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>>VINT CERF: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
We are within 2 minutes of beginning the session.
My apologies for the late start.
Okay.
We have electronic operation.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to open the meeting with a reminder.
We do have translation available from Francophonie from French to English and English to French.
And if you are not prepared to deal with both languages without assistance, you may want to go and pick up a headset upstairs.
Sorry.
>>ALEJANDRO PISANTY: There is a risk that someone will begin speaking in French.
So even English speakers would do well to avail themselves of a translating thing.
>>VINT CERF: Second, you will recall that we did not complete all of the business scheduled for yesterday and that we left over continuation of the WSIS discussion to this morning.
So Theresa Swinehart is going to open the meeting with an update on the WSIS.
And then this will be followed by the working group on the WSIS matters making some initial comments, and then we will open the microphone for public discussion until we have to finish that.
I must tell you that if we were to go for a full hour on this, that we will be quite compressed on the remainder of the schedule.
So we need to be somewhat moderate.
But I will do my best to make sure we do get everything done before we finish today.
I will estimate that we will finish today probably not at 12:30, but, rather, 1:00.
And that will have to be a fairly hard deadline.
So, Theresa, thank you for allowing us to run this over to this morning, and please give us your update on WSIS.
>>THERESA SWINEHART: Okay.
I will do my part to keep my part short.
Apologies for having the date wrong, but carried over from yesterday.
I think most people are familiar it has been put together.
There are many participants who are following it or have been -- the working group on internet governance has met once, on the 23rd through the 25th, in private, with one day of public consultations.
Intergovernmental organizations such as the IT, UNESCO, and WPO do have observer status during the closed sessions as well.
The next phases of the working group meetings are 17th through 18th of February for a preliminary report.
Mid April, June, and then the aim is in July 2005 to have the submission of a report to the U.N. secretary general in order to have the further discussions and adoption at the summit in the late part of 2005.
I will, however, let Markus and others speak more directly to the time line.
The outline of the structure itself will focus on working definitions, evolution of the Internet, current situation, inventory of public policy matters, future developments and scenarios, and proposals for action as appropriate.
I would underline that the term "as appropriate" is very important here and sends a signal that perhaps in some areas there's not necessary changes.
Moving forward, and these are going to be the folks who are going to speak after me, many of the ICANN constituencies are following this debate.
There's the WSIS working group, which consists of constituency representatives.
And these are the people who have put together the workshops to date that have occurred at our meetings.
And we would anticipate to have another one in Argentina.
There's been increased awareness by the ICANN constituencies to be involved, to engage in their local Internet communities, to engage with their governments.
And I will let them speak more to what their next actions are.
From an ICANN staff side, we are continuing to monitor it, support constituency initiatives and involvement and provide contributions and input where appropriate.
With that, I will actually allow -- Peter, who do I refer to? -- I will allow members of the working group itself to address you.
>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Theresa.
Peter Dengate Thrush from Internet New Zealand.
You will be relieved to know that I don't have the 65 slides that I had prepared this morning.
As Theresa said, we had a workshop on Tuesday organized by the workshop planning group.
And members of that are going to give brief updates.
It's important that we just not have a repeat of the panel discussion.
So we're going to give you, if we can, updates on what's occurred since then and perhaps some clarifications.
The intention is really to resume the open session with the microphone, because there were a number of people who wanted to say things and because of the time constraints, we had to cut you off.
So please regard this as an open session immediately.
From my perspective from the cCNSO, what has happened since the working group is some progress.
First of all, the ccNSO's open working group on the WSIS has agreed to draft a response to Mr. ZHAO's paper.
This was splitting the IANA database in response to the ccTLD entries.
We are going to respond to that.
We also agreed to respond to Mr. Desai, the chairman of the WSIS working group, on our positions.
Our working group will be drafting those on behalf of the ccNSO.
And we agreed to keep participating on the work of this group which includes helping draft the white paper that is being prepared.
Marilyn Cade will finish by giving you details on that.
And the resolution that is coming out on that.
That's the update from the ccNSO.
Hopefully if there's any questions, I would be happy to answer them a little bit later on.
Now I'd like to call on Tony Holmes, who is from the ISP constituency and a councillor of the GNSO.
Tony.

>>TONY HOLMES: Thank you, Peter.
I believe that you have actually covered everything that needs to be said about the ongoing work that's happening here.
And in view of the chairman's remark about the time, I think it's probably appropriate we move quite quickly towards the open forum and get comments.
There's nothing I wish to add to that.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you for that brevity, Tony.

>>MARILYN CADE: My job here today is to remind everyone that we are working on a white paper and a draft -- we have a draft resolution.
And we did provide copies of that through the constituencies and asked -- and the other SOs and asked them to take a look at it while they're here.
Very much draft, which means that we need your input and your comments.
We'll be posting it on the Web site, and we will be asking you -- you know who the members of the working group are.
You know you've got to button hole us while we're here if you have immediate comments.
But we'll also be asking to you give us E-mail comments.
We're looking forward to the feedback you're going to provide, because that is also going to help us in our further evolution of the white paper.
The white paper will be a background and information piece, and will be intended to be available to anyone who is interested in learning more about the positions that we think the ICANN community should be putting forward.
But when I say "we," we mean you.
So we look forward to your comments in the public forum.
>>VINT CERF: Marilyn, before you step down, one small question about the scope of the white paper.
Are you focusing this on the work of the working group on Internet governance or is this a broader paper going more to all the issues that WSIS is facing?
>>MARILYN CADE: I think that our focus will probably be internet governance.
But you can't really -- and we're still really working this out.
But the working group on internet governance, of course, is taking place in a much broader environment.
And so I believe it's necessary for us to -- at least in our background section and in our exploration of the implications, it's really necessary for us to take into account what the driving themes are and the broader set of issues of the WSIS.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you.
Are there any further formal or, well, even informal comments, from the working group members?
If not, I'm pleased to open the Mike phone now for comments on the WSIS in general and the working group on internet governance.
I'll call upon -- whoops.
Hold on.
I'll call been Izumi first.
>>IZUMI AIZU: Good morning.
My name is Izumi Aizu, and --
>>VINT CERF: We're not hearing you yet.
>>IZUMI AIZU: The mike is open.
My name is Izumi Aizu, and although I am the member of the planning group from the at-large advisory committee, but I'd rather make this as my personal comment than the member of the planning committee.
I have participated in most of the WSIS process, and mainly from the NGO or civil society sector standpoint.
But I think the most -- single most important lesson we can learn from being in South Africa, is everyone is created equal, regardless of the color.
It doesn't matter if you're white or black or red or yellow.
And you should have the right to participate equally, to make the decisions concerning the society you live in.
Three years ago, or almost four years ago, I came with my colleague, Adam Peake, to Cape Town, the same place, as a member of the G-8 dot force, or digital opportunity task force, which is a tripartite exercise to deal with the digital divide issues initiated by the group of eight nations.
I was given as an NPO, nonprofit organization, to be equal with my government colleagues in the private sector, and discussed what to do with this digital divide four years ago.
Adam and I worked pretty hard to propose a one point universal participation to the newly emerging ICT, say, policy or standard-making fora.
We saw very little effective participation from the developing parts of the world.
So we proposed to our colleagues in the government of the G-8 and also South Africa as a host country government which was participating in the same forum, and they accepted that, yes, this is a good idea to help promote their participation to international new bodies such as ICANN or W3C or some others.
And four years happened.
How much visible output or outcome we saw?
Perhaps not as much as we wanted to.
So, again, at the WSIS two years ago, some governments started to question, are we participating equally?
And I think the -- I think the -- the question is two things, to allow the developing parts of the world have, but, first of all, we should set up the principle, but also, as our G-8 action plan pointed, that we should -- or this international body should make special effort to promote their participation.
I really welcome that Paul and ICANN is now taking very special effort to set aside certain proportion of our resources to help that.
Do you know the FIFA, the football federation.
They spend 24% of their budget to help the developing countries, especially outreach.
They didn't say Internet is -- I mean, football is for everyone.
We used to say internet is for everyone.
If so, I think we should really make some visible effort.
Similarly, the lesson we took from the WSIS process is that civil society is part of the multistakeholder approach.
It's slightly different from the stakeholder-based that the civil society be given not necessarily fully equal, but well-recognized position in the WSIS process as well as the WGIG process.
So the current setup of the civil society component in ICANN as the at-large advisory committee, we have done our best, and I don't have much time to continue, but, still, it's not sufficient.
And the basic question is, the current modality or the framework we are given, is it sufficient enough to play advisory role?
Or should we need a little bit more to be -- to have equal opportunity, right, and responsibility to participate into the decision-making of the ICANN?
Thank you.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Izumi.
Ivan.
>>IVAN MOURA CAMPOS: This is just a clarification, Izumi.
From the standpoint of FIFA, is Brazil a developing country?
(Laughter.)
>>IZUMI AIZU: Go to FIFA.com and you will see.
It doesn't matter if it is classified as developing countries or not.
If the need is there, they have the regulation, very impressive program.
And each national association gets a million U.S. for certain very specific programs.
And they're really helping the training center, outreach, or the stadium and stuff like that.
I think we can learn a lot.
And let's go to Argentina and see how it works.

>>VINT CERF: Okay.
Mouhamet and then we'll take the next speaker from the floor.

>>MOUHAMET DIOP: Thank you, Theresa and all this staff for the great job they're trying to do in order to coordinate the actions of ICANN through that process.
I have just one question for Theresa.
I have seen through the report that we get some input from ccNSO and from the GNSO.
I just wonder if that supporting organization was associated through this -- with that working group on the WSIS, and if the at-large also had this equal participation?
I just wonder how broad was the coordination for that working group on the WSIS that I can tried to set up.

>>THERESA SWINEHART: I'm sorry, Mouhamet, an understanding of how broad the coordination is?
How broad the coordination is among the working group itself?
Or is it the representation?
Within the -- the working group, within the ICANN structure?
>>MOUHAMET DIOP: My understanding is the -- the activities you are trying to coordinate inside ICANN is related to all the constituencies in order to get, I mean, a whole -- just like an ICANN point of view and an ICANN participation to the process.
Do you have all the constituencies inside the -- this working group or is it just -- because I have seen that there was many staff members who were involved since the beginning of that.
And I have seen also that, for example, some members, just some -- some members are really interested as individuals in the process.
And we have seen also the constituency through the NRO, the other process are really involved and get really -- are trying to give their input, sometimes individually, sometimes -- I just wonder if this has really been done systematically through some working group to get a stronger voice and a more harmonized position.
>>THERESA SWINEHART: Let me start.
Actually, to answer your question, it's getting there.
And then I'll let Marilyn add to it.
I don't know if people recall how sort of the working group sessions and the workshop sessions got started within the ICANN meetings.
It was actually at the Montreal meeting that Izumi had made a comment at the public forum reminding the community and the board that the WSIS process was occurring and that it was very important to follow it.
And it was at the meeting in Tunis that the at-large actually began organizing in order to have a discussion within the ICANN stakeholders with the business community, and then the ISP community, and ccTLDs.
So it's been a bit of a growing thing.
And it's becoming more and more coordinated.
It now needs to be systematically coordinated, which I will let Marilyn speak to, but has started to occur prior to this meeting and will occur further.
So I'll let Marilyn speak to that.
>>MARILYN CADE: I really want to echo what Theresa said, that really kind of the catalyst of the at-large leadership in raising this issue, we've kind of been in a very participatory way kind of reaching out who has helped to plan these workshops and we've had a growing addition of when we say constituencies in this particular setting, we need to be a little careful about what that means, because we're actually -- the ASO has been participating.
And in the panels that have been participating in the past, we've had representation from each of the constituencies in the GNSO as well as representation from the ccNSO and the ASO.
And the planning group is also growing, with representation from each of those groups.
So the IPC at this meeting has indicated -- in the past, they've been invited and said, "you know, we're kind of not quite ready yet."
But they've indicated they want to join the workshop planning group.
And the official name of this group, we have to remember, is the workshop planning group.
The effort is to organize education and awareness.
And we kind of through developing the white paper, which we've gotten to, and the resolution, that's kind of the first sort of formal step that we're trying to take beyond initially being into awareness and informing ourselves and hearing from the community.
Does that help, Mouhamet?
>>VINT CERF: Okay.
Thank you very much, Marilyn and Theresa.
I think the next -- oh. Sorry.
I will take the next comment from the floor, then.

>>IZUMI AIZU: I wonder if you can read the online comment from my colleague, Adam Peake just sent.
>>VINT CERF: Yes, I can.
Thank you.
Adam sends a note, it reads as follows: I would very much like to hear ICANN directors and staff reaction to the RIR/NRO comment made earlier in the week.
And I quote, we've also called on ICANN to work with the U.S. government to publish a genuine, unambiguous plan for its independence after the current MOU and to commit to this plan before the conclusion of the second phase of the WSIS.
That would be the end of November of 2005.
This is critical to provide the WSIS community with certainty as to the future form and status of ICANN after WSIS, a question which is certainly still unclear to many.
Adam goes on to say, that's end of quote.
He goes on to say: I fully agree with this and would like to hear comments from the board.
Specifically, I think we need to look at the U.S. Department of Commerce/IANA/ICANN contract, for example, where it states modifications, additions or deletions from the root zone file where it -- without permission of the U.S. government, I think implications for sovereignty are quite clear and must be addressed.
He signs it Adam Peake, glowCOM, Tokyo.
That's the comment that Adam has made.
My understanding is that the MOU is fairly clear now as to what is supposed to happen at its close.
But perhaps, Paul, you'd like to speak to that.
>>PAUL TWOMEY: Thank you, Vint.
Well, clearly, there's limitations upon what ICANN staff or ICANN board can say on behalf of another party.
And as a CEO, as a member of ICANN, and as an Australian, I would be the last person to speak on behalf of the United States government.
But let their own words speak for themselves.
Mike Gallagher, the assistant secretary of commerce and the head of the NTIA, in a series of interviews in August, September of this year, unfortunately, in some respects, interviews given with Washington-based journals, so it didn't get reported as widely as it should have, made two statements, I think, that were very interesting.
First of all, he made a very clear statement that he was pleased with ICANN's progression against the MOU milestones, recognized that we were ahead, and basically he used the phrase "it is crunch time for ICANN."
I actually had to have that translated from American into Australian.
And I understand that to be that this was -- you know, this was now the time where everything was coming to conclusion and it was a positive phrase.
But he very much pointed out that he saw the progression.
The second thing he made very clear, and not only did he say it was a case of himself, but also Ted Cassinger, the deputy secretary, Sam bottinGER, secretary, a series of people in the U.S. executive, were firm of the perspective that when the MOU was completed, that ICANN was to be independent to the United States government and he exhorted again their independence and made the point that the United States did not consider it was in this business.
The second thing he said in a related interview not long after was an interesting comment where he actually, when asked the question what was his position about where ICANN should be based or its jurisdiction, or its place of incorporation, his comments were that after the conclusion of the MOU in 2006, he didn't have a perspective on it and that the USG didn't care.
So I think there were two fairly clear statements of policy intent by senior administration figures in the bush administration about their intent about the MOU is as it says it is.
It comes to a completion.
Then ICANN is independent and they don't have a perspective where it should be based.
As far as the second set of questions are concerning zone file issues, et cetera, they are clearly issues of ongoing discussion between ourselves and commerce as we prepare towards the completion of these obligations, and sits within that milestone framework.
That's probably the most I can say at the moment.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Paul.
I think that Adam's question, in principle, is simply -- and in response also to the RIR comment -- is a request for ICANN to lay out what things will look like operationally at the completion of the MOU.
And I think that's something we can do.
Okay.
I'll take comments from the floor now.
I think -- who's next?
>>MANU NJENGA: My name is MANu NJENGA, and I am working with progressive communications, as well as (inaudible) organizations in Africa.
My question is kind of a follow-up onto the issues of being discussed early on, specifically about (inaudible) as well as information and awareness, especially among African organizations within nationals, that is, activities that are taking place at the national level.
The specific question is, to what extent are activities focused on ensuring that there is national level activities to do with creation of awareness about internet governance issues and to improve the level of participation at the international forum?
I am saying this because particularly if you go to international constituency, there is no specific identified body that's meant to deal with internet governance, no governments are -- no one of the governments are going to have a more active role, because in terms of the stakeholders, government and the private sector, there's no defined mechanism.
And all of this seems especially in terms of African institutions, all of this seems to be happening at the international level.
And nothing at all, no coordination, no information, no specific central point about internet governance.
So I would like to ask the Internet ICANN people especially what is being done to improve this situation.
Thank you.

