is very important. One of the very clear – clearly identified problems that Stuart's paper gave us at the beginning of the year was the fact that there is too much process that ICANN gets very frequently bogged in process. And that's something that not only structural improvements alone will change, but we need to improve various process. It's not, as I have said repeatedly, the anatomy, but the physiology, the way it works that has to be improved.

And there we think that we have been able to define what one can define formally. The process will have to be approved by actually doing things. But then the Blueprint, what we can offer for the improvements of the policy development process is clear assignment to an appropriate – not just to leave something out there to be discussed by whoever comes in, but to assign it to a specific body that will be in charge. In the case that several different bodies could be interested in the – or this could be in the field of several different bodies, what we will be doing is to assign one of them the responsibility of conducting the policy development process.

There has to be a defined time scale. There has to be a defined process and time scale in particular for input into the process. There has to be a recommendation to the board after the process, after the discussions and whatever procedures are established by each body in the case.

There has to be a recommendation to the board. This recommendation to the board must record the inputs, the reasons, and the reasoning given behind or to promote these inputs. The report has to tell us what the consensus has been, if any consensus was reached; what were the (inaudible) for the points which were agreed, and who supports them, and who opposes them. And further, if there are dissenting opinions, then as has already been demonstrated by the GAC, it is – and that is done very usually in panels in other spheres, knowing what the dissenting opinions are is important. In some cases, the board may have to retrace part of the development process, the policy development process, and knowing all these inputs will save us a lot of time and will gain us a lot of legitimacy. We can continue the argumentation that has been in a community to develop the process.

Further, as part of the process, we have to open always the opportunity for advice from experts. And I have taken notes very carefully of the GAC proposal that these experts are not only called by ad hoc procedures or specifically for each problem, but also are institutionalized. In fact, this has been part of the discussions if you look at papers like the May 31st paper and compare it to the Blueprint, there's much more detail on how we should go on about the expert organizations on May 31st, and the fact that we have changed the presentation for the one now --

I'll come back.

Oh, it's the screen saver.

Anyways, the – no, the power's all right. There's some unfriendliness going on inside the computer.

(Laughter.)

>>Alejandro Pisanty: I’m told by apple experts that this is a piece (inaudible).

One of the worst things that – a very well-known provider of PC software has given us is the (inaudible) show of presenters fiddling with computers instead of taking up printed notes and going on.

>>Vinton Cerf: That's why some people still use overhead projection units. My boss used to tell me he never had a protocol problem with a light bulb.

(Laughter.)

>>Alejandro Pisanty: They do know how to fry, but....

Let me just get them here. Okay. Go back one slide to make sure – yeah.

So we have to have this expert base. There's an ongoing discussion on how to incorporate them, how to make – whether we have to decide once and for all who are the experts we can call on or we can have an ongoing addition of experts for the different questions that may come up.

And there has, of course, at the end of the policy development process cycle each time to be the opportunity to – there's the obligation to publish a tentative decision and have a chance for public comment and review.

One very important point here and on which I have made a personal commitment to some of the participants in the process, some of the critics of the way things have been done, is to make sure that we have important letters of accountability which still are practical, which still will not hamper ICANN's work with what could be frivolous or contrived decisions. Some of the reconsideration applications we have received, for example, in the reconsideration committee are maybe not frivolous, but very contrived. They are basically put in to test the system, they are put in in order to make some safeguards for some future very possible tentative event. There are some events that have been substantial and some which actually have been responded to.

So since in Accra the – in the previous ICANN meeting, the board decided not to continue trying to populate the Independent Review Panel and to substitute that process or body with a different one, the proposal of Stuart Lynn and a few additions we have made to it will take us to an Ombudsman, to a management public participation process. The proposal we have now if we get the funds for this stuff, will be to have a Manager of Public Participation. And, of course, to refine the reconsideration process, and to concentrate it on bylaw amendments and alleged infringements.

The Blueprint comes in a few months, it provides for government participation through the GAC and through GAC liaisons in several of the policy development bodies.

This, as you have seen, is something that the GAC is actually not only supporting, but demanding. And we believe that this is – there's been some discussion even with some of our fellow board members about this. I can tell you that, in my view, this can be seen as calling for and doing interference in ICANN's process, but it can also be seen as being proactive and peremptory in knowing if you have something that will go to the governmental advisory committee for opinion, we better have them aware from the beginning, better have a communication with the governments from the start of the policy development process that we are in, attempting something, that we are being called to develop something, and that then these people can perform the very important role from the beginning. I have characterized the way we communicate sometimes with important GAC – the Oracle in Delphi and a Mayan Diviner on top of a Yucatan pyramid, each spelling out oracles at each other and you can take a good year and all of the four seasons of the year before you get the right plumage of the birds, you have to interpret to see what that means. We have to have a more active and productive and instructive way of communicating.

The expert advisory panels I already described.

The committee was unfortunately unable due to time and to the voluntary character of the effort to go into details of funding structure. We see in our proposal the ability to develop from it funding structure. The one thing that's very clear is that the core funding must be based on those registries, registrars, and if you can bring up some other people or organizations. But those people who have agreements with ICANN. That's the predictable basis.

Stuart's very important point about funding at the beginning of the year was not only that it's insufficient for the scope of the size of ICANN can work with its limited scope efficiently and – everybody, as you have heard, asked for staff or some other critical resource for policy development or for their work, which has to come from this budget. So even to keep focused and be effective, we need this larger budget. But that's not the only problem. The most important problem is the predictability of the budget, the stability of its basis.

Therefore, we do support the idea in the committee that the core funding must come from people who have agreements which are stable, which are binding both ways, they bind ICANN to do some things; they bind the people who signed them to do some other things.

And in the internal structure, we are only – we only make a very brief comment, which is that there's – there has been this very long discussion about the thin ICANN and thick ICANN. It may be cynical, everybody wants an ICANN that's thin and contains their own agenda. And the addition of all of these things may still make it thick.

So what we are concentrating more for the future development of the structure is to have the operations part, the IANA and other operations part, well defined, and if not isolated, have a clear interface with the policy development part of ICANN. We are not elaborating any more on this point – at this point in time. But this will truly be a basis forward.

And moving on, we think that we will have to have public forum, we will have a board meeting and discussion tomorrow. We hope that it is – what I put forward to my colleagues on the board is the proposal, the motion that this Blueprint be approved at least in its general terms, which means the nominating committee concept, the general characteristics of the structure, and some means of moving on to an implementation phase. The implementation phase will need, of course, a lot of community and other feedback. But our expectation is to draw a line between past and future tomorrow with a decision on what's the skeleton that will be fleshed out. These details that will be filled in in our expectation should be for the structure described here.

One of the things that has to be done is writing bylaws, developing procedures and so forth. I hope we can invite a large number of members of the community to contribute on the building of these, not only saying if it's right or wrong or how to make it better, but really contributing to make it better. And I think we have an enormous talent and force and energy around us that we hope that this proposal will galvanize around it in a way that it's not only people say "give me some homework," or "why do I have to do this homework?" but people actually feeling this is a very good thing to make in ICANN that we can all identify with, that can serve our purposes, to which we are able to yield something of what we intended it to be, but which can still give us much more than we are putting in, and develop transition procedures. In these transition procedures and bylaws writing and so forth, we'll have to be very emphatic about how we achieve regional diversity and other diversity, how we codify the committees and nominating committee and so forth, and the board position in such a way that we ensure that all parts of the world, all parts of the community are adequately represented, if not on a fixed, on a rotational basis, but a predictable basis. Predictability is very important here.

And to know how to get from here to, let's say, 6 months or a year from now, when we will finally have all of this stabilized in a more or less permanent manner.

We have to make sure that what we have always called key stakeholders are really convinced – they see themselves identified in this structure. And I sincerely hope that with the work that we have been doing, which has been, for me, a matter of pride, the people I’ve been able to work with, if I could convey to you the – if I could convey to you the sense of trust that I have gained on my colleagues in the evolution committee, on all other colleagues, directors, and the sense of trust I have in the staff of ICANN, and particularly what is less spoken about, the trust I have that the community around us, the registries, the registrars for names, the country dot level domain administrators, the participants in the governmental advisory committee, the technical community and its most visible voices and representatives, the address registrars, these – registries, sorry, these specific members of the community have given us so much, they have provided so much of their time, of their effort, of their generosity and seem very well disposed to continue in discussions where we will not always agree in the exact and final wording, but we will agree in creating a venue where we can discuss further and not let the discussion hamper real work.

With that, I’ll finish this presentation and be open to questions and comments.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much, Alejandro. I'd like to again add my thanks to you and the committee and all of the others who have participated in this effort.

Let's not waste any time. We clearly have questions coming from the floor. I am going to start with those.

Would you kindly identify yourselves and your affiliations as you begin to speak.

>>Timothy Denton: Gentlemen, madam of the board, my name is Timothy Denton, I’m from – I’m speaking on behalf of Elliott Noss, the president and Ross Rader. We are very pleased with the work of the committee. We have made two written contributions to its work, the last of which was posted yesterday.

We believe we have been heard in our vital concerns. And we're very pleased with what's gone on.

We have one idea that we would like to contribute to the process on which you people have not yet had a chance to deliberate. And it is this. It is, first of all, to be found at – I’ll just give you the reference. It's byte.org, b-y-t-e.org, forward slash, heathrow. And if you scroll down that page, you will see the second of our responses to the ERC committee. It's four pages long. And I commend it to your attention because the idea is quite simple.

The vital interests of your contracted parties, which are registrars and registries, may need to be recognized in a way that you haven't yet considered. And that is that we need a form of dispute resolution to be created.

And this is for disputes among your contracted parties.

If I may express an analogy, it is as if the inventors of the Internet and the IETF and ICANN have created gravity, lift, thrust, and air pressure. And now an airline industry has been called into being, and now instead of these disputes being about the nature of the environment we will be dealing with, there are issues about landing rights and very mundane stuff, which is of not a vital interest to many people except your contracted parties.

And so the blind spot, the spot which is not addressed either negatively or positively in your recommendations, now concerns the creation of some form of dispute allocation – dispute adjudication or settlement among your contracted parties.

And it is in hope of that that we have put out a second of our responses. We do not have the solution to this. We are making a recommendation that you and other interested volunteers think about it, and that we would be happy to cooperate with any other interested parties in the development of ideas as to how this dispute resolution function might exist.

In short, what we see is all the good works being done so far sorts out policy. And we are happy about that. But within the terms of contract adjudication of dispute, it seems to me that some effort needs to be put there so that parties may more effectively solve their commercial and contractual problems under the authority of the board. This is not outside the authority of the board, but inside the authority of the board, we would need that process.

And so we have made the suggestion. We are open to any means whereby people might collaborate to bring this into being. And we seek from you an indication that you might be interested in the creation of such a process. And we seek from others the formation of some form of working group that would allow us to flesh out this – this problem.

So contracts – contracted parties and dispute resolution within your contracted parties. Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much for that concrete suggestion.

I've been looking at this long line of people here, and thinking about how we're going to get everybody in in an hour or an hour and a half.

Let me ask each of you to be as terse as you possibly can so we can try to hear from as many people as possible. Thank you very much.

>> you have a question?

>>Vinton Cerf: Is there a question? Lyman.

>>Lyman Chapin: Just can I confirm that it's – that you're referring to the document that's entitled "comments concerning ICANN's role in relation to contracted parties"?

>>Timothy Denton: Yes, sir.

>>Lyman Chapin: That's the secondary --

>>Timothy Denton: Yes, that's the secondary thing. And it's all there.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much. Again, a reminder as you identify yourself, also identify your affiliation.

>>Grant Forsyth: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Grant Forsyth, BC rep on the Names Council. As you know, there's been little time for constituency to fully consult on the last report by the ERC, each constituency has their own views and concerns over specific matters in the Blueprint.

We're also all acutely aware of the need to give as clear feedback to the board as possible. To that end, a group of constituencies have come together to collectively present to you those key points which we – which are consistent with our own constituencies' views.

So before you are representatives of the Business Constituency, IP, ISPCP, and ccTLD constituencies.

I will now hand over to J. Scott to speak on the first point which we agree.

>>J. Scott Evans: I’m J. Scott Evans, the Names Council representative for the Intellectual Property Constituency. We are here to join with the other several of the constituencies in the DNSO to say that we believe that stable funding for ICANN is an ultimate and utmost priority. And we support the detailed-based funding as described in the Blueprint, but we believe that such a model does not fit well with the ccTLD, and we do, however, support that the RIRs and ccTLDs make a contribution.

Unfortunately, my constituency has not had a chance to look at the entire final recommendations of the committee. And for that reason, we were not able to have a consensus.

I will say that we are very pleased at the outreach that that committee made to our community and how much time and effort they spent on getting comment from us. We are very encouraged by many of the aspects of that. We can informally support the nominating committee in that structure of trying to even out and give different voices participation in the process. And we appreciate everything they've done.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much.

>>Grant Forsyth: Just by way of introduction, it's our belief that ICANN must remain a private sector-led entity, that there are we consider considerable threats to this in changes in the role and participation of government as currently indicated in the report.

The proposed approach to increased participation from government is in direct conflict with this core principle, and particularly the insertion of permanent liaison threaten the commitment to private sector leadership.

The way to improve communication and consultation is to establish ways to ensure requested consultation on an as-needed basis, in a similar manner to that which we are already working to establish between the new CCSO and the gTLD so. Therefore, we would urge that the interests and perspectives of the relevant SOs represented in all of the discussions how best to achieve the desired consultations. I'd now like to hand over to Peter Dengate Thrush for our next point.

>>Peter Dengate Thrush: Peter Dengate Thrush. I have been responsible for speaking for others, but at the moment I am speaking for myself. I'd like to speak about the composition, role, and term of the board. The role of the board is to approve policy, not to make policy. Policy making belongs to the supporting bodies.

We support the continuation of three board seats for each of the supporting organizations, for the purposes of representativeness and geographical diversity. And in no case, we agree, should the number of board seats appointed by the nominating committee exceed the number of elected board members. The length and term of board membership should not be increased from two to three, given the dynamism of those who seek or might seek participation. Thank you.

>> Greg Ruth. ISPCP representative to the Names Council.

We do not support the permanent appointment or assignment of nonvoting board seats to advisory councils. We note that two of the advisory councils, the SAC and the TAC, are composed of board selected and appointed representatives, although nonvoting, these board members will still have considerable influence.

We believe that they should be advisory only and consulted only on as as-needed basis rather than having appointed permanent seats on the board.

>>Grant Forsyth: The last point.

>>Vinton Cerf: Wait for one second. Lyman, you had a question?

>>Lyman Chapin: Yeah, Greg, I noted that you referred to both the SAC and TAC as advisory committees or councils whose members are appointed by the board. In the case of the TAC, can you explain what you mean by that? Because I don't see any way in which the board is involved in appointing the members of the TAC. The SAC, yes.

>> Greg Ruth: You have four nonvoting members of the board who come from the respective advisory councils, yes? That's the – that's my understanding of the board structure.

>>Lyman Chapin: I’m just looking at the place where you say the TAC is composed of board selected and appointed representatives.

