GNSO Council Meeting
 Wednesday, 13 February 2008
 ICANN Meeting
 New Delhi, India
 
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Good morning.  I believe we're ready to start.  I think we've gotten all of the logistic things taken care of.  We have people online, correct?  Okay.
 I think we'll start this meeting now.  I've got the agenda up.  The first thing on the agenda is the roll-call of council members to make sure we're all here, to make sure we have everybody that's on the phone here.  So, Glen, could you do a roll-call?  Do you have the list to do the roll-call?
 >>GLEN DE SAINT GERY:  Certainly.  Chuck Gomes?
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  Present.
 >>GLEN DE SAINT GERY:  Edmon Chung?
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  Here.
 >>GREG RUTH:  Here.
 >>OLGA CAVALLI:  Here.
 >>TONY HOLMES:  Here.
 >>CARLOS SOUZA:  Here.
 >>ROBIN GROSS:  Here.
 >>GLEN DE SAINT GERY:  Adrian Kinderis?
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  Here.
 >>GLEN DE SAINT GERY:  Mike Rodenbaugh?
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  Present.
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:  Present.
 >>BILAL BEIRAM:  Present.
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  Present.
 >>JON BING:  Present.
 >>GLEN DE SAINT GERY:  And we have Denise Michel with us and Avri.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Yes.  And online?
 >>GLEN DE SAINT GERY:  And online, Tim Ruiz?
 >> (No response).
 >>KRISTINA ROSETTE:  Yes.
 >>TIM RUIZ:  I'm here I am on the Webcast but not on the phone.
 >>GLEN DE SAINT GERY:  You can't hear me?  And we have Rita with us, too.  Rita Rodin.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  So we do have a quorum of council members.  The next thing on the agenda is to ask if there are any council members who wish to update their statements of interest at this time?
 >> We can't hear you guys through the phone.  We're listening through the Webcast.  I am not sure if we are getting a delay.
 >>KRISTINA ROSETTE:  I just posted a message to the council members.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Does anyone either on the phone or in the room need to update a statement of interest?  Yes, Chuck.
 >> (inaudible).
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  Tim sent an e-mail with a statement of interest that I saw just a few minutes ago.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay, good, I haven't seen that.
 >>GLEN DE SAINT GERY:  I will get that updated, Chuck, on the Web site.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Should that be read out now in the meeting?  Tim, did you want to say something about your updated statement of interest?
 Chuck, do you have that up?  Could you read it in for Tim?
 >>TIM RUIZ:  Avri, we're getting a delay so this will probably come as an interruption, but, basically, it was updated to include Go Daddy's recent involvement in the dot ME  ccTLD.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  In which TLD?  Dot ME, thank you.
 Thank you for that update.  The next thing is to quickly review the agenda and find out if there are any corrections or additions we need to make.  The first thing will be to quickly approve minutes of 17 January 2008.  After that we have an update from Denise Michel on board activities.  This has become a regular part of the council meetings.
 Then there will be -- Edmon will give an liaison update report on activities in the IDNC.  Then the next will be one of the issues that we, basically, will have a brief report -- and this will be the IDN question responses, we'll have a brief report on where we're at with that on the status and such.
 And then an open mike discussion on any issues with that -- with those IDN responses, and that's the public discussion with both people at the microphone and the council members and then any council action that we may decide to take at that point.
 And one of the things we have is we do have a motion on the table that has been suggested but not yet moved for approving that, though we may also decide that it needs -- it warrants further discussion and table that for a later meeting.
 Then, following that same process, we cover the domain tasting development process where there will be a brief report of where we're at, a public discussion with, again, people at the microphone and council members participating and then after that council action which, again, we have a motion on the table.  I don't know if -- that's been suggested.  I don't know if that's actually been moved.  I haven't seen it actually having been moved yet, or there are other possibilities that we will discuss.  And we may end up voting on that motion.  We may end up tabling if it takes longer or take some other approach that will come out of the discussion.
 The next item is the GNSO improvements.  There will be a brief overview on the council position on those, and this was things that we were able to agree to with unanimity and then each of the constituencies has been invited to give a three-minute update on their particular views on the GNSO improvements and such.
 Then we have an update -- status update on two of the other activities that are ongoing in the council, on the inter-registrar issues, both on the policy development process and on the policy recommendation process, and then on the WHOIS studies.  
 Item 10 is any other business.  At the moment, I don't have anything.  Does anyone have anything that they wish to put under "any other business"?  Yes?
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  Avri, I am getting e-mails from everybody saying they can't hear.  Can we just check?
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I am not even hearing you.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  Hello.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I think they're always on, but you really have to speak into it.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  I will do that.  Can we check to see whether the people on the phone can hear you, please.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Can the people on the phone hear me?  Please say something.  I am getting the impression they don't, or there is a very large delay.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  That is of great concern to me.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Yes, that is of great concern because we had many --
 >>TIM RUIZ:  We are listening through the Webcast.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  In other words, you are not hearing the phone.
 >>TIM RUIZ:  We hear you on the Webcast.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I see.  So we can sort of hear you on the phone but you can only hear us through the Webcast.  Can somebody please fix that?  I don't want to delay too much, but we certainly need to get those council members that couldn't travel here including in the council meeting.
 To finish, though, I will keep going through some of these items.  We hope people will fix that.  Ask me to stop if we have to.  
 Any other items of business?  Yes, Alan.
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  I have announcement I would like to make.
 >> I can't download the Webcast.  I can't download the software on to my PC.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I'm sorry.  I could not understand what was being said or by whom.  So it was a technical item.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  So AOB?
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I was talking about any other business and I was asking if anybody had any other business item.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  Could we also possibly get an update on where we are at with the proxy voting issue.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay, thank you.  So we have two items under "any other business."
 >> (inaudible).  I can't get to the Webcast.  I will call back in.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I believe that's technical discussion about trying to get connectivity.
 At which point, we go into the open microphone and have allowed a sufficient number of time and that open microphone as opposed to the previous ones will not be limited to a -- will not be limited to the particular topic under discussion but will include any topic that's within the GNSO's scope and work list.  Are there any objections to proceeding with this agenda?  With the addition of the two "any other business" items?
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  What was the other one, other than the proxy?
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Alan had an announcement to make.
 In which case, we will proceed with this agenda.  So the first item on the agenda is the -- to approve the GNSO Council minutes of 17 January 2008.  Is there someone -- is there a motion to approve those?
 >>ROBIN GROSS:  I move to approve.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  I will move.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Chuck and Robin.  Do I have a second?  Thank you.  Is there any discussion of those council minutes at this point?  No?  In which case, I would like to ask for those in favor of approving those council minutes to say aye and I will wait for the time lag for the people who are listening on Webcast.  So all those in favor of approving those minutes please say aye.
 (Chorus of Ayes.)
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  The time lag is possibly longer than I am imagining.
 >>RITA RODIN:  Aye.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  All those who do not approve those GNSO Council minutes please say nay.
 (No verbal response.)
 No one against.  Is there any abstention from this motion?
 (No verbal response.)
 Okay, no abstention.  Thank you, we have approved the minutes.  The next item is the update from Denise Michel on board activities.  Thank you.  Few minutes for technical adjustments.
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  I'm Denise Michel, ICANN's vice president for policy.  I will give you a quick overview of the last board meeting.  The activities, resolutions that they passed -- that was January 23rd -- and do a quick review of the posted board agenda for Friday.
 So the board accepted the GNSO's recommendations on contractual conditions for existing gTLDs.  This is known as PDP FEB 06.  And they directed staff to implement --
 >> (inaudible).
 >>DENISE MICHEL:  -- the ten recommendations that you had received from services and legal staff.  
 They approved the ISC/ICANN mutual responsibility agreement regarding the F-Root server and also instructed the CEO to conclude similar agreements with other root server operators.  Third, they encouraged ICANN's budgetary process to include fees for all domains added, including domains added during the add grace period and encouraged community discussion involved in developing the ICANN budget.  And this is an acknowledgment that as requested by the GNSO last year, staff included in the proposed budget the fee tax for the add grace period.  The board is urging the community to consider that as part of this budget discussion that's occurring starting in New Delhi and moving forward.
 They appointed the chair of the At-Large Advisory Committee review working group as Tricia Drakes, and they authorized a contract with Westlake Consulting to conduct the independent review of the At-Large Advisory Committee.  They also authorized ICANN to enter into two MOUs, approved an application for another UDRP provider, approved the redelegation of the dot AE domain and dissolved the board meetings committee.
 The upcoming agenda for the next board meeting is to approve the ICANN accountability and transparency frameworks and principles which has been presented here in New Delhi and posted for government.  The review of Board Governance Committee recommendations, of importance particular to the GNSO is the improvements of the recommendations coming out of the Board Governance Committee, GNSO working group and have been discussed this week and are posted online.  The board will acknowledge receipt of that report and instruct staff to post it for public comment.  They will also review a report on ombudsman framework and review of the comprehensive schedule for independent reviews of ICANN's structures.  
 They will also review the Board Finance Committee and board audit committee recommendations.  They'll note the ongoing consideration of the GNSO's new gTLD policy report, acknowledge several reports, documents they've received from SSAC including the one on DNSsec recommendations.  They are expected to approve a resolution to change the bylaws for the At-Large Advisory Committee's review and acceptance of at-large structure applications.  And, finally, they'll have an update on the IDNC working group and discussions related to that as well as the IDN technical test.
 That's it.  Be happy to answer any questions.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you, Denise.  Does anyone have any questions or comments?  Give it a second to wait for whether anyone remotely has any questions or comments they'd like to make.
 Okay, thank you.
 The next item on the agenda is a report on the status and activities in the IDNC, and Edmon -- where's Edmon?
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  Here I am.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Threw are, sorry.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  Is the mike on?
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Yes.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  Well, there has been one important thing to update, I guess, from my last update which was the first meeting really of the IDNC earlier this Monday and subsequently the workshop that was held about the initial report from the IDNC.  As I mentioned earlier in my previous reports, the initial report really was a set of questions designed to solicit some public input and comments.  There were a number of comments provided into the working group mailing list for the initial report.  However, they have not been incorporated into the report and, therefore, there wasn't a preamble that says the report itself doesn't include the comments yet from the participants of the IDNC working group.
 Speaking of the first meeting of the IDNC on Monday, a lot of time was spent on the discussion of the number of IDN ccTLDs into the intro of the ISO-3166 list.  So that seems to be a -- one of the areas of quite significant interest.  And that same topic seems to be an important topic in the workshop as well.
 There was emerging at least some opinions on it to try to avoid talking about an arbitrary number and focus on the requirements and the fast portion of the fast-track to try to see if that's possible.
 The other set of the questions was regarding the ccTLD -- the first set of questions that I just mentioned where the discussion about the number was is the selection of the string itself for the IDN ccTLD.  There was another section in the main section in the initial report that dealt with the ccTLD manager.  And seems like the main discussion point may be because of the overarching technical requirements and, I guess, special technopolicy requirements, really, for IDN TLDs, whether there should be a form of understanding, perhaps, or there has been discussion about whether agreement, contract or any type of, I would say, executed document to try to have the IDN ccTLD adhere to certain areas of technical and I guess technopolicy items for IDN ccTLDs.
 Those are the two main topics of discussion, I think.  A number of people were also in the workshop and Avri was there, if you wanted to add anything to that.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  No, not at this time, other than to say that there's a lot of issues that this group obviously needs to work its way through in the fast-track.  But thank you.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  Well, if there are no specific comments on this one, there's actually a couple of things I wanted to bring out.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Can I first -- I will ask if there are any points of clarification that anybody on the council has in regard to what you've said thus far.  Anybody online, if you can hear me and if you can respond?  And I'm very, very concerned about the people online.
 Okay, please go ahead, Edmon.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  Sure.  The initial report right now is under public comment and the public comment period ends, I think, 26th of February.  I think I would like to suggest for the council to make a response to that.  I did put in my comments, as I mentioned, they were not included into the initial report, I believe a lot of it reflects the discussion that we've add in our discussion about the response to the ccNSO GAC questions, so I think it would be good to input into the process there.  There are also a number of deadlines that are approaching fast.  The initial report would be a target to be finalized by the 8th of March, so less than a month from now.  And then the first draft of the interim report.  And the difference between the initial report and the interim report is that the initial report is a set of questions.  The interim report, I believe, will try to answer some -- well, those questions.  And the first draft of the interim report is actually coming -- is target to come out on the 29th of February which means three weeks from now.
 So I think some input from us would be useful.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Any discussion?  Yes, Chuck.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  If we're going to provide some input, we probably should decide now how we're going to prepare that input because that's only, I think, just about a couple weeks away.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Certainly, and, in fact, I think the approach I was thinking of taking is notice whether there is any sense of the council that they wish to provide that and then in which case my recommendation would be that we do one of the drafting teams to work with Edmon and perhaps the other both members of the IDNC from GNSO and the alternates and any other participant that wants to participate in putting that together.
 Yes?
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  Edmon, would it be feasible or maybe helpful if -- to just mostly incorporate comments from our response to the issues paper?  Quite a few of them relate to the questions asked there.  I don't know if you have thought of that or not, but that might facilitate that drafting team or whatever.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  Yes, definitely.  I think that's definitely the starting point.  There are some specific questions in the initial report, however, so it would be -- I think -- I would like to have Avri's suggestion where at least -- if possible, a drafting team convene to finalize it.  I'm happy to probably put out the first draft based on the response to the ccNSO GAC.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  So we have a first volunteer for a drafting team.  And I'm kind of assuming that anyone that was interested enough in being a representative or an alternate representative on the IDNC can sort of be volunteered.  But I already saw Olga put up her hand.  Are there others that would like to participate in that drafting people but we will keep it open beyond this meeting especially given the technical difficulties we're having with some of the council members who could not attend the meeting.
 Does anyone else here want to put up their hand now to participate in that?  Okay.  So we have at least the representatives.  I don't know whether Tim or -- I could almost volunteer Tim, but whether Tim or some of the others who are  remote might want to.  Let's put together that.  Will you take responsibility for coordinating that team, Edmon?
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  Sure, I will try to.  As I mentioned, I will put out a first draft and I guess I will coordinate with Glen to try to maybe set up a couple of conference calls to go through that.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  Do we need a mailing list or can we use some --
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I think having a mailing list is good.  I know it is difficult, but then we have a record of the discussions from a mailing list.  One of the things I've thought about is almost whether it was reasonable to recreate a couple of stock mailing lists for draft drafting team A, drafting team B and then they would always be there and always in use, but that's a technical thing that we can look at.  I think it is good to have that record, part of the GNSO, everything we do is sort of open and backtraceable.
 Yes, Chuck?
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  Probably would be good for us to identify staff support on that as well.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  That was my next question.  I'm wondering if we do have someone for staff now.  I see two hands coming up from staff, so we can work it between Olof and Liz to work with us and we've got two volunteers at the moment but I don't think you both need to load yourself with it, unless you want to.  Okay, thank you.
 So is there any more comment or question on the IDNC at this point?  No?  Okay, thank you.
 In which case we can move on to the next agenda item which is the response to IDN questions.  As I said -- by the way, we're almost catching up in time, we made through those first items fairly quickly.
 So this one, basically, we're going to start with Chuck giving a brief report on where we are, what's been done, a little bit on the responses.  Then since the last draft, we've had three possible amendments to what we've done so far suggested, so then I'll display those and we'll talk a little bit about those and then we'll go into public discussion at the microphone and with the council.
 So, Chuck?  Did you want to display something?
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  No.  I'm just going to talk to it.  First of all, in the middle of 2007 the ccNSO and GAC finished their joint paper titled "issues paper, selection of IDN ccTLDs" associated with the ISO-3166-1 two-letter codes.  Then on July 29th, the ICANN board approved two resolutions, one of them asking the GNSO to provide the board with responses to the published list of issues and questions and the second one requesting that the GNSO worked collaborative with the ccNSO, ALAC and GAC to explore an interim and overall approach to the IDN ccTLDs.
 So on the 12th of July last year we started the formation of a drafting team that would be tasked with developing a first cut of some responses to that issues paper.  And that was open to any volunteers that wanted to be.  
 As it turned out, Bilal Beiram from the business constituency, myself, Mark McFadden from the ISPs, Olof Nordling from staff, Sophia Bekele from the NomCom and Tan Tin Wee from the NCUC. An then Yoav Keren from the registrar constituency worked on that.
 And we successfully created some draft responses for consideration and deliberation by the full council.
 Then in the ICANN meetings in Los Angeles we spent considerable time after that document had been distributed for a couple of weeks.  
 We spent considerable time discussing the report, making some edits, we added an executive summary.  We did a variety of things.  But one of the things we discovered that there were a couple of critical issues that needed some more work.
 So, realizing that, then, on the 20th of November, we initiated a second drafting team to rework the draft and deal with those issues where they had impact.
 The people involved in that team then were, again, Bilal Beiram from the business constituency.  Edmon Chung from the registries.  Olga Cavalli, NomCom rep. Tina Dam, ICANN staff.  Avri Doria, NomCom rep.  Liz Gasster, ICANN staff, myself.  Adrian Kinderes, from the registrars.  Stephanie Lei from the NCUC. Denise Michel and Olof Nordling from ICANN staff.  We did successfully rework the draft.