>>VINT CERF: Alejandro.
>>SHARIL TARMIZI: Thank you for the question.
In response to your question, I think one has to make a distinction between the term "internet governance" and necessarily equating that with what ICANN's function is.
The term "internet governance," from my personal understanding is a broader issue and may mean a lot of things to different people.
But what I can say here as chairman of the Government Advisory Committee is that we have seen increased participation from African governments, particularly at this meeting.
If I may say, participants from GIBUTI, Gambia, Senegal, and Sudan, the commonwealth telecom organization is a member, the (inaudible) Francophonie is a member, the United Nations economic commission for Africa is a member.
So, in a sense, there is increased awareness and increased participation by governments in this process.
And perhaps I'll leave it at that for now.
>>VINT CERF: Thanks, Sharil.
Did you have another comment?
Okay, Alex and then George.
>>ALEJANDRO PISANTY: There is increasing -- in reply also to Mr. Manu Njenga, many of us are doing work in our own countries to reach out to society and to government and to bring together groups of consultation.
I think that the multistakeholder BOTTOM-UP, et cetera, approach has to be guided for us with a principle that in Spanish says (Speaking Spanish) a good judge starts at home.
So we are doing these multistakeholder consultations.
It has turned out in many countries that academic institutions can play a much easier role than other organizations because they are places where people assume that they can go for an open discussion.
So probably your local chapter of an organization like APC is considered as a part in that discussion and has not the same power to call everybody, every stakeholder to the meeting, but in partnership with academic institutions, you can really call these meetings either open -- to analyze what Sharil Tarmizi said, what are exactly the problems you want to concentrate on and specifically the internet governance ones that are to result internally locally in the country, which are a large number and do not concern really the global arena.
I'll be happy personally to provide some material in Spanish, and I'm trying to translate it into other languages to support this at least as guidance.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Alex.
George.
>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: George Sadowsky, global Internet policy initiative.
I hadn't expected such a good segue to what I was going to talk about.
Thank you.
I'm encouraged by the fact that Marilyn Cade mentioned that the white paper that is being prepared focuses on the larger context and concerns of WSIS rather than on the smaller question of internet governance, because internet governance, whatever we mean by it, is, in some sense, an intermediate step, an intermediate product.
And the purpose of improving internet governance, again, whatever we mean by it, is to empower users, people in developing countries, to better their lives, to increase their income, to participate more actively in the social fabric of their country and so on.
And so I would propose that the end user, again, a somewhat slippery term, but, nevertheless, one which can be concretized, be the focus or be a focus, certainly, of the paper.
And then if one accepts this, I think it makes sense to ask the question, what are the forces, the organizations in the world that empower that user or that consumer of ICT to realize these good things and what are the forces that constrain the development or the ability of that user to become empowered?
And to go one step further, to what extent are these things national in scope or local, and to what extent are they caused by whatever international arrangements exist?
My own personal view is that the vast majority of the constraints on people for realizing their potential within the information society and the use of ICTs are national and local.
And if that is the case, one ought to adjust one's focus to focusing on those things which, if solved, if ameliorated, would provide the greatest benefit.
And I would hope that the white paper would take this into account and discuss this particular issue.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, George.
Denise.
>>DENISE MICHEL: Yes.
Denise Michel with at-large.
I just want to note for the previous gentleman's question, many of the -- most, actually, of the user groups that have joined the at-large network and become active there are also involved in WSIS and internet governance issues.
So we're also using the network of at-large groups to inform and empower those groups and become engaged in other internet governance issues that they're interested in.
So I'd be happy to answer some more questions about that.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Denise.
Let me take one comment from the board, and then -- so Veni.
>>VENI MARKOVSKI: Thank you.
Although it's not fair, because George Sadowsky and Denise already said probably 60% of what I wanted to say.
The other part is that -- thanks, Alejandro.
The other 40% is that in the processes of defining what is the coordination of the -- and the organization of the Internet, it's also in every country to respond to the question. And I speak here as chairman of the Internet society of Bulgaria. A great role comes to the Internet society organizations. At least I can speak in Bulgaria.
And I urge everyone, including Vittorio who is sitting there to reach out and talk to more of these organizations that have many members, because times we help the governments to achieve easier, in a better way the results, because we have some of the expertise which governments sometimes like.
I will just give one example. In the Bulgarian telecommunications law accepted last year, including with the help of the global Internet policy initiative and the center for democracy and technology, we have specifically stated in the telecommunications law what are the responsibilities of the governments and the national regulatory authority towards the Internet. And there are three. First, no licenses on the Internet service providers, and secondly and third, IP addresses and domain names are outside of the control of the government.
The civil society in Bulgaria, even though it's a very fragile democracy, only 15 years old, has shown it is capable of handling those issues together with the government, and with the academic network, with the ISP association.
So we are ready to share this experience with anyone who is in the room or who is listening over the Internet.
Thanks.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Veni.
>>WOLFGANG KLEINWÄCHTER: My name is Wolfgang KleinwÄchter, I'm from the university of Aarhus and I want to share some observations from the first meeting of working group on Internet Governance.
Some people have said in the beginning there is a high level of confusion about Internet Governance. You know, if I look around the members of the group, I cannot see that there is any confusion. There are different positions. And this is a difference between confusion and different positions.
And so far, it was also not such a big question, if we come to the definition of the definition. You know, there are a number of different definitions. And there is a narrow definition and there's a broad definition. And we should not confuse and say, you know, there is no real definition.
There are very defined and clear subjects, but there are different approaches to the question of definition. And we should not confuse ourselves by saying there's confusion.
There is clarity, but different positions.
If it comes to definition, I think the group was very wise to start with a broad definition and have a long list of items. The list is now around 50 different items, you know, which could cover under Internet Governance. And it was also a very wise decision of the group, you know, to start by trying to create now the four baskets, you know, with the four main aims. Equitable distribution of resources, stability and security, access for all, and multilingualism, because this enables the group to pack the 50-plus issues into the four baskets and then to look into each basket and define priorities, and then to go issue by issue and to look, you know, what is the adequate governance mechanism for each issue.
And this helps us avoid the situation where at the end of the day we have to decide whether this organization or another organization should govern the Internet. But we come out with a very, very flexible mechanism, obviously. I call this a multiplayer mechanism. We will have a set of different mechanisms for different issues, which is probably, you know, much more realistic than to have a discussion who should govern the Internet.
So it is a broad range of different issues.
But nevertheless, this has some consequences for ICANN. At least two things, and this I want to raise here.
Number one is I think the microcosm of ICANN has to understand that it's operating now in a microcosm with WSIS. So it means it has to redefine its external relations and its role in the bigger microcosmos. So I think this is really an important task to re-understand what the role of ICANN is in this broader context.
And the second point is, you know, when we start to draft the inventory, mapping all the different organizations, one colleague of the group has proposed to have a horizontal approach, you know, which takes -- which will take all the organizations involved against a number of benchmarks, which are laid down in the WSIS declaration, which includes openness, transparency, democracy, multistakeholderism and things like that. And also it can be checked from the outside which means ICANN has another watchdog. And it would be good for ICANN to reconsider its internal structure and to look whether the ICANN itself will meet or meets the criteria which are in this paragraph 48 of the WSIS declaration.
Thank you very much.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Wolfgang.
Are there any other comments?
Let me also ask -- please, go ahead. I just want to find out how many more people anticipate commenting on WSIS matter at this point.
Okay. So you may be the last one. That's good because we now have used up about an hour.
Please, go ahead.
>>susan Crawford: Good morning, I'm Susan Crawford with a law school in New York City. I WONDER how many of you remember the Spruce goose? The largest airplane in the world designed at the time to carry two Sherman tanks across the ocean and 750 troops. Development dragged, and in fact, the airplane wasn't finished. It was planned to help out in World War II. It wasn't finished until after the war was over at enormous cost.
Now, the Spruce goose's core mission was to fly. It didn't focus on that mission. It focused on flying big. And as a result, it wasn't much of a help during the war.
I believe that we are engaged in a Titanic battle for the future of the Internet right now. This is playing out in many fora across the world. Obviously, the WSIS process is a major part of this.
George tenET the former head of the CIA announced yesterday that in his mind, only authorized users should be allowed to access the Internet. Only people who are worried sufficiently about security. How about that; right?
Pushed by law enforcement, intellectual property and sovereignty people are fighting about the Internet all over the world. And ICANN's role in this is a very small part, actually but nonetheless a key part of the battle. And I believe ICANN is on the right side of this battle. Netizens if you will on one side versus authorities who seek to control the Internet on the other.
Listen carefully to the language of the U.N. They refer to ICANN as the present arrangement. Something that can be reformed, should be reformed, so that new blood can come in and run the allocation of IP addresses and the insertion of domain names into the root.
That language is key, and part of this battle.
Governments, in a sense, have an advantage over ICANN when it comes to regulating the Internet, because all they can do is pass laws. Otherwise, their inaction has no effect on how the Internet is used or what innovation occurs.
The consensus policy process was designed to give ICANN that same advantage, suggesting that some consensus policies would be created if they were supported by global consensus. Everything else would be left to global control. ICANN can claim this energetically with both hands to claim this competitive advantage it has to allow innovation unless consensus policies exist to the contrary. Otherwise, the risk is we, and ICANN is us, ICANN will look worse than governments for its core mission, which is avoiding collisions in the root, handing out new Top-Level Domains, and allocating IP addresses.
So I have two suggestions. Just as the core mission of the Spruce goose was to fly, the core mission of ICANN is to, in fact, expand the TLD name space. We had a dramatic discussion about that yesterday. It's clearly not easy, but ICANN could release a lot of the pressure on this conversation and help in this battle by setting up a process for regular insertion of new Top-Level Domains into the root. And I'm convinced that you're working on that. I see that happening.
But a second thing that hasn't been adequately discussed, I think, in connection with the strategic plan that's under consideration right now is that ICANN very clearly needs to tie its considerable financial goals to its inward processes. That is, as Mouhamet has said several times, its key functions of opening up new TLDs and allocating addresses. Those central things have to work right, just as the Spruce goose really should have flown earlier.
I'm not convinced at the moment that the financial goals of ICANN as expressed in the strategic plan adequately tie to these core inward missions. Rather, they seem to be aimed at fighting this battle outwardly, setting up ICANN as sort of an alternative to other substantial intergovernmental organizations. I think that's a mistake and I hope there will be a lot of examination of that strategic plan.
You have many friends across the Internet, many people who care about your side of the battle. The question is are they going to align with you? Are they going to see ICANN as a failed experiment or as a timeless embodiment of net values, which is what it was supposed to be.
Will your friends, these other friends of the Internet, care if you carefully preserve the TLD string space so that nobody else can use it? I'm not sure they will.
Will they support you and applaud you if you manage in a very careful way the business models of the registries and registrars who have contracts with you? I think so.
On the other hand, if you join with them to protect the net from the sources of control that seek to constrain access to the Internet and control what kinds of things can happen online, you have a tremendous group of people who will help you, who will applaud you and go into battle with you.
So don't let the forces of intellectual property, sovereignty, and just all-out greed destroy the net. Join with your colleagues on this side.
The Spruce goose project was killed. The plane was kept until Howard Hughes died. It's now kept in Oregon.
I don't want to see ICANN fail. Thank you.
(Applause.)
>>VINT CERF:Thank you very much. I don't want to live in Oregon anyway, so....
All right. Sharil.
>>SHARIL TARMIZI: If I might just respond. You mentioned just now governments can only pass laws. I think speaking from a developing country, although some of you may disagree with me whether Malaysia is a developing country, I'd like to say this. There are many other things that governments do play a role in, and one of them is really to create the right environment for industry and the private sector to develop.
So in many of these respects, developing country governments do play an active role in putting in the right environment so that industry and the private sector can flourish. So it's not just about control. It's about cooperation as well and collaboration.
Thank you.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Sharil.
Let me get Marilyn and then Michael.
>>MARILYN CADE: Can I just be last? I just have a closing remark.
>>VINT CERF: Marilyn loves to be last. Okay, mike. Let's keep this short.
>>MICHAEL PALAGE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted, the strategic plan has been a very hotly discussed topic in many of the constituents here in cape town this week, and many of the Supporting Organizations and constituencies have asked for further consultation and dialogue with staff, and I hope that they will, if you will, follow-up on those invitations to, again, if you will, refine the strategic plan so that, again, we don't become the Spruce goose parked in Oregon. And it's not that bad of a place. I have been there a couple of times.
>>VINT CERF: Okay. Marilyn. Paul?
>>PAUL TWOMEY: Just saying that issue has been raised in this topic, to be quite clear, moving to extend the time for consultation by another month on the strategic plan, and there is a program in place which was announced to constituencies and Supporting Organizations, organized with each of the constituencies for specific -- arrangement of specific times to meet with constituencies to go through the plan with them, get feedback. And so an intense effort with each constituency over the next several months. Barbara roseman will help in sort of coordinating that. So that's absolutely part of the consultation process. I just wanted to reinforce that.
>>VINT CERF: Okay, Marilyn. Last word.
>>MARILYN CADE: My comment is really to issue a reminder and an invitation. As mentioned earlier by the workshop planning group, it's our plan to organize another session for the Argentina meeting, and we would welcome your ideas, comments, and input on format and speakers, et cetera. We'll be putting some plans together and we urge all of you to mark your calendars now.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Marilyn.
Okay. In case any of you are wondering, we will have a break between now and the end of this morning's meeting, but not yet.
We're now back into the regularly scheduled program, a series of board committee reports.
So I'd like to begin now by calling on the finance committee for its report. That's -- right. Ivan.
>>IVAN MOURA CAMPOS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is going to be a very brief report.
To those of you who have forgotten, the finance committee is composed of yours truly, Tricia Drakes, Hagen Hultzsch, Tom Niles, and Mike Palage.
After Kuala Lumpur, we had, and we really mean it, every day budget negotiations with constituencies. In a day that I don't remember exactly in October, we reached the point where there was agreement by the -- and approval by the required number of registrars so that the actual operational aspects of billing and everything could happen.
So it was, as you will all appreciate, quite a milestone.
It was the result of an enormous amount of work by a great number of people.
So we are very proud of that result.
We had also a teleconference on November 22nd. That's very recent. And we went through an exercise of cash flow analysis with data provided by staff, who guided us through all sorts of spreadsheets and very accurate analysis for cash flow and also a cost-to-date analysis, how we are doing in terms of following the budget and the strategic plan.
And we also produced a draft fiscal year '05-'06 budget cycle calendar, which is the next slide.
This is the idea. Well, actually, the first item has already occurred. We had a finance committee meeting here, and we discussed several things again. This was yesterday. So many things happening, it seems like a week ago.
And we intend to have, on February -- well, ICANN intends to have in February a finance committee -- a joint meeting of the finance committee and the budget -- the bag is the budget advisory group, which is a group which has representation from all constituencies and is advisory to the president of ICANN.
There's this tentative date of March 17 to post the preliminary budget. By April 6, a meeting with the budget advisory Mar Del Plata in Argentina.
In April, since the meeting after Mar Del Plata will be in July, there will be a need of a continuing resolution to give provision for the time, because the -- for those of you not familiar with that, the fiscal year goes from the 1st of July to the 30th of June of the other year.
So if the meeting is half the 30th of June, you need a resolution to cover that period that starts on the 1st of July.
And the planned date to post the proposed budget is May 17th of 2005.
And I have a last slide that was a result of our thinking yesterday.
The following recommendation: As ICANN has now a new and more adequate budget, and is implementing the actions set forth in the strategic plan, the finance committee takes this opportunity to stress the importance its members attach to the implementation of processes focused upon ICANN's stakeholder relations management. In that regard, we encourage the president to continue to assign special priority to the implementation of processes and at tracking the status of stakeholder-related request and at providing timely responses and effective solutions.
That concludes my report, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Ivan. That sounds to me to be very good advice to the president.
I'd like to move on now to the report of the board governance committee and that will be offered by Alejandro Pisanty.
>>ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you, Vint. The board governance committee has, as you know in its charter to undertake design and propose to the board the internal governance matters of ICANN. In particular, the work we have been concerned with has been designing and putting forward ethics and conduct guidelines for the board and eventually this would be expanded for the rest of the corporation.
It also has a very concrete task of proposing the way to populate the different committees and positions of the board that have to be done through election processes. And it also has -- we have also been working on some amendments, some adjustments and refinements to the bylaws that are required by different administrative processes of ICANN in these days.
Today, we will make a private direct consultation with all board members regarding the possible committee assignments in order to recompose our committees, given the fact that some of the directors will not continue on the board as they are finishing their terms in this meeting, and we're incorporating new members to the board, and, therefore, we have to recompose these committees.
And this will be made public tomorrow once we have done these private consultations.
We have had intense discussions within the committee and between the committee and the interested directors in what can be the practical ways to implement rather specific ethics and conduct guidelines that embody the core principles and values of ICANN in a practical way. We will be circulating again for these consultations. Some of these consultations have to be still kept within the board but we are pushing them to have them public as fast as possible because they have to be able to address some specific concerns of directors, which could be interpreted as personal. And, therefore, we are being very careful before putting all this out for a public discussion. There will be, in our proposal, a period for open comment that will be ample and sufficient for everybody to tell ICANN's board what its conduct should be.
And to be brief, chairman, I will end there. Sorry, one more point. We will also be proposing for the board meeting some very slight adjustment to the bylaws in order to embody, to allow the specific administrative arrangements that are needed for the contract of the ombudsman, which have already been discussed in the Kuala Lumpur meeting and are now properly refined and set in language.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Alex.
I'd like to move on now to the meetings committee. And before -- Veni, that will be yours, but just before we do that, I know we have a representative here from Argentina. Is she here? Oh, he. Okay. No, no, you don't need to rush over yet. But what I would like to do is ask if you would be prepared to speak to the meeting plans in Mar Del Plata right after Veni has completed his report. So you should prepare yourself for that.
Veni.
>>VENI MARKOVSKI: Thank you. The meetings committee met on December 3rd in cape town. All members were present. And after a long discussion with participation of staff and representatives of some of the future hosting cities, the meetings committee decided to recommend to the president to move to the board the following host cities as follows. And it's written on the screen, the last three lines. 2005 -- now, note the change in the dates. November 30 - December 4th. Originally it was December 5th - December 9. In Vancouver, Canada.
The March meeting in 2007, 27 to 31st is in wellington, New Zealand, and the June meeting in 2006 is in Marrakesh, Morocco.
We'd like to thank to all candidates who sent us proposals, and we hope that even if some of them are not very satisfied with the outcome, they will be interested to renew their proposals to host ICANN meetings in the future, because as we know, we change continents every meeting, so they have -- they will have another opportunity in the next round.
Thank you.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Veni. I know it's not an easy task to arrange for the meeting schedule so that it's reasonable in terms of weather conditions and easy area to get to. So thank you for the hard work.
I'd like to invite the representative here from Argentina to give us a preview of what we can expect in Mar Del Plata when we are there next year. Please, go ahead.
>>SEBASTIAN BELLAGAMBA: Okay.
Thank you very much.
First of all, I would like to express our gratitude and appreciation to the board and to the meetings committee for selecting us as the next host.
Mar Del Plata is located in Argentina, is 400 kilometers south from Buenos Aires.
It's a beach side resort.
We are going to be there the first week of the autumn, so the weather will be nice.
There will be no rain, I hope.
We will enjoy a beautiful time there.
For your information, Mar Del Plata is a city of about a half a million people, and it has the most popular beach resort in Argentina.
You are seeing the hotel that we are going to host -- the meeting is going to be held.
The typical Argentinian beef.
And you are going to enjoy very much your staying there.
I am going to just briefly say thanks again, and we'll see you soon in Mar Del Plata.
And we expect you, all of you.
Thank you very much.