>> Greg Ruth: No, what I mean is the board is – as outlined in the Blueprint, the board is to have nonvoting members on the boards from each of the advisory committees. They're appointed or – or assigned somehow to be on – to be nonvoting board members.

We would like to say that we are against having those members on the board.

>>Lyman Chapin: Okay.

>> Greg Ruth: Voting or nonvoting.

>>Lyman Chapin: It seemed one of the reasons that you objected to that was because two of the advisory councils consisted of board selected and appointed members.

>> No.

>>Grant Forsyth: The last point concerns the role and scope of the NomCom in influencing composition of policy counsel. We're concerned that the role and scope of NomCom is threatening to replace the bottom-up process with a top-down involvement. The appointment by the NomCom of individuals who do not represent constituencies to policy-making bodies such as the GNSO and the CCSO is not appropriate.

Should such appointments be made by the NomCom to the gTLD council, they could be best served, the broad interests of ICANN, by drawing appointments from the emerging at large. And with regards members on the board, we therefore support the role of the NomCom as entity who identifies and appoints less than the majority of board members. And lastly, the constituencies in existence today in the gTLD policy body, today the DNSO, should continue to have three voting members on the policy body.

That concludes the points which we have been able to bring together collectively, and, obviously, each constituency will have their own further views on various matters.

Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much.

>>Alejandro Pisanty: Mr. Chairman.

>>Vinton Cerf: Yes, please.

>>Alejandro Pisanty: I would like to make a very quick reply on these points, which is, if we don't – I mean, I don't want to take time from the public forum, but otherwise I don't want to convey the impression that we are stonewalling. We have considered these points in the discussion, and we are to this point in time convinced that we have found the best balance possible between the very different approaches and needs expressed by so many dimensions. And we have increased progressively the number of representative members of the bottom-up designation or election of members to the board or to the nominating committee. And we believe that we are very close to whatever will be – to whatever would be a final balance that really takes into account all of these many different things.

We are convinced of the approach of a few people being designated by the nominating committee to the councils and of the organizations, because we will not – not because we believe that they should preempt whatever is the spontaneous expression of these communities. They should be there in order to facilitate going out of gridlock, which can happen, and we have seen happen in such cases where you have conflicting interests or conflicting principle positions and where a facilitator or someone with a view that has not a specific interest in that discussion can provide a way out and still provide consensus.

It's – as well – as was recommended again by the GAC, I am quoting that phrase, but we have seen it in other places, is not finding out how much to solve disputes or conflicts, but avoiding them from the beginning by having a way to construct things and not to have them, let's say, to bring dissenting positions to the board to decide, to really be able to have the consensus process finished within the constituent supporting organizations.

>>Vinton Cerf: Let's continue.

I see about 25 people in this line, so again, try to be brief.

Please.

>>Y.J. Park: Y.J. Park.

I used to be the Non-commercial Domain Name Holder Names Council, and today I am here to represent DNSO working group chairperson who initially addressed this issue in Melbourne where I urged the board members to pay attention to review; however, the DNSO review working group was shut down just after the Melbourne meeting. According to the Names Council voting decision.

So I feel a little bit such kind of decisions, and here I represent the DNSO working group review as chair.

And I would like to remind people here to – okay.

When the community was worried and concerned that DNSO is dysfunctional and provide the things to consider, it also went to the board in January 2001, through DNSO mail, as working report, it was truly bottom-up process.

However, the DNSO review report seems not to be seriously taken by the board then, and ERC now, when the Blueprint is published just before ICANN Bucharest meeting.

The Blueprint has been raising several concerns to revisit, even though some feel it is sufficient according to the GAC communiqué.

First concern I would like to raise here is bottom-up process.

This put emphasis on bottom-up process since White Paper and during Blueprint.

ICANN decision-making processes have few opportunities of direct participation.

Ironically, the ICANN meetings are getting in a more observed mode rather than participatory mode in the name of efficiency.

In line with this principle the current Blueprint recommendation of appointing General Assembly Chair from electing General Assembly Chair is a serious step back which should be reconsidered.

And second concerns I would like to share with the board here is the geographical diversity.

Despite several touches about geographical diversity in the Blueprint, it is unclear how to maintain the goal under the presented proposal.

The Blueprint says two directors from GNSO, CNSO, and ASO, and two directors selected from the nominating committee composed of representatives from the various groups.

My concern comes from my experience with ICANN, which is already more than three years.

The one representative from the diverse constituency is very likely to end up with the specific regions rather than the representative from Asia, Latin America, and Africa as its constituency representatives.

We can work with – sorry.

ICANN must have a mechanism to ensure geographical diversity, both in the board level and nominating committee.

Geographical diversity should be taken sincerely and generally.

Global community is not only America, western Europe and Pacific countries who we can work together; however, they can now represent the rest of the world.

Therefore, I propose the specific number of geographical location in a bigger picture should be articulated instead of nominal rhetoric.

Lastly, geographical diversity and gTLD registries.

Yesterday, there were (inaudible) from USA and Europe following 2000 gTLD user process.

Nominal proposal could not be present to the rest of the world due to very unclear technical.

Therefore, for more proposals from the rest of the world, I urge the board to ensure people from each region should participate in monitoring task force which will be set up to evaluate new gTLDs in a constant manner according to the new gTLD task force report, as token that unless the board do really care geographical diversity in realty.

Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much, Y.J.

>>Nigel Roberts: Thank you, Nigel Roberts from the ccTLD constituency.

I guess I am in a way speaking for the constituency but I also know many of my colleagues are in the line behind me and will be making points as well.

I don't know if the document that we've been able to prepare is available for the screen.

We've tried, over the last two or three days, to react in a speedy manner to the document that was posted as, in fact, some of us were traveling out here.

It's of necessity only the views of people who are here.

However, there are some very important points.

There we go.

It's been posted to the list.

I don't propose to go through it and read it out, or in detail.

It's been posted to the list, submitted to the board, it will be on the web site.

And as I say, my colleagues will be speaking to individual points.

Now, speaking for myself, one aspect of the proposal worries me greatly, and that's the very existence of the so-called nominating committee.

Let's be truthful here.

A nominating committee is somebody who nominates people.

This committee will not nominate people; it will appoint them.

>>Alejandro Pisanty: That was already explained during my --

>>Nigel Roberts: Yeah.

Therefore, a small – excuse me.

A small number of people, even if in the reality it will choose good people, people for the good of the organization, for the Internet and the global good, will appear to lack legitimacy.

It will appear to be a self-serving, self-selecting elite.

Even if that's not the case.

And comments that have been made about where we are and the history of where we are that were made yesterday certainly rang a bell with me.

In any event, the idea that the nominating committee can impose on other constituencies members of their councils is, to be anathema.

So I would urge you all to take a very great look at the way the nominating committee would work, what it would do, and the very fact, as I say, that it is looking to appoint a majority of the ICANN board, and a majority of the ICANN board is, effect, control of ICANN.

Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you, Nigel.

>>Hiro Hotta: My name is Hiro Hotta.

In ccTLD meetings, one of the results is that the ccTLDs prepared to work in close liaison with the GAC in relation to those matters of interest to governments.

And we do not believe that an appointed liaison officer would be an efficient way of arranging that.

To pursue this, the first joint ccTLD GAC workshop was held in Bucharest, and which agreed to develop a process for establishing further working groups, possibly on a regional basis, as likely to be more effective.

Let me give you an example of .jp, a ccTLD manager has been and is making a very good discussion with the government about the appropriate formation to satisfy local Internet communities' interests.

The arrangement between JPRS and ICANN or the agreement between them is one of the outcome of this.

There, governments is one of the entities which conveys the communities' interest to the ccTLD registry by helping JPNIC, which has been and is historically an Internet leader in Japan.

I hope ccTLD and GAC workshop will elaborate on that proper relationships between ccTLD and government, including this type of arrangement.

Again, we do not believe that appointed liaison officer will be an efficient way to solve issues related to cc so or GNSO.

Thank you.

>>Becky Burr: Hi, my name is Becky Burr it's been a while since I addressed this board.

I want to say I don't represent any governments and neither I nor my former or current law partners have any clients in this debate.

And I also want to place my comments in the context of my history as being one of ICANN's earliest and most enthusiastic supporters.

I hope what I have to say can be heard in that light.

First I want to congratulate Stuart and the ICANN staff and board, and especially Alejandro and his committee for identifying and taking on the really hard questions that face ICANN, and for coming up with a plan that really addresses a solid plan to move forward on these issues.

I'd like to propose a slight variation on the evolution and reform committee's answer to what I think of as one of ICANN's biggest problems, and that is what we've all identified as the lack of a mechanism that properly incentivizes parties to come to a table and strike a deal.

The current system rewards people for holding out and as a result there has not been a lot of consensus policy development in the ICANN process.

Any solution, any forward moving solution has to answer that problem, how do you fix it.

First of all, let me say that I think the current situation is – and if it's not the current situation, we need to clarify, that not all decisions by the board need to be made on the base of consensus.

There are enormous range of decisions that the board can make in the absence of consensus.

I would propose that we tackle this problem first by limiting the range of policy decisions that need to be made by consensus to policies that prohibit a registry or a registrar from taking some action, or that mandate a course of action by the registry or registrar.

So all of the questions about staffing, all of the questions about how many new top-level domains there are in any given year and who they are and what kind of things they are not the stuff of the robust consensus policy development.

Second of all, I agree that there needs to be a mechanism for moving forward when a policy is needed, and it needs to be a consensus party and a party, or more than one party is holding out.

The Blueprint creates a standard that I think is problematic, which is that the board should exercise its best judgment, accounting for community principle's needs, and the desires as best it can interpret them.

That standard is extremely subjective and very hard, I think, to review and to apply.

The other thing that's problematic is it asks the business participants to agree to enter into a contract that says we will agree to do whatever it is the board thinks is the right thing to do.

The only question before an arbitration panel, then, or the independent review panel, if you have one, is was the board sincere in its decision that this was the right thing to do.

Was it – did it exercise its best judgment.

I would submit that that is – puts business participants in an untenable position, and those of you who run businesses probably would have hard time signing a contract like that.

So let's think about some parameters that provide a little bit of a measure of predictability and stability, but still enable the board to make decisions.

With those parameters, I think you will have a reliable agreement and enforceable standards.

So here's the alternative test that we're going to propose and we're calling it the unjustifiable objection test but you can call it whatever you want.

I would say that following – using the examples that the ERC committee has come up with putting time lines and deadlines in place, that policies come up to the board, proposals for policies and objections come up to the board, and the board has the authority to override objections to that narrow range of policies that need to be made on consensus in three situations: First, when the objecting party is not substantially affected by the policy.

They ought not to have the ability to stand in the way of policy development.

Second, when the objections are either not rational or reasoned.

Those are the easy cases, I think.

Third, however, I would say that the board should be able to override objections to a consensus policy when the opposition is based on a desire to continue or to commence an activity that imposes unjustifiable costs on third parties, or will disrupt the orderly competitive marketplace.

We have posted a paper that has more of the details of this, but I think that this standard is going to be a more manageable standard for the board to apply and for business parties to enter into agreements that have that.

I don't want to make a huge deal about this, but this does, it seem to me, go to the fundamental issue of the legitimacy and authority of ICANN.

You've got to have people who enter into contracts with ICANN that they intend to honor.

With an open-ended standard that says a the board can decide whatever it wants in those situations, and you agree, I think that the likelihood of you getting that kind of I’m looking at you across the table and in the eye and saying "i agree to do this" is not going to be there.

Thanks.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you, Becky.

(Applause.)

>>Vinton Cerf: That's an excellent example of a very concrete suggestion, and I do appreciate it.

Next speaker, please.

>>Ramesh Nadorajah: Thank you, my name is Ramesh Nadorajah and I’m from the dot my ccTLD.

I'm also the chair of the APTLD.

I actually have two points to make.

Firstly, that the ccTLD group as a whole is extremely diverse.

If you look at the APTLD, you already find a wide range in terms of diversity.

We have people who are ccTLDs which are purely government and we have ccTLDs which are run for pure profit reasons, and loads that fall in between.

Dot my, as an example, is a ccTLD is that's run by a government-owned company.

With this kind of diversity, I believe that a lot of the concerns regarding the kind of policies that may come out of ccTLDs that have been raised by the ERC are actually addressed.

The need for people that can look at the global policy issues are actually addressed, because we have this diversity.

So I think the more important thing that needs to be done is to look at how we can build interfaces between the ccTLDs and the other constituencies or supporting organizations.

One suggestion – sorry.

One example is what has already happened, which is the ccTLD GAC meeting and the recommendation that came out of that is to build – to come up with workshops that – where we can address issues of concern to ccTLDs and the GAC.

Interfaces like that are what we would need.

Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much.

Another practical suggestion.

>>Kilnam Chon: This is Kilnam Chon from Korea.

I want to comment on this item number 6 in ccTLD's response.

This Blueprint, there's three support organizations, and they are very different.

Like GNSO is base entities are global.

And irl, their base entity is regional or continent.

And the ccTLD base entity is a country code, or Unicode the country.

And trying to have the same uniform policy across all three support organizations may not work.

So here I want you to think about what's the role of ICANN, ICANN board and the support organization, can do on ccTLD areas.

First of all, ccTLD is very much a local matter.

Most of the policy of ccTLD is decided by the local community for the local community, and the occasionally, yes, we do have a global issue.

Like, for example, ccTLD, we have 240 and the maximum number of ccTLD we can reach is 80 or 100.

The remaining, what shall we do?

This is something we cannot solve in each local community.

We have to work collectively at the CCSO.

And the CCSO's role is rather complementary, not primary.

And the ICANN board of directors role is something to facilitate for the ccTLD and CCSO's activity, and which will be different from the GNSO.

And on a separate topic, as YJ mentioned, the geographical diversity, I have a concern on this Blueprint, like you may be backing off for this enforcement of geographical diversity.

Please do come up explicit statement on how you implement geographical diversity both at the ICANN board level and nomination committee level.

Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you for your brevity.

Alejandro, briefly.

>>Alejandro Pisanty: We have already had a long discussion of some of these issues, and I would like to comment again, not to appear to be stonewalling, that we have insisted on some very (inaudible) parts of the ccTLD responsibilities which are of a global reach.

It's not only in the local interest community, the local community's interest to have their resources available.

It's also a global interest community to be able to reach the interests that the ccTLD manages or that are managed under the ccTLD.

There are global aspects also – there's one global resource that both ccTLDs and (inaudible) have access to which is the root server file, and I thank (inaudible) for rules on geographic diversity.

>>Izumi Aizu: My name is Izumi Aizu.

I'm one of the few usual suspects, these days.

I came first to the IFWP meeting five years ago in Washington, DC and have attended all the IFWP and ICANN meetings.

>>Vinton Cerf: You have my sympathy.

>>Izumi Aizu: Thank you.

And you have mine.

(Laughter.) (Applause.)

>>Izumi Aizu: So as one of the seven elected members of interim panel of ICANN at-large dot com today but now speaking only for myself, I’d like to speak for the need and implementation of large implementation structure of the board which will lead to (inaudible) position at the board level for at large.