 And in fact, contrary to what I thought might happen, we actually were able to reach full consensus.  In other words, all of us supported the positions that we put forward.  We didn't have to have any minority positions or anything like that.
 Then just earlier this week, on the 10th of February, we had nearly a four-hour session where the council and any observers who were in the meeting were able to fully participate.  We made quite a few edits.  
 I think it's fair to say that none of those were significantly material in terms of the content, but they were important for a variety of reasons.  
 And then that document was distributed and posted.  And it's posted now, for consideration by the council today.  
 And as Avri said, we have at least three amendments that have been proposed for that and I'll turn it back to Avri.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   Thank you.  Before I went to the proposed amendments, were there any clarification questions that anyone wanted to ask on the council?  
 In terms of the suggested amendments that have come up so far.
 On the first one is to executive summary statement number 5.  
 It currently reads, "We support efforts to determine the feasibility of an interim solution, whereby a limited number of territories designated by the ISO 3166 list that have special needs would be granted IDN labels in the near term, provided that no IDN TLDs  associated with countries or territories are introduced earlier than IDN gTLDs without the GNSO's concurrence."We have, or suggesting amending it.  And in this one we've had various discussions there's been no dissent at this point.  
 "We support efforts to determine the feasibility of an interim solution, whereby a limited number of territories designated in the ISO 3166-1 list that have special needs would be granted IDN labels in the near term, provided that no IDN TLDs associated with the countries or territories are introduced earlier than IDN gTLDs without prior community concurrence."
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:   Avri, can you just slow down when you're reading, please, for the benefit of the --
 >>AVRI DORIA:   I should know better, and I apologize.
  So, let me read the last part again with the change.  The change was in the last part, that "No IDN TLDs associated with countries or territories are introduced earlier than the IDN gTLDs without prior community concurrence."  
 So, we're modifying, without the GNSO's concurrence to, without prior community concurrence.  
 And we've discussed this one on the list and there have not been any issues brought up with it at this point.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:   Avri, a friendly amendment.  I notice in the first part of that, that we use the word "territories" and not "countries and territories".  To be consistent with what we've done throughout we probably should say "countries and territories?"
 >>AVRI DORIA:   And that can go under the cleanup notion throughout the whole to make sure that we've done that.  We did discuss doing that in the meeting.
 Executive summary number 10.  And relevant answers here.  Now, all I've done here is list the executive summary statement.  And if the amendment is accepted, we would have to go through the document and pick out all the other places where a corresponding change would need to be made.  And I didn't put up that here at the moment.  So, we currently have executive summary number 19, "Confusingly similar strings must be avoided."  
 Basically two options have been offered as a replacement for that.  One was "strings that cause technical confusion should be avoided."  
 And the other one was "strings that are visually similar must  be avoided."  And so those are two.  
 We'll get into the discussion once we open but any clarifying?
 >>ROBIN GROSS:   I just wanted to propose a third option that we delete this particular recommendation altogether.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   Okay.  Thank you.  
 I'd add that in a second.  And then the third one, and I only listed again the first executive summary item on it.  But not all the concomitant changes that would go along within a document because we'd have to scrub through to make sure that the answer followed.  
 From: "There should be only one IDN ccTLD string per ISO 3166-1 entry per relevant script.  Measures must be taken to limit confusion and collisions due to variants."  
 To: "There should be only one IDN ccTLD string per ISO 3166-1 entry per relevant script, except in those cases where one script is used for multiple languages and government policy makes selecting a single string inappropriate.  Measures must be taken to limit confusion and collisions due to variants."  And then there are changes throughout the document that go along with that.  
 Any clarifying question on this one?  
 Okay.  At this point I'd like to open up the discussion both to council members and anyone that wishes to speak at the microphone on these suggested amendments or anything to do with the current GNSO responses to the questions.  
 And I'll start with anybody on the council while we're waiting for people to line up.  
 Yes, Chuck?
 >>CHUCK GOMES:   The first concern I have with regard to making changes or even eliminating, as Robin suggested, the "confusingly similar" language, is that it goes against the bottom-up work that has happened over the last six months.  That particular one goes back to the first drafting team, where there was a good representation from most constituencies, and was reviewed by the council and observers in L.A.
 And then it was put forward again, by the other drafting team, and in discussion this past weekend.  So, I think it kind of goes against the bottom-up process if we're going to, as a council, make a legislative decision here that we're going to delete that, even though our process included it there.
 >> AVRI DORIA:   Thank you.  Anyone else wish to comment?
 Yes, Robin.
 >>ROBIN GROSS:   I just wanted to address that concern.  
 Which is that I feel like the more important goal for us to work towards, is to finding the right answer.  To getting the right answer.  Not necessarily being consistent for consistency sake, that will result in being consistently a wrong lot of the time.  
 So, I think it's important that we recognize when we've made mistakes, particularly considering the amount of feedback that we've received from the community about the problems with this particular recommendation.  It doesn't track international law or policy in anyway.  It's entirely outside the scope of ICANN's authority to be making nontechnical decisions about things.  So, I'm very concerned about this particular recommendation.  I've heard concern from a lot in the community about this.  So rather than just marching forward because this is what we've done in the past and this is what we've been talking about doing.  I think we need to stop and revisit this and ask ourselves, is this the right policy?  And if it isn't, we change it.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Yes, Chuck?
 >>CHUCK GOMES:   If this is a mistake, we should correct it.  The correct thing to do is find out whether we think it's a mistake.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I just want to read out -- Tim Ruiz is having difficulty, it's not on this particular one, but I want to get it said.  
 He's having difficulty speaking and, therefore, has sent an e-mail.  
 And this one has to do with the third recommended change, which was related to executive summary number 9 and relevant answers.  
 "The problem is that government policy changes, we should stick to one TLD," I think he means, per 3166-1 entry.  
 So, basically that would also require a change to the document where we say one per script, per relevant script per entry.  
 And that would make a second option to say that we would change it to just one entry.  Hello?  
 Tim, can you hear and/or comment on your own?  And am I understanding you correctly that you're offering another option in terms of changing executive summary number 9.  
 That you would recommend changing it to, there should be one IDN ccTLD string per 3166 entry?  
 Until he can comment, I'm going to assume that that's what his message said, because that is what his message said, yes.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:   What do we mean by "per relevant script"?
 >>TIM RUIZ:   Yes, Avri, that's exactly what I'm proposing.  And, again, this is the slippery slope that I've been concerned with.  I'll leave it at that.
 >> AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Yes, Mike?
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:   "Per relevant script"?  What does that mean?  
 Seems like when we say "per relevant script", except in those cases where one script is used, that's contradictory.  
 Perhaps we should strike in the option 1, the phrase "per relevant script."
 >> AVRI DORIA:  Edmon?
 >>EDMON CHUNG:   I guess I wanted to respond to two things.  With the suggestion from Tim and also from Mike.  I didn't quite get the question.  You mean, there's some inconsistency between --
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:   I think so.  If you read the first sentence of option 1 there, there should be only one string per entry per script, except in those cases where one script --
 >>EDMON CHUNG: Basically, If you think -- the concept of that, is there is one string per script.  
 For example, take the example of, let's say, Singapore, where four official languages are used.  And there are four scripts.  So each script should only have one IDN ccTLD corresponding to its --
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:   I understand it now.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:   That was the concept.  And what I have suggested to add is the consideration for the example in India, where one script is used in multiple language, and the representation of India in those languages with the same script may be different.  So that was the suggestion.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:   Thanks, that definitely clarifies it for me.  I support your option 1.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:   And, back to, I guess, Tim's position.  I think, I guess it's hard for Tim to participate, so the debate is difficult to have right here.  
 However, there are two things I want to bring out.  One is, I think throughout the process it would be, at least in my personal opinion, be good for council to show some sensitivity to the issue for certain ccTLDs.  
 And, of course, there is still a relatively long process for the ccNSO through the CCPDP when they are fully developing the IDN ccTLD concept.  
 So, this response is actually for both the fast-track and the CCPDP.  
 I think it may be good to be sensitive to the -- at least the expressed needs by the countries and territories throughout this discussion for quite a number of years now.
 In terms of trying to wrap this up and really provide some input to the process, I am actually comfortable with the original wording, if Tim is okay with it.  Given that it's relatively difficult at this point to engage in the debate.  
 The original does use the word "should" rather than "must".  Although I understand that we were not using the RFC 2119 conventions.  
 But, however, it still leaves some room so that we can show our sensitivity.  I think in general we are in agreement that we want to -- we are all concerned about spawning, if you will, of IDN ccTLDs.  
 But I think it's also prudent for the council as a whole to be sensitive to some of the matters that has been in discussion for quite some time in the whole community.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Still not seeing anyone at the microphone.  
 I just -- are you at the microphone?  I didn't realize you were standing at the microphone.
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:   Well, I'm -- test this first.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   I didn't notice you at the microphone, my apologies.
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:   I'm very small.
 >> AVRI DORIA:  You were sitting.
 >> ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:  My name is Eric Brunner-Williams.  I'm speaking in a personal capacity, to the nuance and reference to 3166, which I should have sent to Chuck overnight, but the brokenness of our network prevented that.  I'm sorry, Chuck, that I'm having to do this via voice.
 Common to both options, 1 and 2, and I think to the original text, is the phrase "per ISO 3166" entry in the middle of each.  
 I'll read the entire, which is "there should be only one IDN ccTLD string per ISO 3166 entry per relevant script, period."  
 The nuance there is the per ISO 3166-1 entry, which I want to bring to your attention.
 So by way of background for the members of the council who are convinced that 3166 refers to countries only.  In 1974 the antecedent document of 3166 was a table of 220 names of countries, dependencies and other areas of particular geopolitical interest.  
 Most of the names were compiled from the U.N. statistics division.
 So, the point that I want to make, the language here,  is that we should say, per 3166 entry, comma, for which an IANA delegation exists.  
 So that we are not referring to -- you see some of the 3166 table are countries and some are not.  
 We don't want to indicate that we're not including E.U. or PS, and we also don't want to indicate that we're including other things that were created by WIPO, for example.  
 If there are any questions, I'd be happy to answer.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   Thank you.  Yes, Edmon.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:   Just clarification on that addition.  I'm not sure of the answer, but is there any ccTLD that is nondelegated by IANA that may pose a challenge given the suggestion?
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:   I think they're -- hello?  I think there are.  However, they're not currently delegated --
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Technical, we can't hear.
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:   Testing.  
 I think there may be, Edmon.  I can think of one possibly, which is not delegated, which could be delegated or not.  And which would be a candidate for an IDN string potentially some time in the future.  
 But the point of my comment is that we don't exclude noncountry, nonterritory entries in 3166, which we do use.  And we do not include noncountry, nonterritory entries in 3166, which we do not use.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:   I completely agree to that.  What is the exact -- I guess we need to come up with the exact wording to devoid both situations.
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:   Comma, for which an IANA delegation exists.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   I've written that down in brackets on the page just for tracking it.  >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:  As IANA delegations change over time, that will automatically --
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:   Okay -- can you give some volume to the microphone?
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:   Are you concerned with maybe the one example is not delegated in ASCII, but that country might want an IDN ccTLD?
 >>EDMON CHUNG:   Actually the concern I raised is that there are certain ccTLDs that are, I would say, quote, unquote, ccTLDs that are not yet delegated by IANA.  
 I guess what Eric is mentioning is that there are certain entries in the ISO 3166 list that is not ccTLD.  
 In fact, for example, like AP, remember is African Industry Property Organization, or something like that.  And that is not delegated as a ccTLD.  
 So, if I'm correct that is the  problem --
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:   There are 12 of them or so like that.
 AVRI DORIA:   Yes, Chuck.  That raises an interesting question, because would it be possible, and this is probably more of  a ccNSO question or maybe an IANA question, to possibly have a delegation of an IDN ccTLD for one of those, and not have the corresponding ASCII version that is delegated or not delegated.
 >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you, Chuck.  
 Eric, do you have -- 
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:  There are, at the courses level of classification in 3166, there are seven possible reservation or allocation regimes.  
 And it's entirely possible to use an unassigned code element or code elements, which are not used at the present stage, for indeterminately reserve code elements to conduct experiments of that nature.  So the answer is, there are quite few code points that one could use if one were so inclined.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:   I don't think that addresses what I was talking about.  If I'm looking at your addition, let's say I'm going to use a fictitious country code, XI, okay?  And that's not delegated.  
 But island XI, island X, whatever, would like to get an IDN ccTLD, they don't care about the ASCII one.  
 I think, I could be wrong, that adding this language would prevent that.
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:   That's correct, Chuck.  I hadn't thought that that was a legitimate mechanism for an existing user group that does not have a country code awarded to it yet, could utilize the 3166 code point space to obtain an IDN, which would allow them to develop the Internet as we -- consistent with our goals.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:   That would be my only concern.  Other than that, I think the language is probably more precise.  But I'm not sure we would want to eliminate that possibility.  Now, maybe there's way to tweak it to avoid that.
 >> AVRI DORIA:  I guess I had a question on that one.  First of all, I guess it would be a factual question.  Are there any -- other types of entities, are there any countries or, you know, territories or cultural entities that are on the ISO 3166-1 list that haven't had a delegation yet.  Or are we speaking about something totally theoretic, and I don't know the answer.
 But, second, if there are such islands XI, I guess, I wouldn't understand why if, for example, no one on that island ever had really gotten into speaking English and, therefore, they never bothered to want a delegation but now that there were IDNCs, all of a sudden it made sense to them to request one, why would we not want to allow that as a mechanism once IDNs are part of the world.
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:  That's a very good point.  Should we choose to use those for things other than countries and territories in the U.N. sense, but in the 3166 table sense we have considerably more freedom to add things to the root which meet existing user needs.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  May I suggest a simple tweak.  I don't know whether it would work.  But to add "or appropriate" at the end for which an IANA delegation exists or is appropriate.  Is that -- would that -- I know it is getting long --
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  Chuck Gomes maybe a way to proceed, Avri --
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I put this down here, and I don't necessarily want to get into wordsmithing.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  I am not going to suggest that, okay?  But since it's your suggestion for an amendment and you understand the concern that's been raised, maybe you could -- while we're continuing our discussion on all of the amendments possibly come up with a tweak that you're comfortable with, maybe something like Edmon said.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  At this point, I would sort of say I think the discussion will probably go beyond the end of today on this.  I don't think with the number of issues and amendments and the fact that we've got council members who can't really participate, I don't think we can finalize any of this language today.  Yes, Adrian.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  I'm not sure I understand.  If we are making reference to a list, it is not a list as a date as in the list today.  If that list is dynamic, then the list is dynamic.  So if it changes tomorrow, then -- and there are additions, then we welcome those.  So I don't know that there is necessarily a need to make a change.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thanks.  I have got a question from Tim who's trying to participate and send e-mail on it:  I thought this was supposed to be an interim solution, a fast-track for existing ccTLDs.  Agreeing to one so-called IDN ccTLD per 3166-1 entry for which an IANA delegation exists is very generous and any others should wait for whatever PDP ensues to resolve it further.
  I think this is brings up perhaps one confusion in the discussion in that we're not specifically talking about what's done in the fast-track in this conversation.  We're talking about the GNSO response to the general questions that were sent by the ccNSO and the GAC to the board for response.
 So the answers that we're giving in this are answers that are pertinent to both the fast-track and to the full PDP allocations.  So, Tim, I don't know -- and I don't know if you can hear me -- but I don't know if that point sort of goes along with how that affects any of the perspective you've put that in this document -- in this response document, we're not referring to the fast-track except maybe in paragraph 2.  I think it's paragraph 2 where we say we support a fast-track under the following conditions and then, I guess, there are a couple questions that specifically pertain to a fast-track.
 But the document as a whole pertains to everything and I think that this answer here -- this answer to point Number 9 is, indeed, an answer to what might come out of the ccNSO's PDP that we're referring to.  And I don't know if anyone else wants to comment on that.  Hopefully Tim heard me.  I don't know if you can respond or I'll read your next e-mail when it comes.  Or you can use the jabber room.  I'm up in the jabber room and paying attention to it so any of the council members that are -- I think I am in the jabber room.  Is anybody else on the council in the jabber room?  Okay.  Because I am there alone, so I was insecure that I was in the right room.
 But anyway, if anyone else -- especially remote people wish to use it, please do.  But anyway, Eric, you're at the microphone again.
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:  Thank you.  It is just to respond to Adrian's question that he didn't understand why.  There are two -- 3166 itself is dynamic overtime.  That is the maintenance agency makes changes to it, and these are noted in periodical publications by the maintenance agency.  But that's not the only source of possible change here or the agency of dynamic modification of what we do.
 The other one is what subset of the table entries that are present at any moment in time the IANA makes delegations for.  So there's two knobs being twisted by two different hands.  One is the ISO-31 MA which adds the Soviet Union or deletes the Soviet Union.  The other one is IANA which adds or deletes the United States minor islands as delegations.  We're talking about two forms of agency here.  We're not passive -- ICANN is a not passive consumer at the table.
