Posted April 9, 1999

At a special meeting conducted via telephone on March 31, 1999, at 2:00 pm U.S. East Coast time, the Initial Board of Directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers unanimously adopted bylaw changes designed to establish the basic framework for the creation of the three Supporting Organizations called for in the Bylaws (including specific provisions establishing a Domain Name Supporting Organization), based in large part on the DNSO Formation Concepts statement adopted by the ICANN Board of Directors on March 4, 1999.  The changes adopted included several modifications from the draft changes posted in advance of the meeting at http://www.icann.org/dnso/dnsobylaws1.html, in response to public comment received on that draft.

The revised bylaws are now posted, along with "red-lined" versions of the new Supporting Organization provisions and of the technical amendments adopted to conform the rest of the Bylaws to those changes.  Minutes of the March 31 meeting, describing in more detail the specific changes, rationales, and responses to comment received, will be posted no later than Friday, April 16.
 

Highlights of Bylaw Changes:

• Article VI was replaced with a revised article establishing the framwork for establishment of Supporting Organizations.  Articles VI-A,-B, and -C were added to establish the specifics of the initial Supporting Organizations.  (For now, VI-A and VI-C are reserved until the Protocal Supporting Organization and Address Supporting Organization are established.  The structure of the Domain Name Supporting Organization is set forth in Article VI-B.)

• In response to public comment, several modifications of the draft versions of Articles VI and VI-B were adopted, including the following:

• Along with many clarifications and editorial changes, the Board removed the specific requirement that no two Directors selected by any Supporting Organization be citizens of any one Geographic Region.  Multiple commenters raised objections to this provision; more importantly, the Board expects to deal comprehensively with the issue of geographic representation in conjunction with the future adoption of an At Large Membership structure.

• A quorum requirement was added for the Names Council.

• Clarification of the DNSO's responsibility for funding its administrative and operational costs was added.
 
• The ability of any group to petition the Board for recognition as a new or separate DNSO Constituency, without prior ICANN staff approval, was clarified.
 
• Several changes to other provisions of the Bylaws (specifically, Article VI, Section VI; Article V, Section 1; Article V, Section 2; Article V, Section 4; Article V, Section 6; Article V, Section 9; Article V, Section 10; Article V, Section 11; Article V, Section 12; and Article V, Section 13) were adopted to make the provisions consistent with the new Article VI.

Further Comment Requested:

In order to more fully explore an issue raised by one comment submitted in reaction to the draft ICANN Bylaw changes the ICANN Board seeks further comment on the following question:

Should the initial DNSO Constituencies currently identified as "ccTLD registries" and "gTLD registries" be re-categorized as "open registries" and "closed registries," identified according to whether the registry is open to any registrant, worldwide ("open"), or is instead limited to certain registrants based on geography, intended use, or other criteria ("closed")?