In some cases and cultures, without invitation or recognition, people will, anyway, speak up, come to the microphone and demand their interests be included in the decision-making process.

However, in some other parts of the world, it is more difficult to expect that to happen.

So they tend to wait.

If you do not conscientiously reach out to the users, individuals or others, and not provide adequate incentives for participation and representation, ICANN will definitely become like an ordinary trade association, dominated by the providers.

Which I think is not quite healthy for the providers themselves, as well.

Finally, as we are working hard to self-organize the at large members globally, I again like to call for the formal adoption of at-large participation mechanisms and therefore welcome the idea of at-large advisory committee just mentioned as the first small step for us here now, leaving all (inaudible) who can't come, but hoping to become the one giant leap for ICANN and all the players in the world.

Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much (applause).

>>Vittorio Bertola: Hello, my name is Vittorio Bertola and I’m currently the chairman for ICANN at-large.com.

I'd like to be in brief, there's one point I’d like to explicitly make.

In the last two years the board has taken several decisions about representation of the at-large users.

And of course they have been perceived as very negative from the at-large community.

So first of all, I want to thank you from the committee for today's decision, because – I mean the amendment that has been proposed during the presentation is, in fact, the first time I see something positive in terms of going towards announcing the (inaudible) in ICANN rather than reducing it.

And this is what's important for me because I think in the last two years it has been built a lot of reciprocal distrust between the board, between ICANN and so-called at-large community.

And I think if you want to get out of these and we need to get out of these, we have to reverse that circle.

So we have to build trust instead.

So I will take the adoption of an at-large advisory committee as our first sign of trust, that you have towards us, and I want to assure you that we really want to work with you.

I mean, to deserve this trust.

And also to show you that if we are given a real chance, a real practical chance, we are actually able to produce something not only in terms of process, self-organization, but also in terms of policy.

So intelligent submissions to the board, which is, I mean, our last, final objective.

So, I mean, be prepared to the fact that other people will possibly step up and say that this adoption will just be a fig leaf or whatever, and it's a scandal that originally at-large was intended to elect half of the board and now it only has perhaps one nonvoting member of the board, and things like that.

And yes, if you told me two years ago that this was going to be the outcome perhaps I would say this is a scandal.

But at the moment we are now, I think we really have to try and see what works.

So what I’m asking you is please adopt this advisory committee.

Please give us time to (inaudible), let's work together and let's work to find a practical, possible way to elect or select this committee.

Perhaps because I know that many people will call for them.

Perhaps it will have some form of election, but assure you, if we would propose that, it would be a workable form of elections.

So we want to be active in this.

We want to come up with a proposal to work with you and to have a very intense exchange of opinions in the next four months.

And I’m just asking you to support us in this process.

Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much, Vittorio.

(applause).

>>Vinton Cerf: I might add there are scandals and there are scandals, and some of them are bigger than others.

(laughter).

>>Tony Holmes: Tony Holmes speaking on behalf of the ISCPC.

In the interest of brevity I won't read it in totality but we will be posting it to the ERC.

The ISPCP welcomes the recent statement from the reform committee, particularly noting that it steps back from some of the more radical proposals on restructuring that were originally put forward.

The rational put forward embodies the same principles that the ISPCP have been arguing throughout this process, but they also demand an ICANN that's far more accountable for its actions, particularly when consensus cannot be achieved.

The intent that ICANN has to be more than just an agent carrying out technical and operational instructions is accepted.

The need for ICANN to take responsibility for developing policy strictly related to its mission, a boundary for such debates is currently a fuzzy line.

The ISPCP look forward to working with ICANN to define this further.

Moving straight to the issue of board composition, the ISPCP offers no support for the inclusion of nonvoting liaisons on the board except for the inclusion of one nonvoting board member from the GAC.

There appears to be an insufficient rationale to form a 20-man board with 15 voting members.

However, the formation of a 15-member board is supported in order to ensure geographic diversity.

It's the opinion of the ISCPC that the formation of that board should differ from that proposed within the Blueprint.

We propose that nine members should be selected from the SOs, and five from the nominating committee.

Electing the majority of voting board members by the nominating committee fails to recognize the value that the support organizations bring to the table.

I listened carefully to Alejandro's comments earlier.

I emphasize that the Names Council position also supported the view that the nominated committee members should be equal or less than from the support organizations.

Proposals that the board members should serve no more than three-year terms is also unacceptable. It's far too long and needs to be reduced to a minimum of two three-year terms.

Turning attention to the support organizations, with regards to the ASO, we see no needs to any changes to the existing arrangements.

For the GNSO, the ISPCP agree with the purpose set out in the Blueprint. However, the case for including members elected by the nominating committee on the GNSO council isn't supported.

All members of the council should be elected from users' and providers' constituencies. If the nominating committee is able to select members at both the board level and within the council, it has a very dominant position which clearly disenfranchises other stakeholders in terms of representation and tilts the balance.

The inclusion of one nonvoting member from the GAC on the GNSO is supported.

With regards to the CSO – the CNSO, it's accepted that the CNSO could never reflect the same constituent parts as the GNSO. But there should be the ability to include other stakeholder interests, such as users, during the policy formation process.

As with the GNSO, nominating committee members will be represented at board level. So, again, we feel there's no rationale to duplicate this representation within the CNSO.

To date, the ISPCP have continually questioned the role and practicality of electing members through a nominating committee. That view is still held. However, the following comments are offered on the current proposals within the Blueprint.

It has to be accepted that any person filling a position on the nominating committee will be beholden to some particular interest, and this cannot be avoided.

The bylaws must ensure geographical diversity exist when members of any nominating committee are selected.

We also consider that considerable effort's been undertaken by the at large and progress has been made since the Accra meeting. This demands acceptance that they should be recognized as the group who should provide the four and affiliated public interest people on the nominating committee.

If it's the nominating committee's job to elect four members, it's also inappropriate for the board to elect the chair. That needs to be resolved within the nominating committee itself. Whilst we agree that the ICANN board is the ultimate decision-making body, we do not agree it's the only one, nor do we agree it's the preeminent one. In fact, to cast ICANN's board of directors as the sole decision-making body flies in the face of having meaningful support organizations and technical advisory groups.

The ICANN board of directors should primarily be a body for policy review and consent rather than policy development. Lack of staff support has certainly inhibited policy development to date.

The fact that this has been recognized should help resolve many of these problems. However, the emphasis must be on staff support, not staff-led policy development.

The proposal to set up a task force to develop process is supported, but we consider setting a time line of august 31st to complete this work is unrealistic. With the shanghai meeting taking place the end of October, completion by end of September should suffice.

And each of the constituencies in the DNSO and other support organizations should have the opportunity to nominate individuals for participation in this task force.
A couple of final points. Regarding the bylaws, the ISPCP considers that changes to these should only be made during public meetings and then only after traditional consultative process has been completed. We don't want to see any out-of-sight changes.

And, finally, on funding, full support is given for the proposed approach set out in the Blueprint. Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much. Those of who you are reading your contributions, it consumes a lot of time. So if you can do anything to summarize, it would be very much appreciated.

>>Marilyn Cade: Since I have a 40-page paper, how about if I do it in just three pages. I'm joking.

>> it's the other way around.

(Laughter.)

>>Marilyn Cade: Marilyn Cade, speaking on behalf of the business constituency. I would like to start by thanking the community, the board, the committee, the staff, and everyone here that has participated throughout this session as well as previously for their active commitment and participation in the process. This is an absolutely critical process to conclude in a way that can be broadly supported, and we know that you all recognize that.

As global business users, we consider ICANN's role and success of critical concern.

I will submit electronically the full text of our document. And I will make a few points.

The BC constituency did welcome the latest iteration of the evolution and reform's report, the Blueprint for reform. We're pleased to see many elements that the BC can support and we have seen significant evolution toward elements that we can support. There are several areas of critical concern which we will describe briefly, and our document will describe more clearly.

On the issue of mission and role in policy making, the BC is very pleased to see the document explained clearly that there is a policy-making role for ICANN in those areas that are – that are driven by the technical coordination role. So we support the documents' position as it is put forward, and we think it is really important that you have chosen to step forward and clarify this at this time.

On the issue of funding, another of our members will speak to our views on that.

On the issue of the nominating committee, the BC notes, as others have, that a more appropriate name for this committee should be the appointment committee.

We do not believe this committee should have the breadth of influence and responsibilities as defined in the Blueprint. We support that this committee can fulfill and only should fulfill the selection of board seats not chosen through election by the SOs. The number of these seats should be less than those elected by the supporting organizations.

We would also suggest that the present at-large community, which is developing in response to the board's ALSC initiative, should be looked to as a resource for the selection of participation in the nominating committee itself, as you have noted, but also as a candidate pool for board members appointed in this manner.

The nominating committee role in selecting individuals as members as part of the policy councils gives us significant pause.

The BC questions what purpose this seeks to address. The report provides no explanation as to the objective the board seeks to satisfy through these appointments. If the purpose is to ensure public interest participation and representation, we could see some merit and would suggest the at-large pool is a good place to look for candidates. If, however, the board seeks to address the issue of intervening in the process between constituencies as policy is developed or questions our ability to select our own leadership, we would have serious concerns about this top-down approach.

We are aware of the view the policy development process is hampered because of the diversity of participants in the present DNSO. It is my view, as the co-chair of the Whois Task Force and the chair of the Transfers Task Force, that that is in fact not the greatest hindrance to policy development. The greatest hindrance to policy development is clear. It is the lack of staff. It is the lack of an agreed-to process. It is the lack of our ability to focus more clearly just on the structure that enables policy development.

We would urge the board to keep that in mind.

And to fix first the lack of staff before moving to further changes.

On the issue of board composition, we strongly recommend that each of the SOs should continue to have three board seats in order to ensure geographic diversity, meet the workload, and provide broad representation.

We believe the work of ICANN benefits from the diversity of perspective which is represented by such a board.

You have heard our view previously on the benefits or lack thereof of having nonvoting board members. That is not something we support.

On the issue of the gTLD so, we are concerned that without intending to, by suggesting the concept of provisional constituencies, that you inadvertently are engineering new frailties into the policy development system. We suggest a slightly different approach.

We do support that new constituencies need to be able to emerge. But the fact of the matter is that if they could have, they would have. If you put provisional constituencies into a policy development process which you are also reengineering, you will create a situation where there is so much process to deal with that it will be very hard to focus on what we need to achieve. We would be happy to work offline with you and with the staff to clarify the concerns and to try to suggest better ways to ensure that there is a path forward quickly for a constituency to emerge, define itself, come together, and become a really functional constituency.

Another of our members will speak to a point that has been made in the paper which we are in strong disagreement about. And that is the representation of small businesses. On the issue of the CCSO, we have been strong supports of the ccTLD having their own supporting organization, and we have worked over several months to establish an agreement with that entity that there will be, once they spin off into their own so, a bridge between the gTLD so and the ccTLD so that, a committee of liaisons appointed by each of the constituencies, with a matching appointment from the ccTLD so met today at lunch. We have had previous meetings. We urge you to support that process as the most effective way to ensure meaningful communication and interaction between the two ccTLD SOs.

On the at-large, the BC has been a strong supporter of the importance of the at large since its beginning conceptualization.

We believe, given the progress they have made, they must be given recognized – they must be given continued recognition that they have defined path for interaction and comments on policies of concern and interest. If they do, in fact, demonstrate self-organization, we have suggested they could be part of the community from which not only board candidates are drawn, but if there are additions to the gTLD so, very specifically, gTLD so, that candidates chosen by the nominating committee could be added if they are chosen from that pool.

You have heard our view on the issue of board authority. We do not believe the board should be a policy making entity. We are realistic. We understand there may be an exigent circumstance. There should be the possibility and the procedure to allow the board to take action if it is necessary to put an interim policy in place and to refer the issue back to the appropriate SOs.

On the task force to develop policy development procedures and timetables, we recommend that each constituency nominate a slate of two to three representatives from which the policy procedure task force can be selected, the GA chair and vice chair should be included and other representatives of the community as suggested by the Blueprint can be added. We think a more realistic time frame has to be developed.

On the issue of government participation, we welcome the opportunity to consider more effective ways to ensure communication between the SOs and the GAC. We urge the GAC to continue in outreach efforts within their own community and to establish a secretariat. We do not believe the approach taken in the Blueprint will prove to be a solution to ensure effective communication regarding policy issues of mutual interest and concern. We recommend instead the GAC establish a secretariat office and that there be a mechanism for us to raise issues to the GAC to form a working effort on an issue-specific basis that would enable us to come together around an issue of concern and to work on that issue.

We have one final point that is of extreme concern to the business community at large.

There has been discussion about the possibility of segregating some of ICANN's functions. While we support the functional segregation of functions under ICANN, we do not support in any way any kind of segregation of ICANN's functions which could lead to a spin-off of any of their functions or an outsourcing that is not totally under the responsibility of ICANN.

We believe that that would engineer new frailties into the system. We thank you for the opportunity to participate. We are committed to this process for the long haul, and I’m afraid we're going to be back.

>>Vinton Cerf: Well, thank you for that threat, Marilyn.

(Laughter.)
Next speaker.

>>Marilyn Cade: Promise.

>>Catherine Gabay: Catherine Gabay. I represent the Business Constituency.

I want to make the following point, following Marilyn Cade's representation that is a small business representation. There were some ideas by the committee of creating a small business constituency that is to make a split between the large businesses and the small businesses.

I believe there is some misunderstanding there, a misunderstanding in the small businesses' lack of participation, in the business constituency, as it is itself, as today. Business represents businesses of all sizes. And in some cases directly; in other cases, via associations with thousands or even millions of members.

In fact, I want to give an example. (inaudible) is a French business confederation. And we represent over one million companies of all sizes. In fact, mostly are very small businesses all over France and in all sectors of activities, that is, trade, industry, and services.

And therefore I – I want to make the point that there is absolutely no point of splitting this constituency into two small parts.

As now a member of MEDEF, I just want to make the following point. MEDEF is representing the French businesses, and businesses are becoming more and more multi-country. And therefore are interested in the ccTLD global policy matters. And it's very important that there is a way and a process to participate, collaborate, and make our view – I mean, the MEDEF view heard into the global policy making that will be done by the CNSO. Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you. Yes, Alejandro.

>>Alejandro Pisanty: There's a point of clarification, Ms. Gabay. There's – in the Blueprint, not the – a division of the constituency, of the business constituency of the DNSO. What there is is a clear identification in some other place, which is in the nominating committee. This doesn't split the constituency into a small and a large business constituency. It draws it in a way that, hopefully, will be manageable for you. But what we are making sure is in the nominating committee, there's a different person that is sensitive to the needs of large businesses and one for the needs of small businesses who are coming together to designate directors and a few other peoples.

And I will take the opportunity to underline your contribution is one more of the reasons – the second part of your contribution, related to the cc, that we need CNSO, country name supporting organization, that can address a number of issues which have a global reach, even though they are decided (inaudible) different jurisdiction. The fact that you are pointing this out of France, where there's – we always have gotten a very strong voice to look at the local aspect, the local restraints and constraints that the CC has, is particularly remarkable in underlining this need for the interaction between the global and the local aspects of the CCs.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much I will make an observation now. We have a fairly long line of people. And we are running up into agenda time.

