34th ICANN Meeting Mexico City, Mexico 03 March 09 ccNSO. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Good morning, everybody. We'll be starting in a couple of minutes. Okay. We're going to start everybody. Thanks very much for coming. Nancy, do you want to introduce me? No. [Laughter] >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: A couple of housekeeping things. This is -- this bit is the sort of like awareness of what we're going to be talking about for the next two days. But before I start, a few of you yesterday were here for tech day. And you wore spectacles. These were found underneath the tables on this side, I think, so if you've lost a pair of glasses, they're here. Secondly, some of you apparently would like to have this book. This is the book that has Hilde and Annebeth's paper in it on Internet Governance and it's a result of a conference in Sweden? Norway? Oslo. [Laughter] >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Somewhere up there. I'm teasing. Now, apparently if you want to get a copy of this -- and I can highly recommend it, there are some order forms up here, so if you come up and grab a form and fill it in, you can order a copy. That's right, isn't it, Annebeth? >>ANNEBETH LANG: Yes. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Good. So what everyone's hopefully seen the agenda, you know what we're doing, but there's really only one issue for us at this meeting that we need to spend some time on. The implementation plan for IDN ccTLDs, the second or third draft of that has been published and we will be looking at that tomorrow morning and Tina is going to come tomorrow and talk about that. But what I think we need to be concentrating on in certain sessions for today is one issue, and that -- or two issues, actually. That is, the apparent requirement from the board of ICANN that an IDN ccTLD manager must sign a document of responsibility, and the apparent requirement from the board -- I say "apparent" because there's actually nothing in writing -- the apparent requirement from the board that an IDN ccTLD manager will be required to make contributions to ICANN. Now, I do know that there is -- that the document of responsibility which has been published is obviously the basis upon which ICANN will be expecting you to sign, and there will be a paper in the not-too- distant future on proposing a finance model. But the issue is not to talk about the document itself and worry about the clauses, or for that matter worry about what the model might be. The issue is to try to find out why the board thinks that in respect to IDN ccTLDs there should be a different set of rules than there are to ASCII ccTLDs. The GAC's position, the Government Advisory Committee's position, is that -- in our claim, is that IDN ccTLDs should be treated precisely in the same way as ASCII ccTLDs, which basically means you can sign something or not and you can pay or not. Now, you know, most of you know my personal view is you should sign and you should pay, but that doesn't mean that I think you should have to. So this is the plan. Peter and Paul are coming to see us at 10:00 or 10:15. I have told them that we are going to ask them to explain to us why they see a difference between IDN ccTLDs and ASCII ccTLDs. Then at 1:30, we are going to the GAC, and it is -- and hopefully we can get some kind of joint position together. Shouldn't be too hard. The words themselves might be because you know what the GAC's like, but -- but the position itself should -- sorry, Martin -- but the position itself shouldn't be too hard. And then the intention is that we will go to the GAC again at 4:30, when they meet with the board, and so the board will actually be meeting with the GAC and us at 4:30, and hopefully we will be able to demonstrate to them that there is a united front and that the concept of mandatory agreements and payments is not going to be acceptable. So anyone got any questions on that before -- Roelof. >>ROELOF MEIJER: Chris, do you know if there are ccTLDs that are aligned with the GAC representatives, ccTLDs that want to have an IDN ccTLD? Because, I mean, if we as -- we are not really involved, it's not really a case for us, and I think that the case would be stronger if there was a front by the countries through the registries and their governments that are... >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Well, I can tell you that in the GAC on Sunday morning, they were discussing obviously this issue, and I know that there are a number of IDN ccTLD territories who are actually quite happy to sign something and are actually quite happy to pay, but don't think that you should have to. And so for example, Janis went around the room and Russia is comfortable and Bulgaria and Japan and Korea are comfortable with -- basically with documentation. You know, they think it's okay and they don't anything about the money yet but -- because there isn't a model, but nonetheless they're comfortable. The point is they say, "Yes, we'll do it, but you shouldn't have to make us." And the real question is this: If Australia -- and I know we don't need an IDN but I'm just going to use it as an example. If Australia said, "We're not signing and we're not paying. Give us our IDN," is the board going to say -- genuinely saying, "We will say no, you can't have it"? So that's -- I mean, we have to get to that. That's the nub of it. Are you actually going to sit there and say vague did not have dot Saudi or Australia can't have dot whatever it is in Australia. But I haven't answered your question properly yet. Yes, there are a number of registries here who want IDN ccTLDs and yes, their government people are here. But interestingly enough, the -- the loudest voices in the GAC are actually territories that don't particularly need or want an IDN ccTLD. As is always the case. Yeah. Anyone else got a question? There are more seats up at the front here, if you would like to come forward. Yes, Peter. >>PETER van ROSTE: Thanks, Chris. Do we know what other constituencies think in this regard, like ALAC? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Do we have another microphone? We don't have another mic? The GNSO's position is encapsulated in -- at least in part in the resolution that they passed recently. They say -- they believe that ccTLDs should sign some kind of document and should pay money. I don't think the ALAC -- or I'm not aware that the ALAC has a formal position. Does anybody -- I'm not aware that the ALAC has a formal position, Peter. But the GNSO certainly does. They think we should -- we should sign and pay. Which is understandable which is what they want to do is put everything on the same footing, so anyone else? Nigel. >>NIGEL ROBERTS: Actually, I think -- can you hear me? Yeah. I think Chris put it very well, actually, so summarize the position, but the question really is: Is there a difference between legacy ccTLDs and future IDN ccTLDs. Potentially you could say yes. This all goes to what is ICANN's authority over you. They could say that you predate ICANN, therefore, ICANN has no authority over you and we come together to work together with exchange of information and better practices and so on. Whereas a post-ICANN TLD of any kind -- g or cc -- derives its authority from ICANN. Except I don't think it does, because I don't think ICANN actually has that formal authority. Its authority it has is only by us coming together and saying that for the time being, we all work together. Therefore, I agree that we should have a common position. I agree that common position should be there should be no distinction between pre-ICANN ccTLDs and post-ICANN ccTLDs, whether they are C IDNs or not. But this is a fight that we're going to have. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Nigel. >> Generally, I agree with what you say that you should sign something or that you should pay something, but that you shouldn't have to. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Right. Can you hear me? Is that working? >>NIGEL ROBERTS: Would you like the microphone back, by the way? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Oh, thanks, Nigel. That's -- I can have two, then. I think there is one distinction, which is an important distinction, and that is that -- and I agree with you about the arguments both -- and there are arguments both ways. But there's one distinction, and that is, in respect to IDN ccTLDs, there is a requirement, a technical requirement, to abide by the IDNA protocol, which is developing, so it's not like 1591 or something like that, which is there. This is actually something that is developing and will continue to develop over time and in fact, is under revision right now. So there is a need to have an agreed -- some sort of acknowledgment from the IDN ccTLD that they will continue to comply with the protocol. The GAC's position on that is that they -- they acknowledge there is a need to do that and they don't know how. They're not sure how that could be done. And I'm -- there are plenty of ways it could be done but it's -- that is one difference. And the other thing of course -- and your point about, you know, the legacy and so on, you're right. I mean, I don't know if you were in the room. I think it was at the last meeting or the meeting before, where we ran a big situation on IDNs and Dennis Jennings and I had an exchange where we basically said there is a fundamental difference, which is with legacy ccTLDs, we've got them, you haven't, and with IDN ccTLDs, you've got them and we haven't. And that basically is how -- that's what it amounts to. Yeah? So I -- what I -- >>NIGEL ROBERTS: Chris? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes. Sorry. >>NIGEL ROBERTS: Yeah. Chris, I don't want to get into a Ping-Pong debate on this, but -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: You're about to. >>NIGEL ROBERTS: I'm about to. That's right. I don't think that's entirely correct. What you say is we've got them and you haven't, and so -- but the question is: What is the authority of ICANN to put something in the root. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah, I agree. >>NIGEL ROBERTS: It's the U.S. government who has that authority, not ICANN. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes. >>NIGEL ROBERTS: And we are coming together to work together, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. >>NIGEL ROBERTS: So the idea that they are doling out IDN ccTLDs to deserving applicants is simply not true. It's the local user community in those language communities that say, "We want to have this and we've got the backing for this," and ICANN recognizes that and that's where I think the authority derives. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yep. Anyone else? We're obviously going to be talking about this, as I said this morning when Peter and Paul arrive. Can I ask you, please, to speak up if -- to say -- to actually speak up if you have an opinion. Say something. And for those of you in the room who are actually in territories that want an IDN ccTLD, as Roelof has pointed out, the message is more powerful coming from you because Nigel doesn't need an IDN ccTLD and everyone's Nigel's position. It's been the same position. But if you are from somewhere that wants an IDN ccTLD, please speak up. I'm going to be fascinated to hear what the answer is to the question as to why. >> (Speaker is off microphone). >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes. >>ANDREI KOLESNIKOV: I'm Andrei from the Russian Federation. For us, it's pretty much clear that -- I mean, there is no question about IDN ccTLD for Russian Federation. The name has been selected. All the check has been run. Everything is ready. Technical have been tested. So we basically just are waiting for the final countdown from the ICANN. I mean, there is nothing -- not much things we can do except sit and wait for the signal to -- to do it. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sure. >>ANDREI KOLESNIKOV: That's it. That's our position. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: But your position is also, isn't, that whilst you might be happy to sign something, you shouldn't have to. >>ANDREI KOLESNIKOV: Well, of course there should be formal relations, of course, with ICANN. As we mentioned, we basically -- there's not much difference for us. It can be either the commercial contract with ICANN or it can be ongoing sponsorship like we do for many years already. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Uh-huh. >>ANDREI KOLESNIKOV: And it's -- I mean, it's -- I don't see much problems in this. Whatever -- whatever we receive from ICANN as a formal -- on for formal relations, we'll sign. That's it. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sabine? >>SABINE DOLDERER: Just a question, Andrei. Will you sign because you want to have a ccTLD? Will you sign anything? Or would you actually think because you have an urgent need or do you think -- so it's a matter of -- do you think you have a matter of choice? >>ANDREI KOLESNIKOV: No, I want to be clear, okay? This is -- this is important. For us, signing up the papers in either forum is just a little step to achieve the goal. I mean, we don't see -- for us, it's - - it doesn't matter what kind of contract, really. That's it. >>SABINE DOLDERER: But in principle, you would -- would you agree with the -- let's say with the principle that an IDN ccTLD should be treated equal than an ASCII ccTLD or would you say, oh, it's something completely different and can be treated like a gTLD? >>ANDREI KOLESNIKOV: I think that IDN TLD -- ccTLDs and ASCII ccTLDs will merge sooner or later. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Be the same. Yeah. Okay. >>ANDREI KOLESNIKOV: Because fast track is just a -- it's a fast track, okay? Well, we hope a fast track, okay. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It's a kind of slightly-faster-than-slow track, yeah. >>ANDREI KOLESNIKOV: They will merge. I mean, it's the same. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Thanks. Okay. We're going to start the -- in a minute, the IANA session with Kim and Olivier is going to dial in. Kim, do you want to -- We need to -- we need to try and get to a point with the GAC this afternoon where we -- we're on common ground. I think we pretty much are on common ground already, but we do need to work on that. And I have no clue as to what the board will say and what Peter will say this morning when we ask him the question. Okay. Kim, are you ready? Do we need to dial Olivier in? >> (Speaker is off microphone). >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Is he on -- is he there now? Olivier, are you there? Olivier? >>GABRIELLA SCHITTEK: (Speaker is off microphone). >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Oh, is it? Okay. So the line's open. We're just waiting for him to dial in, is that right? Okay. Perhaps you better wait. Don't want to start without him. While we're waiting, it's an interesting time zone to be in for people who live in Australia and New Zealand, because it's actually tomorrow in Australia right now. But tomorrow in Australia and New Zealand and Taiwan right now, it's actually Ian's birthday. So he's got a two-day celebration of his birthday because where he lives it's his birthday and it's not till tomorrow here that it's his birthday. But happy birthday. [Laughter] >>KIM DAVIES: All right. I'm going to start. Firstly, my apologies. I think the clarity of those slides in the back of the room, it's almost impossible to read, so I apologize in advance. I'm going to present to you on a couple of topics, and hopefully they'll be informative. I'm hopefully going to teach you something new today. I think most people in this room are not particularly technical, but for a change I'm going to talk about some very technical topics. We'll see how it goes. Firstly, I did something very basic but I thought I'd share it with you, which is that I've come to the realization in the last couple of months that I get asked how many TLDs there are probably about 20 times a week, and I thought I'd put together a little picture of exactly how many there are. So I'll just go through it very quickly. There's 280 TLDs right now. 11 are the testing IDN domains. One is dot ARPA, which I'm categorizing separately, as it's really one of a kind. There's 248 country codes right now that are delegated. There's 20 gTLDs. Now, of those gTLDs, 13 are sponsored top-level domains, three are what we call generic restricted, which are generic TLDs that were assigned in 2000 but have some kind of restrictions on registration. And then finally, we have four gTLDs that are pretty much totally unrestricted. Now, most interestingly for us is the 248 country codes. Right now, there's 242 of those that are derived from ISO 3166. There are six that are not. And of those six, we have three that are former countries that are due to be retired. Then we have three which we -- which I didn't really have a good word for, but I've just put it down as "exceptional current countries." And there we have dot uk, we have dot ac, and we have dot eu. In all three cases, they've been recognized, they have all the requirements of a ccTLD but they're not in the ISO 3166 standard. And finally, there's actually 246 -- >> (Speaker off microphone) >>KIM DAVIES: If you wish to be technical, they're on the ISO 3166 maintenance agency exceptionally reserved list. That's true. But there's actually 246 country codes in the ISO 3166 standard, which means there are actually four country codes right now that are not delegated: Dot um, dot eh, dot bl, and dot mf. So that's a summary for you. Okay. Moving on to actually something relevant: Technical conformance testing. This is a follow-up on something that I think I first raised at the São Paulo meeting. I don't know how long ago that was. Perhaps 2 1/2 years ago. Which was that I think as staff, we recognized that some of the technical tests that we do are not really relevant anymore, in terms of the way top-level domains operated. Furthermore, there are technical tests that would be appropriate for us to apply due to developments since we first started applying technical tests, and I think we did a public call for comments. We received a lot of comments back. Though mostly uniform in agreeing with our feelings about what should be changed, informally over the last two years I've presented at various forums such as CENTR technical workshops, APTLD, and so forth, discussing the kinds of changes that I think would be appropriate in terms of our procedures, checking for TLD changes, and what I'd like to present to you is three concrete changes that we intend to implement. In fact, we've started implementing on a sort of an ad hoc basis so far. And we've been able to do this slowly, because right now root zone management is fully manual. Whenever one of these checks files, we have a discussion with the TLD, we explain what the issue is, we explain why it's an issue, and they've pretty much always resolved the issue. But obviously in the context of automating root zone management, we need to formalize these down as they're put into software because in the future these will be fully automatic tests. So the three tests are prohibition on open recursive name servers, a more appropriate name server diversity requirement, and not allowing fragmentation of root zone referrals. And I'll try and explain to you what all those three things mean. Actually, open recursive name servers, I'm not going to try and explain what it means because I think at the last meeting, I gave a long presentation on this and you've probably all heard about the Kaminsky attack. It's not just the Kaminsky attack, though. It's other reasons why open recursive name servers are not desirable. And there's not really any good reason that you'd want open recursive name servers on an authoritative name server, so our aim there is to prohibit any authorities for TLDs from being open recursive name servers. Just as an aside -- there's no way you can see that in the back of the room. Dot SE has set up a pretty interesting Kaminsky Web site, which I just thought I'd mention at this point. I'll just mention all these slides are already on the IANA Web site, they're already on the ccNSO Web site, so if you want to follow along, if you can't see this, you can. Secondly, the second test we want to look at is network diversity of name servers. Right now, we have a very crude way of checking for network diversity. What we do is we ask that all the name servers not reside in the same slash 24. And what that means is if you look at the IP address of a name server, it's a set of four numbers. Those first three numbers kind of will be the same and that might have made sense perhaps 10 or 15 years ago but it doesn't make sense as a test right now, because the way networks are configured, that's not a good indicator at all as to whether all the name servers are sitting in the same network. In fact, what happens is that every IP address that you get to over the Internet is in what's called the global routing table using a protocol called BGP and in this global routing table, it explains the path to get from one network to another, and by looking at this global routing table, we can get a fairly good indication of which network is announcing which IP address. By looking at this global routing table, we get a much better indicator of the diversity of the networks providing upstream connectivity to name servers. So what we've proposed and what I'm going to talk about is requiring that you advertise your network through two different networks as seen in the BGP routing table, so-called two autonomous systems. Just to give an example. Here I have listed all the authorities for dot cx. There is six of them, different I.P. addresses. Some of the I.P. addresses look kind of similar, some don't. If we look at the routing table, it shows three different entities so we can go there and we say that the first I.P. address is announced through entity one. The second through another entity. And that whole group of the next four are all through the same Internet provider. But nonetheless, that's three distinct networks that would pass our requirement for a diversity of at least two. So that would pass. I don't know what I just did. So if we actually map all ccTLDs right now against this diversity requirement, almost all pass. Those that would not pass I have mapped as red. But we have a very high pass rate for matching that diversity requirement. I've shaded on the map just to give you a sense of how many just have two, how many have three, how many have four or more just to give an idea of sort of how diverse the networks are. All we care is that you are not in the red which is only having one. If we graph this over the past five years, this is how constant AS diversity has been in all different TLDs, including gTLDs. It has actually been remarkably constant. I think back in 2004, AS diversity for TLDs was 89%. I think right now it is like 91, 29% and it is obviously fluctuated over time but it has been remarkably constant. Now, one interesting thing is if you have read the draft gTLD applicant guidebook, we have actually required there that the same diversity test for V4 that we're applying within IANA -- and to be clear we are only talking about IPv4 here -- but for new gTLDs, we would apply the same diversity requirement for IPv6. This is a way of pushing the envelope a little to try and push IPv6 adoption. If we look at this chart to see how many match that IPv6 diversity requirement -- and this is just an academic exercise -- but we start off at 0% 2004. Back then we actually didn't have any IPv6 records in the root zone. Right now we're about 1/3 would match that diversity requirement, so certainly not a large number and not at a level where we could reasonably expect to enforce this test on current TLDs. If we graph any IPv6 support, it is better but still not anywhere near the kind of diversity that we have with IPv4. And if we map that -- and, again, this is just an academic exercise -- but you will see most countries would have difficulty passing that test. Those that are marked as yellow are those that just scrape in the diversity test. Those that are red don't have enough diversity. And actually I think