(Applause.)
>>VINT CERF: I sincerely hope that after the meeting is over, you'll still feel like you want to thank us for coming.

(Laughter.)
>>VINT CERF: All right.
The next report has to do with the conflict of interest committee.
And, Hagen -- where is Hagen.
There you are.
Hagen, I call on you to make that report.
>>HAGEN HULTZSCH: Thank you, Vint.
The conflict of interest committee has a charter, and there is a conflict-of-interest policy which the committee has carefully evaluated.
As you see in the first -- actually, the second chart, we had the following activities.
First, we tried to do a detailed evaluation of the conflict of interest committee tasks.
We focused on understanding the words "interested" and "independent," because we, the members of the board have to be independent with respect to this policy and also other outside legal requirements.
The conflict-of-interest policy itself only uses and knows the word "interested," not the word "independent" itself, for officers, directors, and for persons engaged in ICANN business.
That sends all board members except the president independent towards ICANN.
And if you go to the next chart, the full set of the conflict-of-interest statements of the members of the board were available since mid this year.
We had an evaluation by legal counsel.
We had a detailed discussion in the board conflict-of-interest committee, and we realized that there were no major conflict-of-interest situations within the board.
And we also, let's say, realized and managed that we have a proper management of these minor potential situations.
Summarizing in the last chart, the conflict-of-interest policy, we have the definition of an interested director; we have the definition of a potential conflict of interest.
And this is very clear in this policy.
This requires disclosure of such a potential conflict of interest before the discussion of a related or relevant subject within the board.
And it requires also the abstention and reason for abstaining to be clearly stated.
And it also required abstaining participation in the board's considerations in case of a conflict. And it also requires that family potential conflicts of interest are also mentioned and treated as well.
Thank you, Vint.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Hagen.
This is a very important part of board business, to ensure that conflicts of interest don't interfere with proper decision-making.
I'd like to call on Tricia now to make a report on the reconsideration committee.
>>TRICIA DRAKES: Thank you, Vint.
If I could have the next slide.
We had the meeting of the reconsideration committee here this morning, attended by myself, colleagues Raimundo and Veni.
There were two requests that we -- one was actually to note one from Danny younger which related to the archives of the GA list, which disappeared in July before reaching reconsideration process.
Actually, it was resolved and the technical aspects dealt with.
We were also grateful to Danny, because as a result of looking at the processes of this reconsideration request, we actually -- and when I say "we," it's really the staff who we should also be thanking for this -- looked at, A, the list the way it works.
There are thousands of requests that come into the list, and probably only one's got a genuine reconsideration request.
So they're actually developing Web-based reconsideration request forms for the future, which will make everything very efficient.
So that was dealt with.
There's a new reconsideration request, submitted by network solutions, and the process that's followed by the reconsideration committee is, firstly, it acts as a gatekeeper.
So it decides whether there's a genuine request that really should go into the reconsideration process.
And, in fact, this morning, and I think it's one of the few things that the committee itself can decide without going to the board.
So this morning we decided that, actually, 04-3 could go into the process and move forward for final recommendation, and being dealt with within 90 days.
What we also did was to approve, as required under the bylaws, an annual report of the reconsideration committee, which we'll be putting in for the board for tomorrow.
Note on there.
I would like to thank not only my colleagues, but John, Dan, and also the technical team for actually getting all of this slot in there, because we actually finished the meeting at 8:30 this morning.
And for all their good work.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Tricia.
I look forward to seeing the annual report from the reconsideration committee tomorrow, and those of who you sit in on the board meeting tomorrow will have a chance to hear that report also.
At this point, we move to the section on advisory committee reports.
And just to give you a heads-up, I will schedule a half-hour break -- in fact, now I think about it, it's almost 10:00.
Why don't we do this: Why don't we take a half-hour break now and reconvene at 10:30, and we will start the advisory committee reports at 10:30.
(Break.)
>>VINT CERF: Okay.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to get started.
This is a two-minute warning.
If there are any errant board members around, they should be sent towards the stage.
(Pause.)
>>VINT CERF: Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to reconvene the meeting now.
We've come to the section at which we begin advisory committee reports, the first one of which is given by the Governmental Advisory Committee.
And I'm calling on Sharil Tarmizi to make that report.
>>SHARIL TARMIZI: Thank you, Vint.
Good morning to all present here today.
By way of introduction, the ICANN governmental advisory committee met in Cape Town South Africa from the 29th of November to the 2nd of December, 2004.
GAC participants at this meeting comprised 38 members and six observers.
Since the Kuala Lumpur meeting, new GAC members are Fiji Islands, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Turkey.
New observers are the AGENCE governmental Francophonie, the commonwealth telecommunications organizations and the United Nations economic commission for Africa.
The GAC also welcomed the participation of Gibuti, Gambia, Senegal, and Sudan in the Cape Town meeting.
On matters discussed, particularly the consultation with ICANN board, the GAC consulted with the ICANN board, the GAC welcomed the ICANN briefing which addressed current ICANN priorities and initiatives.
In particular, the GAC took note of the publication of ICANN's strategic plan, the strategy for introducing new TLDs, and the adoption of the 2004/2005 ICANN budget.
GAC recalled its interest in the work of the security and stability committee and in the implementation of the WIPO II recommendations.
GAC welcomes the letter from the ICANN president of 1 December, 2004, proposing to strengthen the interaction between GAC and ICANN and outlining a number of issues on ICANN's agenda involving public policy.
In respect to its commitment to public policy, GAC will continue to deliberate on these issues.
GAC will also explore the possibility of establishing a priority ranking of the proposed issues as well as proposing new issues, as appropriate.
On generic top-level domains and GNSO, the GAC GNSO working group consulted with the GNSO Council.
The GAC took note, with interest, ICANN's strategy for the introduction of new gTLDs, which sets out a process to fully consider the significant issues associated with an expansion of the top-level domain name space.
GAC members supported increased competition as a means of increasing consumer choice and are equally committed to ensuring the continued stability and security of the Internet.
In particular, GAC members look forward to contributing to this important initiative by clarifying the associated public-policy aspects.
GAC also recognizes the public-policy dimensions of the GNSO policy development process relating to WHOIS data and is engaged in consultations with its members and with the GNSO Council on these matters.
On country-code top-level domains, the updating of the GAC principles for delegation, administration of country-code top-level domains, based on a document prepared by its working group on ccTLD policies, the GAC continued the discussion on updating the GAC principles for delegation and administration of ccTLD registries, also known as the ccTLD principles.
Members present at the Cape Town meeting share the view that for the time being, the resulting final public draft update adequately reflects the position of the GAC on this important issue.
The GAC will make this document public through its Web site and announces its intention to adopt the updated ccTLD principles at the Mar Del Plata meeting.
The GAC would like to draw the attention of the ICANN board to the final public draft update.
On country code supporting organization or ccNSO, the ccNSO and GAC have established a joint liaison group which will identify issues of common interest and will prepare future meetings within the GAC plenary and the ccNSO.
GAC welcomed the interest shown by the ccNSO in the GAC's report on progress and updating its ccTLD principles and is pleased that the ccNSO intends to take the GAC paper up through its appropriate working group.
On WIPO II, GAC recalls its advice to ICANN, notes the range of opinions among the ICANN community, and encourages all parties to work together to resolve the matter without further delay.
GAC considers the -- that the additional consultation period envisaged by ICANN is a positive and necessary development, with a view to arriving at an acceptable solution.
On the address supporting organization, the GAC consulted with the ASO and received a comprehensive briefing and updating.
GAC welcomed the signing of the MOU between ICANN, the number resource organization, or the NRO, and the four RIRs, outlining new policy processes for the ASO.
GAC has constituted a liaison group, reflecting the ASO's regional representation and working methods.
Brazil, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, and the United States will constitute this group.
GAC also welcomes the progress in establishing the AfriNIC organization.
On the world summit on information society, the GAC had an exchange of views with the chair and the executive coordinator of the Secretariat of the United Nations working group on internet governance or WGIG.
GAC members also attended the third ICANN workshop on the WSIS.
The GAC Agreed that it would submit to the WGIG through its chair a factual description of its role and activities as the Governmental Advisory Committee to ICANN.
I'm coming to the last part.
On outreach and the Cape Town regional forum, the GAC welcomed the presence of several new participants in Cape Town and confirmed the priority of communicating effectively with countries that are not presently GAC members.
The GAC regional forum addressed the following topics: ICANN and the GAC briefing, ccTLD redelegation, regional Internet exchange points, IV version 6, and AfriNIC.
Participants in the regional forum noted that traffic routed through national Internet exchange points can contribute to individual countries' economy and contribute countries to establishing ISPs.
During the forum, it was also noted that there are numerous issues relating to ccTLD redelegation and that ICANN is willing to help resolve issues that the redelegation process for countries that are planning to do so.
In light of the discussion in the regional forum and recognizing the current deployment status of IPv6 and its -- end-to-end communications and et cetera, GAC continues to support ICANN's efforts towards the deployment of IPv6.
There is a need for individual workshops on the deployment of IPv6.
The GAC thanked all those from the Internet community who had contributed to the preparation and realization of the regional forum.
The Governmental Advisory Committee also expresses warm thanks to the government of the republic of South Africa and the organizers, for hosting this meeting in Cape Town.
The GAC also thanks all those among the ICANN community who have contributed to the dialogue with the GAC in Cape Town.
And last, but not least, the GAC meetings will be during the period of the ICANN Mar Del Plata, which will take place in early April 2005.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I end my communique.
Thank you.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much.
I want to make an observation about the operation of the GAC.
It's my sense that in the last year or so, there has been a remarkable opening up of communication between GAC members and all components of the ICANN process.
And I certainly want to thank you for your part in that and to encourage this continued dialogue.
I think it strengthens our entire process and improves the outcome of any policy decisions that we have to make.
So thank you very much for that, Sharil.
>>SHARIL TARMIZI: Thank you.
>>VINT CERF: Izumi, I wasn't planning to open the floor.
If -- is this short?
>>IZUMI AIZU: Just a (inaudible) question, if I may.
Izumi Aizu.
Can you hear?

