GNSO Mexico City 01 March 2009 >>AVRI DORIA: We'll start in a couple minutes even though there are very few of the council members here. We'll start soon going through some of this stuff. Give it another couple minutes. Okay. Let's start. There's not many of us here, but we want to get through these four things. This meeting was set up -- I'd originally planned it as a lunch meeting, and then there probably would have been more people there. But basically, it's prep for our joint meetings. And we have four of them coming up. We have the GAC meeting this afternoon; we have the board/GNSO Council staff dinner this evening; there's the ACSO meetings on Monday; and then there's the joint ccNSO/GNSO Council lunch on Monday also. So basically I've got a page on each of these. In terms of the GAC meeting, the topic that's been requested has been new -- is new gTLD policies slash protection of geographic names, and that was the issue that Janis basically sent that basically the GAC wanted to discuss with us. So I believe that that makes sense to talk about that. I am not planning any presentations at this point. I don't think there's any need for us to present anything in this one. It's more of a question of finding out what issues they've got, sharing what issues we may still have in terms of what's being developed, and basically just conversing about it. I wanted to also find out if there are any other topics that we wanted to bring up at that meeting this afternoon. It's a one-hour meeting, General discussion, open discussion. It would be really good - - we've been moving away from, you know, one or two talking heads at the front of a table giving presentations and more into people from the two communities talking to each other. I think that's a better way to run the meeting, but, you know, let me know if that's not the case. So, first of all, is there anything we want to talk about in terms of positions we want to make sure that they've taken into account or questions we have? And then are there any topics we want to bring up? Is there anyone that wants to comment on either of those? >>CHUCK GOMES: The one top -- I was a little bit surprised as I think I said in an e-mail, that they didn't bring up the WHOIS studies, but if there is time -- I don't necessarily think we need to bring it up to force it into a tight agenda, but if there is time, we could give a little update. I know one was sent to them already in terms of where we're at, but that is a topic that is of big concern to them. >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. I think the reason that one didn't show up on their list is because as they told us last time we met with them, their truck on WHOIS is with the board and not us, and they got a report from Paul that basically let them know what we were doing and then let them know what ICANN itself was doing, and so I think them not including it is a continuation of that. So we can bring it up if we've got something we want to ask them. >>CHUCK GOMES: No, I don't think there's anything we want to ask them. It may be one that we're just ready to respond if they bring it up, but I think we leave it to them to bring it up. >>AVRI DORIA: So are there any other issues that -- yes. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Yeah. I notice on other issues something interesting about the way we might structure it. I mean presumably on the geographical names, the key question for us would be having seen the adjustments now made in Version 2 of the guidebook, are GAC satisfied or do they have other things they would sort of like to see? I think that understanding would be the key thing that would be useful. >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. Please. >>CHUCK GOMES: Janis this morning, in a different meeting that Avri and I were in with -- for the ACSO preparation indicated that there's one other area that they may be interested in, but they can't agree -- they haven't found a good definition, and that's place names. Because they haven't found a good definition of what a place name is, it's -- it may be unlikely that they bring it up, but I just kind of throw that out so that people on the council have heard it before it comes there. So that's the only hint I think he gave us that -- of anything more that they want. >>AVRI DORIA: And one conversation I had with Janis on this also was that, you know, taking this as not final. In other words, one of the things that they were looking at -- in fact, your name, Edmon, came up in this conversation -- was looking at experience of (a) what happened in Asia, dot Asia, and (b) what happens in this first round, again reviewing this for future rounds. So there is an interest, and perhaps they mentioned that if you were willing during the meeting, you might give a short explanation of the relationship between what happened in dot Asia with this. It seemed to be something that Janis was interested in. And then (b), just the fact that whatever is in the implementation plan for the first round is understood by both GAC and us as something that will be reviewed and perhaps changed or whatever before the next round. Yes, Philip. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: I think the other public interest issue relating to that, of course, I think would be trademarks, because governments themselves are typically interested in that. So I think it may be useful just to let them know where our thinking is on that, which I think is either we will see what fora are created that we participate in, and probably in the meantime certainly from our stakeholder group, we may be submitting specific practical proposals that will come there, but I think that would be quite useful information for them. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. And one of the things I did let Janis already know is that at the moment, it didn't appear as if we as a council would be presenting any unified statements about implementation V2; that there would be certainly constituency and individual statements. But I never got back to you, Edmon, on whether you thought the mention of dot Asia experience was at all relevant in this meeting and whether, if it came up, you were, you know, ready to go on about it a bit just to -- >>EDMON CHUNG: Sure. I'm always happy to talk about dot Asia. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Fantastic. So as I say, I'm not, you know, programmatically planning it. It's just something Janis mentioned that might be of interest, so you've been warned that you might be asked. >>EDMON CHUNG: Sure. Not a problem. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Great. Yes. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I apologize for being late, and if by being so I've missed this -- >>AVRI DORIA: We just started. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Okay. But with regard to the question about giving implementation Version 2, is GAC okay with the plan, it would seem to me that that might be a question that's premature to ask, given that the GAC has yet to issue its first statement on the implementation plan at all. Because if you remember, they didn't issue -- their communique in Cairo did not include it because of the recency of the document's distribution and so it's my understanding that it's at this meeting that they will be working on a communique that covers the first draft. >>AVRI DORIA: But I think they've already started talking about it among themselves. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Okay. All right. >>AVRI DORIA: So we won't give any definitive firm positions but we might get a couple people -- >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Okay. All right. >>AVRI DORIA: -- like Janis and others, you know, Bertrand for sure, and others being willing to start sharing what they view. And I don't want to presume to ask if individual members of the GAC are fine with it, because that opens up yet another can. Okay. So the other issue, so that when I start off basically, I'll talk about that and I'll mention that, you know, there's some interest in that in our community in talking about some of the trademark issues, too. Anything else that should be added to this list? So at the beginning, I'll say very little. I won't put up a presentation or slides or anything, but, you know, I'll mention our two questions here. Anything else I should be adding at this point? Obviously, other issues can come up, but within an hour I think if we've got these two issues, we're probably in good shape. Anything that anyone else wants to add to the list? Nope? Okay. We can always come back to it, but not too much. That's this afternoon at 5:00, I believe. Okay. We have tonight's dinner with board/GNSO Council and staff, and seating arrangements have already been made with the random bid again, so we'll see who ends up with whom. Actually, it truly got random because I first did it for eight by -- eight tables, and it didn't fit, so I had to do it by nine tables and I had to move people around, and so it ended up even more random than I thought it was going to be. But anyhow -- and I don't even remember who I put at what table. But we did that poll and we came up with basically two topics, and one of the things, we had a discussion with -- Chuck and I had a discussion a couple weeks ago on e-mail with Bruce and Rita, and sort of added some fleshing out to the two topics that we -- that we picked, more on the second issue than on the first. On the first issue -- and what we -- what was recommended, though, out of those conversations is that perhaps we put at each table a slight cheat sheet on, you know, just some general questions and ideas that people could talk about. So on the first issue, which was issues requiring further work in the gTLD implementation process, one of the first things that I added to the list -- and I want to see if that strikes people as a reasonable thing -- is sort of under what conditions and rules can board approve staff implementation plans that appear to run counter to recommendations made by GNSO Council and approved by the board? What is the appropriate process? And because I think that's come up in various conversations, but nowhere is it written, nowhere have I seen a specific conversation of, you know, does the board just approve the implementation and assume that everything is fine from the council? And while it may be with some people, it might not be with others. And there's the notion of sort of precedent of, you know, even if we agree with the change they're making, just how does that get dealt with? So that was just one general conversation that I thought some tables could engage in, just to sort of start having a notion between us of how this works. Because it's -- it is complex. We put together something with, you know, 20 recommendations -- what was it, four principles, five principles? -- and a whole alphabet full of implementation guidelines. They essentially approved it. I think they approved it, but sometimes I think they essentially approved it, because they basically said, "Yes, we approve going ahead with the implementation plan." They have got an implementation plan which in some cases runs quite well with it, some cases maybe it's a matter of interpretation, maybe not, but it doesn't quite, you know, go with it. So is there a process for bringing us all together? And also given that we don't want it to take a lot of time, once things settle. So just that was a question. The other thing that was on the table was, there were the specific issues. The four here were the four specific issues that were listed in the paper. The last two I added because they were brought up in our meeting yesterday. And obviously I would have added trademark protection if it already hadn't been in the list, because that was obviously one of the big ones that came up yesterday. So there's the four specific issues that required more conversation, according to the staff, which was stability and security, malicious conduct, trademark protection, and demand/economic analysis. And then there were discussions about geographical names and there was discussion about the morality and public order. One of the things I wasn't sure whether I put down here or not is the whole review process or the whole objection process, whether how that was being implemented was something that we wanted to add to this possible issues that people around the table could talk to. So I'll leave it at that for the moment before going to the dessert topic. So does anybody have anything that should be changed, added, subtracted from this list? And what we're talking about is basically putting this page on each of the tables so that we've got something to refer to, just in case everybody doesn't remember all the possible topics. Yes, Chuck. >>CHUCK GOMES: Yeah. On the question -- I don't know how long ago it was, a month or so ago we as a council were -- we talked about the geographic names one, for example, or, in fact, we even talked about what things were really different in the implementation plan from what we recommended, and as I recall -- and my recollection may be weak -- there didn't seem to be a lot of sense of the council wanting to do much about those. Now, if I'm remembering that right, is that something we should convey in our discussions with the board or not? I'm just kind of raising that. Because I thought maybe at the time I was one of the ones that raised that, and thought maybe the council, you know, had some concerns there and may want to -- maybe wanted to do something, but I certainly didn't get that sense then. Now, maybe it's changed now, but I throw that out for discussion. Because it would be kind of nice to know where we kind of stand as a council on -- and there's one big one, the geographical names. >>AVRI DORIA: Well, we've taken the position at the moment, from yesterday, that as a council we have not chosen to do anything. >>CHUCK GOMES: And that's what I'm just kind of confirming right now. >>AVRI DORIA: Right. >>CHUCK GOMES: And are we comfortable with that? And if we're not going to do anything, then is the question about what the board does -- I guess there's still a process issue. >>AVRI DORIA: Yes. >>CHUCK GOMES: But maybe it's not a big issue for us. >>AVRI DORIA: I -- well, I think -- I think in terms of -- and hopefully other on people will speak on it. I think in terms of process, it is a big issue, and I think there's a difference in us sort of saying, "We're not going to raise a protest about anything, we're not going to make an issue of it, but we still believe that we should understand the process by which such changes can and would be made and it's just worth talking about." And is the situation such that it only counts if we want to protest? It doesn't count if they just want to change it but we don't feel like protesting, it's okay? And maybe that's the situation that, you know, the process is they can really decide what they want unless we raise a fuss. And if that's the case, that's cool, but we should -- I'm basically looking for a: Explicitly how do we handle these things, explicitly let's talk about what happens in this kind of situation. There have been a lot of conversations that I've been in, there have been a lot that I've heard of, and I assume there's a lot I haven't heard of, where people have sort of questioned the bottom-up/top-down, you know, when something comes from the council, et cetera, question. So that's why I have that in there as a question, even though we're not protesting. And I think it's quite possible -- quite reasonable for when I'm doing the intro to sort of say, you know, in terms of the issues, that the council as a whole has decided not to take any particular action about any of these, other than perhaps work on some possible suggested solutions, but that those are all being done by constituencies and individuals, and say that, but -- I don't know. Anyone else want to comment on this topic? >>CHUCK GOMES: Well, by the way, this is -- I mean, it's so far a discussion between you and I. >>AVRI DORIA: Yep. >>CHUCK GOMES: But -- >>AVRI DORIA: Which never happens. >>CHUCK GOMES: Right. [Laughter] >>CHUCK GOMES: But this is the kind of thing I think it would be good that all of us understood, so that when we're at different tables with the board, we can talk intelligently kind of about where we're at and we're mainly looking for -- if that's true, we're mainly looking for process in terms of how that will handle. Now, they're going to want to know, okay, where are the significant differences? There, of course, is one, which is on our other list, and that's the geographical names, contrary to the way Kurt described it yesterday. >>AVRI DORIA: And as I said to Kurt yesterday, and this will be an individual comment that I submit, you know, if they're going to do something different than what we suggested, I think that's something that obviously needs to be done, can be gone through, but to say that they're doing essentially what we asked when it looks different is something I personally have an issue with, because you can always redefine an answer to match a question with a bit of sophistry and make it look good, but, you know -- I love sophistry myself. Good game. So anything I should change about this? So this is going to be part of a handout. >>CHUCK GOMES: I guess a question for the councillors who are going to be at the dinner tonight right now is: Are you comfortable talking about that first question in this regard? Because it would be really helpful if -- if there's someone at every table that can kind of describe where we're at as a council. >>AVRI DORIA: Yes. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: If it's raised, the first question they're going to ask is: Give us an example of where that's happened. >>CHUCK GOMES: Yeah. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: What is our -- what is our key example where we think things have gone the most astray? >>AVRI DORIA: I would think geographical names has been the most obvious example, where, you know, we quite specifically said "No list, no reserved names," and never came up even with this notion of going and getting explicit permission. So that's definitely an example. I don't know -- >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Well, I mean to some extent we know the answer of why, don't we? >>AVRI DORIA: Yes. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: The GAC, huh? >>AVRI DORIA: Exactly. But is that something that's legitimate? Yes, Kristina. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I actually would prefer that we flip them, and the reason for that would be that given that there are these outstanding issues for which significant further work, I think, everyone agrees, needs to be done before the process can get put forward. I'm wondering whether we're kind of, you know, flipping things around by dealing with the other issue. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Yeah. I wasn't thinking that they were necessarily ordered in terms of -- >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Oh, okay, all right, all right. >>AVRI DORIA: -- we had to talk about them. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: All right, all right. >>AVRI DORIA: But I have absolutely no reason not to flip it. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Right. >>AVRI DORIA: It's just these are just topics. I don't think that every table, and this is the kind of thing that I will, you know, prattle on about when I'm doing the introduction. I don't think there's any table that has to talk about all of these topics. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Right. >>AVRI DORIA: It's just a reminder of what some of the issues are. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Right. I mean, I think that the question that you've got up there, to me, the heart of it really is: What exactly are the roles of the advisory committees, to me, is kind of the bigger broader question, which I think -- you know, particularly with regard to ALAC as well, I think is an important question. What happens when the committee gives its advice to the board? What's supposed to happen? >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah. Because the bylaws are specific about what the board has to do, but it doesn't explain if there's repercussions with what the board has to do in terms of the SOs that have -- >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Right, right. And maybe it might be more helpful to frame it in that larger question, but to use this as a specific example. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. So in other words, I could speak the other, but not put it on the list. Is that what you're saying? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: No. I mean, I think it's fine but, I mean, to me, really, the bigger issue is, you know, what -- what is the process for, you know, reconciling what sometimes are different positions taken by an SO and an AC. Which should the process be? And it's come up in WHOIS as well, you know. I mean, the GAC has made very clear what they view their role -- what the board should have done or should be doing with regard to its advice. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. I added "role of AC recommendations and how the process" -- >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: And if you're making changes, I'd add another "s" in dessert. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Although truly the topic may be out in the desert, but... Thank you very much. So okay. I've added role of AC recommendations and how the process deals with -- oh, no. With differences from SO recommendations. Is that okay? Except that "those" doesn't belong. Okay. So should I move on to the dessert topic? Are people happy with this as the handout for the tables on the first issue? We can come back to it. Okay. The dessert topic was -- and we'll do it last time. I mean no formal break, just when a table starts shifting from eating food to eating dessert, it can shift topic. Obviously if they're well into the other topic and don't want to shift, they don't have to, but this is another topic, and this one was an important -- and a lot of this content came with conversations with Rita and Bruce. Role of the GNSO restructuring in the greater scheme of ICANN improvement. I mean we know all the stuff that's going on. The new PSC paper that was just published, I guess, yesterday, et cetera. You know, will this help increase participation and responsiveness to the communities. You know, questions like -- and these are just, again, sample questions, no table needs to cover them all, or any, but similar ones would be good. Where is the organization going? Is it going where it should be going? Are there other things we should be doing as the organization goes -- or grows? -- goes through many simultaneous and large changes. I mean, you know, new -- you know, some of those changes that seem to be all happening at the same time. New gTLD, more participation -- I should say new gTLDs and IDN ccTLDs. More participation because obviously we bring in more TLD -- more registries, more registrars, IDN, we're going to be bringing in more participation just by having that. The possible end of the JPA, the restructuring of the GNSO. I had it all fitting on one. And the review of the board that's upcoming. >>CHUCK GOMES: And the review of the board isn't upcoming. It's ongoing. Minor point. >>AVRI DORIA: What? >>CHUCK GOMES: It's ongoing. It's not upcoming. I don't know if you have that written there. You said that. I just wanted to point out -- >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. >>CHUCK GOMES: Yeah. >>AVRI DORIA: No. I just said "Review of Board." >>CHUCK GOMES: Yeah. >>AVRI DORIA: So those are some of the -- you know, the major changes that are happening this year, next year, so, you know, because the -- the restructuring of the GNSO, which we're living through the details of, is supposed to be part or -- part of a larger, you know, review, restructuring, re-understanding, so -- and that was the interest that Rita took in looking at this particular question. So any comments on this? Does that look okay to people as the table cheat sheet on some topics to talk through? >>CHUCK GOMES: Try and start it off, on the review of the board issue, I don't know how many people have looked at the working group report on that, but it's a pretty easy report to read. And, of course, one of the things that was recommended by the independent reviewers was a reduction in size of the board. And one of my thoughts when I went through the working group paper that's up for public comment now was they talk about the need to have on the board geographic and cultural diversity, which I support fully, but they don't mention anything about stakeholder diversity. And so when you start reducing the size of the board, I think that's another issue that needs to be kept in mind. For example, within the -- just from a GNSO perspective, we're going to have two houses, a contracted house, a user house and so forth. And it is important, I think, that key stakeholder groups in the ICANN community be represented on the board not in a representative capacity because we know that's not the way it works but so that there is expertise, for example, from the business community, from the commercial business community, from NGOs, from contracted parties, et cetera. And so one of my concerns is if they reduce the board to too small a size, then I think it becomes harder to achieve cultural, geographic and stakeholder diversity. That would be my biggest concern. I'm actually supportive of reducing the size because I think it could be more efficient. I throw that out just as my personal thoughts. It is an area where tonight's meeting might be a good opportunity at our individual tables to talk about that. >>AVRI DORIA: The thing I want to point out with the PSC report that came out -- and I haven't had a chance to read it yet -- but at this morning's breakfast, someone said if you read pages 3 and 8, I think that's where the synopsis is. You will have the major points of what they are reporting. If you have time to read the rest, great. But if you don't, 3 and 8 are supposedly the pages that will give us the basics that we need to have on what PSC is recommending regarding JPA, et cetera. Any other comments on these topics? Anything else that should be added to this table cheat sheet? As I said, I'll walk through this. I will add some stuff at the beginning of the meeting. Basically, as far as I can tell, there's -- we're the smallest group at the meeting tonight: 19 of us, 21 staff and 22 board. We will be outnumbered. It was only just a third. But at most of the tables there will only be two council members, perhaps three. And I, as usual, split it so there is at least one from each of the two houses so there is at least one from what would be the contracted parties and one from the users, though I did use the NCAs and Alan to fill in shortage in contracted parties. Anything further on the dinner? Anyone want to ask anything? Next thing is the ACSO for tonight -- not for tonight. I just saw your e-mail. You're volunteering for the expanding the name? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Yes. One S and two Ts and you have the A on Kristina, so you are good. >>AVRI DORIA: I'm still short one person from the registrars for improving policy development. In fact, I was supposed to give a note to people about speaking more directly into the microphone and then I didn't do it myself. Okay. So I'm still looking for one volunteer from the registrars for improving policy development. It doesn't need to be a council member. We have no registrars here to volunteer anybody. Okay. I will continue to chase them down, but obviously I'm not going to get an answer on that at the moment. >>CHUCK GOMES: Avri, there is a meeting of those people tomorrow morning. >>AVRI DORIA: There it is, orientation meeting, Monday from 7:30 to 8:30 in Don Soccoro. For those participating, breakfast will be provided. And basically Patrick Sharry who will be moderating this will -- Anything else? Only Olga has got herself in the position to be in both of them, which will be an intense afternoon, I believe. I'm not sure it is followed through on but the original planning including giving the rest of us who are attending this red cards, green cards and perhaps white cards, but at least red cards and green cards, so that people will be able to flash colors as they love and hate what they hear. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: As long as they don't throw them at me is okay. >>AVRI DORIA: The look on your face was precious. [laughter] Anyhow, yes, Olga? >>OLGA CAVALLI: Do we know how many people will be in the panel? >>AVRI DORIA: It was slated for about 20 because it is somebody from every one of the ACs and every one of the SOs and some of them like SSAC and ASO. The reason we have four in each panel is because SSAC was quite gracious to say, "We'll only put on two." I think they are having trouble twisting arms to get two. So it was three per with a little bit of give and take. I think the ccNSO is also coming with four on the panel, at least on the first one. So it is about 20 or thereabouts. And basically the way the panels run for anyone that hasn't read the whole sheet on it is during the panels, it is just the panels talking and there is no crowd interaction other than red and green cards, just among the panelists. And then there is a short session at the end of it all where those of us that have been watching get to comment. But what it is really meant to is to make sure as we go into all the rest of our meetings for the week on these two issues, we not only know the views that we come in with, we know the views that they come in with. This is also still an experiment. I'm happy to say that a lot of the comments that the council had from the last experience have basically motivated the organization of this one, not completely but the topics beforehand and so on. So we'll see how it works. It is still an experience; and if it's close to successful, it may continue. If it is a total disaster, then it may be dropped. If it is somewhere in between, then who knows. Okay? Any questions or comments on that? Okay. The last thing we've got on this particular planning is the lunch also on Monday which, I think, is before any of these sessions so that will be good, is basically the ccNSO/GNSO lunch. And basically what they really want to talk about, as I understand it, is our motion in terms of IDN ccTLDs and, of course, Olga, you know probably more than I do about what they want to talk about. But what I've gotten is that the topics that they're interested in are "what about this motion?" essentially. And I don't know if we had anything that we wanted to add. I thought that for one lunch conversation -- I think the other topic that had occurred to us at times and might be worth putting on the agenda also was are there policy items that we can work on together? That's always been one of the topics that whenever the GNSO Council has talked about meeting with the ccNSO, it has been one of those that has been put on the table, is there stuff that we can be doing together. >>CHUCK GOMES: And, in fact, along that line, the communications work team under the OSC which is cross-communications and so forth, we can talk about whether -- that's a place where we can start talking about cross-SO policy development processes or whether they would like maybe something -- a totally different means of starting to do that. That's certainly an issue that will come up. >>AVRI DORIA: I'll add that to the list. Is that reasonable to add that topic to the list so it isn't just talking about, talking about cross-SO development? And you can bring up then as part of that -- Olga, should you convey or should I convey to Chris that we would like this topic on? Probably best if I should convey to Chris. Yeah, okay. >>CHUCK GOMES: Should we add Edmon's favorite topic, the three- character IDN gTLDs? Because obviously that's of interest to especially some of the ccTLDs. >>EDMON CHUNG: I'm always happy to talk about it, but I'm not sure whether it's relevant, though. It might be. It seems like there's at least one thread of thought from ICANN that says the reason for keeping it at three or above is to provide some sort of protection to the ccTLDs. And perhaps the question is whether they feel it's relevant at all. >>AVRI DORIA: Do we want that -- I'm totally making a mess. >>EDMON CHUNG: Generally, though, I think this should be very low priority in this particular -- >>AVRI DORIA: Maybe it can be brought up if there's time at the end as an extra issue? Yes, Marika. >>MARIKA KONINGS: I just wanted to mention on the cross-SO policy development one of the ideas that was raised in the context of the fast flux PDP, or one of the ideas, was maybe some ccNSO involvement would be helpful going forward. >>AVRI DORIA: That would be good. Okay, great. So I will leave the other one off for now. The three-character -- okay. Any other issues? That's right, we also have with us a perspective -- or a candidate for our liaison, so I'm sorry I ignored you in all this. Anything else that should be on that lunch? I think it's a lunch. We'll be eating. We'll be talking. I think those issues should probably cover it. >>CHUCK GOMES: Avri, that's open to anybody in the GNSO and anybody in the ccNSO? >>AVRI DORIA: It's scheduled as ccNSO/GNSO Council luncheon. And I believe it is, as all things, open but not widely advertised. But, yes, as all things, it is open. >>CHUCK GOMES: So it is not just restricted to ccNSO and GNSO council members? >>AVRI DORIA: Right, it is a ccNSO/GNSO Council luncheon. We may -- if it gets too difficult, in the past we have restricted conversation to council members if that became an issue. If the room was so full, then we've done that in the past. But I don't see any reason to do it unless there is a reason to do it. I will talk to Chris about it beforehand. If we see that it is becoming way too much, then we might try to restrict it. And there will be a recording. That means we have to speak with our mouths not being full into the microphone. I suppose we can speak with our mouths full. Yes, Kristina? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Can I actually back up a second to the joint SO/AC? >>AVRI DORIA: Anything. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Are the panelists supposed to be preparing statements? >>AVRI DORIA: Not that I know of. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Okay, good. >>CHUCK GOMES: What was Janis talking about having papers ready at our meeting this morning? I wasn't totally following that. >>AVRI DORIA: Janis having papers ready? >>CHUCK GOMES: Yeah, he said the GAC -- >>AVRI DORIA: It is more difficult for the GAC to speak freely. >>CHUCK GOMES: It was just for them? >>AVRI DORIA: I think that's how they want to do things, that they've got various positions that the people can speak on. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: It is a moderated session. Patrick Sharry is moderating, so he will be inspiring and turning to panelists and putting them on the spot? >>AVRI DORIA: One would assume, yes. Yes, Olga. >>OLGA CAVALLI: It is something that the council should want us to have a mind for both of the topics or especially for any of them? >>AVRI DORIA: I don't know. One of the reasons why I had opted for trying to get four and making sure there was one chosen by each of the - - what I have been calling the future stakeholder groups was so that they're really representing not the thoughts of the council so much but the thoughts of, you know, the perspectives of the stakeholder group that they're coming from. The problem we had last time is with just the chairs up there, all we could pretty much say was what the councils or the SOs or the whatevers we came from had already agreed to because we couldn't go -- this allows people to go further and speak within the context of the stakeholder group. And I don't think everything has to have been -- it is up to each person and their stakeholder group what degree of freedom they have to interpret what is important to the stakeholder group as opposed to have had specific instructions. And I think at some point from the GAC it is much more programmed than it probably is with some of you folks and your stakeholder group. Anything else? Okay. That's basically what I had as the agenda for this meeting, was those four bits of preparation. I did have one announcement I was supposed to make, and then I will open the up floor to anything else anyone has. That was there has been a request from Diane Schroeder that for each of the constituency groups that are going to be having meetings with the board, that you send them your questions of them in advance. And "in advance" means today? "In advance" means today, the questions you would like the board to address when they're meeting with you. And I'm just passing that one on. And it is Diane Schroeder that you send these questions to. So is there anything else that we want to discuss before we break? Our next meeting is the discussion -- sort of the introduction to revision to -- of the IDN fast track. Any comments or questions, or are we on break? We are on break. Thank you. (Break) >>AVRI DORIA: Just to let people know, we're going to start shortly, but we are waiting for the presenter with presentation to come. And also, did anybody lose a pearl earring? Because a pearl earring was given to me. Ken, you would look cute in it. That would be legislative and we don't do voting on such things. But then we'll have to discuss which ear. Okay. We'll start. We seem to have had some confusions where we didn't convey exactly what we thought we needed to convey, so -- but we have Tina, we have Bart, we have Kurt -- or had Kurt and will have Kurt back -- and we have Chris coming in and out also. So basically while there is no presentations, per se, on the changes in what's going on with the IDN ccTLD fast track, Tina basically will talk us through the changes and then basically we can have a, you know, question-and-answer dialogue on any of the issues that people