it is a little unfair because this map kind of hides those that are gray, but the gray are the worst. They don't have any IPv6 support at all. But very few countries are in the green there. Okay. So that's my discussion about network diversity. And the third test I'm going to talk about is that referrals should not fragment. What I mean by that is that when a query comes to the root servers looking for a domain within one of your TLDs, it needs to send back a list of name servers, your name servers, in order for the lookup to carry on down the DNS hierarchy. There are certain conditions where that can happen where it actually causes a very complicated transaction to happen that's very inefficient, which we call fragmentation. Ordinarily, you have seen this kind of graph many times before, but a computer asks a name server where is IANA.org from the root server will get an answer "I don't know" but here are the dot org name servers. The classical response size that gets transmitted over the Internet needs to be no more than 512 bytes. If the root server needs to send back more than 512 bytes in order to give that list of name servers, it can't fit it all in one response and it needs to split it up into multiple responses. As I will hopefully demonstrate, it is not as simple as sending two packets. It is a lot more complicated. So here's what happens when a computer asks the root server about a domain and it doesn't fit in 512 bytes. It says, Where is IANA.org? It gets a response back is what we call truncated. It doesn't have all the answers in it, and it has got a little indicator on it that says, "I haven't given you all the answers. You need to query back and ask for the whole lot using a more complicated protocol called TCP." What happens is a transaction like this. You end up with packets flying back and forth, multiple packets, five, six transmissions in each direction and as opposed to that simple one to the name server and one back, you actually end up with five or six going in each direction that takes a very long time. If you can imagine, the load on the root servers of doing something like this has substantially increased as opposed to doing that very simple answer. This is what we are trying to avoid by applying this test, which is we want to make sure that when an answer comes back from the root server it didn't need to split it up into multiple parts and do this very complicated transaction. Now, what can you do to limit your exposure to this problem? Well, you can reduce the number of name servers. The more name servers you have, the longer the response and the more likely you are to hit this limit. You can also take advantage of something called name compression. And you probably already know about this, even if you didn't know that you did because you would have noticed that, for example, all the root name servers have a very consistent naming pattern. There is a very good reason for that. The way the Internet transmits names across the DNS protocol look something like this. I won't go into too much detail, but the benefit of name compression is if you have the same ending on domains, that does not need to be repeated throughout the response and it can much shorten the response size. So if you have a consistent naming pattern of your name servers, they all end in the same domain or something similar, you actually get a compression benefit and it reduces the size of your response. So there is a trade-off there. If you put all your name servers under a single domain, if that domain has problems, that could cause problems for all your name servers. Having some diversity there is actually useful. Having a reduced number of distinct domains as your authorities will achieve a compression benefit. So the bottom line of all this summary is as follows: The number of TLDs that have open recursive name servers right now is 9.6%. The number of TLDs without diverse IPv4 connectivity is 7.2%. The number of TLDs without diverse IPv6 connectivity is 68.7%. The number of TLDs without any IPv6 support whatsoever is 41%. And the number of TLDs with referrals that can fragment at the root level is 4.3%. So based upon those numbers, our sense is it's reasonable to apply the test on those three that are well below the 10% mark. And like I said, in our discussions informally over the last couple of years, those that have run into these problems have understood why we are applying the test once we've discussed it and have had no problems addressing it. Okay. So that was my discussion of technical checks. I will move onto the next topic which is how IDN ccTLD applications will be processed by IANA in theory. I say "in theory" because the policy is not set yet. This is a presumption about how things might work. Right now when we do a delegation request, the sponsoring organization, the operator, the registry, whatever you want to call it, they submit a bunch of documents which we call supporting documentation to IANA. We do an evaluation. We produce a report. That report goes to the ICANN board. The ICANN board votes to approve it. And ultimately -- sorry, there is one other piece. You have to be on the ISO-3166 list. With those two conditions and all of your supporting documentation and the relevant listing in the ISO-3166 list, you get back the delegation of your top-level domain. That's the way it works today. Now, with IDN ccTLDs, the process for us won't be much different. Obviously, we no longer have the ISO-3166 list to look at in terms of deciding what the TLD is. We all know this. So what we will have is an additional process before called string evaluation. I won't go into too much detail because I know you probably know this already and it will be discussed further. But effectively, either the government or the sponsoring organization can approach ICANN and ICANN is distinct from IANA. There will be a different department, some different entity running this other than IANA. It will provide supporting documentation on why that string is appropriate. And that ICANN department will provide back a report, some kind of confirmation that it has been approved once it has gone through all that acceptance process. Now, with that in hand, the sponsoring organization will then go through that same process it would normally do with IANA for an ASCII ccTLD which is sending that supporting documentation but they will just add one extra piece of information which is they will take that string approval that they received from ICANN, add it as a supporting document to IANA and send it in. But, otherwise, the process will be exactly the same. So that's really how we see IDN ccTLD applications working. My third topic is signing the root zone. ICANN's strategic plan is to be operationally ready. I think we have talked about out test bed in the past. We have been working on this, and we are ready to go once we have signals on how that can be done. The DOC did outreach, I'm sure you are all aware. They called for comments. That call for comments ended November 24th. What's the result of that call for comments? Well, they haven't said anything yet, but the media certainly seemed to have opinions. And I think it is best summarized by just one single quote which is "Internet experts are siding overwhelmingly with ICANN." I think it is fair to say the assessment of the comments that were received by the DOC is they would like to see the root zone signed, and they believe ICANN is the appropriate body to do that. Interim trust anchor repository, my final topic, something we just launched. The interim trust anchor repository is a mechanism to publish keys of the top-level domain that use DNSsec. Right now because the root zone is not signed, it is not possible to use a single trust anchor for the root zone. Those who wish to use DNSsec have to implement the trust anchors manually for all the top-level domains. This is a stop-gap measure. It is not designed to replace signing the root zone. It is designed to make things easier until the root zone is signed. So our aim is to decommission this service once the root zone is signed. Quick overview of how DNSsec is meant to work and how it works under the trust anchor repository. Let's assume those in green there are signed. A validation for a computer would work basically to validate up the chain to the root zone. And then inside the computer would have a trust anchor for the root. And then it could compare its validation against the root signature and validate the domain is okay. However, the root is not signed, as we know. So we have a situation more like this right now. So the validation happens the same way, but the root is not signed, so inside the computer it needs to have a list of trust anchors for the top-level domains. And this is what the ITAR seeks to do. It gives you a list of trust anchors that can be installed to validate those top-level domains. So the benefits of this, firstly, we received a list of recommendations from RIPE. We believe we met all those recommendations. We believe it is simple to use both for top-level domain operators and for end users. It is quite simple to configure for end users to use this software. It is very easy for top-level domain operators to launch trust anchors. In fact, it is almost fully automated. It is a Web form. It is exactly what you would like root zone management to be already today. But for the trust anchor repository, because we didn't have all those legacy constraints, we've made it a very simple process. It works with different kinds of DNS software, different protocols. It is not proprietary. It almost fully automated and it helps DNSsec deployment. This is a screen shot. You can pull it up. It is not that interesting to look at, but it is the effect that counts, right? One thing that might be interesting is that it is the first site we have at ICANN that uses the so-called green bar, the PVSSL certification. It just adds an extra layer of trust that when you connect to it, it is really ICANN that you are speaking to. So it is available now. ITAR.IANA.org. That's it. Grab your trust anchors. That's kind of my summary. I hope it was useful. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Any questions for Kim? I would like to say congratulations for introducing yet another acronym, ITAR. And it is good that it begins with an "I" because that fits with the general -- >>KIM DAVIES: That's right. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Ondrej, did you have a question? >>ONDREJ FILIP: Ondrej Filip. Just a question regarding the ITAR and root signing. Is there any time frame or are there any steps that have to be done to sign the root or is there anything moving in that regard? >>KIM DAVIES: Right now we're waiting to find the outcome of the consultation that the U.S. government has done. >>ONDREJ FILIP: So we are waiting for NTIA response? >>KIM DAVIES: Right. We have, more or less, been instructed not to move forward with some of our DNSsec initiatives, not to do outreach until the result of their outreach has been concluded. So we're in a holding pattern right now. >>ONDREJ FILIP: Thank you very much for ITAR actually. It was very helpful for us. Thank you. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sabine. Sorry. Who's that? >> Sorry. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Carry on. >> HAN CHUAN LEE: Sorry, hi. Han Chuan from Singapore. (inaudible.) Is there any consultation taken into consideration in your checks? >>KIM DAVIES: Depends on what you mean by "taken into consideration." Any case is tested but it is seen as coming from the same network. If you wanted to have a pathological case where you have a single name server that is Anycasted through a single autonomous system, that is still a single point of failure. If you misconfigure your routing announcements for that particular Anycast instance, then you still have a single point of failure. If you had two sets of multicast servers set up, you would pass this test. It would only fail in a multi--- Anycast scenario if you just had one. Does that answer your question? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sabine? >>SABINE DOLDERER: Actually, I have two comments and I want to go also down that line. Of course, it is a pathological case but, on the other hand side, I think if you look on the autonomous system, the numbers, it doesn't reflect real network accessibility. If you have another pathological case, having two small ISPs, two different AS numbers, it is also a single point of failure, which is the Internet connect where they are referring to. So I'm not sure if it's -- while I see that it doesn't -- it is not a real problem concerning to the requirements of the fulfillment of a lot of ccTLDs. I'm not sure if it's really a requirement which I see the technical background, where I would say it doesn't make -- I think it would be something which is very good being a warning if there is sort of a best practices to look at if you are connected with different AS numbers. If you are only connected with one, please try to know what you are doing like having one large Anycast network. If you are connected to two AS numbers but both of them are only connected to one small Internet exchange, it is maybe better to look for another place. But come up with a set of ideas where you say, please, look into it when you try to configure it. But I don't think it is good to set this as a requirement for actually changing things in the root or using the root changes. >>KIM DAVIES: Right. It is a good point to clarify because, I think, as is the case today. We always envision that the root zone requirements are not hard requirements. It will fail technical validation. But if you come to IANA staff today, if you come back and we said you failed certain things, if you have a good justification, we can manually push through the change anyway. If someone did fail any of these three tests and had a compelling reason, we would be reasonable and certainly let it go through. In our experience, 99% of cases that's a genuine problem they weren't aware of and very happy to be alerted. None of this is 100% insofar as it would absolutely reject a change and you would have no right to appeal. Right now in the manual processing you are e-mailing us back and saying what your issue is. In the foreseeable future with the automation systems, you will get the error appearing, some dial-up box will come up and you can type in your rationale and that will go to IANA staff and that will start a dialogue. At the end of that discussion, we can either push it through to skip the technical checks or it will remedied. >>SABINE DOLDERER: Do you think IANA has the right to reject the change? In which cases do you think IANA staff when they say "we are not convinced, we don't want to do it" that they say we don't do it? Where do you think is the borderline? I know most people are very sensitive. Most people will listen. Most people will actually take actually the good recommendations, which they are, indeed, but the question is at which point you will draw the line. >>KIM DAVIES: I think the only one I consider mandatory -- and I can't think of any reason why we would allow it -- is LAN delegations because they can cause operational issues. If a country really wanted to forge ahead with a setup that had inconsistent zones between the different name servers and it was all sitting in a single LAN, sitting in a building somewhere, if they really wanted to force the issue, that's their prerogative, I suppose. So I think almost all TLD operators, if not all TLD operators, are trying to perform a good service and would never have to come to that question. I think it would only be LAN delegations where we would put our foot down and say it is demonstrably wrong and it doesn't work with that set of name servers. >>SABINE DOLDERER: Thank you. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Anyone else? Steven? Calvin. >> Steven Deerhake. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sorry. Can I ask everybody for the sake of the describes could you please say who you are so that they can -- so that you can be written into the record permanently. >> Steven Deerhake, dot as. I was in the process of doing that -- [laughter] -- as the record notes. What are the mechanics where the TLDs are submitting a DS record to you guys to be a trust anchor? >>KIM DAVIES: You go to itar.iana.org. There is an add anchor form there. You put in your trust anchor and hit submit. Almost instantaneously the admin contact will get an e-mail asking them to approve the listing request. Once they confirm -- I won't say immediately but in the span of about 24 hours, it should appear in the trust anchor repository, assuming there is a matching DNSkey. That's the basic work flow. >>STEPHEN DEERHAKE: Your form is well-hidden. >>KIM DAVIES: It is on the right. It is like an anchor with a plus sign. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Calvin, can you put your hand up? >>CALVIN BROWNE: I just want to ask quickly, in my talk, EDNS, is that fragmentation check still valid? Is there any idea of the adoption of EDNS? >>KIM DAVIES: I think what EDNS is, just to explain, is an optional add-on protocol to the DNS that allows for much bigger response sizes that would mean you don't need to fragment. I think if EDNS implementation is widespread, this could definitely be revisited. I think one of the key concerns are for the root zone fragmentation, which is amplification of text and so forth. The attacker doesn't have to put an EDNS flag in the query so they will get back a fragmented response anyway. I think right now EDNS has much an effect on whether to do this test or not. In the back? >> Bill Semich, dot nu. Do you have any idea what the implementation percentage is among ISPs for DNSsec, you know, the resolvers? >>KIM DAVIES: My pure speculation and guess would be almost non- existent. You know, I know there is trials by some major ISPs and essentially in the U.S. and others but I don't think there is widespread implementation of DNSsec validating resolvers. We are hopeful that the ITAR will help spur that a little, but time will tell. But I don't think there is any kind of widespread implementation. I think our colleagues from Sweden probably have a better perspective on this than I do. I will pass the microphone now. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Kim. >> Thank you, Kim. Anne-Marie Lowinder from dot se. I can only speak for the Swedish market. But I think all of the largest resolver operators are running DNSsec and validating DNSsec. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Anyone else? Yes, Kim? Go ahead. >>KIM DAVIES: While I have your attention, I just thought I would raise an additional issue that I didn't talk about which is with the IDN ccTLDs, as IANA, we have a problem which is obviously we're expecting once the policy gets approved and implemented that we're going to see a rapid influx of these requests. And obviously as staff, we need to process these in a timely way. I would like you to think about and perhaps not answer straight away but come back with an answer about what you think "timely" actually is. Obviously we can process them in parallel to a certain extent, but at some point we need to add more staff and we need to ramp up an ability to do these all in a timely fashion. So any indications, whether it's tomorrow in the fast-track session or just privately, as to what you think a reasonable time is, just for perspective. Right now with regular ASCII ccTLDs, assuming they are fully supported and there is no contention, there is no hostile redelegation, usually we estimate they take two to three months to implement. Not all of that is staff time. It needs to be scheduled for board approval, that kind of thing. Generally it is two to three months between us getting all the documents and between them being implemented. I would like you just to consider what you think "timely" would be in the context of us suddenly getting 40, 50 applications all at once. Thank you. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you very much, as usual, for a very interesting and informative presentation. Thank, Kim, everybody. [applause] Okay. We were hoping to have Olivier on the line to talk briefly about the IANA working group. There was a little bit of confusion, but he will be on the line tomorrow for the council meeting and we'll deal with that then. The next session is our session with Peter and Paul Twomey. Paul is on his way and will be here shortly. So for the moment, Peter, do you want to just chat about a couple of things and then we'll get into the substantive stuff when Paul gets here? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I'll give this one to Paul when he gets here. Good morning, everybody. Mostly, I understand that you want to talk about agreements and money, and I think we probably ought to wait for Paul to come back on that, although Bart is also here and can probably answer a lot of that from a staff perspective as well. Where I will perhaps just start while Paul is arriving is to say we did make the announcements yesterday about the change to the CEO position, and one of the things we do want to do is make sure we've got -- we've heard -- as we go through into the new process, that we get feedback from the constituencies about what you think your important issues are in relation to the new position. The job description's already out there. I'm not asking you to edit the job description by any means, but we do want to know what kind of a focus, what kind of emphasizes, how you see things might change as we go forward with the new one, so that we have a process that we'll be consulting through the leadership with that. Paul, I was just explaining that most of the topics they want to talk about are right in your camp, about money -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That was a handful, wasn't it. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: -- and signing contracts. I've obviously got a long history with this organization in relation to both of those issues as well, so I'm quite happy to give both my personal position and what the official position is. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Perhaps if I can just start by saying we started at 9:00 with a sort of "let's look at the issues for the next couple of days" and we talked briefly about the fact that the major issue for us is once we've got a look at the document of responsibilities and all that sort of stuff and come back and talk about the implementation plan, what we'd like to talk about right now is to perhaps get some kind of understanding from whoever as to why it appears -- although there's nothing official that we can find said anywhere -- that the position is that there should be a mandatory -- there's a requirement to sign a document and there will be a requirement to pay money under the IDN ccTLD. So it's not about the model for money or the words of the DOR. It's about the issue that both of those are required, as opposed to the ASCII ccTLDs where they are not. Okay? >>PAUL TWOMEY: So I think my first input, which will be to what Peter just said about the description of the role for the CEO is the capacity to deal with ambushes at a short notice. There are two good questions. Perhaps let me just come to the funding one first. The reality of IDN ccTLDs is that as Module 7 of the work plan says, these are new services and they frankly just cost -- they cost, and there's new costs involved with new services. And there's no proposal yet on the table about specific ways of meeting with that. We've had, you know, consultations with quite a number of cc's. There's been some suggestions from some cc's potentially of some percentage of revenue from the sales of these new TLDs in a local currency, that these are ideas that are floating around. And, you know, obviously we'd like to, you know, potentially look at those models, but the fundamental issue still keeps coming back, which is: It is a new service which costs, and who should make a contribution to those costs. And that's -- I mean, that's sort of the rock and the hard place. If the answer is, "Well, the cc's don't," then people need to think of what you've just said. What you're saying is the 67% or 70% of the gTLD registrants who live in the United States are paying for it. And think that through in terms of everything else you say about how you want ICANN and those structures to work. All right? If what you're saying is, you want a free ride on the citizens of the United States, if you want a free ride on the citizens of the United States, you want to say, "I want these additional services offered but they will need to be paid somehow but we're not going to pay for them" - - now I know I'm sort of exaggerating. I'm stretching to make the point. But it's -- there's no free money somewhere. It's going to cost. And so somebody has to contribute to those costs. So that -- I think that's at the heart of the discussion. And, you know, I'll have to say, frankly, if I was reporting board sentiment, when people say, "Well, there should be, you know, some sort of voluntary contribution," they say, "Well, I look at the history of the last 10 years and say 'voluntary contributions from the ccTLDs' is not a phrase that leaves me with a great deal of confidence, if I'm a board member, because I haven't seen that meet." So I mean, I'm just trying to convey some of the sentiments from some of the board members. So, you know, we still don't have a proposal firmly on the table. There has been these ideas floated, but that's the -- I think that's the rationale and the thinking. I'm happy to take questions and dialogue on that. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Well, while you're thinking of perhaps some more questions for Paul, perhaps I can just move into some thoughts about the agreements. I originally proposed what became the exchange of leaders approach back in about 2001/'2 to Stuart Lynn. We may have had a lot better ride if it had been accepted at this stage. But the reality is that things have moved on. I give a number of talks, as I'm sure many of you do in your own communities, about how we originally set up the original ccTLD managers, and the acronym "FOJ" comes to play, and that's just "Friends of Jon." And so Jon Postel allocated these original ccTLDs to people that either he knew personally or were recommended by a friend. So there was just an original personal or one- step-removed sort of web of trust. And that was entirely appropriate in those days. And part of what made it appropriate was that the FOJs, as they were, were people who had Internet DNA deeply embedded in their core. They and you and we were all the people who were building the Internet in their countries, and in 99% of cases, or perhaps 98.5% of cases, these are people who are still there today, are still building the Internet, are still responsible, in our leadership, and there really hasn't been much of a problem. And I can distinctly remember a major change in the ICANN board approach when I'm not quite sure why, but Vint Cerf came to New Zealand and toured around, and having met all the Internet pioneers in New Zealand and seeing that all these strappy New Zealanders who were coming to ICANN were, in fact, part of the community, not opposed to it, Vint went on record in the press in New Zealand and said, "ICANN's got this thing wrong in relation to ccTLDs." And if you remember, at that stage there was allegations of blackmail and trying to force contracts, trying to tie people to commitments, to binding policy that hadn't then been being made, and fees, et cetera. And really, it was meeting some of the Internet pioneers and recognizing that the ccTLD managers were, in fact, part of the institution, not trying to break it. But time has moved on and we're now talking about a totally different thing than we were when Jon was allocating these things. We're now talking about something that's become the operating system for the world and is going to become even more intimately involved in everyone's lives socially, politically. There wasn't Facebook. There wasn't Skype. There wasn't -- there wasn't almost any of these things even contemplated. And it's about to take another quantum leap with the new IDNs and the new gTLDs. And the business and practical, social, economic realities of the world have moved on. And as a minimum, we have to have relationships that people can trace and can track and can -- and can relate. So why do we have to have -- well, which leads to why we have to have agreements. People have to know what's there. Why they have to be mandatory is because the level of formality of the world, in my view, just has moved on. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Let me perhaps take questions. Do you think -- yeah. I thought so. Roelof, you're first. Sabine, you're second. >>ROELOF MEIJER: Well, maybe it's better to ignore the phrase "having a free ride on the citizens of the U.S." considering the present economic situation. [Laughter] >>ROELOF MEIJER: And it could also be the price that one has to pay for the supervision of the root. I understand the argument of having to pay for services. But it still doesn't explain why one has to pay for new services, and we don't pay for the existing ones. I think that ICANN will remember that for several times, we have asked an explanation of the cost of the service provided to us and it's been impossible to have them. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That is coming. >>ROELOF MEIJER: Yeah. I've heard that for the time I've been here. Which is four years now. So that's obviously a difficult thing. So the question remains why existing TLDs don't have to pay, if they're not willing, and all the new ones, the cc -- the IDNs will have to pay. I think it's unfair. You either make everybody pay or you keep this voluntary approach. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So Paul, do you want to just respond to that? >>PAUL TWOMEY: I think that's right. And the other point I'd make is that there will be released data on -- the finance committee -- there's a major issue in discussion in the finance committee about releasing the data for the costs and breaking down the costs through the functional reporting. I'm looking at my chief operating officer in the back of the room. It won't happen during this meeting, but we expect it will happen -- >>DOUG BRENT: (Speaker is off microphone). >>PAUL TWOMEY: Next four to six weeks. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: And can I just -- in the next four to six weeks. And can I just clarify, are we talking about breakdown of just in respect to IDNs or are we talking about breakdown in respect to everything? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Well, can I just take this back a step? Because again, for a long time I was in that same position, asking for this kind of information, because I can -- and I want to get a -- get some sense of whether this is still valid. And at the Bucharest meeting, a working group chaired by Patricio came back with a resolution which had the unanimous support, I think, of the ccTLDs then in Bucharest, and that was that the ccTLD managers there said that they would pay their share of the costs of running IANA as long as the material was made available, they would -- they would [inaudible]. And they also agreed to pay a share of the -- some component, not yet identified, of the overall running costs of ICANN because it was accepted that there was a role to play in having a body that provided the coordination role that ICANN provided. So I guess, Patricio, I'll ask you or any other members of the community whether that sentiment is still alive. Is there an acceptance by the ccTLD managers that they should pay their share or their fair share, if we can determine what that is, of the costs of running IANA, and is there any sense that on top of that, there should be some -- some component of the general overhead just for the mere existence of ICANN and the mere existence of an organizing body. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sabine, do you want to say something? >>SABINE DOLDERER: I think I have two comments. I -- first of all, I think it's important to stay realistic, and we have the current situation. Of course we -- of course some of us were friends of Jon Postel and we are here and I completely acknowledge that we have to pay for our services, what we get. We don't have pay for all the [inaudible] lengthy things which ICANN is doing, but I think it's fair to pay for services [inaudible] and I think one could say that also as an argument to board members. But, on the other hand, side, I'm -- I would strongly oppose to enforce contracts, first of all, to ccTLDs but also to new IDN ccTLDs because I don't think they are enforceable. I think it's good to have let's say common understandings in place. I think it's good to have the acknowledgment of each other, but, on the other hand, side, ICANN is not in the position to enforce those contracts. ICANN has not the political capacity, in my perspective, to really enforce payment or to enforce -- enforce contracts, because if you think about -- let's say take one huge country somewhere in Asia having registered an IDN TLD and is not paying, what will happen? Look about the U.N. There are contracts in place. There's a huge country in North America not paying since years. Who is enforcing them? Who throws them out through the U.N.? They -- so I think we have to be realistic. We are in a framework where enforceable contracts are because of the global nature more possible, and therefore, we have to search for let's say working methods together in good faith, where of course the money comes in in some way, and where we as an industry can show that we are responsible. But I don't think we should go through a model which works perfectly if you are in one country, have one legal system, and have a course to decide on and you can enforce it. That's not the case. And so I don't think it's possible. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Sabine, can I just ask that we park the enforceability of contracts? I think that's a very, very good question, not just as a lawyer, but also as representing one of the parties to that contract. What I want to pick up on, perhaps, is your first comment, which was just that very brief acknowledgment that the ccTLD managers should pay for the services. And I guess I'm still wanting to make sure that that is the general sense of the room. Is there anybody who doesn't think that ccTLD managers should pay for the services component? I also take your point that you don't want to pay for other things that ICANN does. For example, I assume you're thinking about some of the gTLD policy issues. >>SABINE DOLDERER: I have only one comment. I'm willing to pay for services and I'm also willing to pay some share, but I'm not willing to pay for something which is not related to a sort of -- I don't want -- I'm not willing to pay taxes. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Yeah. I think I just -- I think I just repeated what you said and you've just -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Lesley. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I think we're now very clear. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No. Hang on. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Is there anybody who doesn't want to do what Sabine has just said? Because I think that's an important starting point for us. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It depends what it means, I think. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Yeah. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Lesley. >>LESLEY COWLEY: Lesley Cowley from Nominet.uk. Clearly there are some concerns coming from the board about contracts and money. I understand that. I think the board needs to hear that there are concerns from cc's about contracts and money. None of this is new. This has been the case for many, many years, of course. Rather than have a negotiation or a vote in the room where we kind of aren't very clear as to what we're agreeing to anyway, I would suggest that maybe the -- the information that Doug was referring to earlier will give us some greater clarity on costs which might be a very useful starting point for a discussion about this. It would be very useful to have this worked through, again, as an issue in order to stop this perennial discussion about contracts and money. >>PAUL TWOMEY: Thanks, Lesley. Sorry, I've swallowed this now. I'm just going to make two observations. One is in the data which we will release, I want to make quite a clear distinction between what I will call "the IANA function" and what in some reporting previously has been referred to as "the IANA" because I want people to understand this very clearly. In the operation of the IANA function, there are staff and other resources allocated that are not just Leo Vegoda and Kim Davies and Barbara Roseman who are operating a database in Marina del Rey. So if you just think about a redelegation process and the staff and the resources involved in redelegation processes, which involves lawyers, involves regional liaisons, which can be very labor-intensive and take quite a long period of time, they will be included in the calculation of what the IANA function is. Because that is what is the process. Now, it's a quite important issue to think through, because if the -- if -- we will present data which says, "This is the total cost for us to produce the IANA function," and we will put detail. We will put detail behind what constitutes that number. But the -- you know, in some respects, the reality of that is that if you were to say, you know, "I want to allocate each of those -- that cost per cc" or "How does it distribute across the cc's," the reality is it doesn't distribute evenly. You know, some cc's, you know, if you want to put it this way, in a particular year, cost way much more money to service than another cc in a particular year. And that's going to be an interesting part of our discussion. But I just wanted to say that's what we'll try to produce is that total IANA function cost, and we will give behind it so that you can see that. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: May I just add some organizational background to this? Three years ago, we got a new chief operating officer, Doug, who is there (indicating). Well, I thought you were coming up for three, Doug. Is it only two? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: He looks like he's coming up for three, but actually it's only two. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: So two years ago we got a chief operating officer, and just less than that, we got a chief financial officer, and really it's only been with the changes at the administration level that this kind of thing is actually focused. I can tell you that the board finance committee has been driving the function-based reporting, which wasn't available previously, so it was really difficult to get this information. I think I can also report that I am driving a different kind of approach to this, and that is to rely on the transparency issues and the bylaws. I think historically ICANN felt threatened in a number of ways before WSIS, and there was a sense that some of this information, if published, could be used against us. I'm slightly more -- I'm much more confident about the future of ICANN, and I think we can be confident that publishing this kind of information isn't going to carry, you know, the kind of threats that people were concerned about before. So I think we can get this information out there and we will share it. Now, we're going to do that, I guess, partly because of the indications from Sabine and the historic indication I mentioned earlier, that if this information is available, there is this kind of understanding that people will use it to calculate methods of payment. We don't want to go through this exercise and give you all this information just for you to simply say, "Hmm, that's interesting." You know, we're doing this for the reason that this has to be used for calculating payments. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes. But you're presumably -- you are presumably, however, going to allow for the possibility of some questions and some discussion about the numbers. I mean, because I want to make sure in the same way that -- I mean, you're saying I'm relying on a resolution that was passed in Bucharest and an indication from Sabine and that's fine but I think I would anticipate that the feeling in the room would be the production of the numbers means we actually know where we are. We can start talking about it. We've got something to work on, and we can -- we can then come to -- we can then negotiate what needs to be done. Does that -- that's what -- that's really what you're talking about, isn't it? It's not just the slavish acceptance of a number. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Oh, absolutely. We will issue a whole lot of documents and you will get a chance to comment. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Fantastic. >>PAUL TWOMEY: Chris, can I make a comment? My second comment, because I think it's really important for history purposes to be -- this word "contract" we should be very, very careful with it. The DOR that's proposed in a piece of paper is an accountability framework based on the existing accountability frameworks that are being increasingly used in the ASCII world and which drew from thinking that came from the ccNSO itself. So the history of the terms in that document come from, "Can we track back to a ccNSO piece of work itself?" The one thing -- the one distinction that I focus on, Sabine, which is quite different to, I think, what you were saying, with new IDN ccTLDs, the one thing we're talking about is we don't have 30 years of stability to rely on when it comes to the introduction of the IDNA protocol and how it's all going to work. And so it may all be fine, but if there is a difficulty, if difficulty emerges technically in the way in which it's operated, the one distinction is that there needs to be some way in which we can ensure -- at least without respect to this, be some way that you can ensure that there is a dialogue between the cc manager and ourselves about any technical issue. And if you actually look at the wording, it's quite -- it just simply calls upon the need for dialogue. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I actually had Nigel next but as the microphone is there, I know you won't mind Nigel. Roelof, Sabine and then Nigel. >>ROELOF MEIJER: Talking about the data that we will soon get, maybe -- maybe it's better to push it one step further. Because I think it would be very useful if you could already make a distinction between different types of services rendered by IANA. For instance, I think it would be very logic if IANA had a separate price or maybe even a per- hour price for redelegations. I don't think it's very wise to spread the cost of redelegations over all ccTLDs and other TLDs, and I think it's -- it's just like most registries do. We have different transactions and those different transactions have different prices. And I think otherwise, we -- we will probably be discussing the basis of whatever any registries should pay for another two years, and now on the basis of actual data of IANA, so -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Roelof, I genuinely don't think it's reasonable to expect an organization to completely tailor, you know, some -- for every single organize -- for every single one of us. There has to be a -- >>ROELOF MEIJER: That's not what I'm saying. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Then I must have misunderstood. >>ROELOF MEIJER: It's not per registry but per transaction. So resolving has a certain price, depending on -- in which class -- size class you are, for instance. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. >>ROELOF MEIJER: And a redelegation has a certain price. Or it's -- if it's a complex one, it's even more expensive. But it's not very logic to have everybody pay for the few redelegations that happen, and for the very few problematic redelegations that we have. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Doug, do you want to say something? >>DOUG BRENT: Just a very -- Doug Brent, chief operating officer at ICANN. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Two years. >>DOUG BRENT: Yeah. Two years, by the way. Two years and two months. A quick response to Roelof. I think if we had Kim or someone stand up here from the IANA, it would almost certainly -- there he is -- it would almost certainly be the case that the most complex -- each delegation, probably the more complex delegation, the more expensive delegation comes from the countries who have the least mature ccTLD infrastructure, and so there's almost always an inverse relationship in the cost between, you know, the more mature larger, more established ccTLDs, what it costs to interact with them and then the ones that are less established, you know, from countries with lower infrastructure. So that would be a real challenge in terms of doing that kind of per- hour charge. It's vastly different. A transaction is vastly different, depending on the organization we're dealing with. Just one other point on this financial information. I -- my expectation is this is a dialogue. You know, reporting is sort of an Hydra. You chop up one head and 10 more appear, 10 more questions appear. So I'm sure as we publish this data, it will be a dialogue with the ccTLDs and ccNSO about what does this number mean, what's the basis for this. So it's -- so I expect that that will ongoing as a dialogue. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Doug. Sabine, you were next. >>SABINE DOLDERER: I have a comment about the IDN difficulty. I'm not sure that IDNs are so very difficult. The current -- the current IDN protocol as it's defined is that the application changes the IDN string into an ASCII string and then it goes up to the DNS, so the only thing what actually is different is that the DNS string is not two characters but it's an ASCII string which is a little bit more characters. And I don't see the dramatical within the IANA function that on the table that is a two-ASCII code instead of more than two- ASCII code. So the real technical differences -- difficulties are, from my perspective, not so really obvious. Nobody couldn't explain me that in the past. So I know that there are interpretation changes, so that parts of the Unicode table, when they were translated into the ASCII has changed, but that is something which, from my perspective, does not really concern the ICANN or IANA function, because that does -- it may -- maybe what could happen is that if you now register the current translation from an IDN string into an ASCII string which at the moment represents a large country somewhere, and the -- and let's say that the standard changes and now the translation from the IDN string to the ASCII string is not different, that may cause some problems and maybe somebody want to talk then that you should also register another ASCII string for the same country. But I don't see a real big issue at the moment on the DNS level with regard to IDN. >>PAUL TWOMEY: Thanks for that. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: You got the two technical gurus here who can obviously respond. >>PAUL TWOMEY: No. All I can say is I wish I had the same confidence of reporting from the people who have been advising us through this process. They're not giving us that degree of confidence. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No. >>PAUL TWOMEY: They are simply saying, "We don't know." And maybe that's the nature of it. So I'm not going to keep going on in dialogue about this -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Let's not, because it's an intensely technical -- >>PAUL TWOMEY: It is. Yeah. But we're just getting advice from people that say, "We just don't know," and as a consequence, it's important that we can have a way of having a dialogue with someone if we need to look at an issue. That's the advice we're receiving. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Nigel, you've been very patient. Thank you. >>NIGEL ROBERTS: I'm a very patient guy. As you know. I agree with something Peter said at the very start of this discussion. That this is a new thing. But that's actually a good thing. That means effectively for the first time, as I see it, since we've been coming to all these meetings, we're actually forging ahead and doing something new in the cc space. I disagree with something Sabine said earlier about enforceability. The United States, or whichever country she was referring to, that wasn't paying its United Nations dues is a sovereign. Short of invading, there's no way you can do anything about that. Peter said let's park the issue of enforceability. Now when an experienced and respected lawyer says "Let's park the issue of enforceability," I begin to think it's enforceable. And let's face it, whether it's enforceable or not, I was brought up to believe you don't sign an agreement that you believe is unenforceable or that you don't intend to stick to the terms that you've agreed on it. That's sophistry. I think the problem for a lot of people historically and coming back into this and seeing the discussion that we're having here, that this hasn't gone away, is something that Stephane once described as "bindingness." Many countries around the world of varying different shapes, sizes, kind of feel a little uncomfortable about signing an open-ended agreement that even if we have a situation whereby we trust everybody in ICANN -- and, by and large, I think we do these days -- to be good- intentioned, agreements like this that last into the long term are a bit like a constitution. You want to make sure that if in 10 years' time or 20 years' time less sympathetic -- let's put it no stronger than that -- people are in charge, that you're not going to be disadvantaged. So I think the message I would put is: Don't underestimate the philosophical objection rather than it's -- of course we'll pay for the IANA services. Just tell us how much and let's see if it's reasonable. But that's not the issue. At least as far as I can see it. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Nigel. In a minute, we're going to hear from some -- from actually somebody who wants an IDN ccTLD, which is quite a -- which will be more interesting, I suspect, but Peter you wanted to go first. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Well, I'm not sure who this experienced lawyer is that you're quoting, Nigel, but thanks. I only want to park it until later in today's discussion. I don't mean park it in any longer sense. I just wanted to make sure we covered the finance. So if people are ready to move to enforceability, I'm quite happy. Can I just push back slightly on the suggestion of the open-ended contract? I think that was the 2002 contract, and I think that was certainly very open ended. What we're talking about now, though, is based on the years of experience of the exchange of letters and the accountability frameworks, and as I read it -- and I haven't got it in front of me, but I'm sure we can put it up. It's pretty much we recognize what you do, you recognize what we do. If there's a problem, we'll talk. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. And there are 40 -- >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: And an indication about -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: There are 49 of those existing right now. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: And there is 49 of those in place. Let's be clear, we are not talking about the original Cairo contract. We are talking about a declaration of mutual respect and responsibility. If it didn't achieve what I have just described, then I think perhaps we ought to go back and have a look at it because that's certainly what's intended, not open-ended. Let's come to the whether or not you sign -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can I hear from Andrei first? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Is it about the declaration -- what's in the declaration? Sure. >> ANDREI KOLESNIKOV: It is just a little summary of what I have heard here. Coming back to the simple solutions, we all know all the countries are different. There is a different level of development and Internet penetration and so on. I think the service charges, the single contract for all cc's, for IDNs and for ccTLDs, based on the number of domain names, and number of registered number of records will defer and be clear enough to understand and will consider the difference between the different countries, right? Because it will be based on the actual Internet development. Also, I think there should be a working group made in the ccNSO to work around this financial thing. And that's my little proposal. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Andrei. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: If I can come back to Nigel's other point about enforceability, I think you ought to recognize we are in a complex area and there are advantages in my view in having a contract even when there are potential difficulties with enforcement because of sovereign issues or other ones. Turn it around, if you don't have a contract, you are never going to get any enforceability. If you don't know what you are doing, how do you know whether you have done it and if you have got there? At the very least, the contract sets out what the parties think at one stage is the position and there are other mechanisms other than legal enforcement as we all know to bring pressure to bear. This community puts pressure on its members to conform to various standards without written agreements, but the RFC is there. I think if we need to move forward, just the fact that there may be difficulty with enforcement with sovereign powers is not a sufficient reason for not going down having a reasonable exchange of responsibility and sort of frameworks. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Nigel, don't want to get into a legal debate. >>NIGEL ROBERTS: Just the opposite. I think Peter has misunderstood. That's not what I was saying. I was saying it is pretty clear to me that the contracts would be enforceable and that would cause a concern. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, okay. Anyone else? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Again, just to respond, I think we've got to get out of this, you know, letting the minority situations dominate the discussion. In 80% of cases, if there is an agreement, there won't be any problem. So as always with these things, let's try and do the greatest good for the greatest number and not let the fact that there may be some forensic forebodings of indeterminate future disaster about some situations mean that we grind to a halt, which is where we were for many years in trying to get anywhere. Let's move forward, trying to do the most we can for most of us who don't have problems. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I have somebody at the back. Is that you, Young Eum? >> Young Eum from dot kr. KR has just signed an agreement framework with ICANN yesterday in the ASCII domain. We are actually concerned -- even though we did sign the AF, we are very concerned about the extent of the so-called responsibility that will be added or that will be in the IDN AF. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. There was another hand. Was that you, Bill? Microphone is coming. Sorry? >> No answer? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Not at the moment. Just ask your question. >>BILL SEMICH: Bill Semich, dot nu. This is a little off track but it is related to the fast track. I attended the APTLD meeting in Manila last week, and the topic came up to slowing down the fast track to be on a parallel track with the gTLD IDNs. I think that defeats the whole concept of "fast," I think. I just wondered if the ICANN staff or board was informed of them and what the thinking is. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Let's first say, welcome, Bill. Nice to see you back at a meeting. I hope we catch up later. Let's just be clear what "fast" was fast in relation to. Fast was in relation to the ordinary PDP process which may take two or three years. In fact, some PDPs have been known to go even longer. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Not in our space. [laughter] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: How many PDPs has the ccNSO had? Yes, Bill, "fast" was in relation to what was likely to be quite slow. It wasn't intended to be faster than the new gTLDs. What's interesting about that is that we've just been -- Paul and I have just been at a breakfast with members of the business constituencies, a large number of sectors that are saying, "Get on with the ccIDNs." There is a demonstrated need and that community is really happy about it. We have got real problems with new gTLDs because these other intellectual property interests aren't met. There is pressure coming from the other community now to say, "Why don't you guys get on with it?" Not all members of that community agree, and there are many commercial members who see you're getting a head start and, thus, conferring a significant commercial advantage. So there is another balancing act going on there. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: There is no formal position, Bill. The council -- ccNSO Council and GNSO Council met for lunch yesterday and agreed that right now the issue of whether one should be delayed because the other one isn't ready isn't a desperately relevant issue because neither of us are ready and we'll deal with it when we are. We've agreed we will form a sort of joint group whose job it will be to monitor the g side -- I'm not supposed to use the word "side," Lesley -- the g's and the c's so that we know where everyone is and we can start talking about it when we need to. The current position is that we've agreed that in an ideal world it would happen together but it doesn't mean that it necessarily will. Anyone else? Right at the very back there. >> This is Tan Wee. I thought IDN fast track was relevant for a limited number of ccTLDs to meet their present need. And actually it is supposed to be fast. But in my view of that, I think fast track is just as fast as new gTLD process. And the plus, the IDN ccTLD fast track is combined now with the DOR and the financial contribution issues. It is getting more complicated than we thought. The original meeting of the IDN fast track, I guess if we want really fast, we just should consider -- take the DOR and financial contribution apart. Let's just focus on the real issue, that's how are we going to get IDN ccTLDs implemented and the gaps delegated. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Actually, we are doing that. The vast amount of the implementation plan is about exactly that, but it was never anticipated in the IDNC working group that the issue of agreements and money could be avoided. In fact, the working group report is very clear, it says a discussion on agreements and money is out of our scope but clearly will need to happen as part of the implementation of the fast track. I don't think you can characterize it by saying that you can leave those discussions behind and just deal with implementation. It is all part of the same thing. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Can I agree with Chris? From the board and the GAC's perspective, as soon as this was being discussed and even before the working group report, which Chris has, I think, with respect, very carefully -- accurately characterized, as soon as it came to the GAC, the GAC started saying -- expressing a view about those issues and equally firmly members of the board started -- as soon as the idea of the fast track came up, members of the board started thumping the table and saying, If there is a fast track, I will only approve it on the conditions that there is one ccTLD -- one IDN per ccTLD. There will be a contract, and there will be money. So these things have been right on the table right from the beginning of the fast-track process. >>TAN TIN WEE: The DOR and financial contribution is quite a big issue for the fast track. Why don't we just leave it for the IDN cc PDPs? And in the meanwhile, I thought the fast track shouldn't be intertwined with the process of new gTLDs because basically they are two different processes and we should not get them to be in parallel or something. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No one is intertwining the two. They are entirely separate. They are not intertwined. But back last year the ccNSO and the GNSO agreed that in an ideal world, they would happen at the same time. Not they must, but if it is possible, they should. Now, I have no idea when one will be ready and the other won't be. Right now it might look like we are slightly ahead and they are slightly behind and that could change tomorrow. But they are not intertwined, okay? They are entirely separate processes. Roelof. >>ROELOF MEIJER: But you have to agree that it would be possible to just completely de-link the two and complete the fast track first and then have the discussion on contracts and financial contributions by all the ccTLDs later. So I'm just wondering, what it is that you are afraid of, why you want to link them now? Because it will only be what? 35 out of 280 ccTLDs. It is not going to solve your problem from the start. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That's actually the question that we're trying to get to the bottom of. If you agree the terms of the DOR -- we can argue about the clauses of that until the cows come home -- and you agree to sign one of those, whether it is an IDN ccTLD DOR or it is an accountability framework doesn't make any difference. The key question is what's the difference with IDN ccTLDs that means that you should -- you must sign one of those. That's exactly what we're trying to do. >>ROELOF MEIJER: No, no, I think the question has been answered already. There isn't really. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I understand your question, Roelof. It is not why decouple in the fast track with an IDN ccTLD, releasing it and come back to the DOR and the money later. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: But in the round for everyone? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: And all I can say is the sense from the board is that we don't want to repeat -- that would be a replay, if you would like, of the Jon Postel approach. We are going to give it to you on basically an exchange. Most people now just want to do this in a more formal way. >>ROELOF MEIJER: The thing is we are all registries. And most of us are charging our customers for the services we provide. So I think we are used to paying for services we get delivered as well. So the reason why some of us are reluctant in the signing and/or paying anything to or with ICANN is probably another ground. That will have to be solved maybe first. Still, I think it would be better to decouple them because it is definitely going to slow down the process because we will probably be doing a discussion on payment structures for the whole ccTLD community through the IDN ccTLD fast track. And I wonder if it's going to be a very successful approach because you can already hear the problems coming. Doug was saying it is the small registries that are incurring the highest cost at the ICANN level, which is strange. If you look to the cost structure of the new gTLD process where if you would apply the cost structure to a registry as an IDN, you would be paying $725,000 a year to ICANN. Are you following me? I see Chris looking -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I'm not entirely sure. I'm not following you. >>ROELOF MEIJER: The cost structure of the new gTLDs which is proposed -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That has nothing to do with that. >>ROELOF MEIJER: Why not? It is a cost structure for a registry. Let me make my point. The present cost structure that's proposed for new gTLDs is based on the zone size. You pay annual fee of 25,000 plus a 25-cent per transaction for registered domain. If you are small, you pay little. If you are big, you pay a lot. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes. >>ROELOF MEIJER: Right. It would be very strange if another system was applied to ccTLDs. So I'm just predicting that we will probably get something similar. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I actually -- I completely understand your analysis of the gTLD process -- fee process, but I can't see any connection whatsoever -- >>ROELOF MEIJER: Well, I think if you are looking at IANA costs, can you really argue that a cost for a ccTLD of 3 million domains is different from the cost for a gTLD? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, you actually can. >>ROELOF MEIJER: At the IANA level? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, you can. You can argue it very simply because we are a community of effectively public benefit organizations that perform a completely different service to what gTLDs do. You can have whatever funding model -- this community can have whatever funding model this community finally agrees on. >>ROELOF MEIJER: So you are saying you would charge a different price for the cost of the IANA service that would be the same? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: The provision of the cost of the IANA service and anything else for that matter is provided on the basis to enable us to try and find a way of contributing to ICANN. And we've said all along that we would like to see the numbers. That's right, isn't it? We would like to see the numbers. We haven't said all along, "We'd like to see the numbers and every ccTLD will pay the same amount." We haven't said all along, "We would like to see the numbers and Lesley and Sabine will pay more than anybody else because they are the largest." We have never said anything like that. So taking away the comparison of how the gTLD model works and saying it will work for us isn't correct. It could but it doesn't have to be. >>ROELOF MEIJER: I have said from the beginning I want to pay for the services that are rendered. And if we are looking at the IANA services -- and then I will stop repeating myself -- I don't think you can make a distinction between the cost of the IANA services to a registry of 3 million gTLDs or registry of 3 million ccTLD domains. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That's one tiny part of the IANA services. >>ROELOF MEIJER: That's what we're talking about, the cost of the IANA services. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That's one tiny part. Paul made the point earlier on that it's not just Kim and Lesley and whoever it was. There are a whole heap of other things in IANA that are specific to ccTLDs. There is nothing to do with basically delegation -- the redelegation at all with respect to ccTLDs. There are a lump of things that sit under the heading of "IANA" that are cc specific. Now, if you want to argue that a country should pay the total cost of its own delegation or redelegation, well, we can have that discussion when the time comes. But it is not -- it is not just the simple, "I want to put in a name server change, here's my e-mail, send a note back, bang, it's done." Those are the same things for gTLDs and ccTLDs. But there are a whole heap of other things that are not. They are cc specific. Becky was next. Then you Sabine. >>BECKY BURR: Just a very small point, and I know you have heard me say this before. I really think it is a mistake to suggest that cc's were delegated with a wink and a nod. They were delegated subject to 1591. I have always read that as the contractual obligation, and I suspect the cc's do as well. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sabine, very quickly because I have one more thing to say and then I will wrap it up. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Except many of them were delegated before RFC 1591 was written. >>BECKY BURR: (Speaker off microphone.) >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sabine? >>SABINE DOLDERER: I think I made my point. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Patricio, you are the last one. >>PATRICIO POBLETE: But the timing of the launching of the IDN TLDs, I agree with Chris we should worry about that specifically when someone is ready. On the other hand, it is true that calling the fast track "fast" is a misleading advertisement. There wasn't an intention that there should be a non-slow reaction to expressed need of countries and language communities that said that they had an urgent need for having these TLDs. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: And they still do. >>PATRICIO POBLETE: So in the sense we have an obligation to try to be fast, and that leads us to the question of supposing that we eventually are ready to launch these IDN ccTLDs, I would find it very hard to introduce an artificial delay that would prevent billions of users in countries and language communities to begin using these TLDs just for the sake of the business commercial interests of a few companies. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Well said. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Can I take up a couple of points, then, because we are coming to an end. First of all, I think we need to invent a new acronym because we are short of acronyms. I don't think we have had any invented yet this meeting. So we will start calling this the not-so-slow track. We can call it the NSST from now on to be clear. Slightly more seriously, I'm quite happy to take back to the board the suggestions that have come from up CNNIC and Roelof about decoupling. Let's just grant a fast track cc and we'll discuss the payments and the conditions later. But I can warn you that is not likely to fly. The suggestion that the cc community already gets a free ride from the rest of the gTLD community is very strong out there. The suggestion that we are going to do something without a proper professional basis now really grates with most. I would have to say, even though I understand the community and I understand many of the operators that would be operating new ccTLDs will be the same as we already have very strong existing trust relationships with. My pick -- and I perhaps ask other board members in the room to comment -- is what the likely reaction from the board will be that we should perpetuate this relatively informal arrangement. Could I perhaps ask Dennis who is there. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Dennis? And then I really am going to wrap it up. >>DENNIS JENNINGS: I don't have such a loud voice now. Peter, I think the chance of that flying through the board is zero. There are a number of board members who absolutely will not accept that on a number of grounds, and I'm one of them. I don't think that's an appropriate and responsible way to behave. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can I just wrap it up very quickly by -- as I think I said earlier, I know I have spoken to both of you, the c's and the GAC are meeting at 1:30, and we will be discussing this. At 4:30, you have a meeting with GAC and we will be there. We are all going to get together and talk about this. Can I tell you one question that came up in the GAC yesterday morning -- Sunday morning? I forget when. It is this: Is the board of ICANN genuinely going to say to country x that comes along and says, "We are all ready to have our IDN ccTLD, technically sound, everything is okay, the string is perfect, we are not prepared to sign anything," are you genuinely prepared to say, "No, you are not having your IDN ccTLD?" The GAC will ask that question this afternoon. You don't have to answer it now. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: What I can say is that there are individual board members for whom the positions are very clear on that and there are some on both sides. So that's a very live debate. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I think -- that is actually the bottom line. It is not the ccTLD manager. It is the government. The government says, "We are ready to go," are you actually prepared to say no? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: There are some board members that will say without getting this done properly and signed up, we are not going to do it. They will say that to everybody equally, whether it is a government or whether it is a commercial applicant. This is the rule, you do it this way. Others may be prepared to take a softer line and let it start on the basis there will be serious negotiations and so forth. There is no real position on that yet. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: At least we have started which is the most important thing. Can you all join me in thanking Peter and Paul for their time this morning. [applause] It's coffee break time. The coffee is at the back of the room. (Break). >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Ladies and gentlemen, if you could start taking your seats, please, we're going to start again. Ladies and gentlemen, we're ready to go again. Please take your seats. Thank you. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. We're going to start again. Thank you all for your kind attention. Those of you out here who want to have a conversation, could you please go outside or come in here and sit down, one or the other? Thank you. Okay. The next item on the agenda is actually a report from the participation working group but we're going to leave that for a little later and move straight on to the next item, which is strategic and operational planning, a discussion on that, and Byron is going to chair that session. >>BYRON HOLLAND: Great. Thank you very much, Chris, and thank you for all being part of this discussion, and it's going to be a participatory discussion, so we will be soliciting your input later. But I also wanted to welcome you to the new strategic and operational planning interaction committee. Today is our first presentation, and while that's a mouthful of a name, since we need more acronyms in this industry you can refer to as the "SOP." And please remember it's "SOP." [Laughter] >>BYRON HOLLAND: On that front, I would just like to take a moment to give you an idea of what we're going to be doing over the next 30 minutes, roughly, which will be a couple of opening remarks and then Kevin Wilson, who is the CFO of ICANN is here to give us a run-through on the current operational plan, and where we are in that planning cycle. Then we'll move on to what is this SOP, why is it here, how did it get here, and what relevance and import does it have for us as a community. And then most importantly, I think will be soliciting feedback in the back half of the half hour on your inputs. Soliciting your ideas on how we can make this an efficient, effective committee that really generates good inputs in order to participate in the ICANN strategic and operational planning process, which is fundamentally the goal. So with that in mind, I want to say thank you to Kevin for being here. He does unfortunately have another meeting so he'll be here until 11:30. We'll try to get to some of the question period within that time. So with that, Kevin. >>KEVIN WILSON: Great. Thank you, Byron. I really appreciate that, and thank you, Lesley, and the rest of the ccNSO SOP. It's really a great sign for the organizational maturity of ICANN in general that you're having organizations and work groups like that, to make progress. So hopefully you can see the slide up here, and this is an abbreviated version of a workshop that I'll be hosting on Thursday morning, so for those of you who would like to hear the longer version, a little more detail, you can join us there. Or obviously the budget framework has been posted since February 17th and is open for public comment, so we'd encourage you to read that as well. So in general, the operating plan and budget framework is posted right now at 54.3 million. That's a 4.9% growth over the current fiscal year of FY09 and for those of you that don't know the fiscal year starts July 1st. To July 1st to June 30th fiscal year 2009. That's a slowing of the growth that you've seen in the -- in past years. It was 30% the prior year and 30% the year before, so that's really a reflecting an operational maturity that we're seeing at ICANN, where there are many, many areas that are starting to stabilize and we're able to not grow so fast. We're still having some required growth in compliance, in the technology operations area, as well as we'll be hiring and building up our core strength for the new gTLD effort. Also in this budget is a separate budget for planned that would come in 90 days before the launch of the new gTLDs. The most important point that we want to drive here -- and I'm going to show this in the next slide -- is that our goal is to really maximize the participation, so we're really excited to have -- that you're allowing us to speak now and have the workshop on Thursday, have the public comment section, have the SOP give very specific comments both from you and synthesized from them. And this chart really shows the evolution of that, as we've posted the longest and the -- I think it's a 42-page document on the Web site for lots of details for those who are detail-oriented, to see the highlights of the framework. This -- just to crystallize what the schedule is like, at the Mexico City meeting before this we've posted the framework, the budget and framework, which allows 4 months of public participation into that, which is our goal, and then on the 17th of May, by bylaw, we're posting the draft before that. We're posting the draft budget and operating plan for fiscal year '09 and then proposed for adoption at the Sydney meeting in June. So this is a snapshot which highlights -- and I want to emphasize that we're following the recently -- posted on the dashboard -- functional reporting or more expense detailed reporting, so that you can start to see the operating expenses in the way that the community wants to see them, in the operational ways. And so for example, there's a line item for new gTLD expenditures, which you can see that. There's some -- the assumption there is that there would be growth -- or not growth in percentage, but finishing the spending of that to finish the implementation for it. And then as I mentioned, some growth in compliance, technology, and operations. The -- what I'd like to do is go through each of the 10 functional areas, the operational growth areas, just real briefly, just kind of touchpoint on those, to tantalize you, and the focus here -- the point I'm trying to make here is just a touchpoint so you can see how ICANN is planning to spend its money. And this is where we'd really like your feedback on where can we save, where can we defer costs, where can we adjust our priorities. We'd like that active input. So just real briefly, this is the new gTLD implementation area, budgeted at 7.45 million, and obviously the completion of the launch of that, and then just to emphasize, there will be a separate new gTLD budget proposed -- amendment -- 90 days before the actual launch. The second one is the IDN implementation, and that's both the cc IDN fast-track process as well as the IDN support for the g side. The third one is IANA and technology operations, and that's really getting operationally ready for the scaling, as well as DNSsec and some other support. Security, stability, and resiliency is another area, and that includes capacity building with some of the TLD infrastructure as well as internal business continuity and our -- preparing our technology for scaling. Contractual compliance, I mentioned. I think that's the largest growth area over fiscal year '09 that we have budgeted, and that's really just completing the plans that we have in place, completing the staffing that we've started in the last year or two. The other areas, core meetings logistics, that's pretty much flat, 3.1% growth. And with an idea that we'd also be looking at the meeting structure and meeting timing and meeting strategy as well. Constituency support, that would be support for each of the constituencies, including the ccNSO, and policy development support also is relatively minor growth. Global engagement and increasing international participation is another important functional area, which includes some growth in translation work and completing the global coverage market, specifically in the Asia region. Travel support for the ICANN community. Some of you might have attended the travel support meeting yesterday, and that includes almost $1 1/2 million of travel support. Air and hotel and per diems for travel for some of the community members. Other area -- other functional areas, the ombudsman board sort and the NomCom are relatively flat. And then DNS operations, administrative improvement, just minor improvements in those, including the organizational reviews. So this is a snapshot. It shows growth in revenue of about 6 or $7 million over FY09 and that's primarily fixed from the step-up contract and the dot com contract, and the operating expenses growing at 4.9%. I wanted to show this revenue detail slide for here just to show you that we're budgeting -- or in the framework, we have 2.3 million for the ccTLD contributions but we'd like to get feedback on whether that's a good number to use or not. So just to close, what's next? Providing online comments, getting comments here at the workshops, as well as continuing that dialogue, getting that -- we want to make sure that this is a budget that the community really, really buys into, and understands. We synthesize those comments as effectively as possible. And the draft budget, once again, is posted on the 17th of May, and then the final budget would be approved in -- at the June meeting. Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. >>BYRON HOLLAND: Thank you very much, Kevin. In the interest of time, knowing that you have a hard stop, I'm going to stake the chairman's prerogative and adjust the agenda slightly, since you won't be here for some of the question and input period, so maybe I could ask, from the audience -- from the community, are there any questions in the next few minutes that any of us would like to put to Kevin, since we have the benefit of him being here right now and before we move on in the agenda? And we have the source here, so let's take advantage of it. I know there was a lot up there, and that's part of the reason for this very committee, but given some of the discussion we just heard -- Sabine. >>SABINE DOLDERER: Yes. I have one comment, and that's with regard to the TLD operation security courses you are providing. I think 6.2 million is a very tough budget and I think it's -- while I agree that there are some operational requirements that are really beneficial for all, I think some of them are things which are -- basically we are competitors in our markets, so different registries are competing amongst each other and I don't think it's appropriate for ICANN to open basically bringing competitors up to speed, so I think it's important that you distinguish between necessary and important things and between not-so-helpful things where you actually try to get also the fees from those who are benefitting from the courses you are providing. >>KEVIN WILSON: Great. Thank you. That's -- I appreciate that feedback. I think I maybe have time for one more and if not, I'll just fill the last minute before I go over to the next presentation. And I'm happy to take the comments. I just wanted to comment on the - - on your SOP group. We had a conference call that I -- or they had a conference call which I joined a couple weeks ago, and then we met earlier in the week and so I just wanted to applaud that, that effort, and encourage that feedback. I think that's really, really helpful to get lots of feedback through the cc community, which we -- it's improving and that's a good -- heading in the right direction. Appreciate that very much. Okay? Thank you. >>LESLEY COWLEY: Can I -- can I just add I think we'd like to invite you back, Kevin. It's clear that there's a lot more financial information being shared now, and I think it's very important for us to link that with some of our earlier discussions. >>KEVIN WILSON: Yes, absolutely. And I'd like to add, too, that the dashboard shows this functional detailed reporting in a level greater, more transparent, than it's ever been before, and continues that process. There's also a public comments section on feedback on both the substance, but we'd also like to know the form. Do you want more detail? Is it too much detail? Are we in the right categories? It's really important for us to prepare reports that are helpful for you. So thank you very much. >>BYRON HOLLAND: Thank you very much, Kevin. Much appreciated. Continuing on, just to begin with, since this committee is a new committee, I would like to introduce all of the members to the community. Unfortunately we didn't have enough space for them all to be up here. That would have been ideal but I'm actually going to call them out and if they could just stand up, say their name, what country they're from, and their role, just a quick introduction, because the real rationale for the committee is to solicit feedback for the community to get involved. So when you see these people, see their faces, you know, feel free to stop them in the hall, e-mail them, et cetera. So if I could just ask Fad to stand up. So Fad is from dot JO. >> (Speaker is off microphone). >>BYRON HOLLAND: We'll be a little quicker with the mic on the next one. Lesley Cowley is here beside me. Most of you, I'm sure, probably know Lesley, and she's here because of the relationship between the participation working group and how the SOP came to be. I am Byron Holland. I'm from dot CA, or CIRA. We're the operator for the dot CA registry, and I'm the CEO there. Eric from LACTLD. Okay. I guess we've said it there. I'm doing the intros now, I guess, yeah. Paulos Nyirenda from Malawi who unfortunately wouldn't be here today. Oscar from Mexico. Is Oscar in the room? He was earlier. I think he's going to be back shortly. and Peter from CENTR. Just stand up. So now you can actually put a face to the names here. And then of course Bart and Gabby are involved in this committee as well. So those are the folks on this committee, so as you'll hear me say many times today, I encourage all of you to talk with them, reach out to them, provide feedback, and solicit input. So I just wanted to take a moment to identify how this community -- or rather this committee came to be, and Lesley had been chairing a working group, the participation working group, and essentially this committee became an output or, to some degree, the offspring of that participation committee, focused on providing input into the strategic and operational planning cycles of ICANN and how can the cc community provide valuable input into that. I think Kevin was very diplomatic, and you might have noticed that he said they were seeking out input and they would like more. I'll be a little more blunt. Given the conversations I had with him, you know, he really felt that we were not -- you know, we weren't providing nearly as much as we could have, and they really need considerably more. That we could -- we could be providing significantly more input, which, as a community, would be to our benefit. As a community and as individual operators. It is -- in terms of the "why," the cc community, I think, has a significant interest in how ICANN operates, plans, and resources the various activities that it engages in. I think the last -- what we were speaking about just prior to this clearly identifies that the community has very clear concerns, inputs, ideas, points of view, on significant items within the ICANN activity list. And this is an opportunity for this committee and this community to get involved at the input stage more than the react-to-the-activity stage. The operational and planning cycle is a year-round endeavor but of course there are significant way points along the way. As we start this committee, we are a bit -- we're in the position where we're going to try to, you know, fix the transmission in a moving car. There will be a few speed bumps along the way. That's to be expected. We're getting involved in the operational component of this, but that's fine. That will be what it will be. Given that we, as a community, share many common and unique perspectives -- not all the same, but given that we share many common perspectives -- given our relationships with government, the fact that many or most of us are not for profit, many of us have some social mandate associated with our activities, we share commonalities, and those can shape the views and the inputs on what priorities and resources ICANN has and allocates. And I think it's up to us to articulate those views clearly and help ICANN shape and resource those activities. As individuals, clearly we have a voice. As a collection of individuals, we have a stronger voice. And I think it's important not that this committee speak for the community, but that we help the community speak as individuals in a strong and consistent manner. And that really is where this committee comes in. Our goal is primarily to facilitate and encourage that dialogue in a proactive way, to get people engaged in the process at and before the points where we can really have a voice and a say in input. It's also to simplify. The document that Kevin pulled those slides from is a 40-page operational document with significant detail. I mean, I'm an operator like most of you, and I can tell you reading 40- page operating documents that aren't my own operating documents is not necessarily the highest thing on my priority list. So I certainly empathize with that. So what can we as a committee do to help distill a 40-page document, not only in general but to what is relevant, particularly relevant, to us as a community. And as you saw, there were 15 operating -- highlighted operating activities within the operating plan to date. 15! As somebody who has to generate an operating plan of my own, that is a monumental number of activities to be, quote, focused on. And, you know, I'm amazed that ICANN actually can get all of that done. So kudos to them. But I think for us as a community we need to sharpen our focus on what is truly relevant for us. So we believe as a committee that we can help do some of that and present that both back to the community, but primarily solicit input from the community on what do we think are the core issues that we should be focused on, how do we sharpen that focus, and, therefore, how do we make our voice as strong as possible in dealing with some of these very important issues. Because clearly, of those 15 that you saw identified, not all are relevant to us, or important to us. At a material priority way. So I would encourage you to look at the document in its entirety, but I understand that that can be a challenge. We would not suggest that, as individuals, you should not comment on anything that you think is relevant and important, but I would also say that we believe that there are activities that are particularly important, and if we can focus that view, I think we will have a stronger voice and more input into the ICANN process. So we have taken a first stab, the committee has met a couple of times. We have identified what we believe are core elements that we would likely agree on as a community, and you saw them flash up before you just a while ago. They were nos. 2, 3, 4, 8 and 14, which I'm sure you'll all recall. But just to give you an idea of what we, on a first cut as a collection of operators on this committee, believe would be focal points, they were no. 2, IDN implementation. I think based on what we just heard in the prior session, likely we are all interested in that one. No. 3, the IANA and technology operations. Again, based on what we heard in the last session, I would say that's probably a high runner. No. 4, security, stability and resiliency. I think that's clearly important to all of us. I know in our shop back home in Canada, it is a very important issue. No. 8, which is policy development support. Many of the issues that we're dealing with require policy development within our community, our thoughts and input onto policy development within the ICANN -- the greater ICANN fold. And no. 15 -- or sorry, 14, rather, DNS operations. So I give you the numbers because that is how ICANN identifies them, but those are the subject matters that we feel, in trying to narrow the focus and therefore consolidate and strengthen the voice and inputs, those are the five that this committee has taken a first crack at. What we would like to do now is really try to get a sense -- some feedback and input from the community, because part of our role will be enabling the logistics of this process. It's fine to say we should focus our attention and strengthen our voice. How are we going to do that? What are the logistics that this committee can engage in to help facilitate the process for the community to get involved, to get an understanding, to simplify, to communicate? And clearly, this first session is one of the ways we're going to do that. We intend to have a session at likely two of the three ICANN meetings per year, tied into the cycle in the strat ops planning process. That's but one way. Mailing list. Presenting the 15 items here with some of the committee's thinking on how are the issues relevant, what might cc operators be thinking about or should be thinking about for the given issue so that's an upset we would like to feed back to the community for thought. So I don't know, Lesley, did you have something you wanted to add? >>LESLEY COWLEY: I was just going to add that we've always had the ability to participate in the strategic plan process. We've just kind of not used that opportunity very well. So the operating plan and the related figures that we've seen this morning are the end stage of a very long process that started over a year ago, and we have had lots of opportunity to input thoughts and suggest priorities, so the resulting document that we see now has come out at the back end of that process. And we felt that very much in the participation working group, that cc managers, for whatever reason, hadn't been very participative in that process, so that's what we're trying to encourage through this committee's work. >>BYRON HOLLAND: Thanks. And as mentioned, we -- you know, the formulation of this committee really is an output of the participation working group. So I think just listening to the session prior, trying to give everyone a flavor for the rationale behind the creation of this committee, and that now trying to stimulate the dialogue and get a sense of what folks in the room think are the priorities, I would like to open the floor. I know we have some sensitivity to time because we got a little bit of a late start, but open the floor to what you've just heard in terms of what the rationale and the raison d'etre behind this committee is. Of the five topics, and I know a lot of material has been -- for those who haven't read in detail the operating plan, a lot of material has just flashed up before your eyes but thoughts on: Are those the five relevant topics to focus on? Not exclusively, but to focus on. Are there any others? How can this committee help stimulate and encourage the dialogue? So really this is an open session to get things started, based on what you've heard thus far. So any input and feedback, we would welcome. Based on how the -- how the committee operates and the actual specific items you've seen in the operating plan thus far. So I open it to the floor. Comments? Maybe I could toss out -- I heard loud and clear not 20 minutes ago some very distinct opinions on elements of the ICANN activity list. I can't believe nobody has an opinion here. Sabine. >>SABINE DOLDERER: I think I surely have an opinion but I think it's very difficult to give an answer to it because you raised quite a lot of points and I think that's very similar also, when you see the whole ICANN operational plan which is full of a lot of good and whatever -- good documents but maybe we can a little bit turn around and start to come up with a paper which is more a paper from us saying, "What should ICANN do for us," and start to put there the different pieces in there which are important for us, and then give that to ICANN saying, "Please, if you next time make an operational plan, look at that." >>BYRON HOLLAND: I think to some degree, that's what we're trying to do. One of the things that we as a committee believed we are not. >>BYRON HOLLAND: I think to some degree that's what we're trying to do. One of the things that we as a committee believed, we are not to be the voice of the cc community to ICANN. We do not feel that is within our purview. What we want to do is facilitate, encourage, simplify, get the folks in this room to participate as individuals. And if we can all focus on particular things, all the better. I appreciate that many people may have not read the 40-page ops plan document. Maybe a show of hands, who has actually read all 40 pages? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Peter has. >>BYRON HOLLAND: Which is not -- exactly. To some degree, that's exactly our point. Really, there were very few hands that went up. >>LESLEY COWLEY: Maybe there is a point there that we're all busy people. If maybe the committee could help in summarizing, would that be a good starting point? Would that help people to participate? >>BYRON HOLLAND: If we could distill 40 into a handful, is that something of value for the community? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I think there are nodding heads out there. Yes, it is. >>BYRON HOLLAND: Yes? Okay. >>LESLEY COWLEY: The detail is there. It is transparent if you want to go through the detail. But it is quite obvious that 40 pages is a lot. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Would it be useful also perhaps to -- so a distilled document or synthesis paper is pushed out. Do we want to put a call out for input back in? >>LESLEY COWLEY: Yeah. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: What's our deadline? Do we have one? >>BYRON HOLLAND: Well -- and the chart is available that Kevin flashed up. But basically Sydney is the end date. May 17th is another key date for input for the operating plan. >>LESLEY COWLEY: But I think Sabine's point about a whole list -- huge list of priorities is something that as a community we do need to recognize because that list of priorities came from all of the communities. And normally when I do a strategic plan and operating plan, I then go back and say, "Sorry, I can't do all of those with the resources I have." Maybe we're missing some of that loop in this process. I think we need to be clear to ICANN about what the real priorities are of this community and what are the nice-to-have's. >>BYRON HOLLAND: Peter? >>PETER van ROSTE: Thank you, Byron. Maybe to add on to what Sabine pointed out, indeed making a shorter list of priorities that are relevant to us, that basically works very well with one of our other plans to become much more proactive. Instead of just commenting on documents that we get fed, we want to make sure that we provide the input on which those documents are based. Part of that -- this is just something we have been taking on yesterday, we might actually come up with a list of questions that might streamline the opinion of this group without actually claiming to present this group in those discussions and planning cycles. >>BYRON HOLLAND: Thank you. Yes? >>DAVID ARCHBOLD: Dave Archbold, dot py. I think when looking at priorities, you've also have got to look at costs. Is the committee going to help in that respect in any way by trying to look at the costs and priorities? >>BYRON HOLLAND: As an individual, I always believe that one should follow the money because that's a clear indicator where the true resourcing and desire and activity lie. I don't think we would want to get into burrowing into ICANN's GL codes to find every dollar flow. But material levels of activity are something that help set priorities. So can we look at that from that point of view? If the community believes that that's of value at a high level, again not drilling way deep into the financials, I think it's something that could be on this slate. >>LESLEY COWLEY: You're right, David. One normally wouldn't decide on priorities without being aware of the costs of those priorities. >>DAVID ARCHBOLD: From my experience as an ICT regulator, we spend more of our time arguing and discussing and trying to resolve problems about costings and allocating costs than anything else. And I think this is going to come up more and more probably with this group as time goes on. And certainly I would be very interested to know a little bit more and delve a little bit deeper into how ICANN records and allocates its costs. >>LESLEY COWLEY: We've had a very constructive discussion with Kevin about just that and there is a lot of work going on internally with ICANN that will then lead to that ability to reveal those details. I would caution about drilling down to infinite detail because then you lose sight of the priorities. >>BYRON HOLLAND: That being said, they do inform each other. First is what are the priorities? And then comes a discussion of trade-offs, the practical reality. Young Eum? I'm afraid right now we will have to make this the last one given we are ten to 12:00. >>YOUNG EUM LEE: I would also like to agree with the suggestions of the group, the committee as well as many of the people on the floor. I would like to share with you my experience as -- maybe as a former representative of the cc to the ICANN budget committee. I was asked to serve many, many years ago -- I think it was in Capetown -- and I wasn't given a real lengthy notice. I went into the committee and was faced with this long list of issues which -- I mean, some of which we took issue, we focused on and we tried to address. But that meeting, we felt, did not sufficiently reflect our concerns - - I mean, the concerns that the cc representatives raised. And so in summary, I would like to have the committee come up with a mechanism for raising some of the major issues in terms of questions or maybe suggestions by the committee so we can have a multiple method of coming up with the list and maybe some -- I mean, once we have the list, maybe some of us can also contribute in terms of what we think the costs should be. So, I mean, if we make this a community-wide effort, which I think the committee is trying to do, I think we will be able to have a more focused list and more tangible answer. >>BYRON HOLLAND: Thank you very much. That's exactly the kind of specific suggestion that we're looking for as we get this started. I know Lesley has a comment. >>LESLEY COWLEY: Just briefly, Young Eum, I agree with your point that we need to learn from our previous experience of this. The group is trying to organize the kick-off in effect of strategic planning, which is identifying the priorities at our next meeting. And we very much would like that to be part of the ccNSO agenda so that we can all be involved. I would caution, however, about cc's from our own experience setting costs. We have a very experienced financial officer at ICANN whose job, I assume, is to do that. >>BYRON HOLLAND: I'm just going to say one or two words and then I know Peter, the chairman of ICANN, would like to say a couple of words in closing. So in the end, the committee is here to serve the community. We believe that we should have a -- more significant input into the planning process, be it the ops plan or the strategic plan, so that our voice, our concerns, our needs and requirements are heard clearly in the creation of those plans before we are simply responding to documents, as Peter said, but actually providing inputs to those documents. So this is a community endeavor. We are the committee trying to foster this, simplify this. We will act as a catalyst. We will probably remind you on more than one occasion to please participate. If you get one too many e-mails from me, sobeit. We really need your input. We certainly welcome it. With that, I'm going to ask Peter to stand up and say a couple of words. A microphone, please. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just really want to congratulate you all on forming what looks like a very useful committee. Can I thank the members of the committee who stood up earlier? Thank you for serving. Obviously you are very talented and experienced group. Can I pick up on something Young Eum said and go back even earlier in my memory, just to warn you about the necessity to get this right. One of the most difficult things we had in the meeting in Australia, I think it was, was that we had sent one of our representatives off without any instructions to a presidential committee on forming the budget. When he came back and told us what he had done, we were so angry, we had to have a vote of no confidence in him, which was a terrible exercise. And I was in a real difficult position trying to organize and explain what that meant to the various cultures. So we've come a long way, and this looks like a really useful group; so well done. Can I just say a couple of things. It certainly accords with my plans -- and I have had conversations with Chris about the formation of the strategic plan and the budget. I really do want this kind of bottom-up thing. The strategic and the operating plan really must come with key inputs from your community as it comes from the other communities. There has been a certain sense that aspects of it have been top-down. Let's keep the bottom-up process flowing. And a group like this that collects the views of the cc community and feeds them into a process at an early stage is absolutely how the theory and the practice will come together. What we are talking about now is the operational plan, and that's coming -- that's really coming to the end of the cycle. Politically, the key exercise to engage in is in the formation of the strategic plan. What I suggest you do is get this committee running. You have a practice run and get your procedures working and get the inputs working in relation to contributions to the operational plan. And then when the strategic planning cycle starts in July for the new plan, you're ready and you can really make those contributions as to what are those key areas that are of strategic significance from the cc community to ICANN. What a positive step. Congratulations. And thank you for the opportunity to say so. >>LESLEY COWLEY: You have clearly rumbled our plan. [laughter] >>BYRON HOLLAND: Well, thank you. I couldn't have said it better myself. That is effectively what we are trying to do. Like I said, right now we will be changing the transmission on a moving car, so there will be a couple of speed bumps. This is the practice run on the ops plan. We are at the tail end of the it, but input is still required and we still have the time to do that. And in Sydney we will truly get engaged on the strategic side for the year ahead. Thank you very much. Thanks to all the committee members and everybody who provided input. And, please, all of you, the more input we can have from the community, the better we can articulate the voice of the community. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Byron. And thank you, Lesley. [applause] Okay. Slight change of plan now. We are going to postpone the domain name frontrunning topic until later on this afternoon at 3:00. The regional organizations update is next. But, first, I'm going to ask Keith to come and do a quick note on the GAC/ccNSO liaison working group. And if the regional organizations who are making presentations could please get ready to make their presentations, that would be fantastic. Kieren, you want two seconds? Keith, come up. Kieren, you want two seconds to come up about the amazing thing. Can Kieren have a microphone? >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Hello. You may not know this but you are all currently guinea pigs. We are trying to roll out a more very useful participation element, which is if you look over this wall here you will find there is a whole range of equipment and five laptops. We are streaming all this. We have one, two, three cameras and we have the scribe feed and the presentation feed and the cameras on the presenters and you and it is all fed over the Internet on to using this Adobe Connect software all on to one page. We tried it out in Cairo, and it was very successful. We wanted to try it out in one room for the whole meeting and that's you. I didn't want to put it in the main room -- we have already found a couple of bugs with the scribe feed and a couple of bugs with the cameras and so on and so forth. We are trying it out on you. If you go to the Mexico City site and you click on any of the ccNSO meetings, there will be a link which is an Adobe Connect, icann.adobe, something or over. Click on that and you will see what we've got. And the idea is we are going to expand this and roll it out and have it hopefully for the main room in Sydney, if we can iron out all the bugs. If you can do that and provide any feedback either to me or to Cory over this wall here or type it into the chatroom, that's what we are trying to do so -- much more effective remote participation. And with luck, if we get it working right, we should be able to have a single screen here rather than the multiple screens which will have everything that you want on it. Please try that out and please provide as much feedback as possible so we can improve it. Thanks. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Kieren. Fantastic. Keith? >>KEITH DAVIDSON: Keith Davidson reporting on the GAC/ccNSO liaison group. Just thought I would run through the history of this committee. We were formed in 2004. Initially there was a strong flurry of activity between the GAC and the ccNSO on a number of issues, but it has been a fairly patchy work program since it relies on very much last- minute organization. And its purpose is to organize the agenda and speakers for the joint GAC/ccNSO meetings at ICANN. I have to say that the warming relationship between the GAC and the ccNSO, and particularly the empathy on issues such as the IDN for ccTLDs and the ICANN regions or ccTLD region issues have been met with some empathy with the GAC. And I would just like to say that I take full responsibility for the appalling reporting back to the ccNSO members from this committee. The identified issues that we have been working on in recent times have been the IDNs for ccTLDs, the ICANN regions. Security of the DNS is an emerging issue. In the past, we have done a fair bit of work on the best practice for ccTLD managers and ccTLD relationships with ICANN and something for the future is probably the GAC principles on ccTLDs. The committee members are currently as listed there, and I think as already noted there is probably only 3/5 of the ccNSO members represented at this meeting. And the GAC itself has struggled with its own representatives as well. But we have had fantastic support from the ICANN staff, from Gabby and Bart and Donna from the GAC perspective. And, I guess, the progress has been slow. We've struggled between ICANN meetings because we're always very busy in our day jobs and at ICANN meetings because we have ICANN business to attend to. So it doesn't leave any other space in our lives to actually do anything. But so my suggestions for future work for this group is that we also add an alternate ccNSO representative from each region with a requirement that they're regionally well-known and are a frequent ICANN meeting attendees and that we should make a point of always meeting on the Mondays of ICANN meetings so we can get the agendas in order rather than the last-minute panics that we have at the joint meetings. And so what I would like you to do is just think about who might be a suitable regional rep or alternate representative and suggest names to me or any other members of the committee. That's it for me. Thank you. Any questions? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Martin. You just leave your hand up, Martin. Thank you. >>MARTIN BOYLE: Thank you. Martin Boyle from Nominet, dot uk. Certainly I would concur with you, Keith, about how the cooperation between the ccNSO and the GAC has become quite warm and, I think, quite constructive, certainly compared with when I first joined the GAC in 2003. The relationship has developed, blossomed and certainly, I repeat the word, constructive. But I am actually also very, very clear that if you want to keep a relationship warm and constructive both sides, you have got to find time for it and both sides have got to maintain that dialogue. So, again, I would strongly support what you're saying. And I would be quite willing to throw my hat in the ring as being an European representation on your committee. >>KEITH DAVIDSON: Thank you, Martin. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Anyone else? Okay, well, thanks, Keith. That's great. Can I -- we are moving on now to the regional organization presentations. Do we have a presentation from AfTLD? Do we? Ramesh, you are going to do APTLD? Do you want to come up and do that then? I got to say the stuff that Kieren has organized on that Web page is just amazing. You can see people. You can read the words. It is fantastic. We have had a request from the guys behind the techy booth there, if you are talking, would you mind standing up because that way they can actually -- they can put the camera on you and you can be seen. If you wouldn't mind please standing up when you are talking, that would be most appreciated. We're going to have now a presentation from APTLD, from Ramesh, who is the new general manager -- some of you may know that Don Hollander, who was the APTLD manager, has retired from that position. He asked me to personally send everyone his best wishes and to say that he very much misses being here at the ICANN meeting. But Ramesh has ably lept into the job. Ramesh, over to you. >> RAMESH NADARAJAH: Thank you, Chris. Let's see if it appears. Yes, there it is. Okay. As Chris mentioned, I'm the new general manager for APTLD. I have been on the job for three days now. So it is interesting to give an update on something that -- while I have been on the job for three days, but to be honest, I have been involved in APTLD on and off for quite some time, actually since it was first established. Who are we? We are quite a diverse community. We stretch from quite far in the west. I don't want to say exactly where because that's still in discussion, but quite far from the west and then all the way into the Pacific. So looking at the geographical region that is actually part of our community, I think we are probably the most diverse of the regional TLD organizations. We have an interest in but no formal commitment to ICANN. We try and attend the meetings. We try and participate, but quite a number of our members are actually part of the ccNSO. With the interaction that's been happening between the more mature ccTLDs and new-and-upcoming ccTLDs, we find that people are learning faster and more robust operations are coming. Being part of -- or being in the Asia and Asia-Pacific, we are quite committed to our local morals and values. That can also differ quite a bit across the geographical area. That makes for very interesting meetings, very interesting resolutions. We see APTLD has an independent facilitator of experience of peers. We have a lot of people with experience, and we can use these people to help others. The charts you see at the bottom gives you a bit of a snapshot. This is based on a survey that was done last year by Don Hollander. The actual numbers may not still be valid because we have seen quite a bit of growth in membership, but you get the rough idea. Most of us, about a third actually, are not-for-profit associations. We have a small group that are government departments. We have academic institutions. We have regulatory authorities who are all ccTLDs, ccTLD managers. Again, this provides a very interesting environment when we debate issues. And in relation to how these people became ccTLD managers, how they obtained authority to operate the ccTLDs, you have a variety -- you have those who have been given authority by legislation, those that have been given authority by administrative directive, those that have a contract, for example, with ICANN, or by appointment by someone within the government or maybe an e-mail from Jon Postel. Some highlights from 2008. Well, the new general manager -- I suppose that should be 2009. The last AGM we had was just last week on the 24th of February in Manila. We had about almost 60 individuals who turned up representing about, I think it was, 18 ccTLDs and about 10 associate members. The way the organization is structured, our membership -- there are two categories of membership. Sorry, we have ordinary members, i.e., the ccTLDs, and we have associate members. So at the moment, we have 36 ordinary members and 13 associate members. In fact, the latest only joined up about -- dot nr joined up about two weeks ago, I think it was, or a week ago. We hope to get a wider -- we hope to increase the membership of APTLD and towards that end, we've actually amended our constitution and bylaws. There is a wider scope for membership. To explain this a little bit, earlier for associate memberships, it had to be an organization or individual that was actually involved in ccTLD work in the Asia-Pacific region itself. But now the membership is no longer limited to only Asia-Pacific. That's for the associate members. For ordinary members, it is still limited to Asia-Pacific. But for associate members, we welcome any and everyone who would like to be a member of APTLD. We also amended the constitution with regards to quorum because when we first started, there were only about 12 members. And we said that quorum would be -- half the members must be present at the meeting. So it wasn't very difficult to get about six people to together in a room. But now that we have a larger grouping. It is very difficult to meet the 50% membership for quorum. So we've amended it to just have 8 people -- or 8 ccTLD managers to be sufficient. We've also tried to redefine "Asia-Pacific" to follow the definition we hope that will come from the ccNSO. The India meeting did not happen, mainly because a lot of people who we had invited as speakers and to provide training and so on couldn't make it. So we've -- we will still have a meeting somewhere in the region but we're not quite sure when yet. In terms of training, we've done quite a bit of training and substantially focusing on ADRP. There was training in Cairo as well as in Brisbane in partnership with APNIC. And we participate very strongly in all the AP-related activities. For 2009, going forward, the top three interests based on the survey that I mentioned earlier for the APTLD membership is IDNs, IPv6 and DNSsec. For IPv6 and DNSsec, we intend to conduct surveys in the coming year to try and get a better understanding of where our members are, what they would like to see in terms of training improvement and so on. With IDN, I think the issue is more to keep track of what's going on in the larger space, and try and position ourselves appropriately. In 2009, we also have another large survey of the APTLD honorary membership to try and increase our understanding of ourselves. We will continue to engage with others, especially the regional TLD organizations, because I think we can learn a lot from each other, and we will pursue membership growth. So with regards to membership growth, please contact me if you are interested in becoming a member of APTLD. Some of the things that we can offer are that we have a huge variety in terms of members, in terms of policies that members follow in their own ccTLDs, a wealth of experience, something that we're willing to share with those who want to work with us. Thank you. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Any questions for Ramesh? >>LESLEY COWLEY: Not a question, really, apart from: Writs your hat? But I'd just like to say welcome, Ramesh, from the community. We look forward to working with you. >>RAMESH NADARAJAH: Thank you. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Ramesh. >>ERICK IRIARTE: Good morning. My name is Erick Iriarte. I am the general manager for LACTLD. I hope to be quick in this presentation and I hope you are -- enjoyed the dinner yesterday. It was a little cold, but nice. LACTLD was created in 1998 [inaudible] our situation like association in 2006 under the laws of Uruguay. We are a nonprofit organization. Our principal goal is to promote communication among the ccTLDs in the region. Also, one of the goals right now is capacity building inside the ccTLDs. Now we have 22 members, full members, and two affiliate members. We are talking about -- in the next slide about that. Our General Assembly generally is in May or June and our next meetings will be in April in La Paz and then in Panama, our General Assembly. Since Cairo, the principal things that happened to us is our change of our bylaws. We changed full our bylaws to include the possibility to have affiliates. The affiliates need to be TLDs with relation with the region. We try to include this special skill so we don't have everybody in sight. We try to be people that are in touch with our region historically, culturally, economically, and finally everybody can say "We're in relation with Latin America, but I need to demonstrate that." We create surveys, especially for priorities for ccTLDs, and then have another survey about commercial aspects that 90% of the ccTLDs respond. We had two workshops between Cairo and now. One is about commercial aspects that was in Lima. It was real successful because our ccTLDs is a very fast process to make professional ccTLDs. Also, we had ACRP workshop here in Mexico a few days ago, with the support of ICANN, also in partner with our regional organizations. This is the third version of this workshop. We have a newsletter. We call it "In the Name of the Domain." It's an internal newsletter with news about the ccTLDs and on the market, on the business. Also, it is weekly. We increase our relation with LACNIC because it's the regional structure for IP numbers, especially in Latin America. Also we are in touch with ARIN who is involved with -- especially in Caribbean area. We have a presentation we have put together with the regional organization in IGF in Hyderabad and we had started another project that we called "maps project." It's a map of the region, especially with the number of ccTLDs registered in each ccTLD. I repeat that. Also, we pass to this project. This project together with another regional organization. We hope to have some copies for the next ICANN meeting. It's a huge map. If you want some copies of this map, you have on the table outside, but for this maybe in the next ICANN meeting. We planned five more workshops in this year, one about legal aspects in Bolivia the next month, another about political aspects in Panama, the next is about technical aspects which will be in Chile, one special workshop for the Caribbean area in October, and another commercial workshop on the final of the year. For all these workshops, we have a fellowship program. We really believe that the more important is the capacity building and the major quantity of our budget is directly for support this initiative. We also have reports of our statistics [inaudible] about how we increase the domain names in the region. We had the handbook project. It's very brief documents, manuals to ccTLD about these topics: Legal, political, technical and commercial issues. I hope to share this product with another regional organization and translate to another language. It's important now the language that speak the LACTLD is English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and we hope to include maybe in the future Dutch. If you have any questions or need more information, please be in touch. If you are interested in being affiliates or you are not -- you are from Latin America and are not being involved like a member, it will be a pleasure to accept you. Thank you. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Erick. Any questions for Erick? Well, I have a -- I'd just like to say thank you for organizing last night. It was cold, but it was still fun. >>ERICK IRIARTE: Thanks. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So thank you, Erick. Vika, could you come and do the afTLD, please? So the next presentation is from afTLD. That's the last one and after that, we're going to have lunch. No, we're not. Sorry. We're going to have an update from Byron on dot CA, because they're sponsoring the lunch, so they get to talk, and then we're going to have lunch. Vika, over to you. >>VIKA MPISANE: Thank you, Chris. So I don't have a presentation that I've prepared. For us it's more of an update from afTLD. Sorry that I'm not going to have to do a presentation for that. I think it's just an update on what's happening and what will be happening soon. The important thing is that we have now a manager, a staff, first staff member for afTLD. His title is called afTLD manager. Mr. Eric Akumiah is from the Ghana registry. He started his position on the 1st of January this year, so he's been getting up to speed, but we're starting to see more progress in that area. But prior to that, we've had participation in various processes and fora that have continued. We had a workshop which afTLD participated in in New Delhi last year, I think, with the other regional organizations. We continue also to work with AfriNIC in its training, sometimes making some presentations there. We are also -- we will also be participating in a ccTLD workshop that has been organized by the African Telecommunications Union, I think two weeks from now, in Mauritius. The major thing that has been occupying us in these last few weeks is the afTLD annual event and it is set for Arusha, Tanzania. So if you are interested in climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, then probably it's a good time to come because I'm told that the mountains are close by. The event will be hosted by dot tz in association with the Tanzanian Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, TTRA. The registration for the event is open. You can go to the afTLD Web site. The agenda also for the event is pretty much in its final stages. It will be, I think later this week, posted to the Web site. I think just the highlights of what will be happening there, there is going to be a 4 1/2 day event starting on a Monday, ending on a Friday lunchtime. The first three days will be on capacity building, looking at ACRP, so we are expecting a number of attendants from the ICT sector in Africa to participate. So that should be the first three days. And then the next two days or the closing 1 1/2 days will include the AGM, amongst other things. The important thing with the AGM is that afTLD has had an executive committee, or if you want to call it a board. In terms of their registration -- company registration laws of Mauritius it's not referred to as an EXCOM. And that board, TANYA, is set to expire this year. I've been part of the EXCOM for the last three years, so we will definitely have a new executive council or committee of afTLD elected in Tanzania. Another important aspect also that will be part of the event is a presentation on afTLD's research agenda. We've identified research as one of the areas that afTLD needs to look at, and we are hoping to work with various other organizations in how we do -- in doing that research. So I think that's one. And then there's -- probably the last one will be -- there's been some thought and some work that has been going on on having a dispute resolution procedure that is led by afTLD for the African ccTLDs. There have been some claims of hope for some who have said it would be helpful. We would like to try it out and it will be done in association -- in fact, it is initiated in consultation with the South African Institute of Intellectual Property Law, which is one of the two DRP providers in the dot za space or in the co dot za space in South Africa, so that will be basically an update on afTLD. Thank you. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. Any questions for Vika? Okay. Good. Byron? Byron? Okay. Maybe Byron's next door cooking. We have invitations -- the lunch -- everyone should have -- or most of you should have a ticket for the lunch next door. I think Gabby has a small number of -- seven more tickets. If you don't have a ticket. One here. Ramesh. Ron. Go to -- go to Gabby. Don't rush her all at once. Norm, do you know where Byron is? Do you know where Byron is? >> (Speaker is off microphone). >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Well, Byron's supposed to give us a brief presentation or an update from dot CA, or is that you, Norman? Is that you or Byron? >> (Speaker is off microphone). >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: You can do it after lunch? >> (Speaker is off microphone). >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. So it's time for lunch, everybody. Can I please ask you, we are due to be in the GAC room at 1:30. Now, I know we've done this before and I know we've turned up and I know they haven't been ready and so we probably will turn up and they probably won't be ready but can we please make an effort to be in the GAC room at 1:30 because we have this very important discussion about IDN ccTLDs to have with them, so we've got an hour for lunch. Please take that hour. Please relax. And then the GAC room is on the 4th floor, I think. Does anyone know? It's on the 4th floor. Okay. So the GAC room is up on the 4th floor. See you all there at 1:30. Thanks, everybody. [Break] >> PATRICIO POBLETE: We have Lesley and Martin here. We have a half- hour for this. I will give that to them. We will have some time for questions and answers. >>BILL GRAHAM: Hi. I'm very happy to be here with you this afternoon. I have been asked to do a brief overview of what the IGF is, I guess, possibly touch a bit on why The Internet Society is interested and also why I think this is something important, something important for the cc community. Looking out over the group, I think it is probably worth talking a little bit about what is the Internet Governance Forum, so I will walk through that very quickly. And if anyone wants any more background, you can ask in the question period. The Internet Governance Forum came out of the World Summit on the Information Society in 2005 where it was really a compromise because the people doing the negotiating couldn't come to a compromise on how Internet Governance should be handled. So it was established as an open multistakeholder forum where there could be a dialogue on Internet matters without entering into negotiations and where all stakeholders could participate equally instead of it being a governmental forum as the summit had been where everyone else basically had maybe five minutes to speak out of every three hours. It has been running -- well, there have been three annual meetings so far, and it is proving to be an important platform and channel for talking about Internet Governance, although it certainly isn't the only one. The IGF is really about evolving models of engagement, I would say. It exposes governments to multistakeholder open, bottom-up or what we in ISOC call Internet model community-based processes. It builds communities around Internet Governance issues based on interest rather than geography or politics. There is a very strong emphasis on skills development and capacity-building. This is very hard keeping your button -- >>PATRICIO POBLETE: We are not supposed to. >>BILL GRAHAM: Maybe it is holding. Good. It leverages opportunities. It let's people compare and contrast regulatory environments, technical and social approaches to problems like Internet access, diversity, openness and security. So, as I said, it is unique as a forum because it doesn't involve any formal negotiation. There is no arranged seating. There are, we hope, no lengthy policy statements. It encourages a frank discussion among equals and it focuses, as I said, on capacity-building and on development which are two cross-cutting themes through the discussion. The Internet Society has supported the IGF and its predecessors in the WSIS since they began. And many of the internet communities have also been really active, ICANN as an organization, the RIRs and so on. Participation of the Internet communities have been really considerable. They have been noticed by the governments and, by and large, appreciated. We think in ISOC there is a real value in this open multistakeholder kind of forum to talk about Internet matters, since that's the way business gets done in the Internet community itself. So after three editions, we think the IGF is working reasonably well. It's continuing to evolve. We're starting to gradually see some possible outputs from it, which are taking place organically and being driven by people who are finding interests in common with other people they meet during the IGF. So that's the fundamental reason why we're continuing to support it, and ISOC does support it quite heavily. We have a ambassadors program there where we have a competition. Last year we had, I think, 15 ISOC ambassadors there who were very active in getting speaking slots. We had a booth, as did ICANN itself, and tried to spread the news about what I call the native Internet institutions where Internet Governance really goes on. So we're moving now towards the fourth IGF. When it was set up, it was to have five meetings, one a year. And there is to be a review of whether it continues beyond that. That review will take place in 2009 in November in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. This is a quite important IGF in that it will determine whether it starts or stops after the next meeting. The goals here, I think, are to maintain participation by knowledgeable players in the Internet community. It's really important to have the knowledge and experience of the people who are active in genuine Internet Governance at the meetings to impact on the governments and other stakeholders. It is also important, I think, to build on what is the real IGF strength. The chair of the advisory group that prepares the meetings is Nitin Desai, an old U.N. hand. He says the real strength is that the IGF brings together people who generally tend to meet separately. So for the cc community, cc's have been pretty active through your regional organizations in doing workshops and providing speakers at the IGFs. In my experience, they brought a unique voice of local communities to the process talking about the experiences in running cc's and sharing best practices. Cc's are also a voice for diversity, I would say, and for real-world Internet Governance because, after all, you are the ones who are active at the local level. So I think it's really very important for the cc's to be there. It is really important, I think, as well for all of the other stakeholders, whether they are from the civil society organizations or from governments or from the international organizations like the ITU and others to understand how the cc's operate and that they really do provide a voice for their local communities. I think I will just stop it there and turn it over to -- >>PATRICIO POBLETE: We have a bit more time than anticipated. >>BILL GRAHAM: I'm fine. More time for questions. That's great. >>PATRICIO POBLETE: Next, Lesley. >>LESLEY COWLEY: Okay. We're not the only cc -- dot uk is not the only cc that's been involved in the IGF, but we were just volunteered to speak to you about it today. And it's fair to say we've devoted a lot of resource to the IGF, as many others have done, including ISOC. And, briefly, I would like to explain why we're doing that and how that fits in with Nominet's ongoing strategy because we've also devoted a lot of resource to holding a national IGF and taking inputs from the U.K. to the international process. We hold regular meetings with parliamentarians in the U.K. And at a most recent conference, our minister, Lord Carter, started by saying a large amount of the work of a government and regulator shouldn't be about preventing problems -- should be about preventing problems, sorry, rather than dealing with them. If you can plan for the worst, then that's normally a good place to start. Now, Lord Carter was the first head of U.K.'s regulator -- of U.K.'s communication's regulator in this area. And he is a big champion of self-regulation and very anti-regulation in the U.K. He also mentioned to me that regulation moves at a glacial speed, so it is probably not the quickest way to deal with emerging issues. And in the U.K., we're very concerned about the market providing the competition that drives up standards. So we have the responsibility as an Internet industry to meet the legitimate expectations of people like Lord Carter and delivering on that premise. We see in the whole IGF process that many government people, though not all of them it has to be said, believe that when it comes to the Internet, traditional government responses break down and that actually we can achieve more by working together. And what Bill maybe didn't mention is that the IGF is very much an experiment. This is the first U.N. experiment where governments, stakeholders, you and I can turn up and participate. That is unusual for the U.N. context. And for some, that's quite a difficult concept to cope with. But we've recognized the opportunity and very much see it as enabling us to respond to the challenges and the opportunities that we're all facing in the online world. And I think I would say that as an industry, we have a responsibility to make that work, therefore. So for years we've tried to respond to innovation and change on the Internet by saying, "You can't legislate us because we're special and legislation might not follow as quickly as developments in our area. You certainly shouldn't overgovern in this space." And that's fine, but we also need to show that we're stepping up to those responsibilities. For example, in the U.K., we have an organization called the Internet Watch Foundation. This is where the industry is trying to work together to prevent limits to -- to prevent access to child pornography. And hidden behind the word "pornography" is a very real issue about the abuse of children. But even so, it took the government to push the industry to do something about that, to threaten to legislate. That actually meant that the industry created the Internet Watch Foundation. That's preferable to legislation, we feel. And no matter how well legislation is intended, it can be blunt. It can be inflexible, and it kind of doesn't necessarily work. We also heard from Lord Carter that the Internet is the most important global industry in the world. It is the real global industry. Therefore, for us helping to build a common international understanding is really important. And the IGF provides us with the opportunity to shape and influence our environment going forward. Now, I have been around in the ICANN space, gosh, for ten years now -- which is scary -- and I think we've all seen huge change during that time. But also the Internet has changed hugely in that time. People who use the Internet are no longer in the minority. You no longer need to be real techy to get online. People are expecting the same sort of professionalism and integrity that they see in other media of the Internet. They have higher expectations as a result. And I think we're also seeing that from the at-large contributions the other day in the expectation that we will evolve and we will deliver to meet end user needs. If we don't address that ourselves, then that does throw up serious questions about the way the governments address regulation of the Internet in the future. So that's kind of why we're involved and why we're very proactive. As a registry, like many of you in the room, we believe we act in a public interest and, therefore, we have a responsibility to the U.K. society to respond to their needs and their expectations. And nationally we've engaged in this discussion with law enforcement agencies, the banking community and many other organizations in this sphere to try to bring together U.K. views to the IGF. We see that as taking responsibility. We see that as building upon our commitment to our local community and really using the forum that the IGF is providing for us to do so. And I'm very proud that along with Bill, Emily Taylor, who unfortunately is unwell at the moment, has been a key player in that context trying to shape the cooperative and partnership approach. To be fair, there is many governments that would like to see international control of the Internet space and kind of don't think industry or other stakeholders are that important. I think it is up to us to demonstrate that we have a key role here, and we have a key contribution to make. And the IGF for us is an opportunity to engage in that dialogue and, therefore, is fundamental. We think the effective engagement from all stakeholders can make a real difference, and so it has been a very big motivation for us. Luckily, in the U.K., we have good cooperation between government and industry and so we've been able to work in close partnership with our government on this and, indeed, get many parliamentarians involved. And every public meeting of the U.K. IGF's work has seen ministerial involvement. So I hope that helps to explain why as an U.K. registry we've devoted a lot of resource to helping to shape this, to engage nationally with key stakeholders and to try to help make the IGF a success. Martin is going to give you some ideas as to how we actually do that in practice. >>MARTIN BOYLE: Thank you, Lesley. Yes, I would like to try and set the scene of the U.K. IGF, what it is we're doing in the U.K. and perhaps some idea of what we're hoping to achieve. But I think the U.K. IGF is fundamentally all about helping us to respond to the challenges of the IGF by helping us engage in the process. And we have developed quite a firm belief that if we are going to get the best out of the IGF, we actually do need to put a lot of effort into the process. And so all our actions have tended to be around developing our own national multistakeholder partnerships, helping to provide the framework for key national stakeholders, to develop ideas, really to get the people who can really make a difference in the international space. If I can just do a very small amount of history, what actually helped us get the U.K. IGF off the ground. It was immediately after the World Summit in 2005 that the U.K. government organized a stakeholder consultation to try to identify what we should be doing, what should our response be to this opportunity. And in this process, the U.K. government really did not want to take ownership of the national response to the IGF. It really had to be a partnership of which the government was a member. And like many -- well, like all U.K. government departments, it certainly didn't have the resources either in finance or in people to be able to take a very strong role in that process. And I guess also, as with many government initiatives, it's always in a position of not perhaps being trusted by all stakeholders. They see governments as being the people who tell them what to do, who perhaps threaten them. And that goes entirely against the ethos of the IGF, of our partnership. So that was really where Nominet came in. Nominet had been closely involved with the government through the WSIS process and they have -- we have quite a central position in the U.K.'s Internet community. As we tried to develop our ideas, we came up with five main elements for this national presentation -- national preparation: Engaging with key partners as I've already said; using those people to identify U.K.'s messages in the international discussion, whether by promoting their active involvement or by getting their concerns onto the agenda. And so every year we have had messaging sessions where -- before the IGF where U.K. stakeholders try to identify what for us are the key issues using the multistakeholder partnership approach to show benefits can come from this sort of engagement. Leading by example, one of our MPs has launched a cooperative network for addressing crime on the Internet in the U.K. Preparing content, not least in identifying success and focusing on achievement, how are we getting the best from the Internet? How are we responding to the challenges of the Internet? And, finally, feeding back to U.K. stakeholders so they can also benefit from international discussions. And the events that Lord Carter spoke at that Lesley referred to was our feedback session, messages from Hyderabad. We produced a small booklet which gave the key messages, the key feelings and ideas that people came back from Hyderabad with. But, undoubtedly, the highlight of Nominet's work has been in identifying content. It's easy for the IGF to concentrate on issues, concerns, worries. That's what we do all the time. What we wanted to do was try in the words of one of the participants at an event we held that the Internet is the greatest flourishing