Alejandro, let me ask you to be even briefer in your response, or none at all. The purpose right now is to listen.

And, again, let me remind you that I think given the number of people, it is unrealistic to have anyone after the last gentleman who is standing there now to – that's – yes, the gentleman in the gray hair. You have more – you have more than I do. No. There are several.

(Laughter.)

>>Vinton Cerf: Everyone has more than I do. Anyway, just to say let's – let's --

>> How about one more, one more?

>>Vinton Cerf: Let me – as a practical matter, I need to draw a line. I need to draw a line somewhere, just for purely practical reasons.

So wherever is the end of the line, raise your hand. Right – no, no, no. I'm sorry. The guy in the back doesn't count. Right, standing in this line, whoever is the last person in line, that person is the last one who will speak today on this subject.

We probably will not be able, given this length, to get to anything other than the people who I put off earlier this morning to come back and speak.

And I promise we will do that.

But that's all we will be able to do, just purely from practical matters.

So let me please go ahead, now, and brevity, please.

>>Rita Rodin: My name Rita Rodin, and I’m from the law firm of Skadden Arps in New York.

I'm here to talk on behalf of the gTLD registry and not on behalf of any of our clients. We are privileged at the gTLD registry to be part of the ICANN restructuring process, and we agree with what a lot of people have said today that ICANN really needs to restructure itself quickly to address some of the criticism that has plagued the organization since its inception. We firmly believe the restructuring should result in an organization that was better than it was before. We want to commend the work that Alejandro and the evolution and reform committee has done. We think the Blueprint is an excellent document and makes huge strides in the direction of making ICANN a better organization.

But we have one concern that we wanted to raise with you today that we actually raised after the Montevideo meeting. One of the criticisms that we've heard about ICANN, and I think was expressed in Stuart's original paper, and also confirmed in the Blueprint, is that the goal of restructuring, and, in fact, the goal of ICANN, is to become a more effective organization and is to create streamlined processes to encourage full community participation without the burdens of time-consuming procedures that impede the effectiveness of the organization.

And we also know that ICANN is trying to be as responsive as it can to the interests of those affected most by its decisions.

So if we keep those purposes in mind and we look at the Blueprint, specifically, at the GNSO plan, the gTLD registries are concerned that what the Blueprint sets out might not achieve this objective.

And let me explain why.

In the Blueprint, the GNSO looks a lot like our old friend the DNSO, Names Council. There's even a paren in that report that states that the new GNSO actually could be called a generic Names Council.

And the gTLD registries believe, and we think we're not alone here, that the DNSO and the Names Council was an experiment that was good in theory, but in practice, really wasn't executed so well.

The DNSO found it in our view difficult to be able to get past some procedural burdens and partisanship to actually promulgate policy statements and recommendations to the board in any meaningful way that could allow the board to make some decisions.

It was unable to reach that ever-elusive goal of consensus.

The new GNSO tries to fix some of those problems, and we think it does go some way in trying to address that. But we think that it's not enough. As we read the Blueprint, the difference between the old and the new DNSO/GNSO is that there are no ccTLDs involved. They have their own so. And that there are these nominating committee members.

It's, I guess, assumed that the objectivity of the nominating committee members, coupled with the extraction of these sort of regional concerns that the ccTLDs deal with, will make it easier for the supporting organization to reach consensus.

The gTLD registries really debated this issue quite long and quite hard. But we concluded that, in theory, this might work, but we are just very concerned that, in practice, it won't.

So we'll restructure the GNSO in this way and we'll still be plagued with this problem of not having meaningful policy coming out of the supporting organization level.

So we want to propose the following: Instead of having this GNSO that's represented by providers and users within the same so, we want to have two separate supporting organizations. The first will be, if we call them providers of domain name services, those will be entities that have contracts with ICANN. And we feel that by putting these entities in one so t will virtually ensure that these parties will be able to get an agreement. They'll all be obligated to actually proffer a policy that they can live by, because they will have to if it gets put into the ICANN process and is approved, that will become part of their contract. So it will be in their interest to try to debate as rigorously as possible these policies and come up with as much of a mutual agreement as they can.

Another so will be represented by parties that don't have contracts with ICANN: ISPs, users, the intellectual property constituency, the business constituency, the at large. These members will be put into another supporting organization, and that will occur – that they can then be encouraged to reach agreement as well. We think having a separate supporting organization for users also aids in the furtherance of another of a principle articulated in Stuart's paper and agreed to by Alejandro in the Blueprint, which is that ICANN needs to embrace individual and other forms of participation in a meaningful way.

I know Alejandro said before, having a separate so might lead to fragmentation. So before everyone gets too upset, I want to just let you know that the gTLD registries are not suggesting at all that these provider or user so will actually make policy that will go directly to the board without providing other supporting organizations the opportunity to comment and consult on the documents.

In fact, we're proposing just the opposite.

So I don't want to get too detailed. I know we're rushing here. But, basically, I think what we envision is that the supporting organization take the example of the provider so, will promulgate a policy. And, again, we believe that it will be easy for that so to reach agreement n accordance with some timetable, it will provide this policy to the other supporting organizations and get comments from them. And then attempt to reach some sort of compromise and agreement at this so level.

If the SOs agree, that's great, we can present to the board a paper that has the agreement of all of the SOs.

If they can't, the supporting organization that proposes the policy will provide all of the points or objections raised in a document to the board and seek guidance from the board on how we can try and resolve the issue.

Just quickly, the merits of separating the users and providers again. We believe that policy is more likely to be made at the so level if in the first instance you can have groups that can actually agree on something. So we're not going to have these papers that have 17 asterisks with, you know, minority a opinion, minority b. We'll try to get at least some fundamental document that will have agreement of parties.

Then it will also formalize the process to obtain comments by other constituencies – sorry, by other supporting organizations. So we'll get that critical input from the noncommercial business IP communities. This will foster meaningful participation from these groups. We think this forced time line will incentivize parties to reach agreement as fast as they can, because if they don't, they will have to convey to you their lack of agreement and deal with the board's instructions.

We think Alejandro's important aspect of – of the community in this dual so mode.

So in summary, we think the Blueprint is a very, very good idea. We hope that the board seriously considers our proposal so that it will enable our constituency to support the revised Blueprint in its totality, because as it stands now, the constituency was not able to agree to support the current plan.

We're happy to give you, Vint, any written materials you'd like or answer any questions.

>>Vinton Cerf: That's very helpful. Thank you.

>>Sabine Dolderer: My name is Sabine Dolderer. I'm the administrative contractor for .de. I'm putting out the point from the ccTLD constituency response.

Actually, we don't – we all believe in bottom-up process. We don't believe that the board should make policies. So we are – in areas where the supporting organization exists. The function of the board is solely to receive and respond to policy that has been developed through proposals within the CCSO, actually, within the supporting organization.

We have actually tried to come up with a formula where we think a policy could be a constant policy for the ccTLDs. And I read it because it was actually decided by the ccTLD. A (inaudible) recommendation is one that is supported by the affirmative vote of two-thirds of members voting in each geographic region. If any region votes against a proposed policy or it achieves less than two-thirds majority vote in any region, it will be deemed to have failed.

Actually, that means, first of all, it should assure geographical diversity. But on the other side, you have to see that we have very different size of the regions. So we have to see regions like Asia-Pacific, with about 150 ccTLDs, and on the other hand, North America with maybe three or so. So it's actually trying to bridge the gap.

The board then could adopt the policy binding to the ccTLDs. There is actually also a possibility for middle ground to come up with a sort of more voluntary interact procedures where you don't have all of these really binding issues, but you can develop a more – more steps.

There is a role for the board, and, actually, also, coming from input from other so to initiate discussions within the CCSO, because we think we need to put the input from all of the stakeholders in our process. And therefore I appreciate, actually, the liaison idea for people coming in and talking to each other.

That's actually the statement.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you.

>>Marianne Wolfsgruber: My name is Marianne Wolfsgruber from CENTR.

Actually I would love to shorten this but as the community, ccTLD constituency, has put quite a lot of effort into agreeing to this wording, I would rather like to stick to the wording.

The ccTLDs, the point I’m making is referring to the nominating committee, and I’m actually quite happy that I’m echoing what some other members of this group have said as well.

The ccTLDs are not prepared to have any agency, including the nominating committee, to appoint members to its council, the international council.

This term is coming, by the way, from the, hopefully to be coming cc's supporting organization.

This is to provide the council with individuals desirable for directors and with the additional characterization of an interest in global names policy.

Those are present in the members of the CCSO and will be available to the board and council by the appointment of directors.

We understand and I think we have learned this in direct conversation with board members the committee's view that such appointments will provide reporting to the board on minority viewpoints, the facilitation in case of dead-lock or other stoppages, and leadership, representation in what is otherwise a monolithic structure.

The ccTLDs will work with the committee to demonstrate that those concerns are already dealt with by the ccTLDs in their proposed CCSO structure.

However, in summary, reporting to the board on minority viewpoints and facilitation in case of dead-lock or other stoppages are met by taking appropriate functional, as proposed to structural, steps such as agreeing on reporting standards and seeking assistance of outside facilitation when conditions require it.

Leadership, this point, appears to raise inappropriate top-down considerations.

The ccTLDs believe that leadership from within, subject to the usual checks and balances, is far more appropriate than leadership from outside.

To appoint representation, far from being monolithic, the ccTLDs represent through their domestic policy procedures and interaction with their local Internet communities, including their governments, a diverse international community that engages in open and vigorous debate.

The second point I would like to raise refers to the board seats.

We, as some others have raised as well, have the opinion that each so should have three seats on the board.

In the case of the CCSO, this is because the volume of each ccTLD registration is growing as is the number of countries increasing or opening their Internet.

And for ICANN to have credibility as an international organization, those interests should be represented on the board.

A further and significant reason for three directors is that number greater facilitates fair geographic representation, this not only for the CCSO but also for any other so.

With two directors at any time given, three ccTLD regions will be unrepresented.

No greater number is appropriate for CCSO as it is recognized that the great bulk of ICANN policy work will continue to be related to gTLD matters for which ICANN itself provides the local Internet community.

We suggest that the board seats in question to be reallocated from those appointed by the nominating committee, reducing those to five, one per geographic region, rather than creating any additional seats.

This would mean that there would be three directors from each so, a total of nine, providing specialist input, ten directors from (inaudible) community, five voting and five nonvoting providing general interest perspectives.

We believe this will present a more balanced structure than the one currently proposed.

Thank you very much.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you.

>>Elisabeth Porteneuve: Good morning.

My name is Elisabeth Porteneuve.

I am working for .fr registry.

I'm also the person who has been in charge of DNSO secretariat and gave 28 months of voluntary work to make this supporting organization happen and to help this supporting organization.

Several comments has been made on (inaudible) ICANN.

The ccTLD believe that the key issue is a well-organized structure in which a policy-making entities are separated from operational ones, and for which the process of communication and reporting is well defined.

The ICANN board, it has been repeated already several times, should not make policy.

In the area for which supporting organization has been created, it is the matter, the policy should be developed with a supporting organization and the function of the board is to coordinate and to receive and respond to policy.

Let me use the metaphor, the ICANN board – the ICANN has been built up as an Eiffel Tower like manner with huge legs – supporting organizations with diversity and several main area of technical area management protocol, addresses, gTLD space and ccTLD space.

Let's keep that lightweight, transparent structure.

The ccTLD cease to see the supporting organization which receive wide support from our colleagues is going to be created.

The ccTLD are prepared to work with GAC in those matters of interest to the government, and personally, I do believe that that work is necessary to consider issues of redelegations.

The gTLD and ccTLD space are different.

I have been repeating this.

But mutually influencing each other and possibly making this evolution together for the benefit of the whole Internet.

The ccTLD space is related to countries and jurisdictions, to the world we are familiar with.

The gTLD space is at the very origin of ICANN creation, the mandate was given by the USG in association with other governments to the private sector to develop (inaudible) role for the planetary Internet.

Let me stress that extraordinary (inaudible) from the whole world to the Internet.

Let's continue and make it happen.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you, Elisabeth.

Jamie.

>>Jamie Love: Thank you very much.

I'd like to start by thanking the members of the reform committee – I don't know about all the members but certainly some of the members for being very accessible.

Alejandro was – are you still there?

Yeah, there you are, was very responsive, engaged in endless communications back and forth.

And we appreciated that.

And the chairman was also extremely accessible, and I was impressed with that and I’m grateful for that as well.

We made a big effort to contribute to the process by submitting a lot of detailed comments on things.

I believe in the area of the noncom, there was some responsiveness on behalf of the committee in the sense that we had a big complaint that we didn't want the board to be appointing all the members of the noncom, and I felt we were listened to on that and we appreciated the fact that there were some changes.

We think that there's still some areas in there like who – where the public interest people come from, who picks the individual, things like that, and we're pretty hard line about this.

We think that the people who elect the board should not be chosen by the board members themselves.

I think that should be a basic deal.

In terms of the current ICANN structure.

We have some concerns we raised about transparency we didn't see reflected in the report.

People say we're going to be transparent and open, but like you don't record your board meetings, even though you've been asked to do it, even though the DNSO does it.

If they can do it, you can do it.

Put mp3 files.

You have secret meetings and don't put out any information about it, and you can schmooze over dinner and stuff anyway.

You can have the regular old informal schmoozing of secret meetings that everybody has.

It makes a difference to me.

>>Vinton Cerf: Jamie I have to tell you that my plan was to open up each meeting with the official conspiratorial report.

(Laughter.)

>>Vinton Cerf: And there would be an official rumor page.

We can probably make this work.

Let's keep this concrete; okay?

>>Jamie Love: I know, and I believe in the sense that I represent an important constituency, we have submitted a lot of detailed reports and on behalf of the transatlantic (inaudible) and one has 50,000 members so it's a big organization.

In terms of the noncom and the issue with the at-large and everything, I don't want to belabor that because I’ve made a number of points, even lost my temper earlier on this.

But to essence, it's insulting that you've eliminated any ability for ordinary people to pick their own leaders.

Everyone else gets to pick their own leaders but not just individuals.

If you're a human being you can't do it.

If you're businessman you can pick your own leaders and I think that's a mistake.

Not allowing the GA to elect its own chair or take votes, this guy doesn't have any power.

It's a way of saying you can't stand dissent.

It's like you don't like freedom or people who don't agree with you.

>>Vinton Cerf: So --

>>Jamie Love: And if I can continue on this because I think freedom is important to talk about in my opinion.

>>Vinton Cerf: I only wanted to ask you something.

Will I be able to summarize a key point and say generally you would like the noncom not to nominate or create the various leadership in the support organizations?

That's the basic message; is that right?

>>Jamie Love: Well, the first thing was that the board shouldn't pick the noncom members.

They should be picked by somebody other than the board.

And then when you have organizations, we don't want the board stacking the deck or picking the chairs of the various independent – let me just put sort of a more fundamental issue which I think we submitted detailed comments and debated with Alejandro endlessly on the NC list and was not discussed at all on the report and we were disappointed about that, and it was with the government ongoing with whether they were going to authorize the contract or not and we don't like the structure.