>> No.
>>IZUMI AIZU: Very minor.
Hello.
You said the WSIS workshop was the third one.
As a joint meeting or workshop, it was the third one.
But ALAC organized an WSIS workshop in Tunisia.
If you count that, it would be the fourth one.
So, please, if you can, fix it.
Thank you.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you.
I'm.
Is it relevant to this report?
All right.
Please go ahead.
>>ROBERT CONNELLY: I want to make sure it's understood that there was no consensus in the WIPO II discussion, either on the IGOs or country names.
>>VINT CERF: That's why we have continued discussion, to try to find resolution.
Thank you very much, Sharil.
Appreciate your time to prepare that communique.
The next report comes from Steve Crocker and the -- I'm sorry.
It comes from the Root-Server System Advisory Committee.
Who's going to present that?
>>SUZANNE WOOLF: Yes, I think in the interest of time, I can stay right here.
>>VINT CERF: Yes, go ahead.
>>SUZANNE WOOLF: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen of the Internet community.
I'm Suzanne Woolf.
I'm here to give you a very brief update on the activities of the Root-Server System Advisory Committee.
Many of you probably think if you have seen these reports before that you've seen this slide.
There's always people here who don't know who we are.
So I include it.
RSSAC is one of the original ICANN advisory committees, advises the board on -- content of root zone is out of scope for us.
We publish the data as given to us.
And the members are root server and name server operators and other liaisons and observers.
We typically meet at the IETF and will meet next in Minneapolis with IETF in March of next year.
Next, please.
Keep today's comments to a very brief update on our last meeting and current work.
One item of business that's been outstanding for a while is the appointment of a liaison to the ICANN board from RSSAC as provided for in the bylaws.
I'd like to say I'm very pleased to have the opportunity of taking on this role.
And I think it's a chance to promote wider discussion and interaction between RSSAC and other ICANN constituencies than perhaps we have been able to have before.
So I think that we can make that a very productive thing.
I'm not here to do this particular liaison chore alone.
I couldn't and don't plan to try.
You will still continue to see others of my colleagues at these meetings and active in other forums regarding the technical operation of the DNS.
In fact, several of them are here at this meeting.
The RSSAC continues to be part of the work of moving forward the deployment of DNSsec, as the IETF has matured the specification, the root server operators are working with the security and stability committee and various other interested parties, with IANA, on deployment practices and standards so that we can move those from a rather academic exercise and a development exercise into an operational one.
We are also proceeding on a recommendation to ICANN regarding another piece of the full support for IPv6 on the DNS, these in the root server of ip6V in the quad A records for the root servers themselves.
There are some subtle difference between how quad A will operate for the root servers than as they operate for the TLDs.
And we're just making very sure that none of these differences are at all -- will cause any unexpected -- any unexpected side effects or issues.
There has also been a consensus that RFC 2870, which was written some time ago, as best practices for root server operators and TLD operators is in need of some updating in light of more recent experience.
And several members are presenting a draft, will be working on a draft that we expect to have published through the IETF by, you know, the normal IETF processes as a best current practice, sort of to expand what the community can readily refer to as the guidelines and practices we operate on.
The other boilerplate I always tend to include is a little bit of information on where to find us and find more information about our operations so that I don't have to take up any more of this assembly's valuable time.
Thank you very much.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Suzanne.
Your work is -- and the work of the RSSAC, is very much appreciated.
I'd like to move on now to the security and stability advisory committee report, which will be given by its chairman, Steve Crocker.

>>STEVE CROCKER: Thank you.
See if we can -- lighting up my screen.
There we go.
Thank you very much.
First of all, I'd like to join in welcoming and congratulating Suzanne in her new role as liaison from RSSAC.
I've had the great pleasure of working with her over the past year.
And as you will see, she's also a valued member of this team.
The -- the main thing that I want to take up in a very few minutes here is that we've gone through a rotation or replenishment process.
As most people know, the security and stability advisory committee was formed in the spring of 2002.
The initial members were selected by the ICANN staff.
There were very few changes over the past couple of years: Two additions and two departures.
One of the departures was pro forma, that is, Doug Barton was on the committee and then took the job as IANA general manager and as ICANN staff member not eligible for membership on the committee.
We've made several changes which I will show new a moment.
But I want to say that the process is not a fixed or closed process.
We're somewhat peculiar in that we do not have a limited number of slots nor do we have particular terms of service.
So it's -- it's a bit fluid.
I'm very, very pleased with the group that we have.
The one thing that would be nice to have would be some greater geographic diversity.
And so in terms of continuing to look for additional people, I'm particularly interested in more candidates from Africa, from South America, from -- and from the Asia-Pacific region in particular.
Here is the committee that has been constituted up till now.
And here are the members who are rotating off.
Everybody on this committee, the people who are leaving and the people who are continuing, has served very well, very ably, and it's been a tremendous pleasure to work with each of them.
And tomorrow in the board meeting, we will present a formal recommendation for a formal thanks to everybody.
The new people who are joining are KC CLAFFY, Rodney JOFFE, Jon Peterson, mike saint johns, and Suzanne Woolf.
We've also created the position of vice chair, and Ray Plzak has agreed to fill that.
And there's a new sense of sort of renewed vitality in the committee.
And I think there will be good things to committee.
We still need a full-time researcher and writer in a position that I have been calling SSAC fellow.
And we will restart the recruiting of that right after the holidays.
Major topics, you've heard already from Doug Barton about DNSsec. And Suzanne just mentioned it.
That has been a very major topic for us over the past year.
And we've spun off an allied project, but it's still sort of tightly intertwined.
Been working with Doug Barton as the IANA general manager on the process of getting the root signed with the root server operators, with the gTLD and ccTLD operators and with others.
A Number of workshops have taken place.
I am looking forward to trying to prepare a workshop and a set of interactions with various constituency committees, including particularly the GAC, and present a relatively substantive report on the progress in our next meeting in Buenos Aires.
We've also spent a little bit of time reviewing a report from the Internet architecture board on proposed research topics.
They wrote that report aimed principally at funding agencies who are considering what their research agenda might be.
We took up the relevant sections of it within our committee because some of the topics that they pointed to in terms of network research were very directly related to DNS and to a lesser extent about addressing.
And we'll be issuing a brief report on our thoughts about that, mostly in the form of a collegial response of, "these are interesting.
Here's what we think about those things."
That's the set of things that I want to share today.
Vint had admonished us to keep it brief, and I'm trying to comply here.
>>VINT CERF: I think you succeeded.
Thank you very much, Steve.
And, of course, thank you personally and for the work that the SSAC does on behalf of the ICANN community.
We'll move on now to the report of the ALAC.
I think I see Vittorio Bertola on his way up.