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:  But, surely, the significant thing is that one is a subset of the other and we're talking about the top set which is the board or group.
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:  One is a subset of one or more subsets of the other.  There are, as I mentioned, seven at the courses level, there are seven kinds of reservation or allocation regimes for the table itself.  And we're consumers of that table but we're consumers of one or more subsets of that table in particular.
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:  I'm sorry, I thought you were arguing for broader rather than narrower.  And I'm reading our language as broader rather than narrower so I'm confused.
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:  If we say countries and territories, I know you wanted to use just "countries" earlier, but let us say countries and territories, we're still being problematic when we come to the EU and Palestine which are neither countries or territories in 3166 sense, but they are table entries.
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:  If you remember correctly, my guidance was not to have any discussion at all about language but to use the U.N. language.
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:  Which you were mistaken in using the webmaster language rather than the formal reference to the document.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  I had -- Alan, you had wanted to make a point and then I have some more on e-mail.  But, Alan?
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  I think it's quite appropriate for us to make comments that we want the IDN ccTLDs to be related to 3166 and maybe we might want to restrict it to one per language or one per script.  I really feel that talking about the subtleties of exactly which 3166 ones we use and exclude is a ccNSO matter.  It's not really a GNSO matter.  We are talking about adding one or subtracting one or two.  I think we're spending an awful lot of time talking about something which is probably not really our discussion.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  You may be right, however, they did ask for answers to questions.  If we can make as our answers as precise as we wish.
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  I support the general answer, I just think we are spending a lot of time on subtleties that we will not come to closure on here.
 >>AVRI DORIA:Jon?
 >>JON BING:  Thank you, thank you.  I also support Alan's view.  It's educational as a lawyer to be present for this discussion because it presumes that interpretation of this instrument is based on the rules usually used in an Anglo-American countries which insist on all the distinctions and all the relevant words to be present in the formulation of the principle itself, while some other countries in the world has decided that this doesn't help, the propositions being very simple to understand.  Rather than putting them in the text itself, they put it in an aside and say that there may be exceptions which are not directly mentioned in the particular statement and so on.  That makes it much more easy to read, in my opinion, also more easy to understand because you are able to address the subtleties in the direct language rather than in an oblique way of making exceptions and so on.
 All this to support the view that drafting should give expression of the principle and leave the substances outside.  Substances are important but perhaps not -- it is perhaps not important to have them reflected directly into the language itself.  You may want to think about our drafting practices at this certain stage.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay, thank you.  I have some comments -- I have a comment from Kristina on a different issue which I will move over to, but I wanted to see if there are any more comments on Number 9 at this point.  So, Chuck?  I saw you raise your finger.  Yes?
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  I'm coming back to the -- to Tim's suggestion that there only be one per entry, however, we decide to word that.  You know, I think we as gTLDs -- I certainly know this is true of the registries -- really think it would be very good for our -- for users of our TLDs to be able to have their domain names in a full IDN way.  And I'm bothered -- I can't honestly push for that for a gTLD if I am not willing to give users in the ccTLD community the same opportunity.
 My feeling is that a good user experience is needed by ccTLD users and gTLD users.  And so if that means more than one, as long as it's connected to the ISO-3166 list and is a meaningful representation of their country or territory name, I think that's very reasonable.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay, thank you.  I've been told that the conference audio should be back, so, Tim, I'm wondering if you'd like to sort of respond to what you've heard thus far, if you can.
 I am getting the impression it is difficult for him to do so.  Well, no, if the audio was working, he would have heard me.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  I know some of them dropped off the call and was just using the Webcast because they had given up on the call.  So they may have to dial back in.
 >>TIM RUIZ:  I still can't get anything about the Webcast which is delayed.  And then the phone I am just getting choppy sounds every now and then.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I apologize.  I was not able to understand what was just said.  Oh, they could.  I see, okay.  In which case I will keep working with the -- with that.  I think at the moment I will go on to read Kristina's comment --
 >>KRISTINA ROSETTE:  Avri, we can only hear through the Webcast and we can't answer your question immediately.  There is a long delay.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I understand that.  I had been told that they thought the audio was fixed but, I guess, that's not the case or at least not the case for you guys at the moment.  
 The comment I got from Kristina -- and this one related to the previous to Answer 10 -- limiting ourselves to technical confusion is simply not, in my view, practical.  Can you imagine the chaos that will result if entire language communities are confused because of the similarity in the strings?  On other note, the IDN working group reached agreement in the RFC 2119 way on the principal that confusingly similar strings should be avoided.  We have never questioned the process by which the IDN working group reached that conclusion and, in fact, the BGC working group singles out the IDN working group as an example of a successful working group.  What does a council decision to reject a properly constituted process following working group principle on which agreement was reached mean for the viability for the BGC working group recommendations?  Comments either at the microphone or from the council?
 Yes, Robin.
 >>ROBIN GROSS:  I wanted to address the issue of the chaos that would result if communities are confused because of the similarities of strings.  I would suggest that there could be a market response to that.  For example, some people have proposed the creation of new fonts so that the fonts -- creating new fonts that can be used to help distinguish characters could be a much better approach for how to deal with this rather than expanding trademark rights in preventing all kinds of lawful speech because we want to prevent something that might be confusing to someone somewhere.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  And I wanted to make a personal comment on the question I had in terms of this is in many cases, yes, gTLDs and ccTLDs are very similar things.  When we're talking about the name or meaningful prep retention of a country's name or identity, it struck me that while we would want to avoid things that were visually confusing, they shouldn't look alike that the name of a country or the meaningful representation of a name of a country would be similar in most cases because the name of the country in different languages may sound similar.  I thought that this may not actually be the same case and that's where I was arguing that this isn't one that was necessarily -- needed to be consistent with the previous because the ccTLDs might actually be different in this respect from gTLDs.
 Yes, Jon?
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  Response both to you and to Robin.  We need to keep in mind we are just providing input into the ccNSO process.  We're not defining it.  They are going to take this, however, they see fit to use it, so it may not be worthwhile spending too much time on this because they are really going to do the policy work on this.
 With regard to the font issue, I would like to point out that just getting the IDNA protocol to be used by application providers like browsers took years and if you start talking about introducing special fonts, first of all, they have to agree to it and secondly there is a whole bunch of different browsers.  In the meantime we have created a situation whether this is true or not for the ccNSO, I don't know, I'll let them decide that, that doesn't seem user friendly.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  I am going to shortly bring this particular part to a close but want to first see if there are any more comments from the floor and from the council.  I have a comment from Tim on the response Number 9, the response of the amendment.  Perhaps, the issue is that the response needs to clarify between the fast-track and the issues for the PDP.  For the traffic one for entry which IANA delegation exists and different response for the PDP input.
 Okay, Elliot, thank you.
 >>ELLIOT NOSS:  Thank you.  Elliot Noss, Tucows.  I just wanted to make a quick comment on Chuck's historically very correct browser point.  We have a lot of experience at Tucows with browser distribution and adoption rate.  I would note today especially around things like this issue, the browser world is very different, especially with the Open Source community around the Mozilla.org platform.  Interesting communities have an amazingly easy kind of road and approach to be able to develop and adapt their own browsers and we're seeing some fantastic things out there.  I think historically that is a very correct point.  
 I would note for the record that the world is very different today.  
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Yes, thank you.  I am constantly getting updates I am getting from FireFox saying they have a new version of something for me.  
 Would anyone else from the council or the floor like to -- the community like to comment on this?
 I think our next steps are not going to be to vote on amendments or change language today.  We obviously have a lot more to talk about on the list to bring these things to closure and something we need to do quite quickly.  So I'm hoping we can table the notion of approving this until our next meeting.  But unless someone believes I am wrong, I don't think we are ready to make a wording on the text today unless we spend the rest of the meeting this morning and probably some more time.  And after -- yeah, after the meeting last time on heavy wordsmithing in a live meeting, I loathe to try that again.
 Mike?
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  Avri, I just want to make sure I understand what your position is on -- what your thinking is as to why we might not need to be consistent in this regard.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Basically -- in other words, while I believe the gTLDs and ccTLDs are for the most part similar and need to be governed by the same rules, when I started thinking about -- and not being a lawyer and certainly not being an I.P. lawyer, I don't understand necessarily the full ramifications of what confusingly similar means.
 But one of the things that I've been told about "confusingly similar" is that it is not just visual, that it is also oral.  And when we're talking about a country's name, whether that name is pronounced in any one of the 23 languages, it may look radically different when written in a different script but in several of those languages, in several of those scripts, it may sound identically the same.
 And so "confusingly similar," if I accept what people have told me, that "confusingly similar" includes not only the visual but what we hear and say, at that point if a country is to be able to have its name in several scripts and in several languages, those will be audibly the same and, therefore, confusing or would fit that definition.  That's why when I started to look at it, I started to say perhaps this rule does not apply in that way.
 Yes, John and then Philip.
 >>JON BING:  Thank you.  Thank you.  I think that's an excellent example of similar names but necessarily not confusingly similar names.  If you have one country and you confuse the name of that country with another name for that country, that is not necessarily confusingly similar but only similar.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay, thank you.
 Phil?
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:  Thank you, Avri.  I think we're getting a little hamstrung where we don't need to be.  Our current wording is setting a principle that we wish to avoid confusion.  Now, to me that sounds like a good principle, huh?  The discussion we've been having is sort of a piecemeal discussion, diverse options mentioned here are piecemeal attempt to start to implement that sort of principle.  Now, in my mind we don't need to go there.  The context is IDNs, we generally think that technical users is a bad thing.  You guys come back to us in time.  You show us in the context of IDNs how you are going to pragmatically avoid that sort of confusion.  That strikes me as exactly the high level we should be setting and all this other discussion is down the road.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Perhaps, what you just said is that the same as confusingly similar strings must be avoided?
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:  To me, yes.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  To me one sounded a little softer than the other.
 >>WERNER STAUB:  My name is Werner Staub speaking in my personal capacity.  I would like to remind all of us that we know what confusingly similar means.  We just think of the capital letter E and the lower case e and we know that they are although very different, confusingly similar.  So it depends always on context.  We cannot define confusingly similar whether it means sound or anything like that.  We have to look at the context which is why confusingly similar is just about the right criterion.  Let's not go any further.  The rest depends on the context.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  At this point, is there anyone in the council or the community wish to make another comment on this?  Yes, Edmon.  After that we will move on to the next topic.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  Really short.  I know we are unable to wrap this up this time, but I really think we should try to do it next time and try to get all the comments in between now and then.  It is already creating some confusion.  This should have been done before the fast-track, "sort of," "should have" in some quotes.
 There is some confusion between what this whole document is for and what the next document which we just talked about which is specifically on the fast-track.  So I would really like to wrap this up.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Definitely so would I.  I think we need to consider these discussions on the mailing list, and we should have a completely finished document a week before our next meeting so that we can have a brief discussion and take a vote on it and go on from there.
 Okay.  I guess at this point, we'd move on to the next agenda item, which is the domain tasting development process with a decision.
 And Olof is going to -- basically, you can take it from me or you can take it from the podium.  But you can take it from me.
 Basically, we are going to start with an overview from Olof of where we are.  Then Mike can speak about a motion that has been suggested.  Then I'd like to, basically, outline the possible tracks we might take continuing and then I would like to open the discussion as last time from the community and the council together and continue like we did on the last one.
 Olof, it's yours.
 One question before you start, are we having any luck with the remote participants?  It is really unfortunate, even if we were ready to make decisions to take votes at this point with one whole constituency unable to attend and unable to participate, I would feel that we couldn't take any decisions.  I don't think we are hitting that but I think it is still very unfortunate that those who couldn't attend can't participate.
 >>OLOF NORDLING:  Thank you, Avri.  Good morning, everybody.  As you can see from the screen, there will be more stuff updates but I am not only George Sadowsky going to deal with the domain tasting right now.  We go straight to the domain tasting.  The activities so far are a little bit of the history about how the PDP came about.
 Roundabout a year ago the ALAC requested that the GNSO consider this, and as a consequence GNSO Council requested an issues report which was prepared by staff delivered on the 14th of June last year.  There were discussions at the council meeting in San Juan, and it was decided then that some more facts and information were needed. 
 So a dedicated working group for such fact-finding was established and delivered a 150-page report on the 4th October 2007.  Whereupon, the council voted in Los Angeles to launch a PDP on domain tasting and, at the same time, also encourage ICANN staff to apply the annual transaction fee to all registrations including those that had not been covered and had been deletes within the add grace period.  So that's the beginning.  
 It is a non-responsive computer.  While, in the meantime, I will continue.
 The PDP track was, if you look at that, launched by this council resolution and that means -- Thank you.  I wonder why it was stuck there.
 Now, the milestones here were that -- okay, the first step following the resolution to launch the PDP is to prepare an initial report which then has to be based on the input from the constituencies.  And such an initial report was posted on the 8th of January 2008, this year, for public comment and the public comment period ended on 28th of January.  We received 67 comments and there were -- well, actually no spam or off-topic in that and it also included -- a lot of substantial contributions from associations like INTA, CADMA and AIPLA and, well, I won't continue with that.  But I have to mention ICA as well.
 Also, we did receive a latecomer when it comes to -- regarding the constituency statement, noticeably what we had been lacking before the registrar's statement, which lined up their preferred order of any measures that could be taken to curb domain tasting.
 So following that draft final report incorporating all this was prepared the 8th of February, five minutes to midnight New Delhi time.  And also in parallel, the council had already launched a design group for next steps followed for council deliberations in New Delhi.
 So that's where we are in the PDP.  But there are a few ancillary steps that have been taken which deserve mentioning.  It would also be encouragement from GNSO Council, as Denise mentioned earlier, has been followed up with introducing this transaction fee for including for deletes in the AGP in the proposed budget for the next fiscal year of ICANN.
 Also, tracking back a bit, the PIR registry on its own initiative launched a restocking fee for dot org which had rather significant effect actually that was back in May last year, introduced a 5 U.S. cent fee for delete for each registrar with 90% or more of AGP deletes in relation to the added registrations.
 That brought the monthly deletes from 2.4 million in May 2007 to 2,700 to be precise in June 2007, so a 5% effect in that particular case.
 Very recently, similar measures had been proposed for the dot biz, notably Neustar; and for dot info, notably Afilias.  I leave at that and back to you, chair.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Mike, do you wish to talk about the drafting team and if I get the cord up, I can actually put up the copy of the motion that Kristina sent out on the list.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  So, yes, some time ago we formed a, quote, design team of volunteer councillors to look at all the work that had already been done on this issue including three reports and come to --
 >>KRISTINA ROSETTE:  Avri, we could hear Olof for a minute.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  I'm sorry.  Let me get closer to the microphone.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Did you say you couldn't hear Olof or you can't hear Mike?  I couldn't hear you.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  I think they couldn't hear me.  Do you hear me now, Kristina?  We'll assume that she does.
 So in any event, the design team was formed.  Four volunteers, myself from the business constituency; Kristina Rosette from the IPC; Tim Ruiz from the registrars; and Alan Greenberg from ALAC, all of whom who were involved in the earlier ad hoc group that came up with the final outcomes report that detailed a lot of factual information about this issue.  And, quite simply, the group felt strongly that plenty of work has been done on this issue, enough work has been done on this issue and we drafted a motion that we felt council should consider.  I don't know, should I read that motion?
 >>AVRI DORIA:  You can.  I think it is probably good so that people have the full content and the context because it hasn't been out for, I think, the whole community to read other than on our mailing list.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  True.  It was actually just revised yesterday.
 So, "Whereas, the GNSO Council has discussed the initial report on domain tasting and has acknowledged the final outcomes report of the ad hoc group --
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I will give you the warning I always get, please slow.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  I'm trying.  I have had no coffee.
 "Whereas, the GNSO Council resolved on 31 October 2007 to launch a PDP on domain tasting and to encourage staff to apply ICANN's fee collections to names registered and subsequently deregistered during the AGP;
 Whereas, the GNSO Council authorized on 17 January 2008 the formation of a small design team to develop a plan for the deliberations on the domain tasting PDP, the principal volunteers to which had been members of the ad hoc group on domain tasting and were well-informed of both the final outcomes report of the ad hoc group on domain tasting and on the GNSO initial report on domain tasting, collectively, we refer to these as "the reports" on domain tasting."  
 I would also add parenthetically, we had the additional issues report from staff last June 2007.
 "Whereas, the design team reviewed and assessed all of the effects of domain tasting activities that had been identified in the reports and determined that the overall effects of domain tasting justified measures to be taken to impede domain tasting.
 Whereas, the board of directors resolved on 23 January 2008 to encourage ICANN's budgetary process to include fees for all domains added, including domains added during the AGP and encouraged community discussion involved in developing the ICANN budget subject to both board approval and registrar approval of this fee;
 Whereas, the GNSO Council has received the final report on domain tasting.