We don't like the one size fits all system.

We think that the reason that the PSO and the RIR – I mean the ASO and the PSO were kind of in less trouble in a way is they have strong bottom-up organizations which are truly independent.

So they weren't really worried about ICANN running roughshod over them.

The (inaudible) is weak and there was disintermediation and stuff.

So I think splitting off the ccTLDs is a positive thing but we'd like to see it go further because we think competition, even for management models and governance structures is a positive thing.

You wouldn't want to have one university in America, you'd want one competing with another, because some people think MIT is better, some think Harvard is better and in the same time they could save money by combining their operations but most people think it's better to have both Harvard and MIT and other universities.

So within this proposal we sort of made you separate the gatekeeper type groups that let people into the root and they'd work differently depending on their functions.

We don't think ICANN should make the United Nations and others what to do about their domain policy.

We think the international organizations ought to do their own thing, ccTLDs ought to have a separate organization.

You ought to have at least more than one gTLD organizations that does all the self-regulation stuff, the noncommercial should be different and once you break it up the noncoms concerns disappear, because in a competitive system it meant we wouldn't care if one got it wrong because we could go to the one who got it right: When you have a monopoly everybody cares about who has their hand on the throttle.

But when you have entry into the gatekeeper role you move away from the OPEC type model.

Actually a lot of these governance issues get better.

And on the IP front I think what should happen is the gatekeepers should negotiate their IP policy things on Whois and trademarks with the GAC, a real government body not this kind of guys.

You guys – Jonathan Cohen, he's a guy that knows a lot about trademarks but most you guys don't know about those things so let the GAC go back and forth because we'll take our chances with the GAC.

>>Vinton Cerf: Want to wrap this up?

>>Jamie Love: That should do the IP policy and negotiate contracts with the gatekeepers, break it up, and then – if you want me to stop, I’ll stop.

That's the way we've ended them all so far today.

Thank you very much.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you, I appreciate that.

Thank you.

>>Alejandro Pisanty: A very quick response.

The gatekeeper's concept, we did discuss until I stopped discussing it with you Jamie because you don't understand the technology.

>>Vinton Cerf: Alejandro this is not the time to have that debate and I want to hear from these folks.

Please go ahead.

>>Patricio Poblete: I’m Patricio, I’m the .cl administrator and also a (inaudible) for the ccTLD constituency.

I'd like to report on the result of the deliberations of the constituency on the matter of funding for ICANN under the new structure and the essential part is we are committed to providing funding for ICANN as it refers to the costs that ICANN has to incur to provide for activities related to ccTLDs and also we are willing to provide a contribution for more general overheads that ICANN has.

And we believe that this contribution is better determined by a two-level structure, and the first level we should work jointly with the board of ICANN to determine the appropriate total level of contribution of the constituency, taking into account the elements that I’ve just mentioned, and also taking into account the fact that each individual ccTLD has to pay at home the costs of developing their local policies.

So we're already funding policy development of our own.

And for the second level, we think that the individual ccTLD contribution to get this global amount is better determined by an internal process of the constituency.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you.

>>Chris Disspain: Good afternoon, Chris Disspain.

I have three brief points.

You've heard from some of the other ccTLD constituents the concerns about the nominating committee and the ccTLDs note with interest that GAC itself also appears to have some major concerns with the – with the concept of a nominating committee.

I just want to reiterate that the ccTLDs are very, very willing to communicate off-line with the committee, to demonstrate to the committee that we can actually satisfy their concerns in respect to nominating to the CCSO by a nominating committee and we'd be happy to take that off-line and continue those discussions.

However, if, in the final analysis, a nominating committee does, in fact, arrive, we just have a few comments in respect to the ccTLD representation on that.

Having said that we have reservations about the concept and the composition, and, in fact, about ICANN's ability to find and select members, if there is to be a body then it's essential for the reputation of the corporation that there be no allegation that it was not created under conditions of greatest fairness and openness.

And in respect to the ccTLDs, we believe that the nominating committee has disproportionately small representation.

And we would recommend that if a nominating committee is to be created there should be one representative of the ccTLD managers and five regionally selected representatives of local Internet communities with the CCSO recommending candidates to the board.

One final point, on a personal point rather than a ccTLD point, as somebody who has spent the last two years restructuring the DNS in Australia and going through a not dissimilar reform process to that which ICANN is going through now, may I please encourage you to listen to your constituencies.

You've heard a lot of people speak to you today from various different constituencies, and each one of them has put forward their own view of their things that matter to them.

However, there is a significant amount of agreement, and two things that spring to mind immediately are the major concerns about the nominating committee and the size of so representation on the board.

Almost everyone has said it should be three and not two.

Thank you for your time.

>>Vinton Cerf: And thank you for your brevity.

>>Peter Dengate Thrush: Mr. Chairman, it's my sad duty, first of all, to announce to the ICANN community the passing away of Mr. Peter de Blanc.

Peter was one of the leaders of the ccTLD community and he passed away yesterday after a brief illness in Florida.

I'm sure most of you will join with the ccTLD community in working on some – sorry – some – we're looking at the moment of establishing a list, for example, by which members of the ICANN community can share in sending their condolences to the family.

One of the things I’m particularly (inaudible) is Peter's habit of pulling out his flute and playing tunes while waiting for a cab or a drink.

He'll be remembered as someone who contributed a great deal of effort and energy into the ccTLD community.

>>Elisabeth Porteneuve: Let me read to you the last message we received from Peter de Blanc it was the 14th of may and it's the message in which he was thinking about the ccTLD community.

Colleagues: Due to the need for medical treatments, I need to take a much less active role in constituency effort for some period of time.

I am in south Florida receiving that attention, as medical facilities required for my current needs are not available in St. Tomas.

I have put up a registry (inaudible) service for ccTLDs needing it for those who cannot afford to pay.

There will be a new company that will also supply registry services to those ccTLDs who might wish avail themselves of such a service.

30% of those from ccTLD will be added to the subsidized service fund (inaudible) from china and (inaudible) from Asia pacific, Nii Quaynor and (inaudible) from Africa, (inaudible) and (listing names) or Nigel Roberts or (inaudible) from Europe will be the designated managers from the ccTLD development organization and will direct will ccTLD will receive the subsidized registry services and other ways to receive the ccTLD development funds.

The ccTLD development project is not yet set up with a bank account.

As soon as it is, you folks can decide who wishes to sign on that account.

This is a private foundation, and does not require consensus.

In the background, I will work on attracting donation to cc developing fund.

Thank you for your attention.

(Applause.)

>>Peter Dengate Thrush: Could I begin my submission on this point by congratulating the committee on the process.

Clearly an enormous amount of work has been done, clearly the committee has been very responsive to the community, making substantial changes along the way and clearly they have not approached this with a closed mind.

What I say to the board is that process must continue today and tomorrow.

The Blueprint cannot be taken as the final word.

The most important principle of ICANN, in my view, is its dedication to bottom-up process.

That policies are made by those people affected by their implementation.

Not paternalistically by those who think because we elected them to the board they're now better than us.

So the reaction today of the community is the most important next step in developing the Blueprint.

One of the three major failings identified by Stuart Lynn in his paper was the failure to sign contracts with the ccTLDs, with obviously the consequences on funding and for the international prestige of ICANN.

Negotiation with the ccTLDs within the ccSO has the potential to substantially improve the prospect of completing contracts.

Can I recall to your mind the point made by Kilnam Chon, the three very different natures of the SOs.

The issue for the ccTLDs is national self-determination.

We are responsible to a local Internet community, including governments, and subject to national laws.

This means we cannot or will not place ourselves in a position where we substitute that responsibility to our local Internet community and governments to a responsibility to ICANN.

What we try to get right is our relationship with ICANN.

We have our relationships with our governments largely organized.

This is very different from the gTLDs.

For them, ICANN is the local community, and the confusion they have, as Jamie Love's discussion with the GAC chairman indicates their inability to see how governments relate to the g space.

The ccTLDs have sought to relate to ICANN on a peer-to-peer basis.

First suggested or first raised in consultation with Louis and Andrew in Los Angeles in 1999.

We don't need ICANN to develop policy for us.

We have long and expensive policy development processes in our countries at home.

But we also recognize our responsibility to the global Internet.

We are not islands of isolation.

But we say that it is our role, and part of our responsibility to our local Internet communities, to determine which are the global policies which we will adopt and which are our local policies.

And the problem with the ICANN contracts is that they proceed on the basis that it is ICANN which will decide those global policies that will bind us.

Now, despite the pressure applied by withholding changes on the IANA database, almost no countries have accepted this position.

ICANN can do this, and must do it for the gTLDs.

ICANN must set the policies for the gTLDs, but it cannot and must not try and do it for the ccTLDs.

The good news is that the CCSO is the place where the cc's will determine themselves those issues and that is the place where the rest of the community can interface in that debate.

In relation to the contracts, recall Becky Burr's contract.

Nobody is going to sign a contract that is open-ended and says they will be bound by any policy the board will adopt in the future.

This is almost the last chance on this.

If we don't get this right in this round it's my real fear that ICANN will fail.

And I say that because it's manifest to those of us who have attended this meeting that other forces are looming if ICANN fails to provide an appropriate forum for at least this issue.

ICANN must stop trying to change the relationship which existed between the ccTLDs, the local Internet community, and IANA.

Allow the CCSO to become the international showcase of ICANN that it can be.

Listen to the recommendations for change that have been put to you today.

Allow the government advisory committee more time to resolve its obvious fundamental differences.

Don't allow the board to provide policy for the ccTLDs.

Allow the SOs to develop their own policies and keep faith with those principles of bottom-up, industry led government free regulation.

Thanks.

(Applause.)

>>Vinton Cerf: Am I correct that there are only three left at this point?

Okay.

Press on.

>>Ron Andruff: Four.

>>Vinton Cerf: Sorry, four, plus the people I promised.

There are four others that still have a chance.

Please, go ahead.

>>Michael Palage: Mike Palage, chair of the registrar constituency.

In the ICANN accreditation agreement with registrars, there's a provision that requires those registrars representing 66% of the gTLD market share to approve ICANN's budget.

Although there may be some participants in this process that would view this as a weapon to hold the ICANN board hostage in approving its budget, the constituency views this as a mechanism to show our ongoing support for ICANN reform.

We believe that we will far exceed the 66 percentile requirement.

So this is an ongoing gesture of support and dedication to ICANN reform.

With regard to the comments in the Blueprint document, the constituency has not yet formed an official position which should be forth coming in the next couple of days however we do have a couple of initial comments we would like to share.

First, we believe that the nominating committee, we believe, is a positive step towards representing the global Internet community stakeholders.

Second, we believe that the policy recommendations that have been set forth in a Blueprint represent an effort to streamline the policy process through outreach and documentation.

The registrars do have some concern with the proposed 25 percent domain name fee which represents a 300% increase from the current 8 cents fee.

>>Vinton Cerf: Just a clarification.

What you seem to have said is 25% --

>>Michael Palage: 25 cent, yes, 25 cent.

The registrars did have discussions with the ICANN registry constituency with regard to forming our own so; however, it's the viewpoint of the registrars at this time that we can exist in the current GNSO framework and it's not necessary for us to have our own so.

The one, we would say, requirement in order for us to cohabitate meaningfully on the GNSO is the following, we urge the structural organization between users and providers in this supporting organization; however, we would submit that providers would be best characterized by ICANN accredited registrars and ICANN accredited registries, and we make this distinction on the following three points.

First, we are unique in that we have contractual relationships with ICANN which require us to comply with its policies.

Second, we believe that the ISPs are more aligned with the users, and we submit, for example, that the joint ISP, IP and business constituency, which has met over the number of the past meetings, show a more strict alliance in their views as users.

We believe that the ISPs are more – are one of the more unrepresented constituencies, I believe currently they only have 38 members. I would submit to you that the ICANN accredited registrars include Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, AOL, British Telecom as far as national ISPs.

There are a number of other smaller ISPs that provide web hosting and local ISP services.

So we believe that if in fact the there is an element of providers that need to be – if ISP viewpoints need to be represented on the provider side, we believe that those current members of the registrar constituency can do that.

No negative comments. Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much. Please.

>>Ron Andruff: Good afternoon. My name is Ron Andruff, and I’m speaking as a member of the business constituency. And I find it somewhat ironic that I step up behind Michael. Because I want to make the comment that in Accra I had recommended as a private individual that we might look at a 25-cent or a 30-cent fee paid per domain. However, I am speaking here, in fact, to that point if I may say I find it gratifying that an individual could speak and it could gather momentum within the ICANN process and find its way into the Blueprint. And for that I am grateful and it does show that ICANN works.

The BC, however, considers the issue of stable end funding reliable funding of I highest priority in order to ensure ICANN that is the resources needed to fulfill its mission. We support that core funding must come through the gTLD processes.

We believe that as much as two-thirds of the funding should be achieved in this manner, RIRs and ccTLDs should continue to make a contribution which completes the ICANN budget. While we believe that a fee on a per-gTLDs domain name contribution in accordance with the amount of 25 cents as suggested in the Blueprint is preferred, we understand that such an approach does not fit well into the very diverse ccTLD environment. We suggest that the ccTLD community should work to develop a reliable process with accountability which provides their portion of the funding.

We are aware of their efforts in this regard. We support their intent.

Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you, Ron.

>>Tony Harris: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. I am the man with the gray hair which you identified.

My name is Tony Harris from Econlab, the Latin American federation for the Internet.

I would just like to reaffirm our concern with geographical diversity in the ICANN.

This has always been a big point with us in the early days of ICANN. And we were very gratified when the first board member from our region, who is Alejandro, by the way, became part of the ICANN board.

If memory serves me, he was elected, not nominated.

And we would simply like to state that we do not find the Blueprints reassuring on this issue. Although we do note Alejandro's comments, we would be concerned that the continuity of the bylaws as they currently stand and which guarantee some voice for our region would not be discarded.

If there's any doubt as to why this is important, I can give you a very simple example. If any of you would like to travel to Argentina, where I live, you might notice that there are certain characteristics under which Internet operators that differ from the rest of the world.

Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much, Tony. I would say muchas gracias.

>>Yu Yang: Good afternoon, my name is Yu Yang from the representative of CNNIC.

So before this meeting, we CNNIC also have posted our comments on ICANN reform. Here I would like to highlight the two points of views.

The first concern I’d like to raise here is the participation of the government.

So in the former ICANN reform documents, ICANN sufficiently approved the function of the government. And to some extent, the participation of the government can perform a positive effect of an organization. We seem to promote the function of a government in ICANN, which will make the implementation of ICANN's policies more easier. And we think it's an inevitable issue for us to consider.

In ICANN's reform Blueprint, we think that there is still not enough recognition of the governments they deserved.

But the second point I would like to say is to use the correspondent to professionals for reference, which means, you know, nowadays, the Internet has extended to technology, finance, culture, and politics, law, and all aspects of the human life. And ICANN itself, I think it has no sufficient strength to solve of problems raised in all of these areas.