>>VITTORIO BERTOLA: Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity of offering the usually report on the activities of the at-large advisory committee.
And I'd like to be very quick so I'll maybe skip a part of the presentation.
This is just to tell again to the audience what the at-large is for, which basically means we are there to advocate the interest of individual users and we are expected to build on a network of existing organizations or at-large structures that get accredited and form regional coordinating points called regional at-large organizations, which in turn should in the end elect members of the committee.
So our activities, as usual, have been focused on two main threads.
One is the organizing of the at-large, which basically means doing outreach, and encouraging organizations to participate in ICANN, explaining to them what ICANN is about and how they can participate.
And, well, in the last month, we have been trying to bring this work more out in the field, I'd say.
So many of us have started traveling and attending more and more meetings in different parts of the world and starting contacts to encourage organizations to participate.
And as far -- I mean, for what we got, the number of accredited organizations, we have three new organizations, so now we have arrived at 19 on a global scale.
And for what we got for policy development.
We are mostly involved, I'd say, in the GNSO, so particularly in the WHOIS task forces and now in IDN, which is a very important thing for us.
And we organize public meetings and we participate, for example, within organizations or many workshops here.
And we are willing, of course, to get engaged on the upcoming policy-making processes.
So I will not go into detail about all the events that we have been attending.
But as you can see on the screen, there is a significant number of events that we have been participating or in some cases even organizing.
So, for example, in Latin America or here in Africa in Cape Town, and there are more planned, actually, for the future.
So in some regions, for example, in Africa, we are planning to organize a three or four meetings in different parts of the continent.
This is the second part.
This is about Asia, Latin America.
Also in Asia there are some meetings planned to take place in the next month.
And in Latin America, too.
So, okay.
Actually, one thing we have been doing in the last couple of months is to encourage these structures to participate more and also to provide candidates.
Both because we have to replace a couple of members for the committee who are leaving and because we need more and more people to participate in policy making processes.
So, I mean, while we proceed, the amount of work we have to do grows and so we need more people, basically, both for the organizing part and for the policy-making part.
So I will skip through the list of accredited organizations.
Well, I just wanted to give you a couple of points about what we are expecting to get from the policy-making processes.
About WHOIS, we already made very clear in the past what we expect the outcome to be, and we are particularly worried by the results of -- current results of the third task force, because we are worried by the effect that they could have on good faith registrants, while we don't think they are effective at all against bad-faith registrants.
And I think that ICANN needs to do much more work in the IDN field, and especially maybe turn it from the technical side to the coordination side, so maybe ensuring that in terms of policy there is a proper introduction of IDNs in all gTLDs, and those who coordinate maybe on three basis, the -- common policies in the ccTLDs.
So this is really a sector where we are expecting to release a statement in the next weeks and we are expecting to contribute more and more to the work of ICANN.
And, finally, WSIS.
Well, we had I think quite important results, since, myself, I was appointed one of the members of the WGIG, which means that we have actually got a good point of recognition both inside and outside of ICANN, so in the wider governmental circles.
This is important recognition not just for the committee, but also for ICANN itself.
And, of course, we still are trying to encourage the community to participate more and more in these processes.
Okay.
So this is -- was the -- this is what I was talking about basically going to replace a couple of members.
And in particular, I wish to take this chance to thank Esther Dyson and Thomas Roessler, who maybe in different ways have contributed really a lot to the work of the committee.
And, actually, we are to the point where we have a good list of possible candidates.
And, of course, we have to submit them to the board because we are still in the interim phase.
So we need the board to appoint the replacement.
And we will come up with the recommendations very soon.
And we hope that the board will be able to take a decision in a short amount of time.
So now my last couple of slides is really about the challenges we are facing, because we think that the committee has arrived to a sort of critical juncture, because the organizing work is not going bad, and, actually, we have -- I mean, as I was telling before, we have reached a good level of recognition and we are successful in involving more and more people and organizations.
But still, this is much less than we were expecting honestly two years ago when we started this work.
And so especially in terms of organizing the regional organization, this work is ongoing, but it's taking much more time than we expected.
So we think that the -- we have to succeed in the next year, and so we have tried, and we are trying to identify a set of possible problems, which mostly depend on the fact that we are all volunteers, so we have to basically take our spare time from our daytime jobs mostly to participate in this.
And this is really hard for us.
And also, we are wondering whether the model is completely good or maybe there are parts of it that should be changed.
So we don't have answers now.
But we are planning to have a sort of an internal assessment in the next weeks and maybe come up with a statement or maybe in the ICANN strategic plan or like a sort of minimal internal strategic plan about where we think we are going and maybe come up with proposals also to the board to slightly adjust the mechanisms of the committee.
And so, well, my last consideration is really about who needs the at large? Because when we started this work, it was mostly seen like sort of an allowance to a group of people or stakeholders that wanted to participate in ICANN much like the other ones. So the idea was does a group of people like that who represent stakeholder and they want to participate, so as long as they can sustain themselves and self-organize, it's fine, we'll let them in. But we really think that openness doesn't just mean opening the door. And this was already said yesterday or the previous days by many people.
So there is a number of, I would say, less powerful, less rich, maybe, stakeholders which include the civil society but also developing countries and you cannot really expect they will just come if you open the door. You have to be perhaps more active in involving them. Ask this is what we are actually trying to do. But this needs a lot of time and a lot of resources.
So we just wanted to point out that it is in the interest of the global ICANN community to have these people on board. And so we just expect all the constituencies, keep in mind that the at-large is not just for the at-large or the users, but it is of benefit to the whole community.
And so we expect to get I'd say even more cooperation from all the constituencies of ICANN in our work.
So thank you.
And finally, I just wanted to remind you about the football tournament that our Latin American members are going to going to organize at the Argentina meeting. So stay tuned for that because it will be interesting. Thank you.
>>VINT CERF:Thank you very much, Vittorio.
Mike Palage.
>>MICHAEL PALAGE: Vittorio, in your presentation you were talking about sort of a self-assessment. One of the things that the GNSO council is currently undergoing right now through work with an outside expert is a review of its process. Now, that I believe is under the bylaws. I don't believe that the ALAC calls for that periodic review.
If, in fact, the ALAC is undertaking their own self-assessment, perhaps it's possible for staff to offer some assistance in that review since most of them were volunteers, to see how to make them more effective. I don't know if that's something that the ALAC would be interested in, but the feedback that I have heard from the GNSO council has been somewhat positive of the review process that has been currently undertaken.
>>VITTORIO BERTOLA: Well, as far as I know, the ALAC is going to be subject to that kind of review, essentially the same kind of review the GNSO has been undertaking this year, and in ALAC next year. So we actually are looking forward to that. But still, time is an important matter in this thing so we do not want to have to wait until the end of next year to understand whether something is going wrong.
With the mechanism, we think we could do it maybe not exactly the same thing, but something maybe more oriented to changing the way we work or asking for specific things to ICANN in a brief amount of time.
And by the way, I mean, this doesn't mean that we are not getting separate from ICANN. Actually, we got a significant budget from you last year, at the end of the year. And we are getting more and more support. One thing, ICANN actually had a consultant in Africa to help organizing the at large in Africa. So we do appreciate what ICANN is doing for us. We are just thinking whether this is enough or perhaps maybe there are even small things that the staff could do to help us.
So we are willing to work to identify them, and come to ask for maybe specific points or changes.
>>MICHAEL PALAGE: I'm glad to hear that staff is helping them. That's encouraging.
>>VINT CERF: Veni and then we need to please keep this brief.
>>VENI MARKOVSKI: Very short.
Yesterday, Ivan Moura Campos mentioned he would like to hear what he would like to hear what they had to say about the Top-Level Domains and I think Vittorio could take the proposal of this question as one of the things you may be doing. After all, you are representing the users. You are trying to represent the users who generally don't care about elections and stuff like that. So this could be one of the things that you do.
>>VITTORIO BERTOLA: Actually, I don't want to repeat myself for the eighth time. I think that we have been releasing a statement on the introduction of new gTLDs, and that was 18 or 20 months ago. And we still stick to that.
As I was telling yesterday in the discussion, I think that there is interest in the registrant community to get more Top-Level Domain names and maybe even in ways we cannot anticipate at the moment. So I don't want to further this discussion now, but I think there is still the need for new gTLDs.
>>VINT CERF: Okay. Thank you very much, Vittorio.
>>VITTORIO BERTOLA: Thank you.
>>VINT CERF: I appreciate your time and energy and this report.
Let's move ahead now to the ASO report, please.
Let's see. Where do we have -- here he comes. Mark is on his way down.
Go ahead, Mouhamet.
>>MOUHAMET DIOP: Thank you, Vint. Before mark connects his laptop, I just want procedure from the RSSAC committee particularly. People are commenting so many time about the root server evolution, how many root server we got now, I just wonder if these stat are available somewhere, because sometime you don't have any clear idea about the new extension that are using the anycast protocol.
>>SUZANNE WOOLF: Sure, I can attempt to address that really quickly.
As far as anycast, each of -- not all of the root servers are doing anycast. Each of the ones that are publishing their particular configurations and their particular sets of locations and so on on their own. And I can tell you that the more widely anycast ones are, let's see, F root is in 25 or 26 locations now. Some of the others, I can't speak for other individual operations and operators, but -- which is one of the reasons why this is a hard question to answer. Operators each make their own decisions about the specifics here.
But several of us are in any number of locations. Earlier this year we passed the point that there are now more operating root servers outside the United States than inside, which was very, very good milestone, good moment. And I can certainly discuss with you -- we can go further into detail without taking more time in this meeting about exactly how to find that information and where that can be better documented.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Suzanne.
Mark.
>>MARK McFADDEN: Thank you, Vint. I will join the crowd who is attempting to be brief here.
This is an update from the Address Supporting Organization. My name is Mark McFADDEN. I am the chair of the address council.
Since I last spoke with you, quite a bit has happened. ICANN has signed a memorandum of understanding between the number resource organization and ICANN. That's a very big development, and the address council salutes that.
The address council has sent an IP version 4 global policy to the ICANN board. That came through the RIRs, through established procedures. That is awaiting action by the ICANN board, I believe. And a big thing that's going on for the address council is the transition to the new numbers council which takes place on January 1st, 2005.
The address council, I put this slide in sort of like Suzanne puts her slide in about the root server advisory committee. This is here to remind you of what the address council is there to do. It is a body that is there to advise the ICANN board on addressing issues and policy. It doesn't represent either the regional Internet registries nor the number resource organization.
The representatives come from all of the regions around the world that have RIRs. The four that currently exist and the one that's about to emerge here.
The people who are on the address council are not necessarily RIR members. It currently happens that they are. And any person from the Internet community can participate in the work of the address council and the work of the ASO.
One of the big changes in the last year is the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the number resource organization and ICANN. That has an enormous effect on the address council because it basically turns the address council into the NROs number council, and that sounds like a lot of complicated bureaucratic speak, but basically this is an effective way of making sure that the numbers community and the Internet protocol identifier community and the Internet address community have a way of making sure that they have a liaison with ICANN.
So the MOU actually has a numbers -- the NRO has a numbers council, and that number council becomes the same thing as the address council.
The changes are actually not very, very significant. One of the changes is in the makeup of the address council. One of the directors now is actually elected by the RIR Board of Directors.
That transition is underway. We are currently working on it here. The address council is talking about that transition, making sure that it goes smoothly so that on January of 2005, no one will see any changes.
The current address council is here. I won't go through all of the names. Four of these people are here today. And you can see that they're representing the four regions represented by RIR communities. And again, as we have a fifth RIR here in the very near future, and the address council is looking forward to that, that fifth group will be represented on the address council.
In terms of administration, the work of the address council is supported by a Secretariat. That Secretariat is generously supported by one of the RIRs in rotation. The current one, and great thanks from the address council goes to them, is the RIPENCC. And next year it will be LACNIC, the Latin American regional registry.
And the current chair is me. I've been the chair for two years. And my co-chair -- one myself co-chairs is here, Hartmut Glaser, and then Hans-Peter Hollen is also a chair.
That address council elects directors. Currently two directors, and you can see here their dates of election and where they're from.
One of the things that the address council is responsible for doing previously is holding a general assembly. This was an annual event for the address supporting organization. In the new MOU, there is no facilities for this. This isn't actually part of the MOU. There's a discussion currently going on amongst the address council about how to make this happen next year. And you can actually see the results of our previous face-to-face ASO general assembly which took place in Amsterdam at the RIPE meeting in May of this year.
I've mentioned this, and I'll say again, that as an address, all of the people on the address council are very, very excited about the prospect of the emergence of a fifth RIR, AfriNIC. Expect that to be recognized in short order here. We recognize they've made great progress on both the technical and also the business parts of actually establishing an RIR. And we look forward to next year recommend to go the ICANN board the establishment of that new regional registry.
In terms of other activities, last year there was a standardization of much of the work of the address council. That work is pretty much done. Currently in draft is a roadmap for the activities of the address council in 2005. And as I mentioned, there's some work going on right now in terms of finishing the transition from the old address council that is the oldest now of the supporting organizations to the new NRO number council and address council that we'll be working with in the future.
And Vint, with that, thank you.
>>VINT CERF: Well, thank you very much for the brevity. I see a couple of hands up. I see Paul and Alex.
Paul. Alex first? All right. Alex.
>>ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thanks, Mark, for this report. I'll take a few seconds to underline the momentous importance of the milestone that this represented by the signing of the MOU.
I think all parties are very pleased that we really achieved the very deep understanding among all participants in order to write this MOU. And I would like to encourage everybody in the addressing community as well as outside it to use this as a platform for intensifying our cooperation, especially in the subjects that are of common interest, of doing as much as possible of informal, intensive consultations before those actions -- before undertaking those actions that can have an impact globally on either part of the organizations, the ASO or the world outside the ASO. And to make sure that there is a renewed reserve of good faith for making this very -- I mean this thing that was very complex, to get started to really work. And I would commit that good faith on my part and the part of many other board members.
>>VINT CERF:Go ahead, Paul.
>>PAUL TWOMEY: Mark, I wonder if I can ask you -- sorry you're looking at my shoulder -- ask you a question. It's how to keep building on that working relationship Alejandro is referring to.
The ICANN board and the other constituencies, but particularly the board I think has very valuable interaction several days of its sort of meetings every three or four months with supporting organizations and their constituencies. It's quite a good way of communicating. The one Supporting Organization and council that doesn't have that interaction is the address council.
The address council tends to meet at RIR meetings, and then the board of ICANN meets at these meetings.
Have you got any thoughts or any considerations about potentially ways we could begin to bridge that -- well, I don't want to use the word bridge, but is there ways of bringing that communication better such that we can actually have a higher degree of interaction? It's just a sort of "getting to know you" thing, I think.
>>MARK McFADDEN: Let me quickly answer that in two parts. First of all, to explain the history of while the address council tends to meet at the RIR meetings, it's a historical artifact, actually, that most of the people who are interested in global addressing issues get together at regional Internet registry meetings. That's the community where they most often get together.
The RIRs have between two and three meetings a year in each one of the regions.
The people who are on our address council come out of those communities, and so in a way, in the past, the natural place for those people to get together has been in their open communities, to sort of do outreach into their own communities on ICANN's behalf, if you will.
But I think in recognizing that the communication isn't as bidirectional as it should be, there's proposal that's being just now circulated amongst the address council to actually hold the 2005 -- a 2005 face-to-face meeting of the address council with an ICANN meeting. What's been suggested is to have the first one be in Mar Del Plata.
>>VINT CERF: That's good. That's a good start.
Paul.
>>PAUL TWOMEY: And just as an idea, potentially one of the things, at a meeting's perspective at the meetings committee for us, is we sometimes -- proposals come up for meetings in different regions that often relate to what's happening with, say, APRiCOT meetings, et cetera and we may be able to link those up to be able to respond to each other.
>>VINT CERF: that's a good idea. Raimundo, you had your hand up.
>>RAIMUNDO BECA: I would like to indicate that I -- obviously I support this idea to have at least one meeting of the new address council back to back with an ICANN meeting.
And also to start that in Mar Del Plata.
Besides that, I would like to mention that I have been -- or I was a member of the address council since its creation, and so from November '99 to May 2004, I have been a participant as a member of the address council.
In May 2004, I was elected to the board, but I continue to be an observer at the address council. So I attend the meeting of the address council. And for sure, I am always available to make the best bridges between the ICANN board and the address council.
>>VINT CERF:Thank you very much, Raimundo. We'll certainly take advantage of that. Thank you very much, Mark.
The next report comes from, actually, Paul Wilson had asked to make a quick report on behalf of the NRO.
>>PAUL WILSON: Thanks very much, Vint. Paul Wilson from APNIC. I'm also the chair of the NRO and I asked Vint to give you an update of some developments within the NRO. I'll just see if I can bring this up.
I won't spend too much time on this, but the addressing community doesn't use too much of the valuable time of this meeting so I hope you'll bear with me.
Access violation; oh, dear.
Okay. There's not much in the presentation slide anyway, so I'll leave that.
I'm just going to talk about a few issues starting with the ASO MOU which was mentioned. That was signed by the NRO at ICANN on the 19th of October. And we also are very, very pleased with that final step in a very long set of negotiations and discussions. And we do thank the ICANN staff, and the board members who are involved for all their time on that effort.
The NRO and the RIRs individually are taking steps now to implement the changes in the new structure. As you've heard by defining the appointment processes and appointing the address council members who will be appointed by the RIRs in each reason.
The terms for those new members are going to start on the 1st of January, 2005, so we're proposing to consider the first January, 2005 as the effective date for the new reformed ASO.
Related to that matter, as Mark mentioned the address council submitted a global policy to ICANN a while ago in September, but on the first of January we'll ask the address council to resubmit that to the board for consideration in accordance with the new policy development process just so we're restarting that process with a clear step.
AfriNIC, we're also very pleased that the ICANN board granted the provisional membership, the provisional recognition to AfriNIC on the 30th of September, and ask the president to work with the NRO towards the final recognition. It's a very significant step, as we've all heard.
Accordingly, the NRO has decided to offer to AfriNIC provisional membership of the NRO from now, including full rights of participation in NRO activities at the staff and executive and board levels.
As we've heard, AfriNIC's aiming for final recognition during the Argentina meeting next April. And we're fully supporting that.
All four RIRs to that end have agreed to prioritize their work in support of AfriNIC between now and then, and to provide staff support and any other support that's needed to achieve that goal.
On the ICANN strategic plan, we've welcomed the strategic plan, the publication of the plan as an opportunity for ICANN to continue its development work. We also welcome the extended time line to respond to this important document, announced this morning by Paul Twomey.
We're going to review and respond to the strategic plan through an open process, and we'll make an open call for comments in each of the RIRs regions in the near future and we'll be incorporating comments from those communities into our NRO response which we'll submit by the deadline.
During this week, the NRO attended a session of the Governmental Advisory Committee, and we're very thankful to Sharil and the committee for their time. We held fruitful, constructive discussions about current matters, including the NRO and the ASO, which we were able to explain in a fair amount of detail and to respond to questions.
We discussed the NRO's response to the ITU or to Hualin Zhao's paper.
Also, we established communication with the GAC, and we welcomed that opportunity and welcomed the opportunity to continue dialogue with the GAC.
The NRO, as some of you will be aware, posted some comments on Haulin Zhao's comments on the Internet Governance and we're continuing to see supporting statements from numerous parties to the position that we expressed there. We don't plan to issue any more further responses publicly to the draft, but we'll continue to participate in the discussions about that and related issues. So that's what I had to announce on behalf of the NRO. Thanks very much for the opportunity.
>>VINT CERF: Thanks very much, Paul. I want to appreciate the support we get from the NRO and the daily work of the RIRs.
>>PAUL WILSON: Thanks.
>>VINT CERF: So Bruce has already figured out he was next. This is the GNSO report.
>>BRUCE TONKIN: Okay. It looks like we've got the electronics worked out. Just reminding everyone, the purpose of the GNSO is to develop and recommend to the ICANN board policies relating to generic Top-Level Domains, such as com, net, org, biz, info, et cetera.
The GNSO policies that are currently going through the policy development process in the areas of WHOIS, we're looking there at how do we provide adequate notice to registrants of their obligations with respect to providing data for the display, looking at mechanisms of controlling access to the WHOIS data, potentially tiered access. And looking at how to improve the Accuracy of the information that is collected.
We also have a process looking at when a gTLD operator wishes to make a change to their operations, what process the ICANN staff should use to approve that change if it's related to the contract.
The -- one of the areas or one of the recommendations that has come out from WHOIS for discussion is registrars, although there is conditions IN agreements between registrars and registrants about the collection and display of WHOIS, that's often buried in agreements that can, in many cases, be several pages long, and it's an effect of the Internet that many people don't necessarily read all the terms in these agreements. So there's a push for registrants to make the WHOIS part of those agreements more prominent at the time of registration, and in particular, their obligation to provide accurate data and the requirement for registrars to display that data.
The other, I guess, work items that are being refined, one is looking at a mechanism to resolve conflicts between local contracts -- between the ICANN contracts and local laws where a registrar might reside.
There's also examination going on of whether tiered access is feasible.
Looking at improving the process for responding to accuracy complaints. Currently, if a person has a complaint, they may lodge it with a registrar. And then the registrar can take -- must make regional efforts to contact the registrant if the data is found to be wrong, that's a breach of the agreement, and the registrar may delete the name.
Looking at mechanisms potentially where, after a certain period of time, if no contact has been received, a name may be put on hold where it's removed from the zone file and, hence, is not active. But long a longer period of time would be available to contact the registrant before canceling the name.
Also considering how to act more promptly in instances where there's a serious problem associated with the use of a domain name, and the contact detail, contact information is not sufficient to contact the registrant, and if, in certain very narrowly defined circumstances, action can be taken more quickly.
In terms of the process for ICANN to approve changes that might be proposed by registry operators, I guess the essential criteria here is really coming back to ICANN's mission, and that is the change that's being requested, would it have a detrimental and a material impact on the security and stability of the Internet's unique identifier systems? And maintain consistency while fostering competition where appropriate. So that's really the essential test that would need to be applied.
And then what we're looking at is in some cases it would be appropriate for ICANN staff to do a fairly quick review of the change, and then assuming that in the view of the ICANN staff there is no issue with security or stability and it doesn't impact on the competition and the registration of domain names there may still need to be a short public comment period, especially where third parties may be affected.
And then, so, ultimately, that entire process is hoped to take a matter of weeks rather than months.
The other option which is defined as a detailed review is if the ICANN staff believe that there may well be an issue of security or stability or there may be -- there's a reasonable chance of problems in the competition of domain names, that a thorough review would be conducted.
In this case, ICANN would use an external evaluator or maybe a panel of external evaluators that would have -- that would be engaged on some sort of contract to perform a review over a period of time.
They may collect further facts on the issue.
They may run certain briefing sessions for stakeholders that are likely to be most affected.
And, of course, there would be an opportunity for public comment there as well.
Because of the need to identify the right external evaluator in the particular area and the need to do thorough analysis and fact-finding, maybe even testing, this process may take several months.
But a review of recent decisions by ICANN in the past two years is the vast majority of those decisions would fall into the quick-look category and there's probably only two instances in the past two years that would require this detailed review.
So those are the two policy areas that are currently going through the policy process.
The other thing that the GNSO community does and the council facilitates is discussion on other issues, and, really, to inform the community and consider potential solutions.
One of those problems is the growth or problem surrounding the contention for deleted names.
And, essentially, the problem is that previously-registered names often have a market value well above the standard retail price for a domain name.
The registry operator publishes a list of domain names that are about to become available and the time when those names are about to become available.
So the obvious thing that happens here is that registrars compete very strongly to obtain those names on behalf of their customers, and the value of those names then causes huge resources to be allocated, and, essentially, what we see here is that under the current first-come, first-served model for domain registration, the first add command that reaches the registry within microseconds of the name actually becoming available gets the name.
And that works quite well where there's not a particularly high value on a particular name.
But where there is a high value on a name, that generates a huge amount of attempts to register that name.
And the way this works is, if you send as many add commands to the registry as possible, and the more you send, the higher the probability that one of those commands would be successful, the registries have responded by limiting the bandwidth or the capacity that an individual registrar can flood the registry with commands.
But under the current equal access arrangements, the registry needs to give each registrar the same amount of capacity.
And so what people have determined in the last six months is the way around this is to apply for many accreditations from ICANN.
So we've seen the number of registrars accredited from ICANN double, but we certainly haven't seen the amount of actual domain name registration activity double in that period.
So what we're getting here is an inefficient use of resources from registrars that are using massive amounts of computing power to obtain names.
Registries are having to provide substantial amounts of resources.
And ICANN itself is having to process hundreds of requests for accreditation purely to obtain additional capacity to send add commands for a few names that become available each day.
So we had a workshop on this on Wednesday this week, and a number of different solutions to this problem were proposed.
And those solutions are available on the ICANN Web site for the community to review.
The other topic of discussion is GNSO review.
As part of the standard process that ICANN is using as an outcome of evolution and reform is to review each advisory committee and council and these supporting organizations more widely.
At this stage, this is a review of the council itself.
There's an external reviewer who's been engaged to review the council.
As part of that process, the council is itself doing its own review to think about, you know, what we believe ourselves we could improve upon and what we might request the board to consider in terms of process changes.
Those review documents will be available shortly.
And then they will be available for public comment.
It is still the belief of the GNSO Council that we should retain three representatives per constituency.
This ensures broader geographic coverage and also ensures more resources, I think, as some others have mentioned.
In ALAC, one of the issues is the amount of things to consider.
There's just not enough people to really work on those issues.
So we find that we need to get a value between having too few and too many people.
And we think that balance is -- that current balance that exists is the correct one.
We're also seeking some flexibility in setting time frames for policy development, depending on the complexity of the issue.
So the council's requested that the ICANN board extend the current arrangement of three representatives per constituency until the ICANN meeting in Argentina.
This will allow time for the external review to be completed and any changes to the bylaws to be drafted and subject to public comment.