 Whereas, the bylaws require the GNSO Council chair to call within ten days of receipt of the final report for a formal council meeting in which the council will work towards achieving a supermajority vote to present to the board;
 Whereas, the GNSO Council acknowledges both that some stakeholders have advocated the elimination of the AGP as a means to combat the abuse of it and that other stakeholders have advocated the retention of the AGP as a means to pursue legitimate non-abusive uses of it;
 Whereas, the GNSO Council welcomes the board of directors' 23 January 2008 resolution pertaining to inclusion of fees for all domain names added and wishes to recommend to the board of directors a consensus policy to address the abuses of the AGP and to maintain the availability of the AGP for legitimate non-abusive uses;
 Whereas, PIR, the dot org registry operator has amended its registry agreement to charge an excess deletion fee and both Neustar, the dot biz registry operator, and Afilias, the dot info registry operator, are seeking amendments to their respective registry agreements to modify the existing AGP; and
 Whereas, the design team considered the potential impacts on the GNSO constituencies of various measures that had been proposed as a means to impede domain tasting and recommended to the GNSO Council that it issue a policy recommendation set forth below in order to impede domain tasting.
 At last -- therefore, the GNSO Council resolves as follows:  To recommend to the board of directors that it adopt a consensus policy to, one, restrict applicability of the AGP to a maximum of 50 deletes per registrar per month or 10% of that registrar's net new monthly domain name registrations, whichever is greater; 2, permit a registrar to obtain from a registry an exemption from this monthly restriction on the ground of documented extraordinary circumstances, which shall be reported by a registry in its monthly reports to ICANN; and, three, grant to a registry that provides an AGP the flexibility to seek approval of more restrictive excess deletion rules.
 Two, to suggest to the board of directors that the consensus policy may be implemented by amending the delete provision of the add grace period section that may exist in each registry agreement to read as follows: If a domain is deleted within the add grace period, the sponsoring registrar at the time of the deletion is credited for the amount of the registration; provided, however, at the end of the month the registry shall debit the registrar's account for the full value of the domain name registrations that exceeded the month's set threshold of 50 deletes per month or 10% of that registrar's net new monthly domain name registrations, whichever is greater, quote, usual deletes, unquote.
 Further provided, however, that a registrar may seek an exemption from the application of such restriction in a specific month upon the documented showing of extraordinary circumstances.
 A registry shall identify in its monthly reports all registrars that have sought such an exemption that month and for each registrar to which the registry is granted an exemption.  The registry shall also identify generally the type of extraordinary circumstances for which the exemption was granted.
 The language of this section shall not prevent a registry operator that provides an AGP from seeking approval of more restrictive rules for deletes in excess of usual deletes during the add grace period.  The domain is deleted from the registry database and is immediately available for registration by any registrar.  See Section 3.2 for a description of overlapping grace period exceptions.  So apologize, that is quite lengthy.  
 So where we're at today, as I see it, we've had plenty of process on this.  You know, going back to June 2006, actually when we started having domain tasting workshops at every ICANN meeting.  
 Then through three reports and two public comment periods.  
 At least for the past year since the PIR proposal was floated, this notion of a restocking fee or excess delete fee has certainly been out there for public comment.  And there have been two public comment periods since that.  
 We feel, bottom line, that the time is right to make a decision.  
 Now I do understand in hallway deliberations with various councillors that some of them, as of the day before yesterday, before constituency day, thought that they were not quite prepared to vote on this motion.  And, of course, this motion has now been amended, last night, to try to obviate some of the concerns that were stated by various councillors on Saturday during our deliberation.  
 So, I am comfortable, personally, postponing a vote on this motion until our next meeting, if that's necessary.  But I certainly think if it's important today to hear from each of the various constituencies that are present, where their constituencies are on this issue after constituency day yesterday. And I'd like to have an understanding amongst us that we will be prepared to vote for this, vote for or against this motion, perhaps slightly amended in the meanwhile, in our next meeting on February 28th.  >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  I have a couple things I need to do.  
 First of all, I need to ask some technical questions.  Not to do with this.  But I've gotten several notes here, one that says, "conference call ought to be up, was miswired."
 So for people who are remote, check that again.
 I also got another note that said, "Something burned up on stage somewhere so transcription will need to be interrupted for rewiring." Is that the case?  Already done that?  
 No disruption needed.
 It just got passed to me.  Okay, I have one question on what you just read before I go on.  Which the text that was in brackets, is the text that the drafting team has not agreed to yet?  Or --
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:   I think there's only one --
 >>AVRI DORIA:   There was two places.  One in the motion part and one in the description part, both sort of referring to the same thing.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:   Okay.  There's one, Tim Ruiz did object to that bracketed language.  The other three felt that it should be included.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   Okay, so That's still open.  
 Did I hear Kristina?  
 While we are waiting to hear Kristina again, and just before we start the open session on this, basically as far as this is really the first meeting of the deliberation.  
 We talked about it on Saturday, but that was nonvoting meeting.  We've really started the deliberations at this point.  I think formally, I don't believe the final report has been actually posted yet.  Though it has been sent to all of us.  
 Just before we open it up for the discussion, I basically saw four possibilities.  We could vote on the motion today, theoretically.  I'm not sure personally that I think we're ready for that, especially given that we'll we're just going to have a discussion on it now.  
 We can, as suggested, have the discussion now -- and it is posted?  Okay, sorry.
 We could have a discussion now and then vote on the motion at the next meeting after all of the, you know, bracketed text has been discussed and either removed or agreed upon to be in, and any amendments dealt with.  Another thing is, is that some of the issues within that; while the drafting team did its own impact analysis of how this would impact all of the constituencies, we could decide to go back to the constituencies and ask them to do a impact -- I mean, to basically produce a -- whether it's an update of a previous impact statements or a specific impact note on how these particular items in the motion impact them, and then vote on the motion.  That would probably take us more than one meeting.  
 And then, this came up in the discussions we had in the meeting, there's one of the possibilities is to initiate an open working group along the style that has been suggested in the GNSO improvements.  That, you know, this would require the creation of a charter, it could be narrow, that basically just dealt with implementation details of issues in the motion.  Or it could be wide and look at the various solutions further and consider other possible alternatives. 
 I'm not trying to prejudice this in any way, except to say that, I don't believe that vote on motion today is practical.  I think that we need to discuss, I think we need to get the opinions of the community on which of these approaches.  
 And I'd like us to be able to decide in a process way by the end of this discussion on which one of those alternatives we're taking.  
 So, that if we're voting on this at the next meeting, we know it.  If we're doing one of the others, we also know that.  
 I've got one person who has been waiting patiently at the microphone, then I've got Alan and -- please.
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:   Can you guys hear me?  
 Good morning.  My name is Jeff Neuman, I'm with Neustar.  
 Just first a little technical note.  
 Olof, on your description I saw it in the final report as well.  
 What we submitted, what NeuStar submitted, and what was submitted by Afilias is actually quite different from what PIR had submitted.  It so I noticed it's kind of lumped in to the same category.  
 Then I heard it later on described as excess delete fee.  And it's really a very different concept.  
 If that could just be noted in the record, and we'll submit comment to the final-up order as such.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Did you want to quickly respond to that?
 >>OLOF NORDLING:  Perhaps I exaggerated when I said "similar measures."  Borderline case this one, I know.  I'm sorry if I exaggerated.
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:   So here's my general comment.  
 Most of you know me, I was on the council many years back and I don't tend to mince words.  
 But, I think I could state that the work that has been done to date on domain tasting is exactly the reason why the council needs to be reformed and reformed dramatically.  
 What you guys have done is nothing close to resembling a bottoms-up process.
 Everything that you have done since the formation of the ad hoc group has been nothing but the involvement of councillors and the design team, is nothing more than a few like-minded individuals, who I have not -- I like as people, but they are very like minded.  They worked hard on this motion, not to take anything away from the work that was done.  But it is not in any way bottoms-up.  
 What needs to happen, and I read the preliminary report, and I read the final report.  And no where did I see any mention of this particular motion put out for public comment.  Any decision by the council on this issue, especially because it involves, a, quote, consensus policy, needs to have extensive input on this particular motion by the public.  It needs to have impact statements.  
 And so, even, Avri, tabling it to the next meeting, I would say, is quite aggressive, since I don't think even that's enough time for the public to comment.
 Now, you might think, well, why am I up here complaining about the motion, because the motion is pretty much the exact proposal that Neustar put in.  And that's probably why you should take it very seriously, because we do oppose the way that this is being handled.  Not the substance, necessarily, for Neustar as a registry, but remember, every registry is different.  
 In fact, many of the registries for which you would seek to apply this consensus policy, don't even have an add-grace period.  Or, don't even have one that's required in their contracts.  So that needs to be considered.  
 Plus, there are other business models that other registries have, for which this type of motion would not be appropriate.  
 For example, dot name has a free trial period.  Now, because of the unique circumstances of their registry, they do not have domain tasting like you see in other registries.  
 Yes, we all see domain tasting in dot com.  And, yes, it's perceived by a lot of people to be a problem.  And, yes, a lot of people in the community want to do something about it.  
 But let's not let the activities that happen in dot com control the activities that happen in every other registry.  
 We may be small, and I'm not talking about size right now, but please, please, do not think that we're all alike.  
 And, finally, the last point that I have is, on process as well, and that is the council's motion on October 30th or 31st, whenever that was passed, to recommend to the ICANN staff and board to examine applying a fee.  
 That is another example of a proposal that never went out to the community for public comment.  
 And, unfortunately, and this is a comment I'll make to the board tomorrow, or during the public forum, the board grasped on to this motion by the council and took it and ran with it.  And, again, it was never subject to comment by the community.  I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I'm just saying you need to build that into the process.  If anyone has any questions on Neustar's proposal, I'm not sure when the appropriate time is, but I'd be happy to talk about why we got to what we did; why we got to the percentages we did, because I hear that's been debated by people in the council.  
 So any information you want, I'm around, now or afterwards to discuss.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   Thank you.  I wanted to make one comment on process before we go on.
 And that is that we're in this funny interim world where we still have the original bylaws process which we have followed.  And what we have basically decided to do is that once it hits the deliberation stage, if it's clear cut, then we can proceed with a motion.  
 However, at the deliberation stage, whereas you notice initiate an open working group, which is on the model that the governance working group has been working on, is one of the deliberative steps.  
 At that point you get the complete bottom up.  What we had before was the normal constituency.  I normally prefer putting the motions up front.  We didn't have a motion up front and that brings us to these decisions.
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:   Just to comment on that.  There was a preliminary report.  There were constituency statements there was a final report.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   There was a comment period also.  
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:  That's in the bylaws.  But the specific proposal here is not even mentioned in the preliminary report or the final.  
 >>AVRI DORIA:  That's why initiating an open working group going further is one of the options.
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:   I don't want to sound like I want to delay at all, because, again, Neustar submitted our final request.  But it almost sounds like a new PDP on this proposal, which is so dramatically different than anything that's been suggested prior would almost need to take place.  That needs to be talked about -- that's a general council, ICANN issue.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:   May I respond, Avri?
 >>AVRI DORIA:   Please.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:   Jeff, I count at least three factual inaccuracies here, okay?
 Number one, the ICANN fee being nonrefundable.  It was specifically suggested as a potential outcome that was put out for public comment.  Two, same with the restocking fee.  
 Now, I will grant you that the specific 10% threshold was not specifically suggested.  But I don't think that council has to put every single detail of a proposed motion out for public comment before passing it.  
 The notion of a restocking fee was put out for public comment with specific reference to PIR's proposal, and there were many comments taken.  
 Shoot, I should have written down the third one.  It will come back to me.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   It will come back to you when you remember.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:   I'm sorry, the working group.  You said the working group was only composed of councillors, that's not correct.  
 We also -- we asked for volunteers and there were, I'm pretty certain, volunteers in the group that I chair that were not councillors.
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:   Again, I was talking just to clarify that last point, it was the design team.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:   The design team also could have been open to other members of the constituencies that were not councillors, it was not limited.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   The drafting teams basically -- they're not fully as open as the governance working group, but they're certainly open to anyone that the constituencies want to bring in to it.
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:   Can I address, Chuck, is that your understanding, too, that this design team was open to everyone?
 >>CHUCK GOMES:   Yes.  It is.  But there is an important qualification for that; what was the purpose of design team, that's where we differ.
 >>AVRI DORIA:   Right.  The drafting team -- when the drafting team was first opened it was, what do we do next?  Now, there had been sort of, I think, a general assumption among many in the council, that what we did next was write a charter for a working group.  
 The drafting team decided that a working team was not needed and presented a motion instead.  
 Now, my interpretation of that is, that is a next step for them to suggest.  And it then is the next step for the council, with the advice of comments, to figure out  whether we accept or whether we say, no, we really want a charter.  
 So, I don't believe it was an inappropriate, I don't believe -- I know that we didn't say at the beginning, either a charter or a motion.  We said, come up with the next step.  
 I think in many of our minds, that was a charter.  However, the drafting team came up with a different solution, I don't believe it's invalid for them to come up with a different solution.  It was open to anyone that wanted to participate.  
 And, I mean, anyone from the constituencies were able to put someone in it.  
 In terms of doing these things for the first time, perhaps, you know, there was a gray area on, come up with a proposal for the next step.  But I believe a motion is a good proposal.  I don't know that we need to accept it, but it is a good proposal.  
 Yes.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  The problem with what you just said is if we're not clear and maybe that's what we need to do to be much more clear in terms of what the tasks are for a design team, if we're not clear, what the role, what the responsibilities are, and have it so wide open like you're suggesting, then we won't get the broadest participation possibly.  If some of us had thought that the task of this design team was more than just to suggest some steps for council consideration as to how to proceed forward, the make up of that design team would have been very different.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  I guess -- and, you know, it is something that we'll need to continue discussing.  Certainly we should, but we're still experimenting in some ways with these changes from an older way of doing things to a new way of doing things that hasn't quite been approved yet.  I actually believe that a suggested motion which hasn't even been moved or seconded yet is, indeed, a next step.  And I think that on all of these drafting teams, one should consider that there is a variety of next steps and if any constituency believe they have a next step opinion, they should participate.
 I think that's less important than how we go on from here and how we clarify in the future.
 Whatever time is appropriate, I would like to talk about some process issues that are, you know, embedded in the motion.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Certainly.  Now, I had Alan and then I will come back microphone.
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  First of all, a couple of things.  I would suggest that the first vote-on motion is not viable, and I am part of the drafting team or the working group or whatever it is. It's changed too much and to change it on the fly right now without careful consideration of the impact is inappropriate.  The fact that not all registries have add grace periods -- dot name have some specific terms -- the intent of the drafting group was to cover all those in the wording of the resolution.  It may or may not, I'm not sure.  It only refers to registries that have an add grace period, so it does exclude the rest that don't.  Whether we correctly covered the dot name situation or not, I don't know.  My preference is when we come up with a resolution -- with a resolution is not to include contact -- excuse me, contract language but leave that to the lawyers but be prescriptive in what we want the intent to be, which I think is a lot cleaner.
 All of that being said, I think we need to decide whether we're going to go ahead with that or form, yet, another group and that really is the substance of today's discussion.
 I would also like to suggest that the wording of "at the next meeting" means in a relatively near future meeting.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Yes.
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  Whether we can go through this process in time for comment in time for the March 13 meeting or not is questionable.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Yes.  Notice only the vote on the motion had "at the next meeting."  I think any of the others have a longer time schedule that I would need to put together with people's advice.
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  No, even if we use -- we send the group or a group back to reword the motion, it's not clear that March 13 is timely.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay, thank you.  Okay.  Please -- oh.
 >>STEVE DELBIANCO:  Hi, Steve Delbianco, Net Choice coalition, also a member of the business constituency but speaking here for myself.  I have a question and then a contextual comment with regard to the proposed motion.  I know it has not been moved yet but with regard to that.
 I have been a consistent and very loud complainer about potential abuses of the add grace period and what it can do to the integrity of the domain name system; namely, the notion of potential kiting that may or may not have happened.  There were concerns about cyber security but, mostly, it was about integrity.  
 I testified in the U.S. Congress at a hearing with respect to ICANN suggesting that the integrity of the user experience was an issue with pages that were deceptive and folks that would find their navigation challenges on the Internet.  I did suggest it was integrity and not quite security and stability, which brings me to the question.  As you look at a motion like this to oppose consensus policy on existing contracts, I know that in ICANN we typically ask the question is it inside or is it outside or is it sitting on top of that picket fence?  Over the policies we are allowed to oppose on an existing contract.  It strike piece we ought to get some sort of legal opinion on that before moving too aggressively in that area or we could find ourselves right back into a controversy over something we ought to be able to figure out.
 Susan was sitting here a minute ago and I know she was the one at least that educated me about what the picket fence me.  That's the question.  Let me just close with a comment.  Some of the urgency of this, I think, can be diminished in one respect.  I really believe the days of free tasting are coming to an end, whether or not this motion is going to be picket fence-friendly or not, because the board moved to charge the ICANN fee all the time.  It is not going to be free for anyone much longer.  A million deletes is going to cost somebody a couple hundred thousand dollars.