So we suggest ICANN to invite more professionals from the different areas, from different professions, to serve ICANN's board and to give more suggestions.

That's my point. Thank you for your attention.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much, Mr. Yang. I imagine one other alternative would be to find other venues which some of those problems could be dealt with, since they might be considered outside of ICANN's purview.

I had promised four people I would get them back here. And I’d like to do that now.

If they still wish to speak.

Open Microphone

And they are in the following order: Marianne Wolfsgruber, Michael Haberler, Nigel Roberts, and Ron Andruff were the four that I had to cut off earlier. So, Marianne, please.

Would you remind us again the subject matter.

>>Marianne Wolfsgruber: Exactly. I wanted to come back why I wanted to raise this point. It was actually brought up by Stuart Lynn as a starting point to his report on the budget. And therefore he referred to the IANA services and the work of IANA.

IANA currently operates – that's what we learned from Stuart – under ICP 1. The ccTLD managers have in the past very strongly stated their opposition towards ICP 1. Therefore, I would like to raise my absolute concern on behalf of center and many ccTLD managers about the way ICP 1 was set in place, because, just to give you an information about this, we have not been informed about this board decision. This might have been our fault to look up when this board decision was taken. But even when we looked it up during the ccTLD constituency, the exact wording of the board decision from what we learned now here in the meeting that it is a board decision, is that you accept ICP 1 as one of the documents in the series of ICP documents.

This was not clear to us if this is an acceptance of ICP 1 or if there is a formal approval of ICP 1.

I just would like to state here my concerns and that we would definitely like to see an involvement of ccTLD – of the ccTLD community in the future if policies are created which are related to ccTLDs and where they strongly object beforehand. Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much, Marianne. I think any future policies that deal with ccTLDs would very likely need to be developed by way of the CCSO.

Ron. Oh, I’m sorry. There were – Michael Haberler were on the list, and Nigel Roberts. Have they disappeared?

>> They've left.

>>Vinton Cerf: Ron, you're on.

>>Ron Andruff: Ron Andruff. I am now speaking as a private businessman. And I am speaking with regard to the new TLD evaluation task force.

On behalf of my company, Trilliance Corporation, I would like to thank the new TLD evaluation task force for their work on the importance task. We support its recommendations and the draft final report and agree it will require longer ongoing process to be effective.

We have been deeply involved in ICANN and the ICANN process for one year now, and I’m – having observed that the wheels turn slowly, particularly in relation to the speed of the Internet itself, we support the well-considered and debated measured steps the board has taken as they are critical to the establishment of a stable, lasting foundation for the Internet.

Having said that, it is also equally important for the board to ensure that through all of the various activities it's charged to oversee, most notably at this time, E&R, it does not allow its primary mandates to grind to a halt. We believe it's important for ICANN to be perceived as a maturing effective organization that is continuing to fulfill its mission. Therefore we would like to respectfully request that the board initiate a call for proposals for new, narrowly defined, sponsored TLDs. Considering the fact that two years have gone by since the call for the first round of new TLDs and that the world's radically changed in the last 24 months, we believe that the board should, at the very least, be informed as to the climate for new TLDs.

If this activity is not initiated at this meeting in Bucharest, it will be two years and four months from the time that new TLD discussions were first introduced before it can be taken up again. That is in Shanghai.

And two years nine months before new TLDs can actually be approved, according to the processes we observed and the current meeting schedule.

The task force draft initial report states, and I quote:

"The ICANN board may find that it needs to move forward faster than can be accommodated by a serial and somewhat lengthy process. There may be a need to move forward in parallel. It continues certainly much of the planning for new gTLDs can be done in parallel with the evaluation, as can much of the proposal solicitation and selection."

Finally, it states:

"There are risks in not moving forward in parallel. Although ICANN should certainly do what is right for the stability of the DNS by not taking any action until after the evaluation is complete, ICANN becomes a pointed target of criticism to those who have strongly held beliefs about the need for more choice of domain names and hence more choice of gTLDs. This is not a problem in itself provided that ICANN has clearly articulated reasons for not opening up a new round of gTLD proposals. In absence of such reasons, there is danger that the potential registry operators who would want to support ICANN processes may look to other alternatives," end quote.

In closing, I would like to make the board aware of a most important fact, and that is that our company is working in the next area – or the area of the next-generation Internet directory services, following John Klensin's model of working the third level above the DNS. That's our focus and the key to our business model. We would like the board to be aware of our interest in a new gTLD to incorporate it into a significantly larger plan that serves a large and strongly supportive constituency.

Thank you for your attention and consideration of this important request to begin the planning for the selection of appropriately focused new TLDs. Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much, Ron. I interpreted that as new TLDs now, or at least as soon as possible.

>>Ron Andruff: Very narrowly focused and only in business supportive.

>>Peter Dengate Thrush: Mr. Chairman, I wonder if I could convey the message that Mr. Nigel Roberts was going to come back, but he has been kept. It's really a question for the staff. We don't understand that the policy inherent in ICP 1 has been adopted by the board. We understand only that the board has adopted that the document is to be numbered ICP 1.

And we think the wording of the resolution is amazingly cleverly drafted. Congratulations.

So Nigel's question is, has the policy inherent in the document in ICP 1 been adopted by the board? And if so, has that complied with the board – the bylaws on developing policy? We're quite happy to call this document anything you want to call it. But have you adopted the content? That was Nigel's question. And we'd like an answer, if possible. Because – sorry, it was Mr. Roberts' question.

>>Vinton Cerf: I believe one answer to that, mine, anyway, it's my understanding of ICP 1, which is a statement not of policy, new policy developed, but of preexisting --

>>Peter Dengate Thrush: The difficulty is that the old policy does not require ccTLDs to transfer their files to ICANN. But the new one does. So that seems to be rather more than just a change of operational requirements.

>>Vinton Cerf: This is something that could be debated. I don't want to debate it now. But I take the point. All I’m trying to say is that ICP 1 as it was drafted was intended to be a description of then-existing policy as opposed to new policy. So if there's an issue about whether it's old or new, that needs to be examined. But the intent was that it not is a new policy at all, it was intended to be simply a rendition of what is understood to be the policy.

>>Hans Kraaijenbrink: I’m getting a little bit tired of this discussion.

ICP 1 is a reformulation of 1591. It states like that. It was adopted by the board or taken note of by the board, prepared by the staff in 1999.

We had a discussion with the cc constituency yesterday, and I just looked up what is written in 1591. And the statement of inspection of the name server is already in 1591. So the text between ICP 1 and 1591 on this issue is purely identical. So I don't know where ICP 1 has created new policy on this issue.

Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: There is – I’ve heard different debates on the interpretation of 1591.

But Stuart.

>>Stuart Lynn: You know, I think we are just approaching this problem upside-down.

The real issue is that are there good reasons why the IANA needs to access certain information in the zone files? Is there a problem to be solved?

I've talked with a number of ccTLDs who've in the last two days, who rather than put it as a is it in this policy or that policy, say what problem are we trying to solve. Can we get together and sit down and figure out if we can solve the problem for the good of the stability of the Internet?

And I think that's going to be a productive way to go. I mean, the IANA acts on issues of instructions. It thinks it's in 1591, it thinks it's in ICP 1. But whatever that says, we should be talking about what problem we are trying to solve and get together and figure a solution to the problem.

So that's what's been going on with a number of ccTLDs. And, Peter, if we are looking at your zone file, we'd be happy to sit down with you and talk about it, too.

>>Vinton Cerf: I think that would be a more constructive approach.

Thank you very much.

We have only one other item on the agenda, and I have come to the belief that perhaps we don't have time for that today.

This is the WLS matter. This wait-list proposal is actually still under consideration, or comments are still outstanding on it from the DNSO and others. And so I'm not sure that it would be appropriate for us to pursue this any further. Do you have an issue?

>>Stuart Lynn: Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that there be allowed to be a presentation and still a Public Forum discussion on it, even though we have not yet received the report from the Transfers Task Force or from the Names Council.

Otherwise, there will not be opportunity for public discussion until Shanghai.

>>Vinton Cerf: That's a good point. All right. So we'll take time to make that presentation, even if we're not able to make any specific decisions about it.

So let's proceed. Louis.

VeriSign Wait-Listing Service

>>Louis Touton: Yes. I’d like to move through this as quickly as possible, given the late hour.

The WaitListing Service arose originally out of some discussions between VeriSign Global Registry Services and registrars in late 2001 which resulted in VeriSign drafting up a proposal and sending it to the registrars in – at the end of December of 2001. VeriSign then went through a consultation process principally with the registrars, although also with some other constituencies, and after reviewing the results of that process, concluded in late march of this year that it would like to proceed and formally ask for some contractual modifications that would allow the Wait-Listing Service.

There are two kinds of modifications in the registry agreements between ICANN and VeriSign for the dot com and dot net registries that will be – would be required to establish a wait-listing service.

First, the Wait-Listing Service changes the method of allocation of names, particularly of deleted names. And there are some provisions in the functional specifications by which VeriSign has agreed to operate the registry that would have to be modified to allow that.

Secondly, VeriSign proposes to charge a fee for this service. Under the agreement, there are approvals required, or, actually, caps required for fees for so-called registry services. That is, those services provided on a sole-source basis.

The Board at a telephone meeting in April considered the request of VeriSign and decided that it was appropriate to seek community views on the request before proceeding, and asked, in particular, for the DNSO Names Council to provide a report back by June, with the hope that that status report that they provided would allow some consideration here in Bucharest.

Today I would like to have two formal presentations and then proceed with community comment if there is any.

First, I think it would be appropriate for VeriSign Global Registry Services to give a talk explaining what their proposal is. And, secondly, for the DNSO Names Council's Transfers Task Force, which was assigned the responsibility, to give its – an oral summary of its status report. And then for community comment.

So I think the VeriSign Global Registry Services presentation will be given by Chuck Gomes there you are. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Chuck.

>>Chuck Gomes: Thank you, Louis. And thank you members of the Board, as well as the audience here today.

I’ll try to avoid getting too detailed. But to give you a high enough level view for those of who you are not familiar with this about what the wait-listing service is.

It's basically a service whereby potential registrants that we call subscribers may purchase a subscription tied to a currently registered domain name in dot com and dot net only, not in dot org.

Only ICANN-Accredited registrars would be able to offer the subscriptions. Only one subscription per name would be allowed in the trial of this offer. And it would be – happen on a first-come, first-served basis.

If a name is deleted that has a wait listing subscription on it, it would be registered to the WLS subscriber after any applicable grace periods.

Now, I’d like to just interject a note there.

Whereas we do believe that there would be positive impact on what was often referred to as the deleted names problem and the special batch auto-delete pool that we created last summer, I don't want anybody to think that this is a solution to that problem. We solved that problem by creating three pools. It's a very expensive solution because of how many times our hit system gets hit. But there is equivalent access for all registrars, even those going after deleted names.

Another point that's important is, we made a decision to outsource much of the technology development for this to a company that had some – had done significant development work in this area already, SnapNames. But I do want you to understand that if this service is offered to registrars and through them, to their customers, the interface between registrars would be directly with VeriSign Global Registry Services, not with SnapNames in any way whatsoever.

Now, just a quick history. I’ll be very brief, because Louis covered just a little bit of this.

The – you'll recall, in the summer of last year, summer of 2001, we actually encountered an equivalent access problem in our systems because of how heavy we were getting banged in the – in our systems. There were actually some registrars that could not get access at all.

We actually had to shut it down temporarily to put in a temporary solution. And you will recall we talked about that in the Montevideo meeting in September. At that time, we formed an ICANN delete group made up of many registrars, registries, any other interested parties.

Out of that group came four ideas that were discussed over a period of a month or two. One of those was the concept of a parallel registry. That became what we eventually called the Wait-Listing Service.

In October, after the ICANN delete list had done quite a bit of discussion on this issue, we came out with a statement saying that we would be willing to offer that if our registrar customers were interested in it being offered. And in addition to that, we would continue the three-pool solution that solved equivalent access problem at our cost, even though that was originally intended as a temporary solution.

After that, it appeared that there was very strong opposition from our customers to offering that. So we basically set it aside.

Then in November, after the meeting in Marina del Rey, the Registrars Constituency requested a proposal from us. That proposal was provided on December 30th of 2001.

We received comments on that proposal in January. We were primarily focusing on the registrar community, because they were our customers. It was never our intent to make this a consensus process, but, rather, it would be foolish for us, as a business, to offer a service that our customers weren't interested in.

So we received comments. The proposal actually was more widely distributed than just registrars. And we accepted comments from anybody that provided them. We submitted a revised proposal on January 28th, 2001. And I think a very important thing to remember with regard to that proposal, not only did we incorporate some changes from the community, from registrars, suggestions there. Certainly there was some input incorporated by the Intellectual Property Constituency. But we also incorporated throughout this process some suggestions from ICANN's staff.

But another important part of that proposal, because there was really no process for getting community feedback, we actually spelled out in that proposal some procedures for getting feedback from the total community. It outlined a schedule and deadlines for comment. The revised proposal was made available, as well as some other documents, and the original proposal, et cetera, were all posted.

It was submitted to the registrar's constituency, certainly, the constituency that was absolutely most important to us in this regard. But it was submitted to all constituencies, and the Names Council as well as the General Assembly, requesting feedback from all of them. We did receive feedback from the Registrars Constituency. And the results were mixed. But in our analysis, there was a substantial portion of registrars that at least justified going forward with a trial of the service to see if it made sense in the marketplace. We did not receive any feedback from the Names Council and did not receive feedback from most of the constituencies that were all alerted to this. But we did provide opportunity for that.

Then in March, at the end of the feedback period, just before Accra, the – we presented an analysis of the feedback we received. That analysis is available on our web site as well as on ICANN's web site.

And we felt like there was enough support to warrant going forward with a trial of this service.

The topic was on the agenda at the general assembly meeting in Accra and was discussed there. I was available in the audience there for answering questions.

And then later then that month, we submitted the request to ICANN for an amendment to Appendix G, which is required for any registry services that we would offer.

Now, some key points about the service is that we – it's a new service. And we believe from the very beginning – believed from the very beginning that it was a revenue source for registrars, and all interested registrars. It would not be forced on them; it would be their option. But in a time when everyone was experiencing declining businesses, we thought this would help all of us, including – including registries.

Another important point is that there is no impact to existing registrants, unless at such point in time they decide not to renew their name and it is deleted. But then it's no longer registered to them.

It provides a common user interface, a common user experience, in contrast to a multitude of experiences that are available at the registrar level today.

And a key point, and one of the reasons why we believe it's preferable to offer it at the registry, even though we are the sole source, is that at the registry, the service has 100% efficacy if the domain name is deleted.

Whereas the competing services at the registrar level are limited in terms of their chances of getting the domain name.

I’ll be very honest with you.

There are registrar-based services that will likely experience negative impact in a case or two.

Their particular business in going after the deleted names will probably be change drastically.

And it certainly was not our intent to harm our customers' businesses; okay?

Our intent was really to offer an improved service to consumers, while at the same time offering new business opportunity for our customers.