The other -- WIPO, again, featured in discussions at the council level.
I think the council's been fairly consistent in its view that the UDRP process that was developed for trademarks should continue to retain its narrow focus on trademarks.
But we agree that there may well be other mechanisms for dealing with the issues raised by the second WIPO process relating to names and acronyms of international, intergovernmental organizations and country names.
So we certainly welcome further work in that area to look at different mechanisms and options and see if some agreement can be reached.
Strategic plan.
I think, essentially, the constituencies are still absorbing the content of that document.
We would like enough time to ensure that we have dialogue between the ICANN staff and members of the GNSO community before the board approves the plan.
And certainly we recognize the need for a rolling strategic plan.
And we need to plan how, as part of that rolling plan each year, there's sufficient processes in place to get input on updating that rolling plan.
Finally, just to thank some departing members of the GNSO Council.
Amadeu abril was appointed by the nominating committee, and his term has expired.
Thomas Roessler has done a huge amount of work as the liaison between the ALAC and the council.
And JISUK WOO has recently departed as the elected representative of the noncommercial constituency.
So I finish the presentation there, Mr. Chairman.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Bruce.
I want to -- and you your colleagues to know how much the board appreciates the efforts that GNSO has made to contribute very positively to the work of ICANN.
I'm looking forward to seeing your recommendations.
And, of course, as actions come to the board, we will take them up.
Alex.
>>ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you, Vint.
I think it would be a shame to have this report go without comment from the board.
It's exemplary in the way that the GNSO has evolved.
It's clear that both internal trends in the GNSO and the effects of the reform process are showing.
The evaluation that is now being conducted will -- I will not dwell on this, because there is an evaluation being conducted and one should not prejudge the results.
But one can clearly see even in the tough discussions about WHOIS where the discussion of non- -- not all users are satisfied yet, there is a way this is progressing with great depth of argument.
There's great depth of argument and technical knowledge as well as policy and business knowledge within the ICANN framework emerging in the add and delete and all of these tremendously expensive processes that the registries are facing and that they're affecting users in many ways.
I think there's a show of responsibility by the GNSO and the GNSO Council that has to be commended.
And one should also commend the GNSO for its increasing openness to widely different views.
I think, again, the GNSO is exemplary in the way that it forms part of ICANN as a whole and the way it makes itself distinctive in itself, treats its own problems within itself and yet still is completely integrated as a part of ICANN.
I perceive also that some of the present threats are very clearly recognized in the GNSO and it has been clear to me that the GNSO has had some expressions and is building up some more, as announced today, to liaise effectively with all of the ICANN-related community and to convey a message that could well be seen as an example of how to work as, really, an active component of ICANN without losing sight of their own role.

>>VINT CERF: Okay.
Now I have a bunch of hands up.
Please keep in mind, board members, that we still have more reports to go.
Tricia.
>>TRICIA DRAKES: Thank you, Vint.
And I'll keep it short.
I'd just like to put on record that I think the amazing progress that we've seen over the last year has really in many ways reflected your -- all the things, the criticism, the constructive advice, and commitment, together with a huge amount of application.
And I'm sure that without that, some of the progress and the position we're at we wouldn't have seen.
And I think in this coming year, with some of the challenges that we know we have in Geneva and in other things, actually, that role is going to be very, very important.
I'd also like to just make one comment in terms of the business constituency.
One of the most regular comments I get from industry leaders is, they say, "What are you doing?"
And ICANN comes up, is to say, "What is ICANN?"
And a lot of them should be coming to these meetings and engaging.
So perhaps that might be an area which I know you're looking at, but also would be very, very helpful moving forward.
But I would like to thank you, and everybody on the GNSO, for your amazing work.
Thank you.

>>VINT CERF: Okay.
I saw Mouhamet's hand and Mike's hand up.
Did I miss anyone else?
Okay.
Mouhamet.
>>MOUHAMET DIOP: Thank you very much, chairman.
I want to thank Bruce for this report and just have one comment and one question.
The comment is, I understand that the GNSO is one of the major contributors of the -- on the budget of ICANN.
And it's really important that all your point of view be taken very seriously, because, I mean, it's part of, really, what makes ICANN achieve the goal they are trying to effect themselves.
And I just want to think about the -- I think that you are one of the main -- I mean, you are more concerned about evolution of the sTLD application and gTLD process.
And my question is, since you have registries who are really involved in the implementation of the IDN on a test bed, did you have some discussion that's going on there?
And can we have, Bruce, from your own perspective what have been the output from the first evaluation we have -- we get from this first evaluation of the registry from the implementation of the IDN at the second level?
Because we have got a chance to get some comment from some of the CC during the other workshop that give us some insight about what happened, especially, for example, at the D or something like that.
And I'm quite a little bit curious about what's going on with that on the registry side.
And we have heard that there was some formal input that we're expecting to get from the GNSO, but I just want to -- want to have an idea about where we are at right now on that process.
Thanks.
>>BRUCE TONKIN: Okay.
It hasn't been discussed at the council level at this meeting here.
It may well have been discussed within the registry constituency meeting.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to be at all places at all times.
So I can't comment on what the registry constituency may have discussed.
I don't know whether there's a representative from the registry constituency that could comment.
But other than that, I think we'll just take your question on notice and try and get some response back to you.

>>VINT CERF: Thanks, Bruce.
Mike.
>>MICHAEL PALAGE: Yes.
I'd just like to join my fellow board members in the acknowledgment of the tremendous work that the GNSO does and the BOTTOM-UP consensus process.
And my comment is I think the best is yet to come when the council gets the staff support as set forth in the current budget and in the strategic plan.
So, again, I try to look forward, and I think better things are on the horizon.

>>VINT CERF: Okay.
We have the next report coming up from the ccNSO.
And do I see our -- yes.
Chris Disspain.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you.
The text of the ccNSO -- I'm sorry.
Do you want me to -- yeah.

>>PAUL TWOMEY: Vint, did you want a comment from the registry constituency?
>>VINT CERF: Oh, if you're ready to comment, yes, why don't you take the -- any microphone that's available.
Chris, I thank you for the indulgence.
>>MARIA ZITKOVA: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
My name is Maria Zitkova.
I am the chair of the registry constituency.
I would like to respond very briefly.
The registries are very interested and we have been discussing on a number of occasions IDN.
And maybe when there is a little bit of more opportunity and we are prepared, which I was not right now, we will comment more comments.
Thank you very much.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Maria.
Chris, you're on for ccNSO.
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you.
The text of the ccNSO report is up on the screen.
I won't read iT.
I'll just deal with a few specific points.
We had our meeting here in Cape Town.
20 ccNSO members, plus 15 non- ccNSO ccTLDs attended as well, which is excellent.
And we lost count of how many other people wandered into the room to see what was going on.
And everyone is delighted that the meeting was so well attended.
Because of the timing of the meetings, our council meeting is not actually until this afternoon, that is, assuming that you are finished at some point.
So we -- this is a members meeting report rather than a council meeting report.
Just on procedures, we have adopted our own internal set of rules and procedures.
At our council meeting this afternoon, we'll formally appoint a chair and vice chair.
We are going to appoint a liaison to the ALAC very soon.
And we anticipate having two appointments to the board of ICANN within the next three or four weeks.
We've also, as you heard from Sharil, agreed with the GAC, a model for liaising.
This is a very important achievement for both the GSC and for us, and we believe that's going to lead to increasing dialogue.
It means, I think, that our future joint meetings with the GSC rather than just being mere reports on what each is doing, will actually become a venue for meaningful discussion on matters of mutual interest.
And, finally, on procedural matters, we also met our three new councillors appointed by the NomCom.
And they will be joining us today.
On WSIS, we held a session, Markus Kummer attended.
We have agreed that the working group, the ccNSO working group on WSIS will prepare a paper on our views and that we will submit that by whatever method is possible to the WGIG.
We're encouraged by the stated willingness of the WGIG to consult with us, and we look forward to being involved in the process.
On the strategic plan, we -- the council has been asked by members to respond.
The areas that are of most importance to us, of course, IANA, accountability frameworks, and the ICANN budget.
And I'm pleased to hear the deadline has been extended.
So we'll be responding.
In our joint GAC and ccNSO meeting, the GAC announced that they were imminently publishing the GAC principles.
Obviously, they're expecting us to comment and provide feedback, and we'll do that as soon as possible.
We also had a brief discussion with the GAC on accountability frameworks, which there was led us to a presentation on the SOD and the Dutch government.
That presentation led to a number of questions. And I think it's a good example of the importance of the now-established liaison between us.
Finally, we asked on the GAC, asked them to consider appointing their liaison to the position on our council.
We spent some time talking about our Secretariat and we're working on a model for that.
But in the meantime, Taiwan has very graciously agreed to provide us with some Secretariat services on an interim basis, which is excellent.
That doesn't mean that the ICANN staff don't have anything to do.
It just means that there are some things that we do ourselves and some things you do for us.
We had a very interesting joint session with the ALAC and a constructive exchange of thoughts, and will be, as I said, appointing a liaison to them and they will to us.
We welcome the opportunity to participate in the ICANN budget process.
We will be formally appointing three people to the Budget Advisory Group today at our council meeting.
And our budget working group is about to start working with ICANN staff on figuring out a method for payment of ICANN fees by ccTLDs.
On IDNs, we had a short presentation from Edmon Chung about IDN-over-EPP.
And we encourage all ccTLDs to participate in that.
On accountability frameworks, we spent a lot of time talking about those.
We've agreed it is appropriate for us, the ccNSO, to develop a series of guidelines for ccTLDs in respect to accountability frameworks, the idea being that ccTLDs will be able to refer to those guidelines when they are negotiating their accountability framework with ICANN.
We strongly encourage all ccTLDs, be they members or nonmembers of the ccNSO, to participate in the development of these guidelines so that they can be as universally useful as possible.
On IANA, Doug Barton came and we have decided that we will make a presentation by Doug a regular feature of our meetings, hopefully not the same presentation.
And we have also, subject to formally approval by the council this afternoon, agreed to set up an IANA working group that will be open to members and nonmembers.
We received a letter from the president and CEO of ICANN, and I mean a letter, on paper, which was very impressive, especially the fact that it took -- that it was dated the 28th of November and took three days to arrive from upstairs to downstairs.
But it was -- the letter was welcomed because it suggested that the president and the board of ICANN would like to arrange for future closer relations with the council.
And so we're going to propose to you that we have a formally meeting at every ICANN meeting.
I know that your time is very precious.
But I'm sure we'll find a way.
2:00, 3:00 in the morning, something like that.
Finally, we just want to acknowledge and express our warm appreciation to the local host organizing committee, to uniforum, ZADNA, ICANN staff, and everyone else for the excellent work in supporting this meeting, and to our two sponsors, NeuLevel and Afilias, who very kindly provided us with food and drink.
And that's the end of the report.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Chris.
And, of course, thank you for the work that you do on behalf of ccNSO.
I want to encourage you and your colleagues to help the board, if necessary, to take any steps that we can to make ccNSO increasingly attractive to all ccTLD operators.
I think it's important that we have that entire community engaged.
And I am very pleased, though, that your meetings are open to members and nonmembers alike.
And I think that's certainly a positive step.
But the end game here is a great need to have all of the participants as part of the process.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We are aware of that.
And we're working on it.
And we'll let you know if there's anything you can do to help.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you.
We'll certainly do what we can.
As to meeting with the council, I note that feeding the board seems to work pretty well.
So showing up for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner seems to be an attractive thing for board members.
So you might put that into the hopper for consideration.
Thank you very much, Chris.
We have, actually, two other reports that are supposed to happen today, and then some time for open discussion.
So, normally, I would have opened the floor for comment on the last several reports.
I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to ask that we complete the GNSO review report from Paul Verhoef and the consensus policy updates from Tina Dam.
And then we'll have open microphone.
So, Paul, it's your turn.
>>PAUL VERHOEF: Okay.
Thank you, Vint.
I'll have a few slides on the GNSO review.
We have started in the process with a review by an external consultant which we have engaged on behalf of the board.
The consultant is actually working on the basis of a series of interviews with a cross-section of the interested constituency players and will take into account a self-assessment of the GNSO Council which is currently being finalized.
Furthermore, the GNSO Secretariat has done an extensive analysis of archived data to go over the results of the GNSO over the last years.
Once the report is finished, it will be posted for public comments and submitted to the board.
The current state of play is that we have an interim report, but there is still some work which remains to be done and that in two weeks' time, the report should be ready and go up for public comments.
I think probably the most important is to give you a bit of an insight in where the conclusions seem to be going.
I have two slides on that.
As you see, the conclusion seems to be that the council is working well and contributes in a particularly constructive way to ICANN policy development.
There are a number of considerations, however, namely, the need to achieve participation of all regions in the council, and to consider how language use can be facilitated.
The council seems to be working well with three representatives of each constituency is the conclusion which is coming forward.
And there is likely going to be a recommendation that the council should use input from the ombudsman as one of its working methods.
As has been mentioned already, staff support needs improvement.
And I'm about to finalize the recruitment of staff in the next few weeks.
So we think that that is indeed going to make the effectiveness of the GNSO go forward in a significant fashion.
On the policy side of -- policy development side of the GNSO, there is a clear conclusion that time lines for the PDPs are currently not being achieved.
There is a variety of reasons for that.
And the report will go into detail what these reasons are and what some ways forward could be.
There is likely to be a recommendation that the council may want to check the viability of implementation of its policies.
Having a policy only is not enough.
The operational and legal aspects associated with it need to be looked at before a policy goes out.
And there is likely to be a suggestion for a compliance policy with graded penalties.
The last remark is, there may need to be a need to build in a review of the effectiveness on the policies and provide some feedback loops so that we are constantly evaluating the actual work of the policies in the field.
Vint, that concludes my presentation.
>>VINT CERF: Well, thank you very much for that.
I'm sure that this work will go forward and certainly more effectively as you bring staff on board to help.
The final report scheduled today comes from Tina Dam.
It's the consensus policy update.
So, Tina, if you'll trade places with Paul Verhoef.