 And PIR, now Neustar, you heard from Jeff, they did use the funnel process or are using the funnel pros to prevent the add-deletes.  Olof mentioned the 5-cent, perhaps will have a reduction in the 20 cents fee the board will be rolling out.  In other words, the urgency of the motion is of some question because there is truly light at the end of the funnel and the processes you have in place could get there without running into the picket fence problem.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Did anyone want to respond before the next --
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  I would just respond quickly that the board proposal still requires a 2/3 vote of registrars which certainly not guaranteed and does not even appear to be imminent.  I've heard -- and I would love for Adrian or any of the other registrar councillors or audience members to let us know about their deliberations yesterday, but I've heard from a senior member of that constituency that they're not likely to vote in favor of the board's proposal but, instead, are seeking to alter that proposal.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay, Alan, you wanted to.
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  Two quick comments.  Number one, the board decision says the fee will be charged, but fee could change for 4 cents next year.  We have no real control.  It is, in fact, a 25-cent fee that was 20 cents.  It use bed much less.  In terms of the picket fence, the original issues report gave legal opinion that this was within scope of GNSO.  Unless that changes we have to assume it was within scope.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  It would not be unreasonable to confirm that once someone brings up the question, one should go back to counsel and confirm it, but I think you're right.
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  Indeed.  I was just noting it has been reviewed at least once and was deemed to be in scope.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Yes, please.
 >> LORD BRAR:  I'm Lord Brar.  I am from NM forum.  I am speaking in my own personal capacity.  I would like to make a comment.  It is not really a question.  I would like to make a comment about the urgency of doing something about domain tasting, to stop certain registrars from misusing this class or this facility to make an anticompetitive environment for every reseller and every registrar out there.  I am not talking about the registries.  I am talking about the resellers of the domains.  There are certain registries, I'm sure you already know what I am talking about, who are using this clause to make an anticompetitive environment.
 Now, ICANN surely makes money from domain tasters because they get good names.  They pay the 20-cent fee to ICANN that helps keep it running, but these companies which are actually abusing this facility are the ones that are, basically, robbing ICANN out of its fees.  So something has to be done now to stop this anticompetitive environment which is being built today at the very moment we are talking.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Did anyone wish to respond?  Okay, please.
 >> Hi there.  Most of you with the likely exception of --
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Name.
 >> My name is Evan Leibovich and I am the chair of the North American region of At-large.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.
 >> EVAN LEIBOVICH:  We became a very active participant in this, as Alan surely knows.  I've heard a lot of talk about wanting to solicit public involvement.  This is probably one of those wonderful cases of "be careful what you wish for."
 In our particular group after considerable deliberation, we came to a very solid and absolutely unanimous conclusion that the add grace period did not serve the public good whatsoever, and we're genuinely interested to try to figure out what clauses exist that would be legitimate.  One thing that concerned me specifically in is a loophole for extraordinary circumstances.  "Extraordinary" can be in the eye of the beholder.  In the lack of any specificity, it seems to open a bit of a gaping hole to allow people to totally ignore all of your best intentions.  I would like to get an idea what you consider those extraordinary circumstances to be and I would hope as you move forward that you put in a little bit more detail in that so it doesn't offer a gaping hole for people to totally circumvent what you're trying to do.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Did anyone want to respond?  I guess, I got Mike.  This time Alan goes first and Mike goes second.
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  The intent is that we, in fact, do have those words there.  The Neustar and Afilias funnel requests use words like "it could not be reasonably predicted," "it must be documented," "if it occurs on a regular basis it is not exceptional."  There are words put in those.  I would expect us to put at least stringent words in our recommendation and that's one of the reasons that I suggest prescriptive and not put the exact wording in but to make sure that our intent is followed.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Thank you.  And, Mike?
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  The gentleman raises an excellent point that many in the community have all along thought that we should abolish the add grace period since it has been so massively abused by this behavior and there seems to be very little legitimate interest.
 However, during the course of the policy development process the registrars did put forward some purportedly legitimate uses of the AGP, notably without putting forward any sort of statistical evidence.
 However, you know, in the effort to get to the goal, the end game of ending commercial domain tasting, those of us in the business constituency and in the I.P. constituency and some others at least were willing to accept what the registrars are seeing at face value and we feel that the proposal put forward will, in fact, end the behavior without taking the step of abolishing AGP altogether.
 Now, we also think that there are two different things that should be enacted, the 20-cent fee should be non-refundable and there should be an excess delete fee.  We definitely feel in combination that should end the behavior.  Thanks.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Please.
 >> Rob hall:  My name is rob haul I am the fire chair of the (inaudible) constituency.  I am here to speak to one specific point and that was Mike's characterization that the registrars have a 2/3 veto power over the ICANN budget.  That is not the case at all.  The 2/3 is simply a matter do we pay ICANN directly or do we allow the registries to collect it from us and pay ICANN.  So in no way would the registrars have a line by line veto over something like the proposed 20 cents.
 I also want to address your comment, sir, about it might go down to 5 cents.  I guess that's theoretically possible.  I would love to see the ICANN budget decrease to 25% of what it is.  However, I would point out that  a 5-cent fee with a 90% threshold rather than 10% threshold in dot org, as the staff said, have eliminated tasting in that TLD.
 We're throwing all these numbers down of oh, my good the sky is falling, the registrars might exercise some sort of veto they don't have and we might have a 5-cent fee.  These are realistic or practical.  I want to point out those inaccuracies.  I will let people speak to other things that happened at the meeting yesterday.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Comments?  Yes, Chuck.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  I saw an e-mail from Kristina that we're not hearing them.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  We can't hear you, Chuck.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  I saw an e-mail from Kristina that the people online are not hearing us.  I just wanted you -- alert you to that.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay, thank you.  I guess that's for the technical, please.  Obviously we have trouble making any decisions if the members remote can't hear us.  Yes, Elliot.
 >>ELLIOT NOSS:  Yes, Elliot Noss.  I want to really push back hard on two things.  I think before that I should note that Tucows has no stake in tasting.  We are not someone who engages in it, nor do our customers.  We've been very, very passive thankfully because we ended up having to get so involved in many other threads inside of this community.  We're very happy to sit back and let others bash each other about the head on this one.
 There were two comments I really want to push back on.  It was, you know, Evan's comment and then Mike's use of the word "purportedly."  Historically, the AGP had a very clear purpose which was to deal with situations of innocent mistake.  Tucows has operated using the add grace period for the benefit of its customers in very, very small amounts since the onset of add-grace.  We actually charge our hosting company customers who want to avail themselves of it $1.  They don't mind that at all to help their customers who have made a mistake out of a situation.
 So its original intent and purpose always did have a very legitimate basis.  Yesterday, again, while watching many others inside of the registrar constituency talk about add-grace and, frankly, engage in what I would call a very detailed and good-faith effort to take a number of the proposals, both registry proposal and board proposal and temper them with some legitimate business considerations, there were great -- there were great examples used around the value of the add-grace in protecting against fraud, legitimate fraud.
 The irony here is that the very people that Mike purports to be speaking for and that Evan, I think, genuinely is concerned about are the ones who are protected by that use of the add-grace to stop fraud because when there is credit card fraud -- and believe me as registrars and certainly all of our customers who are resellers and hosting companies -- we're on the very front lines of fighting spam and phishing at a fraud level.
 And, you know, I am not the one that will be able to educate other councillor board because these were good arguments put forth by others.  I am sure they will come out through the process, but, I think, to try to and just delegitimize every single use of the add-grace is simply sensationalist and doesn't help any of us inside the process get to a place where it is productive.  Thank you.
 >> (inaudible).
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Any comment?  Yes, Mike.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  I will respond on that.  This is why we included the "extraordinary circumstances" language to give protection in the event of fraud.  We all recognize it.  I apologize if you take the word "purported" out of the spirit that it was intended, Elliot.
 >>ELLIOT NOSS:  Maybe I don't understand the spirit then.  What was it?
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  As I said before, we chose to take the registrars' representations at face value despite requests and non-provision of any sort of backup information.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Jeff?
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:  Thanks.  I just want to make a comment.  I think it was Mike that said that we want both this motion passed and the ICANN fee.  At least with respect to Neustar, our funnel request is put in there to effectively end the tasting in dot biz.  If our end hypothesis is correct that it does end tasting, all an ICANN fee would do on top of that is punish, quote, the legitimate deletes.  I know you use the language here and others as Elliot addressed don't think there are legitimate deletes as a registry -- I will not give you confidential information about registrars can, but we constantly get requests from registrars because their system has been compromised because a reseller came in and registered a ton of names that they want to delete during the five-day period or even afterwards in certain circumstances because they have been taken over.
 When registrars and registries provide you evidence and we have provided you some evidence in the ad hoc group and others, you can't just take that evidence and say your gut doesn't agree with it because that's not the basis of policy making.
 And I've seen so many discussions back and forth as to what the number -- what the percentage is of, quote, legitimate deletes.  In dot biz we submitted something, evidence to you and, yet, I still see debates not based on any kind of reality but just "I just feel that number is too" or "I feel that number is too low."  Provide the evidence.  If you can show us evidence that counters what we have put in, great.  If you can't, I'm sorry, I don't want to be so blunt, but I don't care about someone's gut.  I care about evidence.
 So -- but the real point I wanted to make is about adding the ICANN fee because if we do eliminate tasting because of our funnel request that all the ICANN fee does is punish the legitimate deletes.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay, thank you.  I have got Adrian and I have got Alan.  And then after that, I want to start moving to trying to figure out what we do next and go on from there and then I have Chuck.  Adrian, Alan, Chuck.  And then Robin.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  Thank you, Avri.  Being very cautious, I guess, and listening intently to the discussion, I just would like to reiterate Jeff's points and say that there is a layering of impact here.  There are a few solutions being touted all at once and the registrars are very conscious of the impact of all of those solutions being implemented without seeing the effect of them in isolation.
 So whilst none of them are a lock as of yet and to rob's point, I think -- I think we need to be conscious of the fact that we are seeing registries run with this on their own.  We have seen the ICANN board make a move.  Is it entirely appropriate for the GNSO to act not even at this time -- but to act until we have seen the results of the impact of those movements?  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Alan.
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  I guess I want to support a lot of what Jeff said.  Regarding the ICANN fee, I haven't seen any explicit budget words yet, but I would like to assume that there will be a percentage in there of allowed ones.  Maybe you have indication that they weren't planning that.  I haven't seen that yet, so I would like to assume there was.
 Regarding the percentage, if you calculate the percentage of deletes that a typical taster does today, the high-volume tasters, using the calculation method we are proposing, they are typically deleting about 10,000% of the ones they keep.  Whether we set the number at 5 or 10 or 15, it's still orders of magnitude below 10,000%.  And I don't think it is a major issue.  I think we need to do something which will accommodate the registrars in their particular needs.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay, thank you.  Chuck?
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  First a logistical matter, the Web access is also not working.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  Messages from a couple participants.
 Let me preface my statements by saying that I am representing the registry constituency in my comments.  We discussed this at length yesterday.  We will see some of this consistent with what Jeff was saying.  But first I have a process question and that's all I am talking about is process, not the gist of the motion.
 Do we, in fact, have a final outcome -- a final report?  My understanding is we only have a draft final report.  I think we talked about that before, but I can't remember what we resolved.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Basically -- and I'll paraphrase it but allow you to correct me, but is by the schedule, by the bylaws post comment -- post constituency report and comment what comes out is a final report.
 , however, given that there was a motion that was being worked on in parallel that is somewhat different than some of the things that were perhaps completely covered, I think Olof felt, and perhaps correctly, that "well, gee, the final report would need to be updated and, therefore, let's call it a draft final report."
 Now, I actually believe it is a final report and that all this other stuff gets included later in the board report which is really the final, final report of all that has happened, of all that goes on in the deliberations.
 So I think there is a semantic difference.  I believe we have a final report, but I don't believe that's the last word.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  We don't have to debate that whether we do or not.  I'm not going to pick on that.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Processwise, it is a final report.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  I guess I tend to agree with Olof, with everything that's happening, we don't really have a final report on what people are suggesting we take action on.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I believe that comes out of the deliberations.  As I was saying processwise, the name of this report is final report.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  I'm okay with that.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Even though "final" doesn't mean final.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  You already heard this comment and I'm just taking information from the latest resolution.  Whereas, a GNSO Council authorized on 17 January the formation of a small --
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Whenever we start reading, we all start speeding up.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  -- to develop a plan for the deliberations on the domain tasting PDP.  I won't repeat myself there.  Obviously some of us understood something very different there.  And I would say we wouldn't really get to the deliberations point until we had their ideas and we decide how to deliberate.  That's what we are asking them to do.
 It says "whereas the design team reviewed and assessed all the effects of domain tasting activities that had been identified," I think that you've addressed this Avri.
 It wasn't this design team's task to assess all of the effects of domain tasting.  Now, I still ask like I did on Saturday morning in our working session where is the documentation of that assessment.
 The terms of reference from the outcomes report suggested three terms of reference.  I know we have difference of opinions in whether those were met.  All I'm asking is if you think they were met, show me some documentation that they were met.  If we did a working group, we would document the evidence that those terms of reference were met.
 I'm not done yet, Mike.
 Going down, the design team considered the potential impacts.  Again, that was not the task of the design team.  And if you look at the PDP and the bylaws, you'll see that impacts come from constituencies.  That point's been made.  I won't belabor it.
 So my concern here is process.  You know, I don't have problems with a design team actually suggesting that maybe we can move quickly and suggest a motion.  But let's make sure that our design team is very well-representative of all points of view.  I would have just suggested that when you got to that point, let's try and get a broader representation so that we don't get to this point like we are now because if we really want to be legitimate as a policy development organization, then we need to make sure that -- you know, whenever we form a design team, we should make sure that we have as many different points of view on that design team as possible.  Otherwise, we will get to where we are now and I don't think any of us wants it because it wastes time.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  I've got Robin, Adrian.  I saw another -- I saw Mike after that.  And then I would like to make a comment with which I will try to close this particular session and talk about how we move on and process things.
 So, Robin?
 >>ROBIN GROSS:  Thank you.  I just wanted to address Mike's question about where the different constituencies are in this and so I just wanted to talk about where NCUC is on this issue.  We've pretty much been convinced that domain name tasting is harmful to consumers.  It is not in public interest in general.  We're concerned because it raises the cost for consumers.  We are concerned because it reduces choice for consumers.
 So I think that we very much agree that something needs to be done to curtail this practice, and I actually think that while I did have some concerns about the process, I think that the principles behind the motion that the design team has come back with is a good start and is a good approach for us to start looking at.
 So I think that we should be -- we should be able to go forward with this in the next few weeks or so and work towards curtailing the practice.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Thank you.  I have Adrian, Mike, and then myself.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  Avri, so long as you promise to swing back by me after you've done your summation, I'll skip my spot now.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Okay --
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  Promise?
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Yes, I will definitely swing by between subjects.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  Would you raise your right hand and promise, please?
 [ Laughter ]
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I will raise my left hand.  Thank you.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  To respond to the process issue, we can provide some documentation, some analysis as to how we think we've specifically met the terms of reference.  But I think more importantly this was what the volunteers -- and it was open to anybody, this is what we came up with as a suggestion to begin the council deliberations.  The motion can be changed, new motions can be proposed by any councillor at any time.  Specifically council voted not to form a working group on this issue on October 31, specifically voted not to but instead to proceed down the alternate path.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  We voted not to do a task force, not not to do a working group.  They're very different.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  Forgive me.  I'm not -- okay, anyway.  I think that's all I really need to say, is that this can and live and breathe and change depending on councillors making alternative suggestions.  I don't see what the offensiveness is to what has happened so far.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Tony, you wanted to get one word before I closed.
 >>TONY HOLMES:  Yes, I would just like to say for the ISPs we find ourselves in a similar situation to the views expressed by Robin.  We have real concerns over this practice.  We also feel that the design team did a pretty good job here and also think the motion has a lot of potential benefit anyway for everybody.
 The other thing I'd like to say is I'd like to know more about what people consider the legitimate use of the AGP really is.  Thanks.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Okay.  What I was, basically, going to suggest is -- first of all, I wanted to make one comment on process.  I think that Chuck is right with saying that we have to assure that we're always taking, you know, full community, full constituency into account.  And I think that having all drafting teams open to everyone is one thing.  I think the fact that anything that a drafting team comes out with comes to the council and is a starting place for a discussion is, indeed, another way.  It is a suggested motion.  It is obviously in one respect been very good in that it's brought up lots of issues that we need to discuss and deal with and put them on the table in a very solid way so that we have something to talk about.