of creativity since the Renaissance, just without the bloodshed. So we launched the Nominet Best Practice Challenge. Its first event was in Rio. We've now just launched the third -- the preparation of the third Best Practice Challenge. And we launched that when we gave our feedback from Hyderabad. And it is all about celebrating success, looking at achievement and trying to show people how sometimes quite small initiatives can have a massive impact because they're quick to put in place and because they address very real issues, very real opportunities. Those of you who came back on time would have seen a very short video that we produced from our awards session last year, which was in the National Science Museum in London. We had an impressive list of nominations and impressive list of winners, and they went from local community initiatives, really running on a shoestring budgets to major businesses with global reach like Symantec, the British Library, the Open University, and Barclays Bank. If you bear with me for just a moment, I'm afraid this is a little bit dark. That probably is the last known photograph of happy, smiling British bankers -- [laughter] -- for a short time. Let's hope they get better. When we reported back to the minister about the Hyderabad meeting of the IGF, he stressed the importance of picking out success, showing why Britain is a great place to do e-business, a great place for the use of the Internet. And that I see as being quite a good thing for us in 2009, one which fits well with the concepts of the Nominet Best Practice Challenge, an opportunity for the U.K. to show leadership. An important part of the U.K. IGF has been the active engagement of parliamentarians. For multistakeholder engagements, the lack of the end user is really quite an issue. How do you reach out to the citizen? We've been lucky in the U.K. to be able to work with parliamentarians. There have been two who've shown a lot of very consistent interest through the process, but we've had support from quite a number of them. And that's brought a number of very powerful advocates into the IGF, people who understand issues of interest to the citizen because the citizen will go and complain to his elected representative. It's also, as a byproduct, as it were, helped us with visibility. Key stakeholders are keen to mix with parliamentarians. They like to come to Parliament and, therefore, it's been a good way of improving participation. As part of that process of working with parliamentarians, we've sponsored all party parliamentary delegations to attend the IGF in Rio and Hyderabad and we hope to do again for Sharm El Sheikh in 2009. So the U.K. IGF is a way to help the U.K. stakeholders prepare for and draw from the IGF to really get the best benefits from the IGF, and we really do hope that colleagues in this room who share our priorities and our interests will want to join with us in working to meet these commitments from the U.K. IGF. We're building bridges to an European initiative and also with the East Africa IGF which really was shown off in Hyderabad and is a very impressive activity of bringing stakeholders from four different east African countries together to make their voices heard. And we would also like to work in developing a similar network with commonwealth countries. So thank you all very much. And now I think it is open to questions, chair. >>PATRICIO POBLETE: Next, we have Raúl. We'll leave the questions for the end. So we have Raúl. >>RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Raúl Echeberria. I am the CEO of LACNIC. LACNIC is the regional Internet registry for Latin America and part of the Caribbean. It is very interesting what Martin has said before me. He has shown all the activities that Nominet is performing in order to support the IGF activities in the U.K. and other parts of the world. We had -- last week, we had an advisory group meeting of IGF in Geneva. We had a breakfast one of the days. We had a breakfast, a donors' breakfast, which all the organizations that support with money the funding of the IGF Secretariat met to discuss how things are going on. So one of the things that was pointed out at that meeting is that one of the most positive impacts of IGF is all the activities that are being performed around the world related with IGF, and all the organizations that are involved with and supporting those activities. And it was suggested that in some way, in some of the reports that the IGF Secretariat issued, often it could be included these kind of activities or a list of some of the activities, like those that Martin has mentioned. LACNIC is also very strongly involved in those activities in our region. We support the organization of preparatory IGF meetings every year, so we will hold a new meeting this year in August from 11th to 13th of August in Rio de Janeiro together with other organizations from civil society, APC and [inaudible]. My first point here is to invite all the ccTLDs that are -- that belong to our region to participate and become engaged actively in the discussions toward the next IGF meeting. The next IGF meeting is -- will be very interesting. I think that in the three first meetings, we have evolved very much from the point of view of the format of the meetings, how to improve the participation of the public, how to make more productive the discussions. I think that this meeting in Hyderabad was very proactive in that way. We got some point of maturity in the -- in those aspects regarding the format of the meetings. We can still work a bit more in continuing to improve the formats for improving the participation, but I think that the main challenge is the next two years, 2009, this year and next year, will be related to two aspects. One of them is how we really turn this IGF in a useful platform that could impact, in public policies processes around the world, and the second one is the continuity or not of the [inaudible] IGF. I will take first the second point. Let me talk a bit about the continuity of IGF. So this is -- my personal view is that as I said in the beginning of my speech, while it has been -- it has produced -- IGF has produced a very positive discussions around the world and has made the organizations like LACNIC, for example, to improve the donor structures to allow more participation for different stakeholders, there are still many -- much work to do in order to make the discussions in IGF to be -- to have more impact in different international policy discussions. How we bring those discussions in IGF about interconnection or about multilingualism to intergovernmental organizations like ITU or UNESCO or many others, how we really make that -- all the conclusions -- not the -- the outcomes that the IGF produces could impact positively and develop actions in other organizations that have as missions regarding specific topics. This is one feeling which we want to work on more. And probably one of the things that we have to do is to continue working with governments in order to make the governments to become more involved and also to develop actions, introducing their own policy discussions, the outcomes of IGF. This is one of the points. I think that the -- at this point, when the discussion is still in the beginning, I think that there are enough points in favor of continue -- of having the IGF in the next years after 2010. We have to discuss more about that. But we have -- we need an IGF that really has a key role in the policy international discussions and is not only [inaudible] for discussion the more controversial issues in which we don't make enough progress year to year. Regarding the contents of the IGF for 2009, it is interesting that there are some -- I think that there is a broad consensus or at least broad support to the fact that there are some issues like privacy, freedom of expression, issues related with what was named in the beginning of IGF as "openness" to have the priority in the discussion of IGF. The evolution of the Internet has changed the life of the people. It has redefined -- has really brought some issues that make us to redefine the concept of privacy, for example. The Internet users face many challenges regarding the privacy issues. Privacy regarding the business practices, privacy regarding the role of the states and all the information that the states collect in different activities, privacy regarding social networks, privacy regarding law enforcement agencies' activities. Many things. This is -- while we -- there is broad support for pushing those issues to be discussed as priorities in IGF, there still remain many people that expect to turn the IGF in the main forum for fighting or discussing issues related with critical Internet resources. The [inaudible] role of the organization that I represent is very open to discuss the issues related with activities, IP address management, and we also support the discussion about all the activities related with critical Internet resources like ccTLDs' activities, root zones, JPA issues and all those matters, but what we cannot do is to create artificial needs for discussions. We have to promote discussions on those issues that respond to real needs of the community or real problems of the community. So one of the big challenges that we face in the advisory group of IGF and all the community faces regarding IGF is to really avoid the IGF becoming only a forum for political discussions, for political discussion, instead of using the IGF as a real tool for improving the life of the people regarding the use of the Internet. So that's it. Thank you. >>PATRICIO POBLETE: Thank you. Thanks, Raúl. Bill, you want to add something about the -- the agenda for the coming IGF? >>BILL GRAHAM: I think Raúl has covered it extremely well, so... >>PATRICIO POBLETE: Good. So we're now taking questions. Chris? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Could I ask each of you to -- if you can think of something, what -- as a ccTLD manager who could possibly go to the next IGF, what is one thing I could do while I was there, and as a ccTLD manager who won't be able to go to the next IGF in Egypt, what can I do that might be useful even though I can't actually be there? >>LESLEY COWLEY: Went all the way down the table. >>MARTIN BOYLE: Indeed. One thing to do while you're there. Well, I think it actually goes back to even before you're there, and that is, to be talking to partners and others in your local community about the issues and about the concerns. Because that actually means that when you are there, you can intervene, contribute to those discussions, with a certain legitimacy, perhaps, with a certain ability to be able to represent a wider community. I think that really is quite important. One thing to do if you're not there. Well, I think it's probably to look at the stuff that comes out, to try and identify the key issues for you and for your community, and to start sharing it with them. And to start getting them interested. Because just staying away from the table isn't going to stop the discussion going on. And, therefore, there is a quite a lot of interest, I think, in sharing it with them and seeing how, perhaps, next year you might go along. Thank you. >>RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you, Patricio. I think it is a bit contradictory, but this is a community that is very accustomed to work online and to participate in consultations online. But in IGF, we are not enough active, so my answer is that the best way in which we can participate is submit papers, opinions, trying to influence the IGF agenda from now and through taking advantage of all the advantages that -- the open consultation meetings for those people that can travel to Geneva and participate physically in the meetings, and submit papers, questions, comments to everybody. So it's very contradictory that our community, that these different communities of stakeholders that are related with ICANN and its processes, is less active than other people that is not so accustomed to participating online in policy process but are very active in IGF specifically. So my recommendation is this. >>PATRICIO POBLETE: Lesley. >>LESLEY COWLEY: Thank you. If you're there, I would suggest you commit to being fully involved for the entire duration of the IGF, which is a similar thing to ICANN, of course, in terms of dedication needed. I would actually recommend personally that you go to the areas that you would not normally engage with. I -- I missed the DNSsec session, for some reason, and I went to something on child protection, and that's an area I'm not normally heavily engaged in and I found it immensely interesting and very useful. If you're not able to come, then I suggest you usefully participate remotely, where that's possible, but also think how we're going to get you there next time. There's a whole load of opportunities coming through various fellowships, in particular the ISOC fellowships, for example, that hopefully will enable more of us to get there and be involved. >>PATRICIO POBLETE: I have a question. You want to say something? Before I have a question? >>BILL GRAHAM: Well, I think most of it has been said, but the one thing I would stress is that the IGF is so far turning out to be a bit of a circus when you're there. You know, it's well over a thousand people. There are typically six or seven things going on at the same time in terms of workshops and main sessions, and it's really challenging to figure out what to do. So if you were going to be there, I'd say it's important to take a look at the things that you're interested in. I really like Lesley's suggestion of venturing into areas where you might not be active. But the number-one thing, I'd say, to do if you do go to the IGF is look at it as an opportunity to build community, to meet people that are doing similar things to what you would like to be doing. Plan how you can work on those things over the next year or over the next years, plural, and then bring those things home and act. If you're staying at home, one of the things that really needs to be done -- and Raúl made reference to this -- is help out with the local access. We're now heading into our fourth attempt to have remote access. There were some interesting experiments this -- in 2008 at setting up hub sites to have -- and have local discussions in different cities and different countries about the IGF themes. Frankly, the connection to the IGF that was going on in India didn't work very well. What did work very well was getting people together in local sites where they very often just turned off their Internet connection and started talking about the issues locally, and that's a really strong contribution you can make. >>PATRICIO POBLETE: I want to toss out a question about when the IGF was first announced, there was some doubt about what -- what's happened about -- in terms of the overlap between the kinds of issues that are discussed in a meeting like this and those that would be discussed there, if that would lead to contradictions or conflicts. How has that evolved? How's that handled? >>MARTIN BOYLE: Well, the one thing you'll never do when you get a thousand, 1500 people all turning up is to get them to agree not to talk about things they've been talking about in other fora. Inevitably they will. But, by and large, I think -- and here both Raúl and Bill might be able to comment -- the preparatory process of identifying issues, the idea of getting workshops that have got community buy-in which then feed into the large plenary sessions I think does help encourage a certain amount of good use of time, because people are building on things that are of interest. And the comment that, well, actually very unusually, you have a massive sharing between different stakeholder groups, stakeholder groups who really don't turn up at other events. You know, the child protection people, they turn out because they've seen real advantages of working in this environment, but, you know, they don't turn up to ICANN. >>RAUL ECHEBERRIA: I think that, in fact, most of the issues that are being discussed in IGF, except all the issues related with Internet resources, are issues that are not being discussed deeply in other forums, so this is one of the most important values of IGF. There is no single place to discuss about cyber-security. There is no single place to discuss about privacy, freedom of expression, Internet connections. Okay, maybe there should be, but it's not working well, so... So I think that the -- this is really one of the most interesting things of IGF that this is a place for working on issues that are not being discussed in other forums. Or at least that there is not clearly identified forums that have responsibility on those issues, so I think that IGF is quite successful on that. Probably the exception, as I said before, is critical Internet resources that are being discussed in many places, but that's... >>PATRICIO POBLETE: Okay. Thank you. Are there any other questions? Or if not questions, perhaps -- yeah. Roelof? >>ROELOF MEIJER: Lesley, Martin, thank you very much for so frankly and opening telling us about Nominet's motivations to so actively participate in this whole IGF process. Martin called it an experiment, and I think it is, but it's an important one, and it's one, I think, of which we don't want to see the consequences if it fails. I think we should all applaud Nominet for the reason -- or the way you -- you set the way for us. And it's difficult to keep up with you, and I'm just -- well, we are trying and I'm urging my colleagues to try and do the same. Because if we add more, I think together we might help making this a success. >>PATRICIO POBLETE: Are there any other questions or comments or perhaps -- yeah. Lesley. >>LESLEY COWLEY: Thank you for that. I mean, it's very kind but there are many others in this room who are also as dedicated as we are. We just had some good ideas that we've kind of been able to run with, and it's been a useful distraction for us, too. [Laughter] >>PATRICIO POBLETE: So if there are no more questions, I'll pass it on to our chair. [Applause] >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, everybody. We're going to have one last presentation from Dave Archbold on the new geographic regions working group, and then we're going to have coffee, tea, and would you believe broccoli? [Laughter] >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Don't ask me why. [Laughter] >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: But there are large plates of broccoli outside. And mayonnaise and tomatoes. >> (Speaker is off microphone). >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Exactly. Broccoli and tea. [Laughter] >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: And we are due to be back with the Government Advisory Committee at 4:30. Now, I don't know whether they'll start on time. I guess they will because the board will be turning up, so if you want a decent seat, you should probably get down there for 4:30. And that's it. That will finish -- now, that is open for the whole of the afternoon. They won't devote the whole of the afternoon to IDN ccTLDs, but it will be the first thing or the second thing. You can start off with that, if you want to, or go after that. We are finished, then, for the day and we start again tomorrow morning at 9:00, with the IDN fast track documentation. But for now, Dave will take us through the new geographic working group. >>DAVID ARCHBOLD: Thanks, Chris. I'm very conscious that I'm all that stands between you and coffee, and that you have also -- many of you -- heard my brief summary in the GAC session a little while ago, so I'm not going to take long at all. Just to recap some of the history, you will remember that this was started by the ccNSO when we approved the regions report that was sent to the ICANN board in September of '07. The board accepted our report, which called for a community-wide working group to look at the issue, and sent it for comment to the other constituencies within ICANN. There was a speedy response, and 12 months later the board were able to authorize the formation of the community-wide working group. That was in November of last year. And a call went out to each of the constituencies to provide two representatives. Those representatives were nominated in January of this year, and in February we had managed to publish our draft charter, which was our first order of business. For your information, these are the members of the geo working group. I'm not going to run through them all. You can read them yourselves. What you will note is for my sins, I was elected chairman and Olga Cavalli is vice chair. The working group charter is on the ICANN Web site. You can go to it from a link that's on the right-hand side of the homepage, and I'm not going to go through the whole charter here. Just to try and pick out some of the key points. In the scope, we're looking to identify the different purposes for which ICANN's geographic regions are used, and then go on to determine whether these uses of ICANN's geographic regions continue to meet the requirements of the relevant stakeholders. The answer might even be yes, and that would surprise us all. And then thirdly, we submit proposals for community and board consideration relating to the current and future uses and definition of the ICANN geographic regions. And the following wording is actually taken from the board resolution on the subject: "In meeting these core objectives, the working group shall focus on, but not be limited to, examining the criteria for assigning countries, dependencies, and recognized geopolitical entities to a geographic region." We propose to produce three reports, as I mentioned at the GAC meeting earlier this afternoon. The first one will address the topics and issues on the subject of what needs to be considered. This hopefully will not be a controversial issue. The interim report will look at the degree to which the uses of ICANN's geographic regions continue to meet the requirements. Again, I would hope this will not be greatly controversial. And then the final report says, "Okay, this is what we need, these are the problems, here are some solutions." I'm not suggesting that that might not be controversial. But at each stage, we are looking for a high degree of public consultation and hopefully discussion by each of the constituencies at an ICANN meeting. So this is the time line that we are currently looking at. So with the initial report published in June of this year, the interim report in October, and the final report aimed for the February 2010 meeting. Once the final report is produced, it goes to each of the constituencies and they're asked to give their support or not, and to inform us. If they're not prepared to support the report, we'd like their reasons. We get a chance to relook at things and perhaps come up with a supplementary report. Again, it goes back to the constituencies and from there, to the board. That, I think, is all I have got to say. The full text of the charter is available here. Public consultation is open for at least another week, if not more. We would be very, very happy to have any comments from you. I may say we have had, so far, no comments at all, so either we did very, very well, or nobody's in the least bit interested. [Laughter] >>DAVID ARCHBOLD: Or a combination of the two. [Laughter] >>DAVID ARCHBOLD: Happy to answer any questions. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I may -- I may have missed it, something you said. What stage do you expect to be at by the time we get to Sydney? At Sydney, will you have something to -- there we go. The initial report, right. >>DAVID ARCHBOLD: The initial report, yeah. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So we're looking at the initial report in Sydney and we're looking at the interim report in Seoul. >>DAVID ARCHBOLD: Yes. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: All right. Thanks. >>DAVID ARCHBOLD: We're trying to aim for an ICANN meeting each time. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Good. Anyone else with any questions? I wish you luck. >>DAVID ARCHBOLD: Thank you, sir. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay, everyone. Time for coffee, tea, whatever. Broccoli. And I will see you all in the GAC at 4:30. Thanks.