>>TINA DAM: Thanks.
Since we met last time in Kuala Lumpur, ICANN staff have announced and requested implementation of four new consensus policies that are applicable to registries and registrars.
The details of these policies can be found at this place on the ICANN Web site.
First off, we have the inter-registrar transfer policy, which is a policy that allow registrants to transfer freely their domain name registrations between approved registrars if they wish to do so.
It is currently effective.
The policy contains a dispute resolution policy and some standardized forms that registrars must use when they communicate with registrants.
A quick status on this policy is that for the time that it has been in effect, it's been working fairly well, say.
One of the main things that we can see right now is that the complaints we used to receive from customers who weren't able to perform the transfer is now getting a smaller and smaller amount of that, so that's good news.
We're working close with the registrars and the registries to try to accommodate for any changes that might be necessary.
And the first time that takes place is in the first review of the policy, which is three months after the implementation date.
Then we have the expired domain deletion policy, which is a -- it's basically just a practice that registrars follow at the time of a domain name expiration date.
That policy is going to be effective on the 21st of December this year.
The WHOIS marketing restriction policy, it's a requirement that in the registrars access agreements they need to make sure that third parties agree not to use data for marketing purposes, and they also need to require that such data is not being sold or redistributed.
That policy came into effect on the 12th of November as well.
The restored names accuracy policy is pretty much an update on the redemption grace period service that most registries are offering right now. And what the policy states is that if a domain name is being restored that initially was deleted because of false contact data, then that name has to be placed on registrar hold until the WHOIS data is accurate.
And that policy is in effect as well, 12th of November this year.
And that was all I had.
>>VINT CERF: Before you step down, Tina, thank you for that. Just a clarification. These policies apply to the generic TLDs; is that correct?
>>TINA DAM: That's correct. The inter-registrar ICANN policies for all ICANN accredited registrars and the gTLD registries, unsponsored. The three remaining policies I talked about is for accredited registrars.
>>VINT CERF: Of course the policies are publicly available and if the ccTLD found them useful, they could apply them but it would be at the ccTLD operators' discretion.
>>TINA DAM: Yeah, that's right. Thanks.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much. I just wanted to clarify that.
Okay. Thank you very much, Tina.
We now have opportunity to open the microphone for general discussion comments and questions on any of the previously submitted reports. So I would invite those of you who are still here to take advantage of that.
I am prepared to allow this to go on for as much as an hour, although if you choose to end after half an hour, we will actually end on time.
All right. The first question.
>>WOLFGANG KLEINWÄCHTER: Yeah, hello, my name is Wolfgang Kleinwächter, I'm from the University of Aarhus. I have two questions, one for Vittorio. Vittorio, when do you expect the first RALO will be established and have you discussed again the individual membership in one of the at-large groups? And the second question goes to Bruce Tonkin who gave us a list of all the gTLD registries working under the GNSO. Bruce, do you have any direct connection or cooperation with the gTLDs dot EDU, gov, dot MIL and dot MNT?
>>VINT CERF: I don't know, is Bruce still here in the room? Oh, there he is. Good.
>>VITTORIO BERTOLA: For one regard, the date line or schedule for the regional organizations, I don't have a simple answer to that because the question is do you want to form these organizations even if you just have maybe five, ten, 15 organizations in the region, or do you want to wait for more time, involve more organizations and then do that job later?
And this is one of the strategic questions we have to discuss, and maybe we have to discuss with the board, too.
So if we decided that we wanted to do them, we could actually do them in a couple of months, I'd say. But until now, we have been thinking it's better to proceed with more and more outreach and wait to get more organizations on board before actually starting the work.
And about individual memberships, that's an old question. So I think that we do have to introduce some way to involve users in ICANN again directly, but mostly I think related to specific policy issues, because as we have seen in the WSIS context, people want to participate and directly on the specific issues.
So maybe, for example, we are thinking about setting up mailing lists, let's say, on WHOIS policy issues and maybe inviting whoever wants to participate in the discussion to join. And that's not exclusive to the other ways or to the formal organizing of the at large. It will just be another way of involving people in ICANN.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Vittorio.
Roberto, you wanted to make a comment on that specific subject? Okay. And then I want to make sure Bruce has a chance to respond to the other question.
>>ROBERTO GAETANO: Just my personal opinion. In fact, we need to discuss this in the At-Large Advisory Committee. But I think that if we -- at this point in time when we are in the middle of the effort of getting more organizations and have the RALO off the ground, if at this moment we open to individual membership and we start making a confusion, that will make the work of outreaching on more at-large structures much more difficult.
When the RALOs are in place with the critical mass of at-large ORGANIZATIONS in place as members, then we can discuss the best way to proceed in order to have better feedback from the Internet community which might include having individual membership.
But to put that on the table right now can really be dangerous.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Roberto.
Bruce, I guess I'd like to call on you to respond to the earlier questions from Wolfgang, and then we'll go back to the floor in the regular order.
>>BRUCE TONKIN: I think the simple answer is that, no, the GNSO has not had involvement with dot EDU, dot GOV, dot MIL. We wouldn't consider ourselves to be generic top-Level Domains in the sense that they apply globally. I think they are. I'm not precisely sure on the rules but I think they're mostly focused on U.S.-based organizations, but you might be able to clarify that.
>>VINT CERF: That's probably not entirely true for dot EDU. I get the impression that EdU-cause has opened that up a bit. You might check on that.
>>BRUCE TONKIN: There might be a bit of a gap there in the sense that ccTLD has participation from ccTLDs and the GNSO has participation from the GNSO, but there may well need to be a bit of a forum to engage some of those other operators.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Bruce.
Okay. We had -- yes, actually, Milton you're actually number two in line.
>>MARCUS FAURE: Hello, I'm Marcus faure, CORE COUNCIL, SWITZERLAND, and I had two comments to make. I have been giving Kurt a hard time and I have to add a little something to make sure I'm not misunderstood. Core has been set up to bring competition and fairness to the markets, so hence we are interested in a strong ICANN. However, we would have a problem with ICANN running on the $40 million budget. While I understand that Paul said to me that my calculation of that figure is based on wrong assumptions and that he can't clarify that assumptions right now for strategic reasons. I understand that.
I just want to stress that we are willing to work with ICANN on the budget and that's why we have sent a representative to the Budget Advisory Group. That's my first point.
You want to comment on that?
>>VINT CERF: Well, there's not much to say other than to thank you for your willingness to work with ICANN on this matter. Clearly we all want this to work out satisfactorily.
>>MarCus Faure: Okay. The second point is I love this place and I love the friendliness of the people here. It would be good in the quality of the Internet connection could match that. So when I said ripe access point and my wireless goes down every ten minutes and even when it's up I have a packet loss of five percent, there's something wrong.
And maybe a suggestion that for the next meeting there should be some quality control of the Internet access before the meeting starts. And back to the budget, if ICANN a looking for new source of revenue, they might ask for a refund from the local ISP.
(Laughter.)
>>VINT CERF: Let's see. Actually, Milton, were you -- I'm not sure who was second.
>>IZUMI AIZU: I gave my name earlier to --
>>VINT CERF: Izumi. Okay.
>>IZUMI AIZU: As a member of the At-Large Advisory Committee but this is my personal opinion, not the committee's, and to thank you, Wolfgang, first.
I think the issue of do we have the individual users and individuals to the at large RALO structure or not is a very valid question. Coupled with my own observation of past almost two years effort within ALAC and the preceding ones from MAC to all the membership issues, we At-Large Advisory Committee, I think we are making a fair amount of progress. At the same time, we are not doing as much as we wanted, or we are or we were expected from outside of us.
So having the ALS certification procedures on the one hand and then to make RALO and go to the memorandum of understanding with ICANN, yes, we do our best. We try, but I still have some doubt whether we'll be effectively successful to set up RALO in five regions within a very reasonable amount of time given the political and other climate now we are facing.
So we are now, as Vittorio reported, sort of doing some self-analysis or self-evaluation, whether our performance of the two years have met expectations internal and external, and how we can sort of address the challenges to go forward, including some possible reconsideration of the framework already given. Because as Vittorio asked earlier today, the question now is perhaps. The original resumption two years ago after reform is there are a certain amount of interested users out there who would like to participate in the ICANN process under the bottom-up self-organizing mechanisms. No sort of extra subsidy from ICANN or elsewhere. But you guys self-organize and participate. And I thought that's a good idea, genuine idea, and we tried very hard.
There aren't that many who can afford to self-organize because there's a fundamental difference between individual users and most constituencies of ICANN because for most registries or registrars it's their business. For others, it's not our core business. We have other things like teaching or research development or others. But it's so hard to justify to get involved. Many of the volunteer members of ALAC have set aside their own job and take vacation to come here and make excuse to their own institution to come here because we're believing this is a good thing. But is it a sustainable, is a very good question we are challenged.
So we ask for more support, financial. And I'm very grateful that the board approved a new increase of budget. But is it sustainable or are you going to fund us until a way that's only just bootstrap, and then we become -- RALO becomes self-sustaining by the users?
I'm not too sure if you can do that.
And then the question is well, we need to carefully evaluate. I know there are varying opinions about that and this is not my conclusion; that is just my tentative observation. But if it is difficult to self-organize, then what should we do? The question is does ICANN need to user involvement as a whole, meaning each registrar, registry, other constituencies, do you need the participation or direct participation in some form at the ICANN level to the policy development process or you better not to try that much because it's not feasible?
So it's not ALAC wants ALAC only, perhaps. But how do we really address this in the challenge of a WSIS. The government is claiming they have the legitimate right to represent the public interest.
And I think the users' involvement to at least these complicated areas, to show direct involvement is perhaps good, as good as the government participation. Not intervention. But I think we are facing a very, very fundamental question. To the registrars, registrants, all the constituencies. Not only ALAC. Thank you.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, iZUMI. Milton.
>>MILTON MUELLER: This is a question for Bruce. I just listened to your comments about the review of registry service changes and I wanted to know in your discussions whether there was any suggestion of a distinction between dominant and nondominant registries or whether this was something that would apply to any registry. And if it is the latter, whether you really think that's feasible over the long term to have ICANN staff be reviewing every -- what is it (inaudible), every change that is made by every registry particularly as we look forward to adding Top-Level Domains, some of them in different languages S this a feasible thing that's being considered by the GNSO or are you too narrowly focused on the Site Finder problem which is a problem with VeriSign which controls over 30,000 domains? Are you really thinking whether this should be generally applicable to any and every registry?
>>BRUCE TONKIN: I guess the first point is what are you defining as dominant? Are you defining it in terms of their impact on a global basis or their market share or --
>>MILTON MUELLER: That's the distinction the regulator or, excuse me, GNSO has to make in these distinctions, but it's a common thing for an entity that's trying to regulate or monitor entities in communications and information to make these kind of distinctions. And they are to some extent arbitrary, but they could be based on market share, could be based on scope of impact in a technical sense. But clearly there needs to be some sort of distinction, don't you think?
>>BRUCE TONKIN: I think the distinction so far is more in the criteria. Firstly, most of the discussion I've heard is more related to the sponsored versus unsponsored side of things. So that the view that some of the sponsored registry operators have is they have their own internal review process and, therefore, they should be allowed to do that, much as the ccTLDs do.

So that has been part of the discussion. There's not a conclusion on that yet.
The other issue that I think we are grappling with is probably how does it scale, because right now, I think it is feasible with the current number of gTLDs we have to have a process like that.
The real question is what is the result of the new gTLD process? If we're talking about a hundred or a thousand TLD operators and we're trying to run a process, then I think you're right. There could be overheads there.
The other comment I would make is I think it's part of an evolution itself. As we gain more experience and understand what changes are appropriate to be made, you could imagine the controls might well be loosened over time whereas, in some recent events there was clearly a need for such controls.
So....
You know, I think it's just one of those things that will probably evolve. So right now the process is focused on the market that currently exists, the number of players that currently exist and the contracts that currently exist. IF you change some of those parameters then we would need to change our policies. If the contracts changed, et cetera. But right now the contracts in many cases require approval. And under that basis, we're just trying to establish on what basis ICANN would give that approval.
>>VINT CERF: Thanks very much, Bruce. James Seng is next.
>>JAMES SENG: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the first time standing here I'm not going to talk about internationalized domain names. I'm going to talk about something else particularly about at-large and I'm talking about at-large individual participating in ICANN.
First of all, I'd like to say that ALAC has made great progress in the past two years in trying to get various participation from individuals into ICANN process, and I appreciate that effort. But I'm particularly concerned that we have more resources in terms of budget in money into at large. Whether we have a measurement of success of the outreach parameter. What is the measurement of success? Is it the by the numbers of organizations that sign up or is it the contribution that's made by ICANN? I do not see that.
I am concerned that the participation of ICANN -- of at-large in ICANN means going around different parts of the regional world, setting up meetings, spreading the messages, and funding people to come to ICANN. I'm not sure whether that's the right way to get at large participation. As Izumi said, there is a large group of people already, a huge group of friendly people in the Internet community that are friendly to ICANN, would like to see ICANN to be successful. And in some ways we need to get this participation into ICANN, to get their voice into ICANN.
This does not require them to travel to ICANN or to various meetings the at large set up. It requires individuals to have their individual voices heard. I don't see that at this time.
There is (inaudible) for at large in general discussion but the discussion level is very, very low.
Perhaps there's a tool that large committees it's not appropriate to evolve over time. I could cite one example but most people here have heard of the (inaudible) and in the last one year of the (inaudible) ID I have seen a lot of good ideas that's relevant to the Internet and to ICANN came out from that -- the use of that tools. And perhaps at large should relook at how they can more effectively represent the community.
>>VINT CERF: Paul.
>>PAUL TWOMEY: I wonder if I could make an observation at the staff level to comments about at large and to share a bit more of the information that the At-Large Advisory Committee and myself and others on the staff had this week.
First of all, just to reinforce from a staff perspective very much the significance we place on at-large and the voice of the at-large and the voice of the user and consumer, the staff consider that to be an absolutely essential part of the ICANN construct and the ICANN philosophy. I'm reminded that when I wore a different hat at yokOHAMA we endangered (inaudible). So if ALAC appeared tomorrow I think staff would have to be REINVENTED the next day in order to have a voice of the consumer and a voice of the users.
So that's just a first philosophical statement.
The second, some of the practical things that we're trying to look towards helping on the at-large, first of all, our perspective of ALAC, we would like to have perspectIve of the staff functions of ICANN is staff-ups always take longer and harder than you look and think. So I've got a lot of respect for the ALAC committee who have been putting a lot of work in. It's always much harder than you think it's going to be.
But a couple tools that we're trying to look at at the staff level, first of all, clearly one of the things that we think the establishment of further regional presences does is actually allow to have ICANN staff assisting the at-large community to identify particular communities or individuals who may wish to participate. We find a lot of that tends to be regional. People's interactions tend to be local and regional rather than immediately global and that's part of the commitment. The second thing we're trying to do is also develop some tools that we can give to some of the constituencies to let them operate things, for instance, such as newsletters, electronic newsletters and to try to have some tools early next year that people can be able to use in order to, I think as Mike Palage said, brand newsletters and things like that to try to start building more of a link.
So I just wanted to indicate the staff, we're taking this need seriously and we're trying to find anything we're doing that contribute to the At-Large Advisory Committee's proselytization.
>>VINT CERF: One small observation, at ICANN we do have provisions for public comment and so those interested individuals who care about policies that evolve out of the ICANN process have regular opportunities to make their inputs, although I do confess that many of them may not need to know much about ICANN or know what it's doing.
So we do have an outreach and visibility them; that we have mechanisms that would allow input.
The key item here is getting feedback from the registrants who are affected by policies that are made by ICANN.
Let's go on now to the next comment. Maria.
>>maria zitkova: I want to make a very short comment to what Milton said and Bruce said before as to the sponsored and unsponsored gTLD. Registry operators have sponsored TLDs are usually contracted by sponsors, and sponsors are organizations representing communities and sponsors at organizations that are in the registry constituency. In the context of what was discussed, I think this is very important. Thank you.
>>JAMES SENG: I want to make a comment in response to Paul. I appreciate the response the staff has made to at large, and I think the at large is very important. To be honest, I'm a convert. Originally, I do not believe at large after witnesses of the general assembly in the early days. But when Stewart Lynn talked to me, I would not even have a voice to talk here today. I would not even be able to make this comment at all. So in that respect I think at-large has served a very important role for the ICANN community.
The only comment I would like to say is we should spend more time trying to look at online tools and help online users, people to give comments to ICANN to the at-large community without physical participation.
Outreach is important, but to not try to create -- don't spend money traveling. We are already using the Internet. Use the Internet.
>>IZUMI AIZU: To respond to what James said, I think the travel and the online tool are not mutually exclusive. It will complement each other. The more there is interest and participation, usually it ends up more travel or meeting physical as we all witness.
What I want to say in my earlier remarks is the challenge we're facing is, ALAC, when we go out and outreach what should we do? We have to explain what ICANN is all about, first of all, before going to the at large. And I can have so many different things dealing with, and do we need to explain all of these? Not necessarily. But if the ICANN, per se, already made a significant amount of outreach known to the Internet community locally, then the tasks for at large are much easier. But obviously that is not always the case for many parts of the world. We need to go to describe, first of all, what ICANN is all about, which I think is also your job as our job.
So it would be very helpful if Vint or Alex or whoever, as ICANN member, representative, go out there and do more outreach on not only ICANN but at large, than just at large people doing outreach on at large. That makes a huge difference.
And so we're sort of perhaps facing a dilemma, too, because on the one hand, individual users, at large or civil society, usually want some kind of independence, neutrality or whatever, that we don't want to be under the ICANN control. I was described, are you going to be a puppet of the ICANN board to just reinforce ICANN, that CORRUPT organization?
That kind of image is usually trying to be, especially active citizens are vocal. They want to be independent. So if you make an appearance too close to the status quo, you need some sort of a credibility. But at the same time, you have to be inside. So it's a very difficult job we are facing.
So again the question is who needs at large, the users' voice, and if we need that how can we improve?
I take James sort of very good suggestion. Yes, we are short of using interactive tool on the mailing list. The members of the At-Large Advisory Committee may not have done that work expected. But then where there's areas to improve, we're open to improve.
But also just one more additional point. Being advisory is a little bit difficult to get their interest to participate. Because they can merely advise. But if we are lucky, our voice may be heard but there are no guaranteed mechanisms to influence the real policy making.
I'm not just going to directly go to say give us three seats on the board or something like that at this stage, but we need to really think how we can sort of effectively involve the users' voices into the main business of ICANN.
Is the current mode sufficient or not, is the overall question. Thank you.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Izumi.
Vittorio.
>>VITTORIO BERTOLA: I'll try to be quick because Izumi has already said much of it.
Just to comment on this last point, I think it is really the point, it is one of the main points of why we were encountering all this together with the past history of ICANN, because when you go to people and they imply, okay, but after five years you still don't have any kind of privacy in WHOIS and the policies that are being discussed are less protective of privacy and more protective of business interests. Then I don't know what you can reply. And it's easy to understand why some organizations that have limited resources choose not to participate in ICANN.
And the other point, I think, very important we have to make is that yes, we might have more and we will have maybe more online tools and ways of interaction.
But we must never forget that the at-large is not about the kind of very Internet-savvy connected people who can use tools and have regular access and use E-mail every hour or so.
We also have to think at all the other users which are in fact the majority, which mostly are people that maybe connect in the middle of Africa or Latin America or even Europe, people like my mother, who only can check E-mail every couple of days and just knows how to run a browser.
So, yes, we have accommodated the technical users.
But the at-large is much more and we must never forget that.
Because the technical users are much more vocal.
But all the other categories of users maybe don't even know that ICANN exists.
One last point I make is not -- is connected but not only this.
But I think it is very important.
I think ICANN also has to rethink a little to its practical organizational structure especially for what regards the meetings.
Because, I mean, I don't want to get to the opposite extreme, which is the way organizations in Geneva work.
But still, coming here and having schedules that change minute by minute and you go to a room to be in a meeting and then you find that the meeting has been moved and there just maybe a sticker or maybe some E-mail circulating among people you don't even know maybe because you're a newcomer.
Or these kind of things.
It makes it very difficult.
So it's not just enough to allow people to enter the rooms.
But you must let them know clearly where the rooms are and what is going to be discussed and possibly have printed documents in advance and all these kind of things.
And so without turning ICANN into a very bureaucratICal structure, we have to think of ways to perhaps be a little more practical and more effective for people who are not really insiders of this process.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Vittorio.