 Now, I don't believe we made any motion -- any movement, rather, on the four possibilities I put up there except to make it very obvious as Alan said that we're not voting on the motion today.  In terms of whether we're voting on it at next meeting, I think that that's still difficult but still possible.  On the rest, I think we need to continue the discussion on the list, taking into account everything we've heard from the community, from others and also hopefully including our absent council members in this critical discussion and at this point I would like to turn the floor over to Adrian before I move on to the next item on the agenda.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  Thank you, Avri.  I thought I better get this in now before the people -- that are remotely or attempting to remotely participate have some sort of ombudsman or something.  We certainly brought this up in our registrar constituency meeting yesterday and we will be bringing it up in the public forum.  The logistics of this meeting have been an absolute nightmare and I think it's completely unacceptable that since Saturday morning when we had our council meeting and Sunday when we had a council meeting we've had nothing but dramas and headaches.
 Now, let me at least make myself quite clear although it was my opinion at this stage and I would like to get a collective opinion and I would like to get you to submit this as part of your report to the board that I'm not picking on the selection of the venue as far as Delhi is concerned.  I think getting out the remote and outreach side of ICANN is to be applauded.
 , however, I think the venue by way of where we're housing this, if it's unable to deliver certain baseline logistic call tools, then that needs to come into question.
 We have seen today that we haven't had vital and valuable participation from our remote council members and specifically on the issues we had, we're at a loss for that today.  We're potentially slowing down issues that need to be resolved.
 So I just would like to get feedback on the council and, if possible, if we can all agree that potentially Avri this is something you could take to a higher level.
 My final thought is it's unacceptable.  I am disappointed, and, you know, we make an effort to get here.  I am not going to go into -- I know it tends to get into a price of hotel rooms, blah, blah, blah, blah debate.  That's not what I am talking about here.  What I am talking about here is providing appropriate circumstances in which to conduct meetings.  We are a $61 million business as such organization and you would think that we would be able to deliver better.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Actually, I guess, I would prefer not to get into a conversation on this at the moment.  And what I really wanted to ask, okay, one comment -- but really we got a full agenda, we are already slipping behind because of technical issues, so...
 >>ROBIN GROSS:  I just wanted to second what Adrian said and also take issue with the choice of this venue.  I'm considerably concerned about an organization that calls itself "inclusive and bottom-up" et cetera, et cetera that would select a venue and all the surrounding venues where less than 1% of the world's population can even afford to be in the room.  That's unexcusable.  That's unconscionable.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  What I would like to just check is, basically, on Adrian's proposal that in any report I mention the technical difficulties that we've had and the participation difficulties that we've had.  Is there any objection from anyone on the council of mentioning that in the report?  There is no --
 >>ROBIN GROSS:  I would like to suggest that we also mention the financial issue.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Is there any objection to mentioning the financial issue?
 >>MARILYN CADE:  Avri, are you open to comments from the floor before you take a decision?
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I guess so.
 >>MARILYN CADE:  Thank you.  As a member of the community who also traveled to India and also bore the expense of coming here, I have sympathy to the concern about expense.  But I have a broader sympathy and that sympathy is that of the billion users of the Internet today and the five-plus billion that aren't using the Internet today, all of them have challenges and I appreciate that the councillors who received travel funding to come here are expressing their concern about logistical challenges and technical challenges.  I would like for you to please take into account that there are people from this region who have been able to travel here to this particular meeting.
 So, perhaps we could as an elected set of councillors, those of you who have contributed to your elections, ask for a different consideration for you to raising the question whether the constituencies who elected you about what changes, more broadly, might help to increase participation and attendance.  And it is, of course, I think, appropriate for any elected body to think about the technical and structural and administrative support that it needs to do an effective job.
 As a member of the community, I, too, am frustrated by not being able to access the Internet all the time or to make phone calls all the time.  But I'm also very committed when I'm sitting here to listen to you and to interact with all the other people who have been able to come here.
 So I ask you in any comments that you make to also take into account the huge dedication of the Indian community and the Indian government that have built a facility for us to come here.
 And the long hours and commitment reflected by the sponsors from the Indian business community, many of whom were here very, very late working hours that seem to me to be about 20 hours a day to try to give us a good opportunity.  So I ask that you take that into account in your report.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.
 [ applause ]
 I am only going to take one more comment from the floor on this one because I really don't want this to become the topic, of course, if that's what we want to spend the end part on the open microphone on, I have no problem with that.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  Can I respond to that, please?
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Very briefly.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  Very briefly, for clarity.  I absolutely applaud the Indians and the community that have built this venue.  Thank you.  My comment was more about the logistics of this meeting.  I am a business owner for me to come to this meeting 12 hours a day depends on the fact that I can still get Internet access.  So it is inexcusable that I don't have it.  It is expected we do so when I get there, I get disappointed.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Give you the last word on it because -- although not the last word if people want to comment further.
 >>IZUMI AIZU:   I'm Izumi Aizu from this region.  Now I am a member of the At-Large Advisory Committee from AP RALO.  I support what Marilyn said 150%.  I will ask you to be very careful to use the languages.  I understand Internet is usually the best network, quality is not guaranteed.  I understand the logistics of practices.  We are all living in the same planet.  I would like to call you to share the same burden.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  I'm going to move on.  I always try to be diplomatic when I am writing things.  So moving on, the next item on the agenda relates to GNSO improvements, we start out with having a discussion of the general GNSO Council position which will be given by Philip and then we'll go through the constituencies each on statements and until I come back to the table, I turn the chair over to Chuck.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  Philip, please.
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:  Chuck, thank you.  The council made a collective response to the Board Governance Committee, GNSO review working group papers that were published in October.  Since then we have seen a final report from that working group which is now being adopted by the Board Governance Committee that is being presented to the board at the end of this week.  Despite community comments from constituencies and ourselves, the content of the change between the October report and reports that we've just seen are minimal in terms of substance but were useful in terms of clarifications.  So the comments that I think we made collectively as council that I helped to collate back in November, I think are highly pertinent still to the substance of the report that we see before us today.  And I will just summarize what we said as part of those comments at that time which I say will apply very much to the current wording and substance of the report.
 We noted the previous reviews that had been done in 2004 and 2007 and in our comments what we are saying what we were doing collectively were only responding on those things with which there was unanimity on council in terms of what we approved but, of course, there may be other areas that have support or not individual council members.
 In summary, we welcome working groups on policy development, most notably because council has already used that model in its recent work., however, we made a small caveat saying we would like to attain flexibility in our own options of policy development so we can match need to process.
 Secondly, we welcome definements in the PDP timeline.  Council has called precisely for that change.
 Thirdly, we welcomed recommendations which delivered improvements in process, in administration, communication and there were a number of useful suggestions in the report for that.  We also welcomed help for outreach and membership expansion including multilingual versions of the output that council produces.
 We welcome improvements in the provision of staffing resources and improved GNSO Web site and in particular I think that means better coordination with the older parts of the GNSO.ICANN site and the newer policy process and tracking facilities which are not yet integrated and we also called for a welcome where we can get this financial support to councillors at face-to-face meetings.
 We also welcome improvements in internal coordination with the board, with other Supporting Organizations and committees, just better liaisons where necessary, better means of face-to-face communication, better means of virtual communication.
 We made a separate point that hadn't been highlighted in the report.  We are working a parallel track on this which was that we would also like to see a means of proxy and, perhaps, we refined that to being alternative possibilities for absent council members on items of substance taken by council when we're not meeting like this, or even on telephone calls where other council members are present so that they are not disenfranchised.
 And, finally, we welcome moving swiftly to the above improvements and noted some of the challenges that had been presented, I think, in the proposals from that committee.  There were another couple pages of more detail on that and some finessing of what we said in those reports, in those comments but I think that summarizes where we were on that report and where we are currently on the one we have today.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  Thank you very much, Philip.  Let me then point out to the audience that constituencies or even NomCom reps may or may not have a statement today so we'll give everybody an opportunity, but if one doesn't, this isn't a requirement, just an opportunity.  Would you like the chair back?
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Oh, thank you.  Okay.  So I guess the first one to be invited would be the business constituency.
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:  Why don't you take us last?
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  So the next one would be the ISPs.  I am trying to remember my alphabetical order.  So the ISPs.
 >>TONY HOLMES:  The ISP supports the adoption of a working group model and the desire to maximize the ability of all stakeholders to participate in the GNSO process.  However, we also recognize the success of that approach is clearly dependent on the development of a successful implementation plan, and the ISP recommends that both the development and implementation of that plan should involve all impacted stakeholders throughout the entire process.
 The ISPCP also supports the revision of the PDP process in order to increase flexibility.  The proposed structural changes that would result in the creation of four [inaudible] stakeholder groups are not supported.  The proposed arrangements would not result in the creation of an effective policy development process through the working group model.  To make that work, it's essential that an equitable balance is maintained across the GNSO structure, and that isn't achieved through the proposed approach.
 This remains a major concern and has serious implications for the future of ICANN.  There's clearly a need to address this matter in order for ICANN to reach its goal of becoming a stand-alone internationally recognized organization that's fully supported by all sectors.
 The ISPCP will work with other impacted stakeholders to address this concern and provide a way forward that fully supports the goals set for the GNSO and ICANN in general.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Okay.  Next would be -- now, we don't have -- I don't know if we have IPC members on the phone that can hear us at the moment.  Do we?
 I don't know if anyone else from the IPC constituency or the IP constituency -- not to be redundant about it -- wishes to make their statement for them or do we just move on?  Excuse me?
 >>JON BING:  
 [Speaker is off microphone]
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Sorry, Jon, I don't understand.
 >>JON BING:  Sorry.  If you'd like to have the alternatives that we discussed earlier displayed under the discussion.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  I hear Kristina.  Yes.
 >>KRISTINA ROSETTE:  If Claudio from INTA is in attendance, I'd like for him to be able to speak on behalf of the IPC.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  I didn't catch --
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  Kristina he's not in attendance.  I'm not seeing any members in the audience from the IPC.
 >>KRISTINA ROSETTE:  Okay.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Then, in which case, I'll move on to NCUC.
 >>ROBIN GROSS:  Thanks.  I just wanted to Note the NCUC's --
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Speak into the microphone, please.  It's hard to hear you.
 >>ROBIN GROSS:  Sorry.  I just want to Note the NCUC's welcoming of the report and particularly the redefinition of the stakeholder groups into a more equitable distribution of interest.
 >>KRISTINA ROSETTE:  Okay.  I think in that case what I'd like to do --
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  I'll get right back to you after NCUC --
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  No, no, her go.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Go ahead, please.  Go ahead, Kristina.
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  It will take her five seconds to hear.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Are you there, Kristina?
 >> We need someone to monitor the Webcast so we know what the timing is.
 >>KRISTINA ROSETTE:  I'll just post it to the council list and ask that it be included in the transcript.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Have you posted already?
 >>KRISTINA ROSETTE:  No.  I will shortly.
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  It's a quick turnaround.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Right.  I mean at this point, we could almost hear you well.  It might be worth trying.
 >>KRISTINA ROSETTE:  Hello?
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Yes.
 >>KRISTINA ROSETTE:  All right.  I apologize in advance.  Actually, I'm not apologizing.  It's 1:00 in the morning and I can barely hear you all.
 No, I will --
 >>AVRI DORIA:  We can hear you fine at the moment.
 Okay.  Moving on, if you send it before we finish, I'll read it out.  Otherwise, we'll include it in the record later and pass it on.  NCUC, please.
 >>ROBIN GROSS:  Thank you.  Yes, I just wanted to welcome the report that came out, and the work that went into it.  A lot of work.  And in particular, we support the redefinition of the stakeholder groups into a more equitable distribution of interest.  We feel like this is one of the most important things that came out of the report and that can be done to improve policy development at ICANN.
 We also support the working group model, and how it encourages more constructive policy development atmosphere, but we also believe that there are times when a vote is necessary and so we need to make sure that whatever policy is put into place takes that into account.  And we also support revising the PDP to make it more effective and more responsive to our needs, so overall we're very pleased with the report.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Thank you.  And now the registrar constituency.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  Thank you.  Now I've lost it.  Sorry.  Just a second.
 Got it now.  Thank you, Avri.
 We had discussions with the registry constituency yesterday, and pending their statement, we -- well, and we concur with their statement.
 However, we support the existing recommendation and particularly are pleased that there has been a balance struck between the contracted and non-contracted parties.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Thank you.  And that brings me to the registries.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  Yes.  Okay.  The registry constituency thanks the Board Governance Committee work group for the amount of time devoted to this effort and compliments the work group on a very thorough job.
 We believe that GNSO reform is as important today as it was a year ago.  The problems identified by the LSC study still exist.  For example:  One, there are still instances where voting is overemphasized; two, the proposal to fund GNSO Council travel emphasizes the council's role in policy development as opposed to the proper role of the community; and three, significant policy work is still being delegated by the council to itself rather than to working groups, task forces or other groups with the requisite expertise needed to develop policy.
 Put more simply, the council is still acting, on occasion, like a legislative body.
 In evaluating the GNSO improvement recommendations, we believe that there are two points that are essential:  One, it is critical to judge the recommendations as a total package.  Many of them are interdependent and, thus, must be evaluated in relationship to one another.  For example, the recommendations regarding council restructuring and associated vote allocations must be examined in light of the enhanced working group model with a deemphasize on voting.
 Two, the recommendations should not be evaluated in light of old paradigms.  A council that is primarily involved in developing policy is very different than a council that is managing the policy development process and providing leadership to a broader section of the community that is doing the policy development work.  Therefore, in the new model, it may be deemed more important by some to serve on a working group than to serve on the council.
 When looking at the overall GNSO improvement recommendations, the registry constituency strongly supports them.  In particular, we believe that:  One, they build on recent GNSO successes in using open working groups; two, they address the major issues raised in the various GNSO reviews done over the last several years and can result in many key improvements such as enhanced representation of stakeholders, spreading of the workload over more people, redefining the policy development process, introducing new tools, improved document management, providing training for process leaders, increased staff support, periodic assessment of policy development efforts, improved outreach to and involvement of more stakeholders and greater cooperation across other supporting organizations and advisory groups.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Thank you.  I have received, before I go back to BC, I have received e-mail from Kristina who has asked me to read out the IPC statement.
 The IPC was disappointed by some aspects of the final report of the Board Governance Committee working group regarding GNSO reform.
 IPC had provided extensive comments on the draft report in November, which included our reasons why consideration of the drastic restructuring of the council proposed by the draft report should be postponed until after a number of other recommendations had been implemented.
 We also made some specific suggestions regarding alternatives to the restructuring proposed in the draft report.  The final report, issued just before this meeting began, does not provide any indication that these views were considered.
 Of course we will continue to review the final report and provide comments on it.
 Two, here in New Delhi, there have been a number of discussions with our colleagues in other constituencies concerning preparation of an alternative proposal to the council restructuring proposal in the BGC working group final report.  We intend to continue these discussions on an intensive basis, with the goal of joining in a comprehensive and concrete proposal in the near future, and prior to the Paris meeting.
 The tripartite proposal put forward by a member of the business constituency will be given serious consideration in that process, although we have already identified some concerns with it.  We plan to contribute our own ideas to this process.
 Three, the issue of the extent to which ICANN is fulfilling the often stated goal of private sector leadership in the management of the domain name and addressing system will be a topic of considerable discussion in the context of the midterm review of the joint project agreement by the Department of Commerce.  Review of the Board Governance Committee's proposal restructuring will, quite properly, take place in that context.
 That proposal is widely viewed as diminishing the role of the private sector interests in the ICANN process -- at least those private sector interests that may be greatly affected by ICANN decisions but that are not dependent upon ICANN (through contractual relationships) -- as the basis for their business, we hope that the board, in considering the BGC proposal and any alternatives will take that perspective seriously and that its ultimate decision will concretely demonstrate its commitment to the concept of private sector.  That's the end of the IPC statement on GNSO reform.  I now turn the microphone over to BC.
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:  Avri, thank you.  We've prepared a formal statement.  I can send this to the list afterwards to help put it into the record.
 The business constituency welcomes a majority of administrative reforms suggested in the Board Governance Committee's paper, but has significant concerns with the first structural proposal in that paper, which conflicts with the ambitions of those administrative reforms.
 The BC notes that the BCG proposal has two minority reports.  We will respond favorably to the second of these which asks for alternative proposals.  In those, the BC will address some significant concerns inherent in the present proposal, and these concerns can perhaps be characterized as follows:
 Incentive.  The current proposal fails to provide the incentive to make the working group model functional.
 Second, credibility.  The current proposal will drive away commercial interest participants, so undermining ICANN's credibility.
 Third, oversight.  ICANN's public interest and oversight responsibilities are being compromised by these structural proposals.
 The BC will work with other stakeholders in the short term to provide the board with an alternative structural proposal, and in the meantime we recommend a public comment period for this report of 60 days.  Thank you very much.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Thank you.  I think that concludes that agenda item.
 And if people have comments, we can do that in the open microphone period at the end.
 Moving on to the next item, which is the status update, we have first on the inter-registrar transfers and then on the WHOIS, and then there was an any other business request on perhaps an update on the status with proxy voting, so perhaps Liz might be able to just continue straight into that after the WHOIS.  If not, we can deal with it otherwise.
 So -- oh, yes.  I have to give you the cable.  By the way, while that's hooking up, I've been informed that the conference call should be working now, and that conference callers ought to use their handset, not their speakerphone, and so at any point at which someone wants to make a comment as we move along, please let's try again.  It's -- I know it must be terribly hard and frustrating at 2:00 in the morning, but if we can try again, that would be wonderful.  Thank you.  And Olof.