Would hope that the negative impact that some of these business models would experience would be offset by participating in the wait-listing service which is open to all.

And we believe that, in large part, would be true.

Finally, in conclusion, and in response to feedback from our registrar customers as well as others in the community, since we have put the request into ICANN, we would like to submit the following three changes to our proposal.

Number one, an interim redemption grace period, a topic you talked about earlier today, will be implemented with the WLS until the redemption grace period is fully implemented.

It's my belief that it will take probably at least in the com net registry as much as six months to get the redemption grace period in place, because to go through a full cycle and make sure there are no negative impacts to our registrars, to registrants, et cetera, it will take some time once the requirements are defined.

So we would implement an interim procedure to cover this.

We have been supportive of a grace period since ICANN first talked to me about that early this year.

In fact, a very important point is that in our original proposal of the wait-listing service, we actually built in a redemption grace period.

I didn't use that term, but that was built in from the very beginning.

We later, at ICANN's request, removed that from our proposal because of the fact that staff felt like it was more constructive to separate the two issues so they could be worked separately.

So we're fully supportive of that.

Number two, there will be no special treatment of existing SnapNames, SnapBack holders as we had originally proposed.

We had suggested what we thought was a reasonable way to deal with some customers of SnapBacks that have SnapBacks right now.

We are going to remove that from our proposal.

There will be no special treatment.

Number three, pricing will be simplified, eliminating the rebates, and offering a set price to registrars of $24 per year.

I’d be more than happy to answer questions as we proceed today or even after today, and I’ll make myself available for that.

Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much, Chuck.

>>Louis Touton: Now I’d like to invite Grant Forsyth, a member of the task force, the transfers task force of the DNSO, which was assigned by the Names Council responsibility for analysis of this problem.

Grant, I would ask that if you can, in your presentation, you just spend a little time describing what efforts at outreach and consultation with the community you took, because it may indeed save us time because people won't feel they need to speak for themselves if you can speak for them.

>>Grant Forsyth: Thank you, Louis, thank you Mr. Chairman.

I'm not sure I want to take upon myself the onerous responsibility of speaking for others but I will touch on certainly the matter of process that the task force has gone through.

What I’d like to do is just pick out the eyes of the presentation that was given by myself at the Names Council yesterday and spare you a lot of the detail, much of that detail being a recording of the input that we have received.

And I understand that that presentation is going to be up on the web site very shortly, and may well be being forwarded to you at the moment.

The first question which I just wanted to touch on is that what I’m reporting to you now is an interim or draft report.

The – this draft report has been with the task force since the 4th of June, but has yet not been concluded by the task force, neither the recommendations, which we'll get to at the end.

I’ll ask you to remember that as I present it to you.

The first question I’d like to note is that there was a question as to the appropriateness of the Names Council and the task force considering this question.

We think that that question of appropriateness or legitimacy has been addressed and it has been addressed in the manner that there is considered to be harm due to the implementation of WLS, and that harm, if you will, and that's the term that's used, not my term, that harm arises through matters of reduction of competition which currently exist in the market.

The second matter I just wish to inform you about is the matter of process.

And I noted that Chuck said that there had not been any input.

Well – and – from the Names Council.

In fact, the process of the task force is to, in fact, provide that input, and that's what's going on at the moment.

The process that the task force has been through is, firstly, to review the preexisting material that's about.

We've taken information and input from the community through at least three open conference calls as well as using e-mail and e-mail lists.

We've taken specific input from VeriSign, SnapNames, and ICANN staff.

We've produced, as I say, a status report, which is what I’m presenting to you now.

Some of the – of this matter, WLS, has been included in a general status report from the task force which was presented to the Names Council.

The next step, as I note in the process, is that this report and the recommendations of the report need to be ratified and concluded by the task force, then presented to the Names Council for their ratification and forwarding to the board.

Where we got to is that, firstly, we identified a number of issues, and we've chosen to characterize those issues as registrant issues, competition and registrant issues, registrar issues, and registry issues.

With regards to registrants, we note there is both legitimate frustration felt by prospective registrants in securing a currently registered gTLD domain name when it lapses and grave concern by existing registrants that they may lose their currently registered gTLD domain name should its registration prematurely lapse through mistakes, accidents, or unintentional lapses.

On the note of competition, we note it should be viewed as effects on the consumer, the end consumer, the registrant, not its effect on consumers of specific suppliers, regardless of their position in the supply chain.

With regard to registrars, their concerns the fact there is currently available lapsed name services, one of the better terms, and those services will be eliminated by the implementation of WLS.

And in fact, Chuck noted that WLS will, to use his words, deliver a similar or same user experience in contrast to the multiple experiences, read choice, currently available today.

With regards to registry, Chuck has noted the matter of technical issues of actually supporting the current systems, but again, we heard him note that from their point of view, those technical issues had been solved.

I’ll skip the detail as to the observations and inputs that we have received.

They're in our presentation, and move straight to the matter of the recommendations.

And again, I note that these recommendations are draft recommendations yet to be concluded by the task force, but they have been out there with the task force since the 4th of June.

The following policy recommendations are to be concluded by the task force and then put to the council, and hence to the board.

Number one, the ICANN Board move with haste to implement and actively enforce the proposed redemptions grace period for deleted names policy and practice.

And the reason we zero in on that, and it would have come through, if I had detailed information that we had received, is that the big issue here for registrants is dealing with deleted and lapsed names.

And as again Chuck has noted, this service doesn't go to that matter.

So we feel that the redemptions grace period policy will.

Number two, the ICANN board should reject VeriSign's request to amend its agreement to enable it to introduce its proposed WLS service.

Number three, the ICANN board should reject VeriSign's request for a trial of the WLS for 12 months.

Now, the reason we've split those two recommendations is because it is noted that a trial would have the effect of eliminating competition, so in effect, would entrench itself forever and a day.

So a trial, in effect, is the service.

Should the ICANN board not accept the policy recommendations noted above and grant VeriSign request for a change to its agreement and a 12-month trial, we would further recommend that, four, the introduction of the WLS depend upon the implementation and proven practice for not less than three months envisaged in the proposed redemptions grace period for deleted names policy and practice, and the establishment of a standard deletions period.

Recommendation five, the price for the WLS be set at the same amount as the current registry fee for a registration. The cost of the WLS function be no more and probably less than registration, given that the activity is less complicated.

Recommendation six, that the WLS include a requirement that notice be provided by the registry through the registrar to the existent registrant of a domain name when a WLS option or subscription is taken out against that registrant's domain name.

And lastly, recommendation seven, the WLS include a requirement for full transparency as to who has placed a WLS option on a domain name and the registrar that actioned that option.

And again, I just wish to conclude by once again reiterating that these are draft recommendations to be concluded by the task force, and our expectation is they will be concluded such that they can be put to the next Names Council meeting and, hence, to the board.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much.

Stuart.

>>Stuart Lynn: Grant, before you sit down, I have one question, I wasn't quite clear on what you were saying.

I think I heard you say that the wait-listing service that VeriSign is proposing is equivalent to the multiple choices of services that currently exist.

Now, as I understand the VeriSign service, someone who made a reservation would be guaranteed of getting that domain name should it expire through some other process.

Are there any other services that exist where there's a hundred percent guarantee that that would happen?

>>Grant Forsyth: Firstly, if I may correct your  –

>>Stuart Lynn: Maybe I misunderstood.

>>Grant Forsyth: – yeah, what you may have heard me say.

I was noting that Chuck had noted that the to be introduced WLS service would provide the same or similar experience in contrast to a variety of experiences, and I noted read choice, currently available today.

So in other words, we are going to remove competitive choice from the market and replace it with  –

>>Stuart Lynn: That's my question about competitive choices, and competitive choices for services that are really very similar.

This is, as I understand it, the service that – I’m not sure I know about all these things.

You know about them better than I do, but what I have heard is that even SnapNames in its existing service says maybe there's a 50% chance of going through that process, and that's a lot different to me than a hundred percent guarantee.

Now, are there services that are close to a hundred percent guarantee?

>>Grant Forsyth: No.

To my understanding, the answer to that last question is no, I don't believe there are services today that would suggest they can provide a hundred percent certainty.

To your comment with regards the fact that today the services offered are inherently the same, differently packaged, because they offer similar or – similar amount of certainty, would amount that eating a steak is a similar experience, but at least one has a choice as to the restaurants and the way it's served.

And that's what exists today as opposed to what would be offered tomorrow, which would be the same steak, perhaps in a slightly different cellophane package, offered by registrars by way of resale.

And that's the difference in the amount of competition.

>>Stuart Lynn: Just to follow up, what I think you're saying is this is a tentative part of your discussion, and I know it's a draft, depends on one's view as to whether these are similar services or not.

>>Grant Forsyth: No, I don't think so.

I think there's a recognition they are different services.

The concern and the focus is on the fact that whereas today you have different services, and Chuck noted different user experiences, tomorrow you won't.

And that's where the concern is.

>>Louis Touton: Okay.

Vint, I think it would be appropriate to take some community comment with the goal to be able to get this at least in-person forum part into a position where action could be taken.

There have been many written comments already, and I expect by the continuing flow of them that there may be many written comments in the future.

>>Vinton Cerf: All right.

Well, I certainly agree with the clear evidence that there are comments to come from the floor.

Amadeu has his hand up.

That's a question.

Amadeu, for Grant?

>>Amadeu Abril i Abril: I have a question for Chuck Gomes regarding the service if he's available for that.

Chuck, the question is how would the system would be launched?

If you understand what I mean.

There's day one for this wait-listing service, and in day one, hour zero minute zero, second one, all the registrars would be launching their pre-waitinglist service list that certainly would emerge from now until then to the registry?

>>Chuck Gomes: Sure, first of all, we have to make sure they could all access it at the same time because of the fact we have to give them all the same access.

So that's required.

We have no problem doing that and dealing with what could be a high volume because of the system we have set up for deleted names.

Understand that the pool, the auto-batch pool, that we have set up right now which could be done for this as well, because I imagine we'll see some auto-batching with this, would – we get in the neighborhood of 400,000 to 500,000 transactions for every $6 add that we get in (inaudible).

>>Amadeu Abril i Abril: Don't misunderstand me.

I trust VeriSign Registry to handle that given the past experience and the solutions you have implemented.

But with all the speculators around them, using their strategic () to know which domains are most interesting, my question was do you consider having a special window period for the current registrant to have preference for the wait-listing service?

>>Chuck Gomes: We have not.

One of the difficulties, Amadeu, that I'm sure you understand that we have is we don't – we wouldn't have any way of distinguishing between a common registrant and any other registrant.

And in fact, they would be going through a registrar, so all we would see is an RRP command from a registrar.

I think it's a good thought.

I'm not sure how it would be implemented.

>>Vinton Cerf: Okay.

Thank you.

Let's go now to public comment.

Please introduce yourself and your affiliation.

>>Bruce Tonkin: Yes, my name is Bruce Tonkin. And I'm representing a company view, Melbourne it, rather than any other views that I might be held to have.

First I want to address the issue of competition.

Today, we have a service called a domain name service. There's really two fundamental commands there, I guess. And that is you can create a domain name, and you can delete a domain name.

There is competition today both as to what's the best name to create and when is the best time to create it. There's competition in terms of the prices for that domain name.

Once someone purchases a domain name, then there is competition in the best way of maybe transferring it or allocating it or optioning that domain name.

When a domain name is deleted, all registrars have access to the same service, which is called "add." You basically add a domain name.

There are different business models as to the best time after a name has been deleted as to trying to predict when the name will be deleted and various ways of generating the "add" commands to acquire that domain name.

The comments have been made that by introducing the WLS service will somehow reduce competition. That is not true, because when you introduce a WLS service, you have exactly the same competitive behavior.

First there is the choice as to what's the optimum time to place a WLS on a name. Some might choose to place a WLS on the name immediately, so there will be competition the instant the service stats. There will be competition to register WLS names. Then there will be those that will choose to put a WLS on a name when they believe it's about to be deleted. Again, there will be different business models in how the best way of the optimum time to apply a WLS.

There's no guarantee you'll get a WLS in that situation, because somebody else may put a WLS on the name. So there's no 100% certainty until you get a WLS.

The question about is there any other service where you have 100%, there is. It's called a domain name. Once I purchase a domain name, I have 100% chance that I can use that domain name for my web site.

Getting that domain name, however, there is a probability that you might not be able to get that domain name, just as there may be a probability that you may not be able to get the WLS on your name. WLSs, like domain names, also expire. So there will also be competition in business models as to what's the best time to predict when a WLS will expire. And you will have exactly very similar types of business models again with WLS as you do for domain names. Whenever you make a change to a service, it will also have an impact on the current business models the companies have. But they will innovate and continue to compete.

The Redemption Grace Period will cause a change in registrar business models. So even introducing something as simple as that could be seen as having an impact on people's current business models.

However, people will come up with other business models to gain the best advantage from the Redemption Grace Period.

In regards to price, I guess my issue there is really I think the board needs to define a process for how it handles questions regarding price. And I don't think it's appropriate for the Names Council or registrars to try and choose a price for the registry. There needs to be a more objective approach to doing that.

Finally, the main issue that I have as a registrar is really that you can game WLS just as you can game the domain name system. And the issue of transfers and delete processes are issues that are of far higher importance to the Transfers Task Force than the actual impact of WLS on its own.

Thank you.

(applause.)

>>Louis Touton: Bruce. One question that arises from the transcription. You were transcribed as saying that you do think it is appropriate for the Names Council or registrars to get involved with price. Is that what you meant to say?

>>Bruce Tonkin: No. I said I do – I said that there needs to be a process that ICANN needs to determine for how it responds to a request from a registry operator to introduce a new service, and the pricing for that service. I said it's inappropriate for registrars to try to set that price.

>>Louis Touton: Thank you.

>>J. Scott Evans: My name is J. Scott Evans. I'm the intellectual property constituency representative to the Names Council. I just wanted to inform the Board, there has been some rumor throughout the community that this is a service that trademark owners and intellectual property owners are clamoring for. While we are in no way opposed to the system, it is not something we asked for. We did give unsolicited comments at one point and they did respond and incorporate our comments into that.

Secondly, I want to say that we believe that one of the most important things that the board can do is implement a redemption grace period. Because that will solve a lot of problems for the business model. One, it will allow the trial period to be a real trial.

Amadeu, with regard to your concern, at least from the International Trademark Association, we would probably not at this time want a pre-registration period. What we would prefer is a Redemption Grace Period.

So in those instances where there were inadvertent deletions, we would have a process to go through that was consistent across all registries, including dot com and dot net that we could recoup that name rather than having to go out and buy at a premium a WLS that we may very well choose to use. We just don't want to be forced to use it.

And so we are in no way opposed to the WLS.

With regard to price, I would say, as I cautioned yesterday at the Names Council, I get very concerned when the Names Council – that is not really an issue. But I would say that when I first read the proposal, $35 sounded like a lot of money to me at a wholesale level. But when you consider the amount of gaming that comes on, at some point, price has to be prohibitive so that gaming cannot occur in the system, so that the cost of gaming is such that it will discourage it. And would I just ask all of you to keep that in mind when you review their proposal.

Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much. Jamie.

>>Jamie Love: I'm a member of the task force. I was put on there kind of against my will by my constituency as a punishment, I guess. And so I've tried to get up to speed.

We think the main thing the board needs to do in this, with dot com and dot net, you're talking about legacy services that kind of most people are – lots of people are on. So I think they should be treated in some ways different than some of the other TLDs. So I think it's from a policy point of view, it's appropriate to treat them different just because of how the – how we got there in the first place.

Secondly, I think the primary focus of the policies should not be on the registrar community, but the domain holders themselves. If you lose your domain and all of a sudden your e-mail is going into the ether or into – to someone else or a porn operator just got your site, or some of the other things that happened to people, then that's really a very terrible thing that happens to a lot of organizations and things. So that's what you want to avoid.

So the redemption period, I think everyone, you know, realizes it's important, that once it sort of goes dead, sometimes people don't pay their phone bill, sometimes mistakes get made.

I think when we heard about the Whois thing, what they said was the biggest problem with the Whois data, it's just outdated data. People move around and they change things and they don't get stuff.

So the fact that mistakes do happen and, for a whole lot of different reasons, you want to – a system where mistakes, if they happen, don't really end up, you know, doing the kind of damage that can happen to people.

So the redemption's quite good.

I thought – it's also important to have incentives so that the original name holder is contacted.

So I had this proposal that I put in that if for 30 days you could put a thing on a list of an expired domain and that people can express interest in the domain in that 30 days and you can get it back within the 30 days, that people would have an incentive to call you up and say, look, by the way, why don't you go ahead and get your domain back and I’ll buy it from you if you don't need it. That sort of creates an economic incentive for someone to track you down, even if your registered data has changed or something like that.

Also, it would benefit the domain holder, because if somebody wanted to buy it from them, then the money wouldn't go to somebody else, it would go to the person that actually, you know, had the domain before, which, fine. And if you have a problem figuring out who to get it within that 30 days, I’d either do it by lottery, which would be fine by me, or by auction. It wouldn't make any difference to me.

But you could have the money if it goes by lottery go to the original domain holder, which is another way that would actually be a fairly simple system. And I would have it be run by the – a co-op of the competitive register industry, not by VeriSign. VeriSign recently did this thing with the expiration notice which we've complained to the FTC and asked them to prosecute on. They sent out this notice from the expiration department that made it that scared people that they had to send VeriSign money even if they weren't the register. And I don't think that's a very good signal for someone who wants to run an expiration service.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you, Jamie. That's probably not specific to WLS, but in any case, let's have the next speaker.

>>David Small: My name is David Small. I'm with OECD and I'm taking the microphone as a simple registrant. I would just like to say that while this wouldn't apply to the domain that we're most concerned with, there is no 100% security in having the domain name, as we found out. I have, for my organization, advised my network people to take backup insurance. And that is through SnapNames. I would much rather have 100% my insurance with 100% guarantee that I’d get it back if they were in an accident. And in my case, well, I think the – the safe haven period would largely solve these problems. I'm not sure in all cases we would have been notified since we're not doing business on these domains. But they're very important to us.

So I think, from my point of view, there's no doubt in my mind that I would like to have the opportunity to spend my 35, 45, $50 if I chose to buy 100% backup insurance for a name in which I may have invested thousands of dollars of effort.

>>Vinton Cerf: Just for clarification, am I to understand that the way you would exercise is this is that you would not only register the name, but would also want to wait list the name and be the holder of both?

>>David Small: This is, in fact, in the wake of our experience, this is what OECD has done for principal domains – I am a customer of SnapNames.

>>Vinton Cerf: This is a clever way of doubling the amount that you get for registering a name.

>>David Small: I might say, we're dealing with something for many users of domain names. We're talking – the price of registering of the name and insuring the name is a very minor cost. For my organization, the web site is a huge investment, and the domain names are the intuitive ways that our community, our potential – the potential – the people potentially interested in finding us can find us. We want those names. They're very important to us. And the amounts you're talking about are not significant.

>>Vinton Cerf: De minimus by comparison. Yes.

>>Amadeu Abril i Abril: Just one question.

Do you understand with the current proposal as explained, as a question I made to Chuck Gomes, the only way you have 100% insurance for the names you currently have is by placing WLS order with 100 registrars, with one each of them, because it will be sort of a general landrush with everybody shooting as many connections as they can for the WLS, because they have on day one?

>>David Small: I'm saying I would be happier to have – put my money on a system at – which is run in connection with the registry where if I have succeeded in getting the wait listing backup for my name, I know that's secure insurance. I know that the insurance I've taken out isn't 100%. It's better than nothing. I think, given – given the complexities of trying to get it back if you do lose it through an accident, this is a reasonable investment.

What I'm saying is I would rather have had the opportunity to place my backup money on a more sure backup.

And I am interested in a choice of restaurants, but I’m not interested in a choice of – for my steaks. But I’m not interested in a choice of degrees of unreliability if I could have a reliable backup to put my money on.

>>Tina Dam: My name is Tina Dam, and I'm working for Ascio Technologies. I realize there are different opinions among registrars on this service. But I would like to offer the board a view on the service from one of the more supporting registrar perspectives.

We actually hope that the board will amend the contracts with VeriSign as to allow the introduction of the WLS service.

The reason behind that is that we think that this is the only way that we can offer our customers in our market a better solution and a better service, in fact, in a fair and completely competitive environment.

So Bruce already pointed out the details of the competition. So I won't waste your time on that. I’ll just add to it that ever since the beginning of this discussion, we've been in close contact with our partners and clients. And the feedback we got was that they think that their service will be of very strong value.

Let me also add that if you compare with other of the newly formed registries, we think that all of these registries should be allowed to introduce a service like this. And making that comparison, I would go as far as saying that we feel that VeriSign has received quite unfair opposition to the service that they're suggesting.

Finally, as has been mentioned before, I will just ask the board to take special attention to the issue of pricing.

Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much, Tina.

>>Rob Hall: Hi, my name is Robert Hall and as one of the registrars we do operate NameScout so I have to start by saying that I am surprised that finally Mr. Small and I agree on something.

But I want to come from a different perspective because you've heard me say registries should only be able to sell to registrars, and the reverse of that is true as well.

Most registrars get their product from registries.

So the thing as registrars, I think we should be doing, is encourage the registries to innovate and find new ways to sell products and that's exactly what this is.

What's happened in the industry is a handful of competitors, and they really are a handful, is come up with a way to cause the registry some grief, causing great lengths to put in something to stop the pounding.

And they call this competition when the vast majority of registrars don't compete in this space yet, so the choice is do we go to a competitor or do we go to a registry where something is 100 percent.

I'm also interested to see that the process that this has gone through to be decided over the past year has taken so long and now it seems the Names Council and indeed task force has decided to not put it forward to you but the Redemption Grace Period seemed to go through in 30 days very quickly.

So I don't want process and other people delaying that process to make this take any longer, if possible.

I note that Grant Forsyth said consumers, by and large, this would be positive for them and most of the registrant responses you got was this would be a good thing.

He also said, I believe, it also should not depend on competition between registrars as much as the end user consumer experience.

But then he asked you to kill it.

So I'm not sure how he reconciles that and would love to hear him respond to it.

So basically I’m asking you to move forward with it.

It's been over a year.

Let's have a decision.

This is a trial period.

This will increase competition, and let's encourage registries to innovate on behalf of registrars because they are our primary supplier.

Thank you, I would like to Vint if I may thank the interpreters – I shouldn't say the interpreters.

Normally I speak too fast and the simultaneous guys can't keep up as they warned me in the past.

These two are so fast I often want to stand here and read what I say so I really do want to thank them.

>>James Foley: Good afternoon, members of the Board, I represent namesbeyond.com, and we would like to recommend the board pass the proposal as soon as possible.

We've been waiting a long time for this proposal to be evaluated and get passed.

I think there's one key point I’d like to make and that is that we should be paying attention to what consumers want and today it's hard for the average consumer to get access to the deleted names, the good deleted names.

And in fact, as a registrar, we benefit tremendously from SnapNames' product today, but we do think that the – that is very important for this group, this community to place the consumer first.

Thank you.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much.

And last speaker

Applause.

>>Paul Stahura: My name is Paul, I'm with eNom one of the accredited registrars who is providing, in my opinion, one of the competing services today

Chuck mentioned some registrars are going to have their business model changed tremendously, and I think I'm one ever those if this wait-listing service gets implemented.

One thing about effectiveness or efficiency if the name is deleted it's 100 percent chance you're going to get it with this wait-listing service.

I’d also like to point out if it's not deleted it's a zero percent chance you're going to get it but you still spent the $24.

With eNom's competing system if you don't get the name you request, you don't pay the fee so I think it's a balance between paying the 24 bucks and basically getting ripped off if the name that's waited on is not being deleted or you pay the 24 bucks, if the name you're waiting on happens to be deleted then you were successful 100 percent.

So I think the negative should be taken into account.

I’d also like to point out that a gentleman came up and talked about insurance, getting the wait list as insurance, and in case by some accident your name is accidentally deleted or for whatever reason you didn't purposely put in a delete command, I’d like to point out that that's covered by this proposed grace period.

If your name is accidentally deleted there's a grace period for 30 days and you get it back so it's redundant insurance so you would be paying 24 bucks, whatever the price would be, for no real purpose because it would be already covered.

Thank you.
>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much.

>>Grant Forsyth: Mr. Chairman, Grant Forsyth again.

I just wanted to respond to a question with regard to timing and I note that VeriSign did not request from the board, until the 21st of march, 17th of April – I'm sorry, 22nd of April the board passed its resolution and on the 24th of April now, that's about just over two months, the matter was referred to the task force.

So I think actually we're doing pretty well.

>>Ross Rader: Hi folks, Ross Rader.

I'm a member of the task force, and I wanted to try and quickly bring a little bit – urge some caution when considering this proposal, simply from the standpoint of ensuring that the issues of the entire life cycle of the domain is taken into question.

I have with me here a document that is actually – I'm not presenting on my behalf but on behalf of somebody who cannot be here, a company called Magi inc., Genie Livingston is the principal there.

Genie writes in the letter that prefaces the document that in 1998, august 2nd, a web site group dot com was set to expire.

That domain has not expired, in fact.

If the WLS is in place on that name, an unsuspecting consumer would have potentially paid five times the subscription paid, the WLS in 1998, in 1999 to wait for the name and so on.

From a task force perspective, I just want to ensure that we are aware of some of the other things that this would impact from an operational and policy perspective.

I’d also like to enter this into the record.

It's a petition against the practice of not expiring these domain names and also speaks out, at some short length, against the WLS.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much.

>>J. Scott Evans: J. Scott Evans from Intellectual Property Constituency again.

I heard someone come up here briefly and I want to give you a little anecdotal evidence of why the WLS does have some efficacy.

I was involved in a case where clients worked out a mutual agreement on a dispute, trademark dispute with a domain name.

They worked it out with no UDRP. They worked it out.

Unfortunately it was a small individual, home-based business that had the name, so they tried to transfer it to my client per the agreement and did some sort of technical error and VeriSign couldn't reconcile it and they didn't understand.

It was too much paperwork.

So I bought a snap name for this particular name because they were spending so much time on the lawyer trying to deal with all the paperwork, it was just a better cost benefit analysis.

We did, in fact, get the name.

It was registered with someone who came up here today to complain about this service.

It took me a year to get that registrar – it was registered in my name on my credit card – to transfer it to my client on my instruction.

I had to hire a private investigator to do this because I didn't have time to spend all day trying to get someone on the telephone, at a randomly assigned registrar, that's the way the system works.

And so I'm just saying there is some efficacy for this in the real world beyond the Redemption Grace Period. This is not a situation where this would have come into play.

So I asked you to realize this has some efficacy and I want you to know that although we didn't ask for it we're glad to see innovation in the marketplace.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you for that anecdote.

>>: My name is Alexander and I represent here just a regular user.

That is no other group.

I think that we should go by way of prevention as well as by way of curing things after they happen, which means why not the registrars would send a message to their users, let's say two months or one month before the name expires?

>>Vinton Cerf: In fact, I think they do.

But the problem is that sometimes the information about that user is not up-to-date and the message doesn't get there.

And that's part of the problem in the --

>>: In a way that extends the Redemption Grace Period and maximizes the chance that the name doesn't get lost.

>>Vinton Cerf: What I think I'm trying to suggest to you is that even if you do that, if the information about the user and his coordinates are not correct, then the only way the user may discover there's a problem is if the name is not operable, taken out of operation.

That draws a lot of attention to the problem, and at that point, the redemption period would at least give that person an opportunity to recover.

So the notification process has been, I would say, not a hundred percent effective.

Everyone knows, with millions of addresses or millions of names registered, the information about the holders of those names is not always accurate.

>>: Thank you.

It was just a suggestion, not for or in counter to the other things but in addition.

>>Vinton Cerf: Yes, Marilyn.

>>Marilyn Cade: I want to offer a point of clarification.

Earlier today I told the board they were being sent a presentation a day in the life of the dot and that presentation goes into some of the details and I think it's very important, maybe even essential, for the task force to make a point to the board that there is, today, no standard set of practices in many of these areas.

And that is, in our view at this point, adding significantly to confusion and it is also creating a situation where registrants then have no certainty.

There's a – and I do – I want to be very careful to say that the task force is not trying to limit innovation in how registrars communicate with their customers or potential customers, but I think the lack of certainty in the form of a standard deletion practice and policy that is implemented across the environment is an essential one and I would ask the board to keep that in mind.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you, Marilyn.

We've actually run up against the end of – almost the end of the scheduled time.

Let me ask, first of all, whether there are any further questions on this WLS matter from the board or from the floor.

I would seek the indulgence of the assembled body here to close this meeting unless there are issues that someone feels strongly they want to bring up in open microphone time, which we have only a small amount left of in the schedule.

So let me find out, are there people – before you all jump up, how many people feel the need for some open microphone time?

I see one.

If it's only one, I will easily accommodate that.

So please, say who you are.

There are two.

Is this going to be incremental?

>>: I'm Cameron Powell with SnapNames and I don't want to take up any time with elaborate comments.

I simply wanted to mention that we have addressed the Transfers Task Force's comments and recommendations in a document that I believe all of you have got a copy of. There's an Appendix E that goes through their factual understanding of the WLS.

In many cases they're misunderstandings, and addresses those issues point by point.

So I think it would be a useful piece of information in your review.

Thanks.

>>Vinton Cerf: Just a clarification – excuse me, before you go away, a question.

Can you just summarize, is SnapNames favorably or unfavorably disposed to this proposition?

(laughter).

>>: Let me check with some of the rest of my company on that.

(laughter).

>>: I think we're pro WLS, we're pro registry innovation and services.

>>Vinton Cerf: Thank you very much.

(applause).

>>Vinton Cerf: Okay.

I saw one – no?

Thank you, sir.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we seem to have come to the end of the day in a timely fashion, so I will call a close to the public session, and invite you all to join us again tomorrow morning.

What time are we getting on tomorrow?

7:30?

7:30.

(End of proceedings at 6:58 p.m.)