>> Keith Davidson: Keith Davidson from interNETNZ.
I hope I am not interfering with the debate on at-large.
But I want to make a comment on BEHALF OF dot nz for the meeting recommendation in wellington, New Zealand.
We look forward to hosting you in wellington in 2006.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much for that.
I have been in wellington once before and enjoyed it greatly.
I can assure everyone who hasn't been there that it's well worth being there.
Are there -- Mouhamet.
Let me -- before you go, Mouhamet, how many other people are there queued up, if any.
One.
Okay.
Thank you.
Mouhamet.
>>MOUHAMET DIOP: Thank you, Vint.
It's just to add a couple of words on the at-large comment.
I have headquarters from the African at-large meeting that was organized, there's many efforts that have been done on the ground using ICANN staff, ICANN board members in order to have a way to forward, I mean, the subject and the topic we are discussing at some regional level.
But we have heard that it's not enough.
I mean, that's -- that's the message we have.
And even if we remember one of the journalists this morning says there's some lack of awareness about what ICANN is and what ICANN is doing at a national level.
It just means that we have many supporters, we have people who want to make some advocacy for us, but they don't have the right forum.
They don't have a forum in which they can collect information unless they come to ICANN meetings or just go to collect at the Web.
I think that there was just some room for some reflection, some -- I'm going to have to find out.
I know that it's very tricky to talk about budget.
But at a national level, when people try to do something with media, because media are -- I mean, are one of the first partners in relaying a message at a national level.
Something needs to be articulated through the regional process we are trying to set up how we can leverage the presence of some ICANN people at this national level in order to get opportunity for people to get the right information on the right topics about ICANN.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Mouhamet.
We'll take this last comment, then.
Then I have a couple --
>>GREG RUTH: Well, I wanted to comment on the strategic plan.
So if there's still discussion on ALAC, --
>>VINT CERF: Oh, absolutely.
This -- no, no, no.
We didn't bind the discussion to any particular topic.
It's just that ALAC seemed to have gotten a lot of attention.
So feel free to proceed.
>>GREG RUTH: Well, I wanted to make a statement on behalf of the ISPCP constituency regarding the strategic plan.
Generally, we are in support of the strategic plan, but we would like to raise a few issues.
We feel that it's a welcome step forward, but we have concerns that the proposals still lack measurable objectives and detailed time lines.
The strategic plan is unclear as to whether the relationship between ICANN and the root server operators will be formalized to the extent of contractual relationship.
And we support the formalization of relationships with the root server operators, the precise nature of which we reserve comment upon.
But whatever the relationship ends up being, those root server -- those providing root server functionality need to be accountable to ICANN.
We support the five key suggestions for IANA, including improving IANA request tracking and responsiveness, providing more reliable operating capacity, doing better reporting for IANA on operational issues, making root zone management professional, and making root servers themselves more robust.
We especially support the move toward project management orientation for request tracking and crucial IANA transactions.
We believe that -- however, that the reference made to the ASO community, quote, "building global consensus policy toward -- policy governing IP addresses," unquote, is not supported by the demise of an independent ASO, and the -- by the RIR CEOs through the NRO.
The ISPCP welcomes the appointment of the ombudsman and the role -- his role in helping to educate consumers, a task which in the past has been left to the ISPs.
We are also glad to see more emphasis placed on compliance so that policy work developed within the GNSO becomes more meaningful.
We feel that it's essential that all ICANN activities result from BOTTOM-UP process and the PDP process needs to be flexible and tailored to meet the demands of individual policy opportunities.
We'd like to find out more.
We seek some information with regard to the proposed regional meetings, whether they're to be focused on outreach and educational activities only, or to become part of the formal policy development process.
And if the latter, then the ISPCP questions HOW this can be integrated into the discussions necessary at full global ICANN meetings.
Finally, the ISPCP notes with some dismay that the support organizations were not consulted prior to the public dissemination of the strategic plan.
While the Internet may be -- the intent may be to craft a plan for operation and management of the ICANN, it is clear that the plan has far-reaching consequences for ICANN's delivery of service and thus its policy.
This -- going forward, the process needs to change so that the support organizations have a meaningful way to have input at an earlier stage in the plan development.
Thank you.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much.
I imagine that the strategic plan is a live document and it will be updated on a regular basis.
So there is actually no -- at no moment is there not an opportunity for input to the staff with regard to the strategic plan.
So you should take that into account whenever you have suggestions, please submit them.
White papers are always accepted.
I don't see -- oh, yes, I do.
It's all yours.
>>ELLIOT NOSS: And, Vint, I confess to a little bit of confusion.
Elliot Noss from Tucows.
Is this open mike or just with respect to the reports?
>>VINT CERF: It's open mike.
Please go ahead.
>>ELLIOT NOSS: Then I will take an opportunity now.
I want to, if I could, repeat some comments that I've made in a slightly different way, first inside the registrars' constituency, and then again yesterday to the -- in the GNSO open mike, as I found from the discussions that ensued in the halls afterwards that are it may be helpful in terms of some issues that both staff and board will be dealing with shortly.
Specifically, my comments will be with respect to the expired names market.
There are two points that I -- that I wish to make explicitly that, hopefully, just can help frame some of this market.
I will first make reference to the comments that I made, you know, again, in open mike back in Rome in March, where I essentially, in reference to WLS, noted that dealing with that was likely to be irrelevant, as the market was going to move past the need for WLS.
I feel those comments have been borne out.
And now that leads to me wanting to frame some of the specifics here.
First, I want to identify -- and Keith Teare I think did a very good job of breaking the market up yesterday in the public comments to the GNSO -- I want to identify -- well, he talked about four stages in the market.
-- very clearly, what I see as two stages.
One, the first where a previous registrant still retains rights.
These rights are REtained through their agreements with their existing registrars.
The second distinct period is where a name has now fallen into expiry and it's really for a registry to deal with them.
And subject to any questions that any of you may have, the important distinction I think for your purposes in dealing with this market is that at an economic level, those two distinct stages are likely to break out where the first is dealing with names at roughly $50 or in excess, in the secondary market, that second stage is likely to be dealing with names between 6 and $50 in value.
And when I'm talking about value there, that's fair market value as will be determined in an auction process in either stage.
So I think that's an important placeholder.
The second and I think more important comment is that I want to explicitly lay out before you certainly my view that you have a very interesting market that you're going to be looking at in the sense that the demand side of this market has actually been extremely efficient.
First, pricing really has moved to what I would call fair market value.
It is the case that the demand side of this market, which is primarily still populated by professionals, is quite satisfied, despite the fact that prices have increased significantly for them in terms of acquiring expiring names.
The increased efficiency has more than made up for that increased pricing.
The demand side really works today.
All of the problems exist on the supply side.
And the most important question that you'll be faced with that underpins all of the various alternatives that may cross your desks essentially come down to who's entitled to the money generated by demand.
This is a question that we at Tucows have been thinking about for years, I noted yesterday going back to Montevideo, the first time this issue came up.
And we have settled now in a place where, very clearly to us -- and we've noted this publicly -- the party that is most entitled to that revenue generated by that market is the previous registrant.
And I want to briefly explain to you why we believe strongly that that's the case.
You know, we will confess, this is a position we backed into.
In other words, looking at all of the various alternatives, you know, this was the party that was most entitled on a relative basis.
But, you know, the more analysis we have done, the stronger we feel about this.
And I want to relay for you a conversation that I had yesterday sort of following that GNSO statement, where a very, you know -- a person who's quite savvy about this market, you know, described the previous registrant, you know, said to me, even after hearing the comments that I made, you know, well, isn't this sort of like the previous registrant has just left a shoe lying in the road?
Why -- why would they be entitled to anything here?
I identified for her that, you know, it was much more like somebody having a lease on a property in central park in New York but was now moving to another part of the world.
They had no need for the property anymore, but if they had appropriate information from an appropriate professional in that case, in that analogy, likely a leasing agent or some real property professional, then they would never walk away from real clear value.
It's important to note here that once a week, my sources tell me, a name goes in access of $10,000 U.S. Once a month, a name goes for in excess of $50,000 U.S. So we're talking about very real money.
And I, at the end of the day, what finally convinced me was, you know, I applied the kitchen table test or the "my mother" test.
And that really, you know, simply goes as follows.
You know, if my mother had had a name that dropped and went for $10,000 and I found out about that, you know, where would my frustration lay?
Where would my anger lay?
And it would lay with her service provider, whoever that was.
Because that's the party that I would expect to have kept her informed about the idiosyncrasies and the nuances of the market.
Rightly or wrongly, that's what my expectation would be.
And not only would I -- would I never have her do business with that service provider again, in this case, most likely a registrar or a reseller of a registrar, I would bad-mouth that party to everybody that I spoke to.
So what we're really talking about here is a dearth of information and a gap in information.
And I think it's important, as are you likely to be dealing with some of these issues in the next month, three months, six months, that these statements are out there.
So thank you.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much.
I have this feeling that because people's mothers get brought up regularly in these discussions as a critical example, maybe we should have a kind of a new committee formed called "the mothers of the Internet," and we'll have them come and suggest to us what it is that we should do.
>>ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Right.
>>VINT CERF: I see several hands up.
Steve, this is relevant specifically to the subject just introduced?
>>STEVE CROCKER: Elliot, thanks very much for those comments.
They resonate very much with the thoughts that I have had over a much shorter period of time.
But since you brought your mother up, --
>>ELLIOT NOSS: Be careful, Steve.
>>STEVE CROCKER: How would your mother feel if -- or you feel -- if not only had it sold for $10,000, but it was then put into use for a adult content site with her name as part of the thing?
>>ELLIOT NOSS: Yeah, if this is working, I -- I think the only thing that I could note there is, you know, if she had allowed a name to go into auction and had taken the $10,000, probably better than if she hadn't.
So certainly, you know, you kind of made it in the conjunctive there, I think that that's going to be part of the risk associated with names going in auction.
I will note that that issue, while certainly much bandied about in these discussions, has really been far surpassed in terms of prevalence by the sort of efficiencies around search terms.
And it's really kind of the monetizing of search that Google, overture and others have brought that has jumped this market.
So what you're talking about there is happening around the margins.
I'm not going to say it doesn't exist anymore.
But it's a very, very small part of this issue at this point.

>>STEVE CROCKER: That's helpful to know.
I do have mail from comparable people.
And my reaction has been similar in that for lack of knowledge about what was likely to happen, they were put into a position that they were unhappy about after the fact.
And in -- although the issue wasn't "where's my $10,000?"
It was, "if I had known, I could have prevented this."
>>ELLIOT NOSS: And I think there's another element to that that's important here, which is, in the absence of the previous registrant being the party who generally benefits, and I mean, you know, to where the registrar really has role that resembles an agent and not a participant, that we -- as a registrar our incentives in the business stop being aligned with those of our customers.
So to the extent that we're going to benefit primarily from that secondary market, WE create the wrong incentives.
My line is, I don't want to have an incentive to put the term "Viagra" in my renewal notices.
And that's part of the problem we'd be creating.
>>VINT CERF: Okay.
Just a reminder for everyone that we have just about ten minutes left on the deadline for completion.
Jean Polly.
>> Jean ARMOUR Polly: Hi.
I'm Jean Armour Polly, but probably also better known as "net mom."
So I'm happy to be the next person to speak.
I wanted to say a couple things, actually, since you did open it up to open mike.
I have been eight years working in the child and family Internet business.
I've written eight books on the subject of good Web sites for children.
I'm the media -- I'm the Web site editor for common sense media based in San Francisco, which is a family media literacy organization.
And I've probably seen more Web sites for kids than pretty much anybody else in the room.
So I think I know a little bit about it.
I've been on the Internet since '91.
I've been a board member of ICRA, the Internet content rating association.
And as not really one of my official duties, but one of the jobs I assigned to myself was an unofficial ambassador to the porn industry, back in 2000, I thought, well, net mom is going to have to step up and do this.
And I did make quite a few phone calls and spoke with folks at that time.
And in 2000, really, nobody wanted to go into a dot xxx that I could find.
They said it's too easy to filter us out in Peoria.
But times have changed.
I HAVE also served as a consultant on the dot kids proposal, one of the dot kids proposals.
Times have changed, and, you know, I want to just stand here and encourage the board to really look at this latest dot XX proposal.
I think it has a lot to recommend it as a sponsored TLD.
And don't -- please just don't dismiss it out of hand.
Please look at it.
I think the Internet way, as I remember it, was to route around difficulty.
And this would be one more tool in the box for parents to do just that.
Thank you.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much.
I don't see any other people in queue.
So I will draw this meeting to a close.
We will open up the board meeting tomorrow, of course. I'm not sure whether it's at 8:30 or 9:00.
Please check the schedule.
And certainly invite you all to have a pleasant afternoon, get some -- a little sun and some warmth.
This room is probably as cold as my wine cellar.
And we'll ask the operators here whether they can turn down the -- or turn up the air conditioning, or turn it in some direction that's warmer.
So thank you all.
We'll adjourn for now and see you in the morning.
(12:55 p.m.)