 >>OLOF NORDLING:  Thank you, Avri.  And this is just a very brief report to clarify what we're up to when it comes to the inter-registrar transfer policy.
 I would say on popular demand and obvious need.
 Because -- well, first of all, a little background.
 This is an existing consensus policy which is alive and kicking since 2004, and which some -- a couple of years ago, actually, a working group was established to review the real workings of it, and they came back to the council, made -- in the summer of 2007, with a report which actually lists quite a long list of small and big issues, and that was put forward for council's consideration.
 What the council did was they requested an issues report on four very detailed aspects relating to the reasons for which a registrar record may deny a request to transfer the domain name.  So that's the limited scope of the issues report.
 That issues report was delivered by staff on the 19th of October, and following that, on the 20th of November, the GNSO Council resolved to launch a PDP on these four limited aspects covered by the issues report.
 So far, we have received four constituency statements, to date, and we do need the remaining ones as soon as possible to enable the next step that staff would have to do, which is an initial report.
 And while we're at it, those who have already delivered constituency statements, could you also review that.  Some of them are fairly wide, but we need answers to those narrow questions that are opposed in the issues report.
 That's one track, the PDP track.
 There is another track.  You remember the list.  There were four issues that were singled out to be dealt with in the PDP.  And in parallel with the PDP, the working group, chaired by Ross Rader, was revived to prioritize the 19 remaining issues on that list, which are not covered by the PDP.  I repeat:  Which are not covered by the PDP.
 Such a prioritized list was delivered in January 2008, and a planning group was established by the council to group these issues.  Using the prioritized order but we realized we can't launch 19 PDPs, that we'd go on forever.  So the planning group was tasked with trying to find combinations of issues that would work well as PDPs.
 Now, this planning group's work is ongoing.  It's chaired, I think, by -- well, I think.  It's actually chaired by Tom Keller, one of our registrars, and currently we have found three rough issue sets for a similar number of PDPs, plus a few additional ones where they are too bulky and too important to be included in these sets.
 So that's where we stand, and that's all I wanted to say.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Before moving on, were there any clarifying questions.  Not necessarily discussions on these issues, but clarifying questions.  Do you have a clarifying question?  Oh, okay.
 And we'll go through a couple more things before we get to the microphone.
 Okay.  In which case, Liz, would you like to take the WHOIS studies and can you also then -- okay.
 >>LIZ GASSTER:  Good morning.  I'm Liz Gasster on the ICANN policy staff and just giving a quick update on WHOIS.
 Currently, there is no policy development process under way.  On the 31st of October, in the Los Angeles meeting, the council decided that more information was needed in order to inform the policy development process, and asked ICANN staff to consider conducting several studies, and in so doing, we are currently inviting public comment and public suggestions on what studies ought to be conducted by the GNSO.
 Public comments are invited until this Friday, February 15th, and at that time then the council will decide which studies we should be assessing or developing costs to conduct those studies, and then we will, as staff, go back and develop those costs and provide them to the council for further deliberation and consideration about which studies should be conducted.
 So as of today, there are about nine suggestions for further study, and I thought what I would do is just quickly summarize the suggestions that we've gotten so far.
 We have a suggestion that we study documented misuse of WHOIS data.
 Second, that we study the nature and extent of privacy options available to shield personal information from display in WHOIS.
 Third, that we study responses by proxy services to notices alleging actionable harm.
 Fourth, that we consider studying whether WHOIS enables greater competition in the domain name system industry, the offering of privacy services.
 Fifth, that we study the experience of ccTLD registries with different WHOIS policies, to determine the impact of more restrictive data display policies.
 Sixth, that we study the recoverability of domains in cases of domain theft.
 Seventh, that we study the participation of certain registrars in spam abuse based on falsified WHOIS records.
 Eighth, that we consider studying the locking of WHOIS name searches by some registrars.
 And then ninth, there was a suggestion that we not conduct any further studies on WHOIS.
 So that's a summary of where we are to date.  I would suggest that probably a couple of those recommendations are out of scope, but we will be developing a summary of those, all of the suggestions, and providing them to the council after the conclusion of the public comment period.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I'm going to ask for clarifying questions.  I have one myself, so I'll put myself in the queue first.
 Are people actually going through the questionnaire and actually responding, for the most part, to all the various questions?
 >>LIZ GASSTER:  Right.  So the questionnaire that we've posted and asked suggesters to complete really asks for details on the scope of the study to be conducted, what the data points would be, and what the relevance of the study would be to further policy-making on WHOIS, and, yes, for the most part there is at least some effort to respond in detail to the questions that we're asking be completed.
 And we do encourage, for anyone who has not submitted suggestions, that they do so and that they follow the format.  It's very helpful and important for us to have a clear idea not only of what the public is suggesting, but how practical and the details of how we might go about that.
 And I would also invite those who might have opinions or extra thoughts about refining suggestions that have already been made.  We have numbered the proposals that have been submitted, so if you have further refinements or suggestions, not only new proposals but also perhaps refinements for proposals that have already been submitted, just identify those by number and those -- that input is very much appreciated as well.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Any other clarifying questions on this?  Yes, Robin?
 >>ROBIN GROSS:  Yes.  I was just wondering if there's any indication as to the number of studies that will ultimately be selected.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I think that's up to our discussions afterwards and I don't think there's any a priori decision on there will be X number.  The thing we were going to ask next is to get an idea of what kind of costs we're talking about, what kind of time frames, and so on.  So I think that's still very open.  Yes, Tony.
 >>TONY HARRIS:  I just wonder if you could repeat the deadline for submitting suggestions, please.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Was it --
 >>LIZ GASSTER:  15th of February.  So this Friday.
 >>TONY HARRIS:  Okay.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Any other questions on that?
 Okay.  Before I -- it's time now to go into any other business but one of the any other businesses had been an update on what was happening with proxy voting, so I'm wondering, Liz, are you the right person to ask?
 >>LIZ GASSTER:  Sure.  Be happy to.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Please.
 >>LIZ GASSTER:  And then others on the drafting team should absolutely jump in if I've left anything off.
 So a drafting team was put together to consider how we might enfranchise council members who are absent from a vote during a council meeting and the reason why we refer to this as "proxy voting" is that the initial approach that was considered by this drafting group was to look at how proxy voting might be deployed.
 In fact, the thinking of the group has evolved and we should probably replace our terminology about "proxy voting" to "electronic voting," which is the current thinking of the drafting group.  And we do have a proposed amendment to the bylaws that we're just about ready to share with the entire council.  I think we need about another day to mull over the details, but we'll be distributing that, and it essentially allows members of the council who are absent from a vote to be able to vote electronically in three instances, and that would be whether to initiate a policy development process on any topic, to vote by electronic vote to forward a policy recommendation to the board, and then the third instance would be in case of an election, to select a chair, a vice chair of the council, or a director of the board.
 And again, that recommendation, that draft bylaws change, will be circulated to the council in the next day or so.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Thank you.  Any clarifying questions on that?  Yes.  Or other comments from people on the team.
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:  Yeah.  No, I mean everything Liz has just said is entirely accurate.
 What I just wanted to do was to give a little background in terms of some of the sort of guiding principles that we discussed.
 I mean, having gone from the concept of proxy voting to electronic voting, because electronic voting would, by its nature, take place outside of the meeting, that would then entail certain challenges and so then we to sort of think about the principles or the guidance around how we address those challenges and what we really said was, "Look, you know, we want this to happen when there's an important vote."  So, you know, when it's going to make a difference, when there is something significant that might be affected by that, and that's what we tried to capture in our current wording.
 And our second principle was that when this does happen, it should be non-discretionary.  So we don't have a discussion at the time whether it can happen or not.  It just does.  That's part of our adopted rules up front, so it's simple.
 And thirdly, that in attempting to do this, we didn't want to compromise the, if you like, sovereignty of the council meeting itself.  In other words, you're not adding on a whole load of procedures, but just make the actual meeting itself or the progress or our speed of moving on things slow.  So it was those three principles that we tried to then turn into wording, and, hence, the reason it's taken a little while just to crank down on that, but as Liz said, basically I think we're pretty close.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Thank you.  Yes, Chuck.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  Thanks to both of you for good explanations.  I would just add one thing to the principles that Philip talked about.
 One of the things, as we started to dig into it a lot more, we found that there's some very complicated corner cases that could really -- and this really relates to the third principle that Philip shared.  We want the processes of the council to be able to move forward in a timely manner, and not overcomplicate our processes.
 And I think that's going to -- you'll see that, and we'll explain that once you see the procedures that we end up with.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  And I expect that as part of the whole process, once we've talked about it, there will be also a public comment period on anything that relates to changing the bylaws, and we don't make it.  It merely goes as a request to the board and I guess it would be the Board Governance Committee that would receive that but I'm not sure.
 Anything else on that particular item?
 Okay.  Then the next item in any other business -- and thank you, Liz, and thank you, Olof -- was Alan's announcement.
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  The ALAC has been talking for the last number of months of holding some sort of summit or meeting of participants from the regions to bring them all together.  The current situation is, we're asking the at-large structures and the RALOs to participate, whereas most of the people from these groups really don't have a good feeling for what ICANN is, what the issues are, and how to participate, so it was felt that if we could bring one person from each organization to a meeting, have them interact with each other, give them tutorials -- preferably in languages they can understand -- they'll be much more able to participate in the long run and they can go home and proselytize and talk about ICANN from a point of knowledge instead of pure conjecture.
 There's a proposal in front of the board this week to approve it in principle, which implies some sort of semi-commitment to fund it, and at this point, that's where it sits.  The board may reject or approve.  But if they accept it, we're going to be coming back to the various constituencies to discuss it and hopefully get support from them.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Thank you.  It sounds like actually a very interesting and good proposal.
 Depending on how you do it, if you're going to want various constituency people to participate, we'll probably have to deal with how we work out the schedules prior to -- prior to the meeting.  It will probably make it all that much more interesting.
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  Indeed.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Indeed.  Did anyone want to ask anything of Alan about this?  Or make any comment on it?
 Okay.  In which case, I think we're done with any other business.  No, is there -- yes.  Edmon.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  At this time, actually I was just looking at some of the dates and I wanted to raise one item as any other business with regards to the IDNC stuff.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Please.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  Okay.  Looking at the dates, our next council meeting I think is on the 28th.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Yes.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  And currently the IDNC initial report, the deadline for comments is the 26th of February.
 I guess the suggestion may be for us -- hopefully -- would it be possible for us to agree to send at least a comment in to it that we need a few more days to respond and ask for an extension?
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  I guess I see two possibilities.  One, we can do that.  Two, we've been fairly successful with -- especially with things like written comments, and such, with actually coming to a working a draft on the list and coming to an agreement on the list.
 So we could take it either way.  We could either ask for an extension and then do covering it in the meeting, or we could just put together one of those schedules where we do the discussion of the text on our list and then, you know, do the 48-hour comment period before sending it on.  I know we've done that several times.  And we've been successful.
 So I --
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  Well, I just want to make sure that whether we need a resolution on it to send it forward as a GNSO comment, but...
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  I'm comfortable either way.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Does anyone else on the council want to comment on which of those we take, whether we ask for a two-day extension or -- because they already extended it, correct?  This is already an extended schedule on it?
 In other words, it had been due before, and then basically they extended it to post to -- to post the meeting, and so we'd be asking for an extension on an extension.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  Well, we'd be asking for an extension on what was eventually published as a draft.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Oh, okay.  That's right.  I was -- I'm confusing.  It was on the PDP that there was a comment that there was an extension.
 Which would you prefer?  Would you prefer to ask for the extension?  Does anyone have a preference?
 I guess at this point, then, if there's no objection, ask for the extension.  If we don't get the extension, we can follow the other.
 Does anybody object to following that path?
 Hearing no objection, please.  And then if we don't get the extension, then we can follow the online process we followed before.
 >>EDMON CHUNG:  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Is there any -- any other other business?  No.  In which case, open microphone.
 >>ELLIOT NOSS:  Thanks.  Elliot Noss, Tucows.  I actually wanted to comment on the inter-registrar transfer comments earlier as opposed to open comments.
 In the state of Texas in the United States, it is illegal for children to have unusual haircuts.  In Tucson, Arizona, in the United States, it is illegal for women to wear pants.  And in the state of New Jersey in the United States, it is illegal to frown at a policeman.
 All of those laws are as alive and kicking as the 2004 transfer policy that was enacted.  I want to stress to the council and I expect I will be doing the same tomorrow to the board that passing a policy is the easy part, much as it might not seem that way when going through it.  Enforcing a policy is the important part.  There are two points here.  To the extent that the GNSO is able to push for enforcement, they should.  We've now opened a review as per appropriate process of transfer policy before we have even enforced the last one passed now nearly four years ago.
 I have been publicly and privately -- I won't even say calling for, crying and complaining for enforcement of the existing policies.  I would stress to all of you that you should be pushing back the existing process or the existing process to review the previous transfer policies until we enforce the current policy and are then in a position to evaluate what we should do going forward.  Thanks.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Any comment?  Chuck?
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  Elliot, can you stay there for a second?  There is really not -- your point is well-taken so I am not really talking about that.  But I happen to be on the little drafting team to deal with the 19 other transfer policy issues and how we might settle those and as we're grappling with that and there are two registrars on that group which are critical to it as you might guess, one of the things we -- questions that comes to us, you know, this seems like a good thing to do but is there any way to even enforce it?  So my question for you is, just to get your opinion and, of course, anyone is welcome to give us opinions on this, do you think it even makes sense to establish policies that we're pretty confident can't be enforced as far as we can tell?
 >>ELLIOT NOSS:  Well, the reasons that I've been made to understand stood in the way of enforcing existing policies have to do with at one point inadequate staffing, which is a problem that went away through subsequent budgets.  In another point, it was the lack of gradation in the potential penalties which, I think, is empty because if the concern is that the penalties are too severe, that should simply aid enforcement.
 And, now, all I can see is that it is driven by fear of bad public relations or fee of litigation.  Nothing of which are appropriate in any way reasons to not be enforcing accepted fought-for policy.
 Chuck, boy, you more than anybody, not only on this dais -- not only on this platform but just probably anybody in the room, maybe anybody in Delhi or India knows the blood and sweat that went into enacting the 2004 policy, the hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours of personal organizational time that was invested in battling that.
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  And still, though, I want to come back to my question.  I am in agreement with you, okay?  But I'm looking forward as we're grappling with how we might move forward on some PDPs for these additional issues, and we are confronting some that we think regardless -- I mean, even if there is a commitment to enforce for technical reasons, for -- they're just practically not enforcement, and my question to you -- and I think one that all of us need to consider overnight is should we even be putting -- I'm not suggesting that any of the ones in the past were unenforceable.  We think we're seeing a couple that could we really enforce this including the two registrar representatives in our little group, should we even be putting those kind of things in the policy?
 >>ELLIOT NOSS:  I kind of hear you saying should we pass policy that's unenforceable?  No.  But I don't think that's relevant as a question to what I am putting forward because I don't think anybody --
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  It's not, that's why I said at the beginning I am going a different direction because you're talking about --
 >>ELLIOT NOSS:  Look, I think sure, at the end of the day, yes, it is incumbent on you folks up there to be smart about the way you craft and draft.  There is no question about it.
 At the same time this is -- and it is something I've said in this -- in the ICANN venue before, we need much less say and much more do.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Any other comments?
 Okay, Jeff?
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:  Hi, good morning again.  First, let me start with a positive -- very positive.  I want to thank each and every one of you for agreeing to this new format.  I know this is the second meeting you're doing this format.  I was not able to be at the first one, but the one where you've up the GNSO meet council meeting to allow interaction, I want to thank you for that.  I think it is very beneficial.  I know it makes for a much longer meeting, but I think in doing so we are able to hear your views as well as having just a general public comment period where we are able to tell you ours, so I want to thank you for that.
 So also the spirit of knowing there's more time and liking to be controversial, there is one topic which I noticed on your mailing list which I'm one of the few to actually follow outside the council, that's not been discussed at this open meeting.  I think it really should be brought up to the open, and that's travel funding for GNSO Councilors.
 So on the mailing list, there were many comments expressed saying that you all deserve to receive funding to come to any ICANN location.  And I want to remind you -- and especially under the reform -- that the role of the council is to manage the policy process, not to develop the policy process.  So in light of that, I would like each of you that have expressed support for receiving travel funding to actually explain to the community why you think you deserve travel funding as opposed to other members of the community or people that may have a need basis for it.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay, thank you.  Adrian.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  First, I would like to thank Jeff for bringing up the topic.  It was certainly a topic of conversation in my -- at the registrar constituency meeting yesterday.  Despite the fact that I enjoyed the benefit and I thank ICANN for that, it certainly was unanimous in the room that the registrar constituency is not supportive of GNSO Council receiving the benefit.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Would anyone else on the council like to speak to it?  Yes, Robin?
 >>ROBIN GROSS:  Yes.  I can say from the perspective of the non-commercial users constituency that the lack of funding to get us to these meetings to participate is one of the largest hindrances that we face in terms of trying to be able to work with the rest of the council and develop the kind of relationships and understand the policy decisions and be in all the meetings, to really do the work that we're sent here to do.  So to ask a bunch of non-commercial volunteers to come up with 10 grand and take off a week's work to come here to India, I think that's entirely unreasonable.  We're here to do ICANN policy work and I think ICANN can pay for its own operation.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Philip?
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:  I'm not here in the main capacity of my day job.  I do that in other issues.  I do that in another country.  I do that for the -- under the direction of what the members in my association require me to do.  I'm here because this is a slice of what our guys are interested in.  It is not mainstream business.  I'm not sheer because I am a registrar or registry and, therefore, absolutely bough to what ICANN is doing in terms of the fundamentals of my business policy.
 I'm also a user, ultimately it is user's money that is flowing through the agent collection services of registries and registrars that is funding this whole shebang.  I find it a bit rich to hear from those guys that they are telling me how we should use our money.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.
 [ applause ]
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Does sound like there is a slight split between the consumer side and the provider side.  So I see Tony and I see Chuck.  Also, is anyone at the line?  I know, Jeff, you are probably wanting to comment on this again?  Are you also commenting on this same topic?
 >>MARILYN CADE:  I have been a while waiting here too, Avri.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  I didn't know you were on the same topic.  So you were there before Tony and Chuck stuck up their hands, so please.
 >>MARILYN CADE:  I'm going to see if I can propose a different approach to addressing a balanced, responsible approach to ensuring support for participation in policy development as opposed to putting interested parties in a position of describing a solution that addresses only part of the concerns and part of the perspectives.  And I really feel that the council voluntarily put itself in the position of making a decision about its -- about funding that affects just the council about travel.  And I think that's an unfortunate position for councillors to be in.
 As a councillor for several years, I paid for my own travel.  Upon occasion, I received a small subsidy from the business constituency that was limited to 1500 Euros for about a trip a year.  So I funded the rest of my travel and all of you know that I am independently employed and I did that because I felt that I needed to do that.
 Now, I want to consider myself individually unique and not try to transpose any of my characteristics on to anyone else.  But I use it as an example to say that I think, in fact, a small group of representatives from the constituencies with no councillors who have an interest in this should work together to propose a balanced travel support program that supports the new approach to policy development which is going to include working groups.
 In fact, the council itself has experienced upon occasion intersessional meetings.  And in those occasions, ICANN has helped to provide travel funding for up to one representative per constituency and the Nominating Committee appointees to try to make sure that the broad representative of people could participate in those intersessional meetings.
 Looking ahead at the fact we're going to have working groups, I propose, just as a straw idea, that something like a set amount of money be given to each constituency.  Each constituency develop a written plan for how they're going to use that money, subsidize it from them within their own group, et cetera, and figure out a program that supports that constituency's ability -- let me leave the Nominating Committee challenge separately here because they are funded to come to the meetings -- figure out a program that ensures that that constituency can effectively and fairly ensure participation of its chosen representatives in the broader policy participation and develop process.
 And let's not put the elected councillors in the position of having to think that they have to make a decision about their own need, instead working within their constituency, they need to educate whoever is representing their constituency on this working group about the needs for the councillors to receive appropriate support.  But it needs to be balanced and I will say one final thing.
 I am not a supporter of ICANN subsidizing the policy development process in entirety.  I am a supporter of a balanced and responsible and fully transparent contribution.  I will just say one thing.  For those parties who expect to get funding to come to ICANN meetings, expect not to do the rest of your business, if you're funded to come by ICANN.  Expect to only focus on policy.  And I think that would be fair to the community.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.
 [ applause ]
 Okay.  Why don't we go.  We had Tony, Chuck, and then back to the microphone and then Adrian, Mike.
 >>TONY HARRIS:  Yes, I'd just like to say that I can understand the position of the contracted parties.  They make money off ICANN.  Unfortunately, my nonprofit entity in Argentina does not, and it takes quite a bit convincing to send me all the way to India at what's -- or any other very far-away place.  I mean Argentina is far from everywhere, but so far we've managed to get here.
 And actually, I say thanks.  You know, anytime we get some help to come here, that's great.  As far as we're concerned, it's welcome.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Thank you.  Chuck?
 >>CHUCK GOMES:  Thanks, Avri.  Let me point out, first of all, that obviously the registry constituency didn't support -- the councillors know this -- this general idea, but we did support travel funding for those that needed it.  So it's not as if we're opposed to support, but we thought it should be focused where the need is.
 Secondly, I'd like to point out that there's a workshop at 5:30 today on this, so it's important that we all come back and talk about it then.  And the point I really wanted to emphasize, and Marilyn, let me thank you for some excellent points made.  And they connect a little bit to what I want to say.
 Because I think you've raised some good things that should be considered, and in any kind of overall travel policy.  But one of the things we need to keep in mind if we're responsible -- and I know we're not a business, but if we were a business, when we're looking at spending funds in the budget, we would look at the total picture.
 We are looking at a possible new model for the way we do policy development in the GNSO, and the working groups are going to be a very important part of that.  And so I think we not only need to look at council issues in this regard, but the working group model and even special intersessional meeting needs that might go with that, like Marilyn said.  But now we're starting to talk about a pretty huge chunk of the ICANN budget, and so one of the questions we're going to have to ask ourselves -- and answer -- is, "Okay.  Assuming that there really aren't unlimited funds" -- and I'm not here to debate that -- okay? -- "we need to decide where the priorities are.  We may come to a point where, okay, if we want to spend all this money on travel, then what do we -- where do we think it should be reduced?  And so we need to look at it in the total picture.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Thank you.  Jeff?
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:  Thank you.  Let me respond to a couple of things.
 First, let me point out that there are a number of, quote, contracted parties that are not able to be here.  There are a lot of them.  Even within the registry constituency.
 So please don't make the assumption that just because people are contracted parties, that they have funding to come here.  There are a lot of smaller sponsored registries that are not here.
 Also, don't make the assumption that just because we are a larger contracted party, that, number one, that that's our day job; and number two, that the funding that we do get is enough to come here.
 For those of you who know me know that I -- this ICANN work is very little, if any, of the actual real work that I do.  We come here because we want to be part of the process and we want to participate just like each and every one of you, and we do all have our day jobs.
 But I do want to echo what Marilyn and Chuck said:  We do support a needs-based approach; that it's not just because you are a, quote, councillor, that you deserve funding to be here.  That may be the case but it should be up to the constituencies to decide, and again, there should be less of an emphasis based on the councillors.
 Robin, if some other people from the noncommercial constituency would want to come to these meetings, maybe they're the appropriate people to get the funding rather than you because you serve on the council.  I'm not making that judgment.  I'm just making an observation.  Maybe you are the right person.
 But the point is that it's -- it should not -- it should never have been the council as councillors making a recommendation on their own funding.  It should really go out to the community.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Adrian.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  Yeah.  I just wanted to bring up an option that the registrar constituency discussed yesterday, which was -- and we'll certainly be bringing this up in the workshop this afternoon, but with respect to potentially allocating a set amount of funds to each constituency, with some parameters around how that would be allocated and utilized.  But effectively, then, if the constituency decided that they wanted to hire a writer to help with documentation, a response, or use that for funding, it would be entirely up to them.
 So we are looking at different options.  That's not to say we're opposed completely to this.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  I have Mike next and then Robin.
 >>MIKE RODENBAUGH:  You know, I just want to say that, you know, I really appreciate that ICANN made an interim decision to provide a stipend to travel.  You know, I appreciate my constituency providing a stipend to travel.  Otherwise, I simply would not be able to be here.
 You know, I think that there needs to be a real balance.  I certainly respect that it could be a needs-based analysis, but, you know, we -- ICANN is the Internet corporation for assigning names and numbers.  We obviously need to be developing some technology so we can conduct most of our business over the Internet.  Teleconferencing or whatever.
 Obviously, with our experience today -- and there may be some exigent circumstances with telecom cable outages and things that contributed to that, but, you know, obviously the technology is not there yet and ICANN has not invested nearly at the level that it probably should or needs to start investing in that regard.
 But also, there's a great value to having ICANN come to far -- you know, to a diverse array of venues.  You know, we're all, in a sense, ambassadors for ICANN, so it's not just the policy, but also the -- you know, the personality of ICANN, the publicity of ICANN, to let people know what we're all up to, and that this is a good thing.
 So I would just suggest that we need to always keep in mind that there needs to be balance, both investing in technology so we don't have to travel so much, but I think also continuing to travel.  Now, maybe that would be one -- one meeting a year that's -- that everybody needs to get to, instead of three.  And we do two by teleconference.  We just need to have this discussion, so I appreciate that it's beginning.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Thank you.  Robin?
 >>ROBIN GROSS:  Yes.  I just wanted to address Jeff's point about why council members should be here.
 I think it's absolutely important that council members should be here.  If you say that, well, we're only supposed to manage, we're not supposed to do the work.  Well, how are we supposed to understand if we're not actually here, if we're not actually in a position to talk with the different perspectives all at once in a room, hear viewpoints that we don't hear on mailing lists?
 It's an entirely different dynamic.  It's an entirely different perspective that we get when we come to these meetings.  We can meet with ALAC, we can meet with all the different groups, and it's -- there's just no way that we could do the work from a distance and expect to be effective.  I think that's not a realistic option.
 And, you know, the idea that nonprofit organizations should pay their own way to come to these meetings in order to ensure that the profits of Internet businesses are kept high seems inappropriate to me.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Jeff in is this on the same topic or a new topic.
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:  Yeah, it's just on the same topic.  I just want to point out something on -- you know, for a while NeuStar was managing some of the IETF conferences for a number of years, and I just want to point out that they have an IAB and an IESG, which are two kind of bodies that are kind of -- have different roles but they manage the process of the development of the standards.
 And I will note that none of them are funded by anyone to go to those meetings, and some of those meetings are around the world.
 So obviously it is possible.  It's just not something that has been explored and I completely agree with Mike as far as the technology.  I think that more investment should go into the technology, into making sure that remote participation is easier and that more work is done on the Internet.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  I have Adrian and Philip.
 >>ADRIAN KINDERIS:  Thanks, Avri.  I'd just like to remind Robin that -- well, yeah, the use of the word "nonprofit" don't always mean poor.  You can certainly be a nonprofit and have a lot of money.  Thank you.
 >>ROBIN GROSS:  Not in my constituency.
 [Laughter]
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Philip?
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:  Just a back of the envelope order of magnitude.  Supposing we go crazy.  Supposing ICANN gives us all -- gives every councillor -- 20 councillors -- $8,000 three times a year to come have a great party here.  What percentage of that is of the ICANN 60 million budget?  Any quick mathematicians in the room?  Just under 1%.  About .8%.
 Is policy worth that?  Yea or nay?
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:  You're making.
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:  Only a question.
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:  You're making the assumption, number one, that we support the $60 million budget, which is not a fair assumption.
 [Applause]
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:  May be a good use of the budget.
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:  So again, we're not talking about proportion of budgets here and I think that money could easily be spent on technology and other effective means, so that people in the community can participate in the process.
 >>PHILIP SHEPPARD:  When and if, I agree.
 >>KRISTINA ROSETTE:  Avri?
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Yes.
 >>KRISTINA ROSETTE:  Can I exercise the right of somebody who can finally actually speak to talk?
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Please.
 >>KRISTINA ROSETTE:  I just want to reinforce some of the points that have been made already, and to also add another one, which I think frankly is extraordinarily important and has not gotten the attention that it needs.
 My experience this evening has demonstrated to me that as of today, remote participation is not a viable, reliable option, full stop.
 I will personally make every effort to get to every meeting that I can, notwithstanding the fact that my employer's generosity has met its limits.
 Having said that, I do think that there is a need to have some funding available for the policy process.  Every other organization in the world pays, in one way or the other, for the policy that it develops and relies upon.  This one should not be any different.
 Third, I think it's important that people not make assumptions, as I'm starting to hear from some of the comments.  Whether it's about the fact that, you know, all registrars have money or all lawyers can afford this or this, that, and the other thing.  But the most important thing is something that I frankly find baffling, and that is, it seems to me that a lot of the expenses that are currently associated with these meetings could be significantly curtailed with better advance planning.
 I don't know of any other organization of this magnitude where important policy-shaping meetings for which attendance is essentially mandatory don't have firm schedules put out until two weeks ahead of time.  Where councillors -- policymakers are getting documents the week of the meeting.  Where no one really knows where the meeting is for sure for several months in advance.  Where no one really knows where the hotel is until six weeks in advance.
 If ICANN plans these things out better a year in advance, they book the hotel a year in advance, they get the rooms, they let people know, people can budget for it.  It's a lot easier for folks to go to their employer or their funder or their organization a year ahead of time and ask for the money to be appropriately budgeted so they can get the least expensive flight.  Frankly, you know, I'm just astounded at the way ICANN does its meetings, and the fact that the board [inaudible] Meetings Committee in its January 23rd meeting is baffling and I would very much hope that at some point in the next day or so there's going to be some discussion about how meetings can be better conducted.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  Okay.  I have Robin and Alan.
 >>ROBIN GROSS:  Yeah.  I just wanted to second something that Kristina just said, that maybe what we need to do is look at how we're currently spending -- ICANN is currently spending its money on these meetings.  And while these lovely diamond-studded chandeliers are just that, lovely, perhaps the money that was spent on this luxurious accommodation here could have been better put toward something substantive, like policy development.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Alan.
 >>ALAN GREENBERG:  I'd just like to point out one thing that hasn't been mentioned.  Certainly there's a good number of us who are independent -- now, I'm -- by the way, I'm funded through the Nominating Committee, so I'm not part of any recommendation to fund the GNSO.
 I personally take a very large financial hit in the time I donate to ICANN.  Far in excess, in fact, of the costs of sending me to the meetings.  And it -- asking someone to do that is one thing.  Asking them then to spend money out of pocket really, really puts a large demand on people.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Okay.  Thank you.  Are there any comments?  Is it same topic or another topic?
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:  Yeah, same topic.  I just want to say I agreed with everything Kristina said.  I think she's -- she's right on.  I think -- I don't -- I don't blame her for her frustration.  I think the remote participation was not adequate here, and I think that that does need to be invested in and I think all of her points were very good.
 I -- you know, in the IETF world, dates were set years in advance.  Venues were set -- are set years in advance.  That agendas are set months in advance or at least a month in advance for most of the meetings.  At least the location and dates.
 So I am in agreement with that, and I do think that, you know, her comments need to be taken seriously.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  As an IETF participant, I agree with everything you said except that schedules are set months in advance.  One doesn't know what meetings are going to be held by what working group on whatever day until several weeks.
 >>JEFF NEUMAN:  But you know the dates.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Yes, we know the dates of the meeting or but we don't know the schedule or the agenda at all.  Okay.  Yes, please, Eric.
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:  Speaking to the same point.  This is Eric Brunner-Williams from Core and I suppose speaking as an individual.
 In the IETF, we actually meet at the same place several times in the course of a decade.  We've been at Minneapolis several marches in the past year.  I know because I watch college basketball in March in the bar during IETF meetings.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  And St. Patrick's Day celebrations.
 >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS:  My point here is that we bring a lot of money to a place where we go.  Whether it's Accra or New Delhi or Montevideo, and then we never return.  We don't have the -- our traveling circus doesn't hit the same spots with any frequency that would assist in the development of the local Internet community and the local Internet infrastructure.  We're here all complaining about flag cables being cut, but when we come and we never come back, there's really no incentive on our part to even think about it other than a momentary inconvenience to us.
 So as we think about how we're going to do travel and expense, I encourage you to also consider that we not throw darts at the globe while it spins madly, but try to make our presence in someplace possibly recurring and, therefore, more useful than it is just as a one-time event.  Thank you.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Yeah.  I'd like to add that from the IETF participant perspective, each time we go back to Minneapolis, the hotel starts to feel more and more like home, more and more attuned to our needs, and the repeat going really does make a difference.
 Any other comments on any other topics?  Or that topic or -- you know, and the topics that we discussed earlier are not excluded.
 Okay.  Yes, Tony, please.
 >>TONY HARRIS:  Since we're sort of reviewing everything we've seen this morning, getting to the question of problems with connectivity which have been pointed out and stressed and -- well, of course we've all seen that, I would just like to mention for the record that this is not the only meeting where that has happened.  We have had connectivity problems in the -- in the main room in, of all places, Wellington, New Zealand, and some other venues.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Yes.
 >>TONY HARRIS:  And at the time, it was explained to me by the ICANN technical staff that this was due to people running some implementations in the room, and they were just taking all the bandwidth away, so I think in all fairness to our hosts, we should not leave a standing impression that this is the only venue that has had some problems with connectivity.
 >>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  That's a good point.  I see no one up here trying to say anything.  I see no one at the microphone, no one here, no one there.  In which case, I thank everyone and I end this meeting.  Thank you.