have with that document. So anytime you're ready. Are you ready or am I pushing it? No. Okay. Thank you. And thank you for coming, despite the fact that we didn't let you know that we needed you. >>TINA DAM: That's okay. I'm just glad I'm here for the start. So I'm sorry, I don't have any slides for you, but let's just talk through briefly on what the changes are in the fast track draft implementation plan and then see if there's any questions for it. So, first of all, I think everybody knows that Module 7 contains those topics that are outstanding and still need resolution on, and those are probably the most important ones for you. Just very briefly on Module 1 to Module 6, we did a -- a few sets of clarifications and definitions in there. First of all, we defined what "evidence of support and non-objection from government authority" means. We did some more explanatory information about what technical review panel was going to be, and that is specified as DNS stability. And then we further specified what kind of ICANN contact can take place through the application process. We clarified what the eligibility requirements were. We did some changes to with the technical strings were, technical string requirements are, and those are exactly the same as what you talked about yesterday for the gTLD program. But as you know, the revision is continuously ongoing, so we're going to see more changes to that. And then we clarified that in the termination process, there, indeed, is a contact to the applicants. All of this was based on comments that we received where things weren't clear enough in the first version of the draft implementation plan. So -- and you can see it's posted in red-line, so I think those changes are pretty easy to go through and see, and hopefully you agree that it's making much more sense as it is today. More importantly, though, on Module 7 topics, we posted two supporting papers, one on the documentation of responsibility. That is proposing a relationship between IDN ccTLD operators and ICANN. The second paper is on IDN tables and variants and how they're being managed. And the proposal there is pretty much following the experience that we have on the second level, and it also includes a proposal to allow variant strings of TLDs to be allocated in the root. Then there's a number of other topics in Module 7 where we did not release supporting papers, but we added clarifying information in the draft implementation plan. One is on a financial model, and on that -- and I should say on all of these topics, particularly in Module 7, they're out there for additional public comments -- right? -- so they're proposals that we put on the table. On the financial model, we've received on the first version a lot of different comments between whether it should be cost recovery, which is primarily what the comments from the GNSO was, or whether there should be no fees, which is primarily the comments from the existing ccTLDs and the ccNSO. The additional details in Module 7 is calling for some more feedback from the community about the fee components and level. So in other words, what components should a fee or cost recovery be on, and what levels should it be on. The last topic I'm going to mention in Module 7 is about preventing contention and that overlaps, again, with the gTLD program. So that if there is any contention between applications in the two processes, that we have specific rules for how to deal with that. And the rule that is proposed is that if a gTLD application is approved by the ICANN board, it is considered as an existing TLD even though it's not in the root yet, and that means that nobody can apply for an equivalent string in any of the two processes. Or for the fast-track purpose, if a string is validated -- and validated means that it has passed the technical check that takes place in the fast track -- if it's validated, it's still not in the root but we consider it as an existing string, and that means nobody can apply for that string either in the fast track or in the gTLD process. So those are the two rules or two thresholds that have been set up to solve contention. Or propose to solve contention. And I think that's at least a broad overview of the revisions that we did. If there's any specific topics you want to dive into, then... >>AVRI DORIA: I've got Chris and then Ken and then Mike. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Just a clarification. Good morning, everybody. Just a clarification. I may have misheard. I think I heard Tina say that -- that the view of the cc's is that there's there should be no fees. That's actually not right. The view is that, yes, there should be a model for fees but the current position of the ccNSO is that that should not be a compulsory model. It's not that -- it's not the view of the ccNSO, nor the GAC, I think, for that matter that there should be no payments. It's more to do with the principle of mandating a payment. >>TINA DAM: Okay. So I probably didn't give enough details on that. I was trying to demonstrate that there's two very different sides to that topic, and that's how it divides, but Chris is certainly right when it comes specifically to the ccNSO and the GAC positions. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Ken? >>KEN STUBBS: Thank you. I want to indicate that I'm speaking solely in my capacity as an individual member of the ICANN community. Nowhere in this document is there any requirement or acknowledgment of any financial responsibility by the ccTLDs for payment to ICANN to help recover the future costs of this process or to provide financial support for the future management of this effort. The entire cost burden -- which at this point in time is well into seven figures -- for this is being laid back on the ICANN community's backs. It's grossly unfair and reflects a continuing pattern going back over the last 10 years of the refusal by many members of the community, the ccTLD community, to pay their fair and reasonable share of ICANN costs. Many of the countries who will benefit from this new rollout have more than adequate financial resources to shoulder their fair share of the burden of the rollout costs incurred, and can certainly manage their proportionate share of an ongoing management cost as well. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you, Ken. Mike. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Thanks. It's Mike Rodenbaugh. Tina or anybody, could you just talk a little bit about the timing and how soon the process is expected to be wrapped up and how soon, I guess, applications would be taken and how soon these are likely to be in the root. >>TINA DAM: Sure. So I'm -- well, I don't know but I'm guessing Kurt is going to say something about that too, but, first of all, we have all of these different topics that are not resolved yet. Because they're not resolved, it's not possible for us to set a specific date for when the process goes live. Even if we could set a date that says, "This is the day where you can send in an application for an IDN ccTLD in the fast track process," even if we could do that, we still couldn't say when an IDN TLD would be in the root. Because that, of course, depends on applications that are sent in, you know, how fast that process is being dealt with. And again, even launching the IDN ccTLD -- not just being in the root but actually launching it and making registrations available under it -- is also not possible -- right? -- because that depends on that IDN ccTLD operator. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: So I guess to then -- just more generally, where has the discussion gone with respect to stated positions, I think, from the GNSO that IDN ccTLDs should not be allowed into the root until IDN gTLDs or other new gTLDs are allowed into the root? >>TINA DAM: Well, so I'm going to hand the mic over to Kurt, I think, but because we don't have a specific deadline for either one of the two processes, it's really impossible for us to go too deep into that conversation. I mean, right now they're running in parallel, right? And we're trying as hard as we can to get the different elements addressed that are still not finalized, so that we can move forward and actually get a specific time line out. >>KURT PRITZ: Thanks, Mike. It's always been ICANN's intent to work toward launching both processes at the same time, and it is also ICANN's intent to work as -- with all due urgency on, you know -- and the proper amount of caution, but with all due urgency on both processes. Still, at this date -- remember from the gTLD discussion today and some of what Tina just said now -- the final dates for the launch or the acceptance, which I would call the acceptance of applications, is somewhat speculative. So our intent is to launch at the same time. The question is: What does that mean? Does launch at the same time mean the same moment? Does launch at the same time mean plus or minus a month or a couple months? And what -- you know, as we get to the end, what's going to be acceptable to everybody, when we say, "Okay, we're set to launch here"? >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. You wanted to add something to that. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah, just briefly. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Just to say that we've -- the ccNSO has -- is going to come to -- tomorrow? Lunch? Are we doing lunch tomorrow. >>AVRI DORIA: Yes, we're doing lunch tomorrow. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: And one of the things we want to talk about is timing, because you passed a resolution, we've passed a resolution, saying we'd like to understand more about what your concerns are, so... >>AVRI DORIA: Great. Thank you. I was asked by Tina that she wanted to come back to respond to Ken's statement. Ken? >>TINA DAM: Yeah. Just very briefly, Ken, because I -- I know that you also posted that comment in the public forum on line. >>AVRI DORIA: Ken? Yeah. Tina's actually making a -- >>TINA DAM: I was just going to try to respond to your comment before. >>KEN STUBBS: I apologize. >>TINA DAM: We didn't get a chance for that. So Section 7.2, which is in Module 7 of the plan has like an outline on some of the topics that you addressed. I'm just going to read part of it for you. It says, "Given that the fast track program is a new program created specifically for new IDN ccTLD managers and their Internet users, some contributions should be required from IDN ccTLD managers to offset its program costs. Still, this remains a module 7 discussion issue in this implementation plan draft because more discussion is required before finalizing recommendations, contributions including feedback on required contributions, the cost components and levels that would be considered in a cost recovery mechanism." And it continues a little bit, but -- so it's mentioned in the draft implementation plan and we're asking for more feedback. >>KEN STUBBS: I guess I'm concerned about the wording. To me, it bodes more like, you know, hey, this is going to cost some money and, you know, somebody ought to pay for it. But I don't really feel that I see a structure there to provide for what I consider to be binding commitments. There's clearly a recognition that this process is being tailored for a specific community, and I think that that community has a responsibility to underwrite the cost of that process. I do not think that that -- that those costs should be buried and passed on to someone else in the form of overhead allocation methodologies. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Thanks. Just to show who I have on the list, I currently have Adrian, Jeff, Eric, Chuck, and I'd also ask, since not everybody in this room knows everybody, please give, you know, your full name, properly pronounced, when called. So Adrian -- oh, yeah. And I've been reminded several times we have to speak into the microphone. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Adrian Kinderis. Thank you. I might not have pronounced that correctly. Excuse my technical ignorance, Tina, but how much is timing a function of revisions to the protocol? Do you see that we -- are we getting stability to the protocol now? Are we getting closer to locking it down and will that affect any time lines? >>TINA DAM: It probably could affect the time line. Certainly. Both for IDN gTLDs and IDN ccTLDs. From a technical standpoint, it doesn't really matter what type of TLD you're talking about. The protocol revision has been ongoing for some time. Anybody that has followed the mailing lists on that topic in the recent, I would say, couple of weeks will see that it has -- the volume and the extent of discussion has gone dramatically up. It's increased. It does not look so good. It has gone into discussions of changing the prefix, all kinds of, like, very significant changes that would mean that it would take a really long time to finalize it. But then the question is: What -- you know, what are we going to do if it's not finalized? Can we go ahead with something or not? What we're doing right now on that is splitting that question into two. First is, what can we actually put in the root, and what can you allowed at the second level? In terms of what can go into the root, we're looking at those fast- track interests replies that we got from different government territories and ccTLD managers, to see if any -- you know, obviously that's not everything. Replying to that is not a prerequisite to go into the fast track, but gives some sort of indication of where we are. So we're looking at those strings that were indicated as an interest, to see if there would be any problems by going ahead with the current standard of the protocol. And right now, there does not seem to be a lot of problems with that. But that doesn't mean that registrations at the second level are going to be easier. So I -- you know, it's going to be a larger discussion, if we can't finalize the protocol, because of technical security and stability reasons, and I am sure that it's going to be a broader discussion than just here. It needs to be in the technical community, obviously. But, you know, it looks like we could go ahead with some, but it would be a limited functionality and it wouldn't give certain regions what they actually need. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: So -- thank you for that answer. So you could foresee, then, that g's -- gTLD IDNs or IDNs and gTLDs would not be able to be put through the same -- or given the same -- what's the word I'm looking for? You said that there may be some cc -- IDN ccTLDs that have put forward an interest in that you could put them in and a solve the problems with the protocol afterwards because they're ones that wouldn't have any issues. Obviously that would then impact gTLD IDNs because they're unknown so cc's could possibly go before g's in that sense. >>TINA DAM: So that's a really hard question for me to answer because I don't think anybody on staff is going to make a decision like that, to let something go ahead before something else and half of a process go ahead before the other. I mean, I don't think we've evaluated the consequences enough of, you know -- or we haven't been able to evaluate what are the consequences going to be if we were going to go ahead with a half-solution like that. It's not just technical consequences -- right? -- there's also going to be political consequences, so I can't really answer that. I answered you purely from a technical standpoint, that it's possible that some of these strings could function fine. That's not a full answer. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. I have three direct comments. I've got Cary, Chuck, and Bart who want to respond directly to this particular issue. >>CARY KARP: It has to be noted that there is a fully functioning IDNA protocol. It's been in the works since 2003 and all of you who are implementing IDN on any level are using it. Okay? The worst case that is actually currently being invoked in the protocol revision discussion is a 10-year scenario between now and a usable protocol revision, and if that's the case, I regard it as absurd. I mean, the work will stall rather than be delayed that much. But the consequence of both of these things is that IDNA will not be revised in any foreseeable future, and we have no choice but to conduct business as we otherwise would have. That being said, and noting what Tina says, I mean, yes, indeed, we can come up with a batch of cc labels -- ccTLD labels and a batch of gTLD labels that we can comfortably enter into the root that are absolutely immune from any of the issues that are currently being considered on the protocol -- during the protocol revision, but on lower levels, the things that are -- that will possibly change become significant concerns. So the -- the debate I suppose would be how far ICANN's interests in this can extend, and I can't comment meaningfully on that, but the root will sustain IDN TLDs. We know that because there are 11 of them there already and they were put there specifically to see if any damage would be done. None has. We're way past the one-year mark on that. But again, rolling out a whole bunch of IDN TLDs are going to put people in a situation where they're building businesses on something that may be disruptive in the near or more distant future, and what is our shared interest in embarking upon that path, question mark, question mark, question mark. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Chuck, you had a direct comment on that? >>CHUCK GOMES: Well, I think most of my questions have been answered, but let me confirm that. What I've heard over -- from several speakers now is that the revision of the IDNA protocol is not a definite prerequisite for the introduction of IDN gTLDs, whether it be g's or c's. It sounds like it would be desirable, but like Cary just said, it might be terribly unrealistic. Am I interpreting the statements correctly? >>TINA DAM: If you're asking me, yeah. My understanding is definitely that it's desirable, but it has not been decided that it's definite at this point in time. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Bart, you had a direct comment? >>BART BOSWINKEL: I just wanted to -- excuse me. I just wanted to recall the recommendations of the IDNC working group with regard to the fast track. It is, if you look at the IDNC working group recommendations, it was very clear that the IDNA protocol update needs to be completed. That was the recommendation of the IDNC working group. Now, I think -- but this, again, is a personal view and understanding a bit of -- just coming out of the discussions with the GAC, and we will have the discussions with the ccTLDs. I think it would be wise if, say -- if the implementation plan is completed, to really revisit this question and see what the status is at that time because I think at this current stage it's very speculative to look into what will happen, because we don't know how long this will take, we don't know how long other processes will take, we don't know how long the update of the IDNA protocol will take. So what Cary just said, 10 years, then we have a whole different ball game than when we started with the whole IDNC working group. >>AVRI DORIA: Hold on -- hold on, Edmon. Mike, had you wanted to make a direct comment to you or you just wanted to be in the queue? Okay. Adrian. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: So now we've had three answers and just so I'm -- I'm clear, I guess I'm speaking more to Chuck's point. I'm confused now. I'm getting some sense that we are waiting, some sense that we aren't waiting, and then some sense that you know what? We'll get back to you. Can I -- is there just a simple answer here? >>AVRI DORIA: I have Chris wanting to give an answer. Who else wants to give an answer? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Let me see if I can try. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. Chris and Tina. Any other answers? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It seems to me that -- thank you, Avri. It seems to me -- it's kind of what Bart said. When we -- when we produced the final working group report, one of the recommendations of the working group was that the IDNA revision -- IDNA protocol revision was a requirement before the launch of IDN TLDs, although of course the working group was only talking about ccTLDs. And that was based on technical advice. At the time, we understood that it was likely that the protocol would be completed probably before we were ready to launch our IDN ccTLDs. That now appears to be unlikely. We will seek advice -- we do not yet have formal advice -- we will seek advice from the technical community to confirm that it is okay for us to proceed on the existing protocol, and if it is okay for us to proceed on the existing protocol -- and I know, Cary, I know you're never going to agree to do that -- you're confused because there is no straight answer to this. We don't yet know the answer. We understand that it is going to be acceptable for us to proceed on the existing protocol. In an ideal world, we would wait for the new protocol. But that -- but we understand that we can proceed on the existing protocol. That's my -- that's my understanding of it, anyway. Which probably just confused the issue even more. >>AVRI DORIA: And I've got Tina that wanted to add something to it and then I've got Cary that wants to add a sentence and a half. >>TINA DAM: The answer from ICANN staff, Adrian -- the answer from ICANN staff is that the protocol revision, completing that is desirable, but it's not a requirement, and the current standpoint is that we're going to go ahead without it if it is not completed. That's the ICANN staff position. >>AVRI DORIA: And Cary. >>CARY KARP: Chris, if it were reasonable to expect unequivocal advice from the technical community, the protocol revision would not be in trouble. >>AVRI DORIA: I think that probably was a sentence and a half. Okay. Jeff, back to you. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Thanks. This is Jeff Neuman, and I'm asking this as an individual. I have actually two small questions. So we all understand that there's a lot of issues to figure out in both the gTLD and ccTLD fast-track process, but in the gTLD process, at least the statement was made in writing, in the analysis, that says it's unlikely that the application round will open before December 2009. So let me try to give a fill-in-the-blank. How about it's unlikely that the ccTLD fast track will open before blank? How would you fill that in? >>TINA DAM: Are you asking -- if you're asking me, I'm -- you know, I'm really sorry. We -- I cannot fill in that blank. We have some very important topics and discussion for this week, and unless there is any indication of reaching a consensus on those topics, I cannot fill in that blank. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Okay. And then -- well, and to follow up on that, then, if you can't fill in the blank, can you tell us when you would perhaps know when you'd be able to fill in the blank? >>TINA DAM: Yes. All right. I will just give it a shot. The most positive outlook on this that I see is that we reach consensus within this meeting or shortly after this meeting in Mexico City on the outstanding elements of the fast track. What that would mean is that ICANN staff can finalize the implementation plan, present it for Sydney, and have, you know, a board approval either between Mexico and Sydney or immediately after Sydney, which would mean a launch shortly after Sydney. That would be the most positive, right? I don't know if that's going to be possible or not, but that would be the -- the most positive outlook of reaching a finalization of it. The worst case? Gosh, you know, I don't know. Probably the same as the gTLD program. >>JEFF NEUMAN: So the -- okay. No, I think that's great. I mean, I think that's kind of the answer I was looking for as to the best-case scenario, so the best-case scenario you think could possibly be at some point shortly after Sydney or certainly between Sydney and Seoul as a best case? >>TINA DAM: If we can reach consensus. Now, as Bart mentioned, we just came from the GAC meeting, and they're still having discussions about some of the module 7 topics. I'm sure the ccNSO is going to have it on their agenda a lot as well, so, you know, at the end of the week, maybe we'll have a better indication of whether it is going to be shortly after Sydney or around that time frame or if it's going to extend longer. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Thank you. And sorry. The second -- or if someone wants to follow up on that, I have a second -- >>AVRI DORIA: Adrian had a follow-up, but I just wanted to ask clarification. There was like a two-month gap between your best case and worst case, is that correct? It was longer? Okay. >>TINA DAM: No. No, it was longer. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. I didn't understand it then. Adrian? >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Yeah. My only -- I think without putting words in Jeff's mouth, I think my concern is that the draft application guidebook does not reference, as far as my reading, and forgive me if I'm wrong -- does not reference the fact there is the IDN ccTLD fast track and that one is dependent upon the other. What I'm hearing today is you have just said best-case scenario -- sorry, worst-case scenario is that you will be done by the time the draft application guidebook comes out and that's fine. Being out in the g world, there are certainly IDN-wanting -- or IDN folks -- start again. >>TINA DAM: That's not what I said? >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Beg your pardon? >>TINA DAM: That's not what I said. I said the worst-case scenario for the fast track would be the same as the worst-case scenario as the gTLD. >>AVRI DORIA: And that's December? >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: My point is this then, if it's going to impact the ability for IDN new GTLDs, then that needs to be stated somewhere at least in the guidebook because at the moment, the way it's written is these things are coming out at the same time as g's. Avri, you are looking puzzled. Am I puzzling? >>AVRI DORIA: My puzzlement has to do with what best-case dates and worst-case dates -- >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Which is where I am. >>AVRI DORIA: December 2009. The best-case scenario for gTLDs or the worst-case scenario for TLDs are just the latest horizon time scenario for gTLDs. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: The only reason I'm harping on this point, there is some serious impact there because there is a need -- at least folks out there want their IDN gTLDs. And us as the GNSO Council, I think we need to be prudent in our getting back to that community to say you either can have them or can't have them because there is an expectation at the moment that you are going to get them at the same time as the new GTLDs in a true sense. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay, Jeff, back to you. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Okay. I'm going back to the fees issue. You said that more discussion needs to take place. I think the ccTLDs have come out with their position. A number of members of the community came out with their position. So can you just clarify who that discussion needs to be with? I mean, this issue has been an open issue since the very first item, so it would help to clarify who the discussion needs to take place or maybe it is an expectation that someone will change their mind. Or what type of discussion needs to take place? >>AVRI DORIA: I have Chris wanting to follow that up. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Avri. Jeff, the current situation is that we expect there to be a board -- sorry, a staff paper on fee methodology. Whether that staff paper will be available at this meeting or not, I don't know. However, that will be then the subject of discussion, and there are two discussions. One discussion is, is the proposed methodology an acceptable methodology? The second discussion is: Are you prepared to agree that you will pay this compulsorily as opposed to voluntarily? One of the things I have been trying to do in managing this whole thing is trying to keep those discussions effectively separate because you could very simply agree the methodology and say, "I will pay voluntarily," right? But the key is to agree to the methodology. We're not at that stage of being able to say exactly what there is, but it is looking possible -- possible that it might be -- the suggestion might be -- I don't want to give the impression that is in any way, A, likely to be acceptable or, B, has already been agreed. It is possible the methodology will be something along the lines of a small percentage of revenue from the IDN ccTLD. And I think Bart said in the GAC this morning -- and like I said this is a wide variation. We are talking somewhere between 1 and 5%. I think the current VeriSign contribution is about 3% -- roughly speaking 3% of revenue, I think. And that would be based on the revenue from your IDN ccTLD. The other key thing to note from the point of view of ccTLDs is that for any model to be acceptable, it is going to have to be in their currency. There is major challenge for ccTLDs in U.S. dollars. In fact, for some of them, it is actually illegal for them to even buy U.S. dollars. So we will be talking about contributions in their own currency. But that's just a very broad-brush indication of what might be happening. And at the moment, there is not much more I can say. >>AVRI DORIA: Jeff, that was okay? I have Eric, Mike and then Chuck. So Eric. >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Hi, Tina. Like Ken, I submitted -- I'm Eric Brunner-Williams from CORE. Hi, Tina. Like Ken, I submitted written comments which you can respond to now. But I thought I would start by saying that the -- as a contributor to the IDNA 2000-and- whatever activity, yeah, this does look like a train wreck and it has been a train wreck that I have been concerned about for a long time. But I don't think it is actually as bad as the train wreck that it looks like it is. I think that some of the excited nonsense is going to blow over. But we made a collection of choices, the people in this room and the people not in this room that are called the board, in not stating what our requirements were in the first place and in leaving it to another organization to try and figure out how to do what we wanted them to do. And while I'm very critical of the in-application's architecture and the use of Unicode and a few other fundamental design choices, I haven't been trying to obstruct this and I don't think it is actually going to blow up into failure. So, Adrian, you asked the same question I asked at the -- I think it was the Paris meeting when I asked if we could get away with the codepoints that we knew about that were safe. Your answer then was no - - was different than your answer today, which is 2008 is desirable but it is not necessary. Whereas, your answer then was reasonably that 2008 is necessary. Giving up on that -- or relaxing the strictness of that precondition is, I think, a reasonable thing to do given the choices that we are facing. But if you do have any responses to the written comments that I made - - because it was -- I have lost count of how many there were in that one piece of mail -- I'm interested to hear them. Thank you. >>TINA DAM: Was that comments that you made on the previous revision, or is this new comments that you have made since the revision that we're looking at here came out? >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Well, mine is right after Ken's. Ken says about the financial contribution. Mine is the one immediately after that. So that was made just a couple of days ago. >>TINA DAM: Okay. I don't know if you guys have the time to go over those in this meeting. If you do, then I'm going to have to look them up and read them. I have not looked at the public forum in the last couple of days. >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: I'm going to cry, my comments haven't been read. >>TINA DAM: It has been a busy couple of days. The comment period is open until 6th of April so we are going to, of course, look at all comments. I happened to have seen that Ken made the comment because I looked at the forum before going here. But I'm sorry, I didn't see yours in the last couple of days. >>AVRI DORIA: Did you want to say your comment now? Because asking her to read it now and answer by the end of this meeting might be a bit difficult. >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: I wouldn't do that to anyone. Let me just say one that I think is sort of an overreaching fundamental. It is kind of the obverse side of Ken's comment, which is that the cc's should pay, to summarize Ken. We have -- we've assumed in the fast-track process that the problem we are trying to solve is, to be blunt, making Chinese possible. Well, Chinese is not going to become extinct in the next century regardless of what we do. There are a lot of languages which use decorated ASCII which are, therefore, outside of the scope of the IDN cc fast track which are also not sponsored by states, which is also why they are outside the IDN cc fast track which will go extinct in much less than a century. So if the purpose of our being here is so that somebody in the gTLD space can make more money or if the purpose of our being here is so that some national government can continue to use its language, the languages that it prefers and not the languages that it deprecates, then we are doing the right thing. If our ambition was to retain languages which are minority languages, not necessarily supported by states, not necessarily using non-Latin characters, then we're fundamentally not doing the right thing. So I don't expect to fix the fast track at this point in time. But I do hope that staff appreciates that we need to do something after fast track, which relaxes these two conditions, the non-Latin condition and the state-supported condition. Thank you. >>TINA DAM: Right. So in terms of the non-Latin condition, that is something that's been considered in the long-term ccNSO policy development process for IDNs and that is ongoing. In terms of minority languages, I absolutely agree with you and I think this was in your previous comment as well in the previous version of the paper, and I agree with you. The two processes that we have today for allocation of IDN TLDs does not -- I'm sorry, I was just trying to address your comment. Those two processes does not necessarily fit really well with the minority languages. It doesn't mean that they can't be introduced in either of those two processes. They can. But I agree with you. I can come up with a few examples as well that would be really nice to have introduced as IDNs and they probably are not going to be proposed in either one of these two processes. I think it is really hard to come up with a process that fits everything. Personally, I think we're covering a lot and we're meeting a lot of needs but we are not meeting all of it. That's certainly something that has to be considered as the processes are being revised and moved on and as the long-term ccNSO policy development process is being continued. I see Chris is nodding and I think Bart is as well. >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Thank you very much, Tina. >>AVRI DORIA: Ken, you had a direct follow-up to that? If not, I can put you in the queue later but if it is a direct follow-up. >>KEN STUBBS: It was a follow-up in Chris' comments about what's going on in the GAC over there. >>AVRI DORIA: Let me put you in the queue for later since it is not directly on what we have just been answering. Thank you. Okay, Mike. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Thanks, Avri. Mike Rodenbaugh. I'm curious as to what sort of discussion was had in this group about protection at the second level for existing registrants? I think there were some suggestions that were made by the council and some other folks that perhaps just, for example, prior registrants should have some sort of priority to register substantially equivalent IDN versions of their names. Was that discussion had at all in the working group or represented in the paper? >>TINA DAM: Are you talking about the fast track or the gTLD? >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: The ccTLD. >>TINA DAM: On the ccTLD? >>BART BOSWINKEL: Going back to I think somebody else made some suggestions regarding the registration policy because I think you are referring to registration policy of ccTLDs. I think one of the -- say, from what I understand, one of the most distinctive -- most important distinctions between ccTLDs and gTLDs is that the registration policy for ccTLDs is set locally and they go through their own policy development processes, some of them very extensively, some of them less extensively and taking into consideration local law. That's one of the things that I think the fast track is not touching upon. >>TINA DAM: In other words, the preregistration right is something -- whether that exists or not is something that's set by the IDN ccTLD manager. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Okay. So I guess I'm hearing, then, that the working group might have considered it briefly but basically it is not going to make any sort of recommendation even in that respect? >>TINA DAM: It is different for the different countries and territories. In some it is going to make sense to make a preregistration sunrise round, and in others it won't. That's up to the local community to decide. >>AVRI DORIA: Edmon, you wanted to follow up on that directly? >>EDMON CHUNG: I guess, just answering a little bit on Mike's question, not -- I guess what Bart mentioned is true in terms of the discussion that happened in the work group but, also, I think one element should be emphasized as well is the IDN guidelines. I think at least at this point we're -- at least in this draft in Module 7 it is still saying there should be some way for ICANN to enforce -- or hopefully enforce the IDN guidelines with the ccTLDs. And I think within the IDN guidelines there are some mentioning of, like, homographical attacks and those types of issues, phishing issues. No? >>TINA DAM: Not when it comes to preregistration rights. >>EDMON CHUNG: Right, I understand. I understand not the registration right, but at least we have it covered in terms of the phishing and homograph issues. >>TINA DAM: Sure. I mean, it is trying to eliminate the phishing attacks and user confusion as much as possible. Some of that obviously is going to be up to the registry operators to deal with as well. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: I do understand it. I just don't see why the working group wouldn't at least discuss it and consider making some sort of recommendation even if ICANN can't make any requirements upon cc operators. It wouldn't hurt to make a recommendation to try to avoid user confusion, for example. >>TINA DAM: Well, so Bart already mentioned that this is very much something that's in the local community to decide. If you don't mind, then let me draw a parallel to the gTLD program. It also does not have a requirement for preregistration rights in any of the potential IDN TLDs that are coming out or any of the other ASCII TLDs that are coming out. The reason for it is there is not a -- well, the reason for it is that you don't even know if it is the same registry operator that runs the TLD, the coming IDN TLD or coming ASCII TLD or coming IDN ccTLD as the operator of any of the existing TLDs. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Well, actually you do because -- I'm sorry to interrupt but you do through the string contention, confusing similarity objection processes. >>TINA DAM: As far as I know, that has nothing to do with preregistration rights at the second level. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Correct, not yet. But that is also one of the overarching issues that is now delaying the program and needs to be resolved. >>TINA DAM: Well, in that case, I guess we'll keep an eye on how that is going. And I find it hard to believe that we can insert anything into the fast track. I would certainly be open into hearing what's going to be put into the gTLD program. We try to keep the two processes consistent specifically on technical issues and so forth. So if there is something that's relevant, making a recommendation in the fast track could be okay; but making it a requirement, I think, is going to be hard because that is a local decision. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Next I have Chuck. Did anybody else want to be in the queue at this point? Nope? Okay. Chuck. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thanks, Avri. Chuck Gomes. Tina, you mentioned quite a while ago now that there are some issues for which consensus needs to be reached before the IDN ccTLD fast track could move forward. I'm assuming that two of those are the fee issue and the document of responsibilities issue. Is that correct? >>TINA DAM: That's correct. >>CHUCK GOMES: Can you identify any others that are in that same category where consensus needs to be had before that process can go forward? >>TINA DAM: Sure. It is actually everything that's listed in Module 7, so that also includes contention. It includes dealing with IDN tables and variants and -- I have it right here. There is the association with the IDN ccTLD manager with the ccNSO, but I think that's pretty much done. >>CHUCK GOMES: Which one is pretty much done? >>TINA DAM: 7.3, association of the IDN ccTLD manager with the ccNSO. And the proposed evaluation, 7.6, I think is pretty much done as well. >>CHUCK GOMES: That's an easy one. >>TINA DAM: The main one you have is fee, DOR, contention issues, and management of table procedures and variants. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay, thanks, that's helpful. Thanks for referring me to that section. My second question is unrelated to that. Section 5.3.2 of the phishing document talks about support for requesters of IDN fast track ccTLDs. I'm curious as to whether that same support or similar support is going to be available for applicants of IDN gTLDs? >>TINA DAM: I don't think I can answer that, but I think, indeed, that would be a good idea. So I will pass that on to Kurt, I guess, and say, you know, I think that's a good idea and then maybe the gTLD program will take that up. >>AVRI DORIA: Kurt, do you think that's a good idea? "Stay tuned" was the answer. He wasn't on mike but stay tuned. Anyone else wish to ask a question at this point? Any other points of clarification? Going once? Twice? Thank you for coming and giving us explanations and answering questions, and we look forward to watching it progress. And we're on break now until 12:30 when the GNSO will actually be having a meeting on IRTP Part A PDP report and comment review. Get your lunch first. Then come in for the meeting, and I'm told that that discussion will take about an hour out of the hour and half and then after that we go into the fast flux discussion, I believe. Okay, thank you. (Lunch break.) >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Okay. Folks, I'm Mike Rodenbaugh, GNSO Councillor from the business constituency, and I was an active member of the working group and served as a liaison between the fast flux working group and the GNSO Council. So today we want to give essentially an update of where we've come in the last -- gosh, is it nine months I think we've been talking about this stuff now? Yeah? Almost a year since the issues report. And then hopefully throw it open for questions. Feel free, by the way, to interrupt with questions as we're going through this, because there's quite a bit of material. And then at the end, obviously we can have a discussion about possibly where we go from here. So the issues started, from the council perspective, I think, in January of '08 when the SSAC issued an advisory about this problem, that the anti-phishing community had been dealing with for a while before then. Basically characterizing fast flux as an evasion technique that enables cybercrime. And they encouraged ICANN and its registries and registrars to establish best practices to mitigate these exploits. And further, to consider whether those practices should be addressed in future agreements. So we launched a PDP, essentially a request for an issues report, in March of '08, following up with a request for a formal PDP on the issue in May '08. The working group formed right after that. These where are the questions that were put to the group. Essentially they were designed to elicit factual information about these exploits and then the council would take it from there. So I don't think I'll read through these questions. We are going to have a slide as to pretty much all of them separately with our proposed -- with our conclusions, so I will move on. But basically, it was, like I said, intended to get the basics down on paper, to understand the problem so that the council could decide whether there was something we could do about it. So here was our approach was to -- we started out trying to answer the questions, and we immediately came into some trouble. Several members of the working group pointed out that the definition needed some work before we could really get started, and we had quite a bit of talk about that. I guess I'm getting ahead of myself slightly, so let me just talk about the basic process approach that we took. We did kind of have a parallel track where some experts in the group went off and did some factual investigation and data collection, and then came back to the group with that, but primarily we were, you know, focused on our weekly calls. We had a ton of e-mail on this list, and we agreed to use support, alternative view, in the absence of consensus. And then there was, of course, the option for minority reports. So the next two slides are really just indicated -- are really just here to indicate kind of the scope of the problem factually, how many fluxing domains were detected during this period of time by one, you know, expert in the field, Karmasphere, and then the next slide -- so you can see basically it's hundreds of domains per day. Typically. And then the next slide is pointing out essentially the same slope because a different expert in the field, Arbor, really was reporting different numbers, so that clearly highlights the importance of coming to an agreed definition of what this is, so that we can start to track it, and figure out how to deal with it. So, you know, initial challenges really right out of the gate, you know, in my opinion we just got off track a little bit right out of the gate. We -- we lost focus on the charter questions themselves and started talking about much bigger issues, about, you know, whether the GNSO was chartering something that's within ICANN's remit, for example, which I clearly felt was inappropriate but nevertheless it hindered the group for a while. And then the definitional issue that I've already highlighted. And then of course fundamentally, we realized very quickly -- and this was no surprise to anybody -- that there are perfectly legitimate uses of fast flux hosting techniques. You know, Akamai is a standard example of a content delivery network that basically changes its nameservers and IP addresses all the time in order to get content to people faster, wherever they are. And of course the FBI we learned uses it on their Web site. All sorts of Web site uses it, Yahoo and others, to avoid DDOS attacks. So, you know, it was a really challenge at the outset because we were talking about well, how do you define what's good and what's bad. You know, doesn't it come down to intent and how do you prove that? So again, we got lost a little bit but eventually we did come back to the questions at hand. So another -- you know, I guess I'll just highlight the bottom one, so that was certainly an issue throughout the group was, you know, what's an acceptable false positive rate when people are reporting a criminal fast flux attack and they're wrong. You know, how often does that happen. Is it ever acceptable to take down a name falsely? And we kind of debated around that for a while as well, although that wasn't precisely one of the council's questions either. So our initial report was published last month, about a month ago. It was open for public comment, and we'll get to a summary of those comments near the end. It provides the initial answers that the group came up with to the charter questions. Including a list of characteristics that help to define what a fast flux attack network -- or what a bad dark hat fast flux network looks like. Interim conclusions, again, we had challenges so we definitely wanted to document those. Hopefully to avoid them in future working groups. And just obviously the reality is that fast flux is simply one tool that's used by criminals to do what they do. They have a lot of other tools at their disposal, and so the issue kind of came up, "Well, if we deal with this problem, are we really dealing with any problem at all or are we just taking away one of a hundred different tools that the bad guys use?" So is it worth policy development, essentially. So, you know, these are big issues that I think the council is going to need to consider next. And then, you know, the overall issue: Is it within ICANN's remit which, again, is teed up in another working group and the registration of use policies group, and it's just an issue that we as a community are going to need to get clarity on here pretty quickly because these groups are just kind of spinning wheels if, at the end, the answer is that, you know, "Great work, guys, but this is totally outside of ICANN's scope." Okay. So we'll rifle -- we'll go through the questions and identify what the working group's conclusions were in response to each. So who benefits from fast flux? As I already mentioned, content delivery networks, a lot of Web sites basically benefit from fast flux. They employ it for the benefit of their business. And then of course there's criminals who are also using it to avoid detection of their Web sites and shut down other Web sites. And I just -- just basically I should mention I think most people in the room are probably well- familiar with it, but anyway I'll just basically define what happens with these fast flux attacks are that it's a phishing Web site or it could be a child porn Web site or whatever that's up and people that are trying to get it down have to go to a host, Web host typically, and, you know, the Web host can take it down. But it can be up on another nameserver and another -- and/or another IP address, you know, in seconds or minutes. Making it effectively impossible to get the content down. So it's -- it certainly presents huge challenges for those of us interested in trying to get illegal content off the Internet as quickly as possible. So who is harmed? Obviously victims of the crimes are harmed. Businesses are harmed that have to deal with the harms of their users, so that's financial institutions of course e-merchants but I mean really any kind of business these days. I've seen phish attacks on, you know, Maybelline's brand for free lipstick and Pepsi's brand for click here and get a free 12-pack of Pepsi. I mean, it's just -- there's no business that's immune from these sorts of attacks anymore. So here again at the bottom is that debate over, you know, the extent to which fast flux attacks contribute to the overall picture of e- crime, and we tried to document that with a lot of statistics that are in the report that were not -- and data that was collected that are in the report but are not reflected on the slides today, because we tried to keep this at a higher level. But, you know, there's no question the conclusion that fast flux attacks have considerable influence in the duration and efficacy of harmful activities. So how are registrars involved? Varying opinions, I guess, as to what we should here because, yes, involvement has many interpretations. I don't know that I agree with the bullet point here, Marika, but, you know, out of the hundreds of slides but, I mean, reputable registrars are not exactly uninvolved. They are involved whether they know it or not, and that's the second bullet point. You know, they're unwitting participants that don't know what's going on with respect to fast flux attacks until it's pointed out to them by, you know, an anti-phishing team or law enforcement. And then we realized that, you know, certain registrars you know, at least create the appearance of facilitating these activities for their customers. You know, black hat registrars, essentially. So next question was how are registrants affected by it. Of course this is very similar, again, to who is harmed by it, but a slightly different take. And registrants who employ fast flux attacks certainly have a benefit, and then of course there's the downside to the dark -- to the dark hat attacks. So this is really the same issue with Internet users as well. They're often victims of this behavior, and then, you know, ISPs are used, their assets are used to facilitate the attacks, registrar assets are used to facilitate the attacks. And then there's, of course, the burden of detecting and fixing these problems, which generally devolves to the business community, banking industry and everybody else that's getting hit by these attacks. Their brands are being abused and they have to deal with it. So what technical policy measures might be implemented by registries and registrars? So obviously this was -- this definitely diverted from a pure factual question, and we asked the group to come up with essentially a list of things that might possibly be considered for policy development, and so there's several of the examples here. Sharing of data was realized to be a very useful tool. Publishing summaries by registrar, by TLD, by nameserver, et cetera, so that you can essentially, you know, track who the bad guys are and try to get compliance out of them or, better, perhaps focused law enforcement attention on them. And the notion of an accelerated domain suspension process was raised again and I think will be raised yet again in the registration abuse policies working group. And of course stronger registered variation procedures at the outset, because those generally in the unrestricted gTLDs don't exist as -- with respect to a lot of registrars, anyway. So again, along the same lines, what are some of the best practices currently employed today with regard to these DNS exploits, and the anti-phishing working group put out a thoughtful paper about best practices for registrars last year, which has been, I think, pretty widely circulated amongst the ICANN community. There was the original SSAC advisory that we mentioned at the outset. And then we listed a subset of recommendations from those two documents, essentially, that the working group thought that the council might consider further. We did have constituency statements from four different constituencies. You know, all of them certainly realized that fast flux is being used as a criminal tool, but there certainly is a stark disagreement on whether ICANN is the proper forum to address the issue. Certainly we all recognize that there's difficulty in deciding what is legitimate use and what is ill legitimate use. How do you do that in an automated fashion? How do you judge people's intent? So we came up with, you know, an answer to that. We did come up with a bunch of different characteristics that tended to only apply to criminal exploits, rather than legitimate ones. There was certainly support for further work in this area. So our initial report outlined a few potential next steps that we have now taken public comment on. Certainly there was the -- again, the threshold issue about defining the issue and the scope and ICANN's remit before kicking off a working group, so I consider that more of a process issue rather than a substantive issue, but certainly an important one and definitely an important lesson we need to learn from this group. No question about that. Definitely we want to explore the possibility of involving other folks in the policy development-- what are some of the other stakeholders that weren't really involved in this? Of course, yeah. The ccNSO is a great example. But possibly even ASO, I suppose, because IP addresses are involved as well. And to explore other means to address the issue, rather than a PDP, because nobody's really interested in doing PDPs because they've got rigid rules and take forever. Certainly we also sought to highlight the solutions and the recommendations that could be addressed either by policy development or by best practices or by, you know, voluntary industry adoption, essentially. And, you know, the further -- further work that I think, again, probably dovetails in with the registration abuse policies working group that is starts this week is, you know, whether abuse policies provisions could address this by empowering -- explicitly empowering registries and registrars to take action when presented with reasonable evidence that a DNS exploit is taking place on their systems. And we certainly want to explore the possibility of industry sharing of data more than exists today. So public comment period closed a couple of weeks ago. We received quite a few comments. The group has started to digest those, and we outlined them here on the next few slides. We'll try to just highlight any new issues that came up that we haven't already discussed. Negative impact of fast flux on digital divide. >>MARIKA KONINGS: I think it was someone who made the point that the overload on the system often will especially impact countries that are on, you know, the wrong side of the digital divide and have best bandwidth and is a point that we actually really didn't consider but would be a valid point. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Got it. Okay. And certainly the position was raised that, you know, the real problem here is that computers and Web sites are simply insecure, and that's undoubtedly true. But I don't think that should really restrict what ICANN can and should do about the problem, personally. So, you know, we also focus on the ways that registrars and registries can help deal with the problem. Again, the data sharing issue is one that we certainly want to look at further. Accelerated domain suspension process. And the need to continue further work, definitely. And then of course some of the comments said, "This is an urgent issue that ICANN's already been talking about for over a year, so let's move it along." And again, I think these are mainly repetitive of things we've already discussed. Well, creation of a black list or white list of fast flux domains. I think that falls kind of in line with the data sharing issue. Yeah, just, you know, further study and research and need for ICANN to decide what ICANN's role is in dealing with this sort of abuse. And maybe other sorts of abuse, for that matter. So next steps are, we've taken the public comments, and we will meet again to discuss those and decide how to incorporate them into a final report, and we need to decide what sort of recommendations we want to make in that final report for the council's consideration. So I'd love to throw it open to the floor for input on that topic, if -- Tony Harris? >>TONY HARRIS: Not being a technical specialist on fast flux or technical specialist at pretty much anything, for that matter, it seems to me that possibly the main component for this to be successfully operated by somebody wanting to do some mischief would be IP addresses, and I don't think casual evildoers who normally do small frauds on the Internet would have access to IP address blocks. It seems to me they would be assigned to people with more considerable resources and they are more easily traced because an ISP has to give them the ISP blocks, usually. Or a telco. So that might be a good starting point, and perhaps rather than white-listing or black-listing domain names, which is just discarded when they no longer are usable and replaced by new names, you might do better with a black list of actual people or companies or organizations or whatever that are traced through the acquisition of these IP addresses. I may be talking to my hat but that's what came up. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: I think that those -- that sort of solution is fairly widely adopted already by browser manufacturers and all the APWG, all the other organizations, but to your first point, I think it's not -- not true that -- certainly criminals have access to IP blocks, and have used them to great harm. No question about that. I mean, rod or anybody else can fill in a little more color on that, but -- >>ROD RASMUSSEN: Rod Rasmussen, and I'll wear my APWG hat for this one. The use of IP blocks is definitely one of the things that gets done. There's been some actually recent activity in shutting some of those actors down. I'll be discussing that at the crime forum on Wednesday. But the real issue is the fast flux type attacks that we've been talking about is that they're using machines that have been compromised on broadband consumer networks for the most part, so it's individuals' computers who have had a virus or some sort of trojan that has gotten on that computer. That computer is then taken and used with thousands or hundreds of thousands of other computers in what is called a botnet, and then those can be rotated around very rapidly, and on the criminal underground, you can buy and sell and trade access to those IPs of those bots and have sites hosted, spam launched from them and all kinds of things. Any kind of things you can do with a computer, the bad guys have a network that allows them to do that. So that's really what the biggest part of this was when we're looking at the criminal side of this is the use of other people's resources without their permission. >>JAMES BLADEL: I just wanted to add, just because I didn't see it in the slides, but the registrars that we were discussing in this -- in terms of this report were not a monolithic group, that some are participating in developing those best practices, and taking a lot of unilateral remedial actions like we were discussing with IP addresses or nameservers or things like that, so I just wanted to make sure that was acknowledged as well. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Absolutely. I mean, there's no question about it, the largest and most reputable registrars and registries are really trying to deal with these problems. It's the little guys you never hear of that certainly don't show up at ICANN meetings that we're trying to deal with. Is anybody on the phone that has any questions or comments? >>AVRI DORIA: I wanted to add something about the "how to progress," not asking anything. I think that using, as an example, what the staff did in terms of responding to comments on the new gTLD comments -- now granted we only have 25 and not hundreds, so it's not as extensive an effort, but I think actually producing something that basically takes them, categorizes them, indicates how those issues were addressed, and if they weren't addressed, you know, how they should be addressed, and then indicate what changes we're making to the final documentation. If we can actually put together something like that, I think that there's enough attention and interest on this group that it's probably useful to do a sort of detailed response. As I say, I think the staff has sort of done the first bit of setting a standard for how to properly -- or at least how to adequately address comments. I throw that out there for the working group because that's obviously work for the working group. It's not something that, you know, the one staff person doing the writing can do, and so I'm throwing that out and as -- as a -- as a chair that's trying to abandon the group, it seems a pretty cheeky thing for me to do, but nonetheless I want to throw that idea out. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: It's certainly reasonable that we can do, those comments. I think Marika's already done it in those three slides, to some effect, on that. Yes. >>NORM RITCHIE: Does it work? Yeah. Really a question. You talked about engaging other groups such as the ccTLDs. Do you have any metrics or indication of what proportion our gTLD domains and what are ccTLD -- ccTLD domains? >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Yes, we definitely have statistics on that that are referenced, if not included, in the report but they're primarily from the anti-phishing working group that does a trend -- an analysis ever year and I believe has a new one coming out shortly. Oh, Greg? >>GREG AARON: There is a data annex to the fast flux report, and it contains some statistics provided by two companies that professionally monitor fast flux activity. One of them is called Karmasphere, and you saw some of those statistics on the slide. The other is Arbor Networks which is one of the largest network providers in the States, and they have a good system. There is a breakdown specifically of which TLDs are experiencing the issue. It's -- it's distributed very unevenly. There are a lot of TLDs where nobody has seen any fast flux at all, and then there are some TLDs where the activity is concentrated. >>NORM RITCHIE: Okay. The ccNSO has their tech day tomorrow, which has mostly technical representatives from all of the ccTLDs. It might be a good idea to stop in and take a few minutes and talk to them. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: I think -- I don't know if possibly Rod might be able to do that. I know my personal schedule tomorrow is not going to allow anything else. >>ROD RASMUSSEN: I'd be happy to do it. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: We certainly have tried to coordinate with the ccNSO and give them updates from the APWG at pretty much every meeting. >>ROD RASMUSSEN: Yeah, we actually gave an update to the ccNSO in Cairo, on this, but be happy to stop in tomorrow. We've actually seen some recent activity on ccTLDs that have never seen fast flux just in the past few weeks, as there's been one particular group that's been trying out new TLDs to exploit for phishing setups, et cetera, so certainly we'll be happy to do that. >>NORM RITCHIE: Yeah, I think in Cairo, you spoke to the general ccNSO and it was a great presentation. Thank you. But, you know, tomorrow is just -- it's more technically focused. >>ROD RASMUSSEN: Okay. One thing we also have a joint GNSO ccNSO lunch tomorrow. And one of the topics I asked to be on the list is what things we can work on together. So this seems one of those things to sort of tack on to the list of possible things we can work on together to -- >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Tony Harris. >>TONY HARRIS: Just one final question for the more technical people in the room. Would certs be of any use in operation effort of this sort? Setting one up in a private cert in Argentina right now. >> MIKE RODENBAUGH: Absolutely. Certs are fundamental to dealing with this problem. Rod? >> ROD RASMUSSEN: I was just going to say they're involved every day in dealing with these things both from the detection and mitigation side. And depends on the cert and the country and what kind of responsibilities they have. But some certs actually can have authority to make things happen from a mitigation standpoint. So yes, definitely. But it depends on the country and the setup. >>TONY HARRIS: Just, as a final comment, the cert we are setting up is actually going to be run by the all the ISP and telco community in Argentina. They may be quite willing to -- >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Any other comments or questions about this about either the report or suggestions or thoughts on where the council should go next or where the group -- working group should go next with making recommendations to the council? >>AVRI DORIA: I think that has to be one of the next things. In other words, you know, okay, finalizing the response to comments, updating the report based on that. And then yes, putting -- helping to put together -- and this is the same thing that came out in the discussion with the previous working group is there are certain recommendations as in this one saying, you know, we could do this further. We should do that. The council should or shouldn't. But actually starting to help frame those things into motions that then the council can act on if there are things that need -- and if there's work that needs to be continued in this working group. If this working group thinks that, you know, perhaps there's certain things we could do more about if we had a different charter. Then there's the notion of talking about a charter and, you know, getting rechartered to do that other work. And I'm not presupposing that, you know, that is the case. But just, if that is the case, that's something that the working group needs to now figure out. You've got a final report, you've said what you want to say except for perhaps the additional things that come in from comments. And now -- and you even have a section -- you know, we even have a section that says well, these are the things that could come next. But now we sort of have to move from the what could come next to what do we want to try and get authorization to go next? And that's a step we have to take. And, again, it's a good report. And I don't just want to leave it hanging and sort of throw it over the wall to the council and say, "Here's a report, you know. You guys put together a drafting team and figure out if there's any motions you want to make based on the work that was done." That would sort of leave it, you know, missing the end game piece. And you need either some of the same people or that. So now to sort of look at what's there and sort of say well, what do you want done? And if it takes more work from the working group, what charter do you need to do that work? And I think that that strikes me as a place where this group sort of is at the moment. I don't know. Correct me or comment. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: I think that's accurate. I think, though, really underlying it is this overarching issue of what is in and outside of ICANN's scope? I know we're going to talk about that issue specifically within a workshop on Tuesday night, about the registration abuse policies working group. My personal view is that that group may be better tasked to make some recommendations that would apply not just to these sorts of techniques but to many other forms of abuse as well. Tricia Drakes? >> TRICIA DRAKES: Making it clear in a personal capacity, that in terms of the U.K, this is a very, very hot topic at the moment. It's probably one of the hottest topics. And I just really want to put a marker down to say that -- and you probably read the submission from Richard Clayton, which actually came as a result of some discussion. We're encouraged to do that. I think to take no action, wherever it fits within ICANN, but for -- to take no action would actually be a very detrimental step. So I just (off microphone) >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: James? >>JAMES BLADEL: I just wanted to agree with you, Mike, that the upcoming registration abuse process is probably better suited to oversee this effort because it is -- the charter, as we mentioned, is much more narrow. And it specifically calls out for definitions in the beginning of that. And I think those are two elements that really led this particular group to mushroom into a lot of different areas right off the bat. And so I think that you're exactly correct in your assessment that that's probably a better approach to addressing the underlying problems, rather than focusing on the evasion techniques or the covering techniques like fast flux as we get underneath fast flux and look at what is actually occurring and what types of behaviors fast flux is being used to conceal. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Thank you. I'm glad that we're agreeing on that. That's a good start. And -- but I would say that there very well might be further work for this fast flux working group as well, which has certainly had a lot of good expert representation from the phishing world, for example, with respect to data collection efforts, monitoring, things like that. >>JAMES BLADEL: If nothing else, it's helped educate a lot of us on the nature of the problem and depth and breadth and how the different organizations are measuring it. So, if nothing else, it's provided just a trove of information in that regard. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Frankly, that really was the intent, I think. I certainly wish it wouldn't have taken so long. But I say that about every policy initiative at ICANN. Any other questions or comments? I suppose we can -- >>AVRI DORIA: If I understand correctly, what we're really saying is, then, that the right solution is to take this report, take the comments, finalize it, and then pass it onto the registration abuse group to as input information and to others? I mean, I'm not saying that's a bad solution. But is that what I just understood? Or did I misunderstand what people were getting to? I know there was Tricia's comment you can't do nothing other than just say here's information, which may be. But I don't know that we've come up with any recommendation of action that is reasonable or step before action. I want to say I want to understand where we're at. >>JAMES BLADEL: And I didn't want to accept a link between fast flux and registration except to point out maybe as a contrast why I have higher hopes for one succeeding where another one didn't. I didn't want to imply then that they should be handcuffed together in any way. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Yeah, but I do -- I would say that, if that definitional debate goes the wrong way from my perspective, then essentially the end result is that we would do nothing. But we can have that debate publicly on Tuesday night and for quite a while thereafter, I imagine. >>MIKE O'CONNOR: This is Mikey. >> MIKE RODENBAUGH: Go ahead, Mike. >> MIKE O'CONNOR: You know, one thing you might consider, there are some things in this report that are pretty positive actions that could be recommended. One that's enchanting is the notion of sort of identifying ICANN's leadership role in this constellation of players. And simply agree or not that ICANN should be a convenor of discussions about this or a participant in discussions about this. But, you know, essentially, establish the level to which ICANN wants to play a leadership role in this issue. And then I think another one that's quite recommendable is getting behind the notion of information sharing. That seems to me something that you could go ahead and recommend. So I'm not sure that you have come to the end of a road where you can't recommend anything, even though we did get in a lot of trouble with the scope and stuff at the beginning. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Margie? >>MARGIE MILAM: Yeah. I just wanted to comment that on the e-crime forum we have scheduled on Wednesday a lot of these issues will be explored, particularly what the role of ICANN is and the issues related to e-crime and whether they should serve as a convenor versus, you know, directing specific policy, you know, inquiries. So we'll certainly have that discussion on Wednesday. >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. So perhaps what comes out of there may lead us into a rechartering discussion that sort of says gee, people have said this is a job we should be doing. Then we can look at is this a GNSO job to be doing. And, you know, look at a rechartering discussion, look at an issues report on a specific type issue with the question of (inaudible) and such so that that may inform us. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: It just definitely seems like now the two different working groups and I think other contexts as well, it's just really become clear that, as a community, we're not -- we just don't have consensus as to what is within ICANN's scope to require of registries and registrars with respect to abuse. So it's welcome and about time that we come to some resolution on that. >>AVRI DORIA: And I think that's what is within scope and what is without scope is sometimes not even a consensus question but a legal counsel advising discussion. And I know that sometimes that can be problematic. But that does seem to be a large part of that equation. In other words, when we have an issues report, they're the ones that tell us 00 it's the staff and legal counsel that tell us in scope (off microphone) GNSO, we don't generally get. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: I'd say they give their opinion, and actually the GNSO could come to a different (off microphone) >> AVRI DORIA: Right. And that's why we have these thresholds for voting on a policy contrary to (off microphone) out of scope -- the voting levels required for out of scope PDP. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Well, again, I think those are subject to further refinement to understand exactly what that means. >>AVRI DORIA: That's a discussion for another day. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Several other days, probably. Well, I guess, if there's no more questions or comments, I'd like to thank people for input today. Go ahead, James, please. >>JAMES BLADEL: I just wanted to -- just a quick second to thank Avri for stepping in and to thank Mike for getting us as far as he did. This has certainly been a challenging group. What we were trying to do. And didn't want anybody to think that they didn't take it as far away or their efforts weren't appreciated. >>AVRI DORIA: Thanks. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: It was, at least my experience at ICANN so far, has been pretty unique in that we really did get a lot of experts involved and people who haven't been involved in ICANN processes before. So I think that alone gives it a little bit of success to the initiative. >>AVRI DORIA: And it has actually also been good, I think, part of that, as part of this whole learning how to do working groups, learning how to do these new complicated PDPs that we're doing. And I probably should mention that I kept saying I need to quit as chair of this. But, unless there's somebody that wants to volunteer now, I will stay through the, you know, the final report, although I'm willing at any point at which someone says they want to do it. Because I still think it's inappropriate for a council member to be chairing a working group in principle other than as an emergency or an interim thing. However -- well, my personal opinion. And because of the conflicts you've got between the two. But, as I said, my personal opinion. But, if you guys are willing to have -- I've certainly learned a lot, because I didn't know that much about this when I started. I mean, I understood the basic concepts. But I've learned a lot, so it's been kind of fun. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Well, I guess we get a longer break than we -- >>AVRI DORIA: We've got a break now until 3:30, I believe. No. Until 4:00. Let's start immediately at 4:00 because at 5:00 we have the joint meeting, so we'll only be for 45 minutes. And, really, this meeting is a drafting team that's looking at the nitty-gritty details of the stuff we have to get done before the next meeting for the reorganization of the GNSO. Terribly exciting process stuff. Yes? Thank you. >>MIKE RODENBAUGH: Folks that are on the registration abuse program, let's just stay here and try to that now rather than at 3:30. >>AVRI DORIA: You can have -- >>JAMES BLADEL: We still get the break, right? We still get the break, right? >>AVRI DORIA: Okay. We probably should start. This one will be a relatively quick meeting because we've got a 5:00 meeting upstairs with the GAC. And while they're not always ready for us when we get up there, we should probably be up there on time just in case this time they are ready for us. This meeting is basically -- I called it a drafting team. It is basically to look at the requirements that we've got to complete all of the -- okay, yeah -- to complete all of the requirements so that we can have the new bicameral council seated in time and go through all the processes we have to go through to be ready to do that. So we had a -- we have a document that sort of indicates the work we're doing which we always said was a rolling document and it hasn't rolled at all since we first wrote it. It has basically been in the same shape. In looking at it now, one can start to worry about how these dates are going. Are we meeting them? Are they still the right dates? What do we need to do so at our last meeting we talked about the first step being to go through that chart to look at those dates, see which ones we need to do some rethinking on, update any of the dates that need to be redone and figure out what we need to do to actually make sure all of these work items actually get completed in time. And, I mean, the goal is to make sure that everything is completed on time. It is down further. It is like page 3 of that present thing. Yeah, restructuring items. Now we will need to make that bigger because almost no one can see it. Everybody can pull this chart down from the Web site. It's our normal action item chart. But, anyway, basically the goal is still to be able to seat the new bicameral council by the end of the Sydney meeting. And in doing that and looking at it and Rob and I were talking a little bit the other day and starting to realize how much pressure there is on some of these things where these -- for example, the stakeholder group charters need to be finished. They need to be public commented. They need to be reviewed by the board. They need to be approved by the board, et cetera. Now, I'm not sure how much of this stuff can be done in parallel, how much is being done in parallel. And I'm not terribly involved in much of any of it not being in a constituency, not being in a house. So I'm really, though, sort of -- feel I sort of have got responsibility in the chair role of doing everything we can to make sure we do complete this on time or as close to time as possible. So I will turn it over to Rob who can take us through the schedule we've got, and basically what I want to come out of this meeting with, I don't know that we'll have fixed our dates by this meeting. Maybe we can; maybe we can't. But at least we get started and basically a group of us keep working on this. I'll ask Glen to set up one of those doodle-scheduling things to determine the next time we talk about this. But basically an open drafting team from the council and others from the stakeholder groups, as necessary, to make sure we get our work done. Rob? >>ROB HOGGARTH: Thank you, Avri. Quick context here, back in the November time frame before Thanksgiving, the council agreed to set up a list of essentially what we called -- an inventory of key process and implementation decisions to effectuate transition to a restructured GNSO Council. A combination of staff and members of the council through various contributions began identifying what are the various tasks that would be required to accomplish this. The resulting document listed 20 items that required attention from the council. At that time, the council determined that it would make the effort in a committee-of-the-whole, essentially the whole council, to work through that. In the board approving a four-phase approach to seating the new GNSO Council by June 2009 set up a four-phase process. The first phase was that the GNSO Council provide an implementation plan to the board by its December meeting. The document that's up on the screen that Avri referenced that some of you may have pulled up was provided to the board not as a final plan but as an update -- a status report, if you will, of what the council had discussed up to that point. I believe in your transmittal, Avri, you referenced to the board that this was still subject to change ongoing discussion and further review of the council. What I'll do is, if you think it would be helpful -- I don't know how many people can read the entire document -- I will go through each of the 20 items. I think it would be helpful. As you will see, clearly a number of them you are going to have to reset the dates, reset the timetables. You may have in the meantime since your last meeting come up with additional items that need to be added to this list. After I go through the 20 and we add any additional items you think need to be there, I think then comes time to have a realistic assessment of whether you can accomplish this all by June. One of the themes that has arisen in the last day and half, yesterday and today, from my conversations with a number of you is what's a realistic assessment of whether this can all be accomplished by June or at some point does the council need to consider advising the board that there may need to be an extension to complete that seating. I'm not expressing an opinion one way or another, just pointing out that that's a potential issue. Before I start on the items, any observations, questions, or comments? Okay. Number one, determine the form, structure, and composition of implementation transition oversight. Basically, this was a decision again that the council made that you would all do it as a whole. You are now meeting as a drafting team. The discussion needs to take place, is this the right format and way to handle it? I think based on the discussion at the last council meeting you had agreed that a drafting team was going to be the best approach. >>AVRI DORIA: In essence, you know, a drafting team that is open to everyone in the council or they can ask a substitute to participate for them is how councils -- committees-of-the-whole have actually worked and everything goes back to the council. If there is a decision made on something, it goes back to the council at its next meeting. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Is it fair to say, then, based upon those of you sitting here in this room that you have now completed this work item? You have determined that you will use a drafting team to make these decisions and recommendations to the full council? >>AVRI DORIA: The drafting team won't make the decisions. The council as a whole will make the decisions. The drafting team will come up with the proposal that the council will probably end up deciding on because it will be the council members doing it. Yes, we'll agree that that's what we're doing. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: This is just a practical tactic to -- on the same path, huh? >>ROB HOGGARTH: Then it sounds like you have now completed your first task, 1A. Jim? >>JIM BASKIN: Yes, thanks. Just maybe a slight rephrasing or amplification of the last thing you said. The drafting team would do its work and give it to the council and the council would approve it. I think that's how you said it. Is it not more accurate to say that the drafting team would do its work, give it to the council and the membership and that then the council with its proper input from the membership would determine what to do next? The way it was said, it sounds a little bit like a process that just happens one, two, three and the general membership doesn't really play a part other than being a part of the drafting team. >>AVRI DORIA: Well, yes in the sense that it is really not the council that's doing all this. All the constituencies are the ones actually doing the work, and the council is helping to guide it through the process and the schedules. The council pretty much doesn't do anything without checking. Yeah, it makes sense to say that council members will consult with their constituencies. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: But I think also, Jim, I'm -- we'll double-check this understanding as we go through this list. But it is supposed to basically be about tasks that need to be done and a simple judgment made as to, yes, they have been done, although we need to add time to that. So it is not about the substance of the task and who's doing it, which is precisely where all the membership is involved. To my mind, that's a distinction. This is really a checklist of a timetable. And I don't think that needs to be -- we don't need to consult members in terms of, "Do they think we are meeting the timetable?" I think we can probably make that judgment at a council level because it either has been done or hasn't been done. >>ROB HOGGARTH: But then if I can anticipate Jim's question, then the follow-up is once that schedule has been determined, the input into the decisions that are made are then a product of the constituency's conversations. >>JIM BASKIN: If I could follow up, I guess my comment was broader than just one particular aspect of all the work that's being done, but just that -- because we have now a number of teams that we've agreed have to work in parallel and we've asked people not to join multiple teams because they have to work in parallel. So there is going to be a lot of things that are worked in teams that don't automatically get seen by all the members. That's why I was just throwing in that "Don't forget the members see all this stuff" and, of course, yes, the council members make their decisions based on dealing with the general membership and get some feedback from them. It should certainly be done that way. I just didn't want it to be forgotten or have anybody think that this is another process that just kind of goes, one, two, three right through these small groups and doesn't get that extra input. >>AVRI DORIA: A couple things. one is this is a different process. In other words, we've got the two processes going on now. We've got the one that is the PPSC and the OSC process with all its teams that are dealing with all kinds of organizational and process and PDP and work teams. These items are the restructuring-specific items that the constituencies and the stakeholder groups are involved in their reorganization, self-organization, et cetera, process. So while it's parallel to one of all those other teams, it is actually separate from them and it is really a constituency and stakeholder group process that the council is saying "And we are helping shepherd it along datewise" and doing that. It is not related to the other process really at all except that, of course -- and so that separation is one that we've maintained pretty much all along, that there are the improvement details working groups, PDPs and all the operational ways in which things will be aided. And then there is the restructuring of the constituencies and the formation of the stakeholder groups. This stuff deals mostly with -- deals completely with that second category. I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just seeing all those other little teams, big teams, whatever, aren't actually part of this process. >>JIM BASKIN: I didn't mean to say that -- or to imply that what's happening here is a part of those other things. But it is, I think, again in parallel so -- and it is more that parallelism that everybody isn't here -- isn't able to participate in all of the drafting team's discussions. So, still, we want to make sure that the full membership sees the drafts before they get to the table for a final decision by the council. Yes, that is, of course, the way it should be. Just wanted to make sure it was stated one more time. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Would now be a useful time to specifically identify who the volunteers to this team are? You have agreed you will form this oversight team. Presumably people are here in the room because they are participating in that process. Can we identify who are the representatives, or is that better left to an e-mail? >>AVRI DORIA: I would think it would run very much the way the WHOIS drafting team of the whole council worked and that, you know, the whole council plus any of the substitutes were on a parallel mailing list and it was anyone that could participate in the meetings did. Does anyone disagree with doing that as opposed to getting specific volunteers, that we handle it that way? Because I don't want to say people who aren't here now nor taking the time for lots of "let's go through sign-ups and find people." I think everyone in the council is responsible to the extent to which they want to make themselves responsible. And anyone who can't do it or doesn't have the whatever can then get someone else from their constituency. We did that in the WHOIS. There were several people in the IPC constituency, for example, who got some other member of the constituency to participate in their place and they were just added to that parallel mailing list. So what I would recommend, if others accept it, is that we build a mailing list that's working on this that is basically all the people in the council plus anybody that is specifically identified by a constituency as a substitute. Is that okay? >>ROB HOGGARTH: Okay, great. I didn't intend to go through each one substantively. I just noted that 1A was essentially completed. You will note that in 1B, a subset of 1, there is a decision that needs to be made with respect to how that decision-making will take place, how you will reach conclusions. Those specific items were originally targeted for 18 December. We're now quite some time after that period, and so that would be, I guess, the initial sort of reset as we start to populate this with dates. Item No. 2, "Develop and confirm inventory of key processes, transitions, and implementation decisions." That's this list of 20 items. Presumably that can take place in relatively short order. That task was identified with two others to be accomplished in early January. The other two being "Developing goals, milestones, and timetable for decisions," again noting that in this original document a combination of staff and council members basically threw out a number of proposed dates, not doing anything more, really, than ordering them in terms of the process that needed to take place, not making any strong or specific determinations about how much time it might take. And then Item 4, "Establishing form, frequency, and a reporting mechanism to the board," once that was completed. So again, I think the items that are currently listed up there on the screen as 8 January, you as a drafting team can move pretty quickly. They're fairly logistical in nature, as opposed to substantive things. I'm going to scroll up a little bit here. The next sort of category of decisions, we had two that were anticipated to take place in the January time frame. One was "Determining and defining the appropriate council interface with stakeholder groups during the transition." You know, what sort of coordination needed to take place there. That's probably something that can also happen relatively quickly, given the fact that over the next couple of days we should have all four new stakeholder petitions in from the various groups. As of today, I think we will have a total of five new stakeholder group petitions submitted to the board. That means -- Thank you. I did that especially to get the reactions that I just saw. We are going to have one from the commercial stakeholders group, we will have one from the registries, one from the registrars, and potentially two from the noncommercial stakeholders group. The board will, over the next several weeks, be evaluating those, taking a look at them, and making some determination. You all presumably in this group can discuss how you want to interact, but I think more that Item No. 5 was interacting in terms of, "Okay, it's now time to tell us who your council members are," and in terms of working through some of those processes. So that was identified as a task that needed to be accomplished. Item 6: "Determining and defining the council interface, if any, with constituency groups during the transition." Again, a matter of a determination by this group. Should you be coordinating with the stakeholder groups or with the constituencies? And that's a determination you'll need to make as you assess, gee, who is an official body, who is not, how do we handle and coordinate the selection of council seats, council representatives, and the rest. There may be other issues that come up and that the drafters of these various stakeholder group petitions have identified, and it will be important for some interaction to take place there. I'd suggest, Madam Chairman, that there may be some liaison function that members of the drafting team may want to take, in their capacity as proponents of the various stakeholder groups, in that regard. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: The answer in terms of who we're liaising with at the moment, to my mind, is very clear. We're liaising with constituencies because they're the only bodies that exist. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Exactly. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: And until such time as that changes, the answer is clear. Yeah? >>ROB HOGGARTH: Very good. That may be another quick decision that you can all make there. Yes, Mary. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Can we, rather than talk about making the decisions, make the decisions and say -- and change things from "may be's" to "done's"? >>ROB HOGGARTH: That would be great. I started to do that with one and quickly saw that we were going to take two hours, so to the extent you want to declare as we went go these, "We have a decision," that would be super. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Lead us on to that and see if you get disagreement. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Okay. I'm taking my cue from a number of sources and eyes that I'm connecting with around the table. Yes, Mary. >>MARY WONG: Just a quick question. Since the proposals are coming in -- and I know each of our constituencies have posted our proposals or will post our proposals on our Web pages, work spaces, and so forth. The NCUC will do that with its just-submitted proposal. Is there going to be a space that will be -- where all of them will be posted at once, and where would that be, and that kind of stuff? >>ROB HOGGARTH: There are two answers to your question. The first answer is yes, and that is, we are using the GNSO improvements information page as that one-stop shop for all documents. As we did with the commercial -- I'm sorry, as we did with the constituency renewals, on the constituency renewal page within that area, we published all the filings of the existing constituencies. We're doing the same with the stakeholder groups as they come in. So when I have a chance and can play with my screen here, I can show you where on the GNSO improvements homepage that information is located. Now, the second step of that is that once all the stakeholder group petitions are in, we will be opening up a public comment forum. It will be a collection, as we did with the constituencies, of all the stakeholder group petitions, and the community will be able to comment on all or individual ones in a 30-day period. Sort of capturing Philip's concept and idea there, as we go through these and if there are specific points of view or if you think you have a consensus on any particular item, let's just check it off. And I would submit that, as Philip suggested, Item No. 6 and Item No. 5 are essentially checked off. We'll make modifications to this and recirculate it to the team, to the list, as Glen creates it. And I'm sorry, my screen saver is very short. The next item, a single one was Item 7 with its own due date, and that was, "Chair election for the restructured GNSO Council." The item -- and I wanted to be specific here -- is "Determine the appropriate timing for when that election should take place," and there were a number of provisions or suggestions with respect to electing before, after, or concurrent with the new council being seated. The bottom line is, you have to determine when that should take place. Arguably, a relatively simple timetable decision. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I would say it's so simple that I'm kind of wondering whether we could just make a recommendation now. Unless and until you have a new council, you can't possibly know who your potential candidates are for a new chair. >>ROB HOGGARTH: That's very true, and if you would like to check that off right now, I'm more than happy -- we'll amend the document to reflect that. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Does anyone object to our checking that off right now? All right. Let's go. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Great. No. 8. Congratulations. There's now 2 1/2 items done on the list. Only 17 1/2 to go. The next items were much more substantive, and I'll again do some quick scrolling here so that you can see that there were a number of items identified for the 4 March time period, which is right about where we are now. And those were: "Identification and development of any additional voting thresholds or categories that may be needed." The board, in approving the existing voting thresholds that were recommended by the working group on GNSO Council restructuring said, "Gee, did they think of all of them? And if they have others, feel free to add them." Item 9: "Apportionment mechanism for the nominating committee appointees." You may recall in Cairo there were some discussions with the nominating committee representatives as to what sort of qualifications you all would be looking for in new NCAs and how those three NCAs should be apportioned. Yes. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Avri, it was my understanding that the council went with the nominating committee for exactly this purpose. Yes? >>AVRI DORIA: I think that's one of the things that, yeah, we're going to be talking with them at lunch on Thursday. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Okay. >>AVRI DORIA: I mean, there may be other things like what attributes are you looking at in people and stuff, so it's more than just this apportionment, but yeah. >>ROB HOGGARTH: And you may decide that by your meeting time and check this off the list after you have that discussion. Not clear at this moment. Item No. 11: "Consider new and/or continuing liaison and observer roles from the ALAC, GAC, and ccNSO." So you'll arguably need to have a discussion about whether you think, moving forward, those roles have continuing value, and if so, how, and how you will manage and operate with those. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Can I move a suggestion that -- I think we're now complete, aren't we, in our current structure on all those liaison roles? >>ROB HOGGARTH: You currently, I think, have a vacancy in one, but otherwise they do exist. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Okay. It's a vacancy, but intended to be filled? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Yeah. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: And does anybody object to the fact that these liaison roles should continue in the new council? If not -- >>AVRI DORIA: I don't see why anyone would. And the new council can decide later -- >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Anyway. >>AVRI DORIA: -- if it wants to cancel any or have new ones. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Yeah. Checked off? >>ROB HOGGARTH: I'm flattered that you look at me for that, Philip, but it's not my decision. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: I thought you were doing the writing. That was all. >>ROB HOGGARTH: I'm happy to do the writing, but not make the decisions for you. >>AVRI DORIA: I don't think there's any danger of that happening. >>ROB HOGGARTH: I don't think so either. Item No. 12: "Consider application of geographic diversity considerations to selection of council members." And then there was a parenthetical, I think, added by one of the council members that it may be that this task needs to be completed earlier to allow enough time for board action, if needed. I know that some individual stakeholder group drafters and other constituency members have had this as part of their considerations with respect to their charter development, but you identified this as an area that you wanted to talk about and have some clarification on. Item 13, an area that's been under considerable discussion is considering the implications for travel funding. That was never fully fleshed out, but that was more of a placeholder. Again, something that -- >>AVRI DORIA: I would think that that one would stay with the -- I mean, we've got a group that's working on that, and I think that once they figure out the current reality, it would make sense for them to just work about the future reality. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Yeah. That has broader implications with respect to stakeholder group primacy versus constituency primacy, a number of issues with respect to budgets and the rest. That's also arguably an item that could go beyond the June time frame, as you suggested, so that could even come off the list if you wanted to check off something right now. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Well, yeah. If this is a list of threshold criteria for sitting council, then I would agree this is not a threshold criteria. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Any other comments? >>AVRI DORIA: Especially since the group that's working on travel funding is constituency-based. There's no implication that members of that group need to be or are council members, so there's no automatic change of membership because you're no longer on the council because there's a new council. So it really does seem to be independent, in a sense, of the council changing over. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Great. Then the subsequent draft of this will take that item off. Item 14 -- >>AVRI DORIA: Take it off or actually put in that third box there an indication "taken care of"? >>ROB HOGGARTH: Right. Okay. >>AVRI DORIA: Because you -- I would recommend that we add elements, we subtract, but we not -- you know, if 13 is done, we don't have a new 13; we mark off "being taken care of in committee," and write what the solution is, as opposed to just losing it. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Great. Will do. Item No. 14: "Determine, define selection/seating/timing process for new council in June 2009 and coordinate with constituencies/stakeholder groups as appropriate." The question that was asked was, is there a need for a clear understanding of whether new elections/selections are necessary/appropriate. That's arguably an issue that will require some additional conversations. 15. There was the observation that with a new council all being seated at the same time, and if you were to look forward to the normal staggering process, you needed to start staggering immediately, and so there needs to be a discussion of who sort of takes the one-year term or the two-year term or the three-year term from each of the groups there. Item 16. In the same time frame, application of term limits, if approved by the board. That has since been approved by the board, so there will need to be a discussion. There's been already some discussions via e-mail on that between Liz and Philip and Mike and others, so that may be fairly close to being resolved. Item 17. Again, the last item in this same time frame. "Consider the impact of the June 2009 seating timetable on existing council member terms and immediately subsequent council member terms," with a question mark. I think that's part of the previous area and that can be a staff responsibility there. Glen has been doing some preliminary research for us, just in terms of going back, confirming where everybody is, how many terms have they served, and how that all fits in. Again, in view of the board's recent decision with respect to term limits, that has potential implications for a June seating of the new council in terms of folks who are already selected. For those of you who have not read it closely, the board resolution approving term limits said that that would not go into effect until the 2009 annual meeting, so there will be some calculations that we'll have to make there, because if the new GNSO Council is seated by June, there will arguably be some people in their seats at the annual meeting who would otherwise have been subject to term limits. But we're still doing the research to see which one of you that may implicate. >>AVRI DORIA: So that -- if I understand that, what that means is, people don't have to worry about term limits for this seating. They don't have to worry about term limits until after this seating. >>ROB HOGGARTH: If they're being seated in June. >>AVRI DORIA: Right. In other words, if constituencies and stakeholder groups follow the pattern that I've heard some talking of, that they are reseating for this new council. Other than NCAs, which will probably continue their three months. But if they were doing a reseating for the June, then at that point the term limit rules wouldn't be applicable to them, except for the ones that were applicable to them, perhaps, before from their constituencies. It's only anybody seated after Seoul that needs to count those. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Correct. So if you've already -- you're already finishing up your second term and are elected through your constituency or stakeholder group at that time, and you're elected to a third term because there's no term limits, then you'd be allowed to fill out that term going forward. And again, we just have to do the calculations for that, and that has to be factored in with respect to staggered terms and how all that process works, and that simply requires folks sitting down and really thinking through how that's going to be applied. The next item is no. 18: "Chair election for restructured GNSO Council." Now, this is slightly different, or at least at the time was viewed as slightly different from the previous item that Kristina noted we had checked off, which is "Don't elect them until the new council is seated." So there's a little ambiguity here. But there was, you know, when do you elect the chair? Presumably, based on the timetables that many of you have discussed, and if the board moves with the alacrity that it hopes to do, you're going to have a decision on stakeholder groups by the 23rd of April board meeting, and that conceivably should give all the stakeholder groups a month's time or so to conduct whatever apportionment/selection/allotment you all have determined with respect to your individual stakeholder groups. >>AVRI DORIA: I think one of the important things in that one is that we still have to figure out how the voting process for the next chair goes, if the 60% threshold in both houses is not reached. That was one of the pending things from the original restructuring is, the group had said new chairs elected by 60% of each house. Then the question was posed, "And if you don't get that?" You know, and the answer may be as simple as, "We keep trying until we do," or there may be some other answer. >>ROB HOGGARTH: And then the final item on this list at the time was vice chair selection process for each voting house, how that timing would work, and the mechanisms were to be determined by each voting house. And obviously, until the voting houses get together, they can't do that. Just a reminder to everybody, under the new council structure both the contracted party house and the non-contracted party house will have their own vice chair. So currently we have Avri and Chuck. In the future, there will be the chair and two vice chairs. Primarily to help with management and coordination of the council. So that is the list that was identified in the November/December time frame. I think one thing that the -- this group may want to consider is: Are there additional items, particularly since you've been going through various discussions in your constituency groups and drafting up the stakeholder group charters, there may have been additional items that are coming to the fore, particularly, as we've noticed that the devil is in the details. You don't begin to see some of the issues until you actually start addressing them. I note, if you look again at the right side, kind of cut off, the hope and expectation was that these 18 decisions would be resolved in the early April time frame. The reason for that is -- is that from a potential bylaw and other standpoint, there may be items in here that require modifications to the bylaws. And the interest of the group at that point was to complete some of these decisions early enough in the process so that bylaws could be drafted, so that the board would have time to act and vote on them, arguably at their May meeting, so that everything would be tied up in a bow by the June time frame. Does anyone have any questions, observations, or potential additions to the list? >> AVRI DORIA: Okay. At this point, I would suggest that, as we were talking, Glen was creating the mailing list for this. I'd suggest a couple things in terms of continuing. One is that mailing list will be up soon. Two, any constituency that wants to, basically, you know, appoint a substitute for someone to this particular list, let Glen know so they can be added to -- or even an additional person, if all the people want to stay on. And as what we did last time is, basically, all the councilmembers stayed on the list. But in some cases there were councilmembers who said, "Listen, I'm not going to be participating heavy. But our constituency would like so and so and so and so to participate." And they were added to the list and participated in the meetings. So it's a defined list, but it's not horribly restricted. >> PHILIP SHEPPARD: On that would it also be appropriate to extend that to the sort of proto constituencies? In other words, anybody who has now made a firm application for a constituency? >>AVRI DORIA: In more than the statement of interest but once they've made a firm application? >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Yes. Yes. I would have thought that would be the right threshold. >>AVRI DORIA: That would seem -- that's certainly something I personally -- we need to check with the rest of the group, but I think that would be a great thing. Not just based on the statement of interest -- the next step. Hard to be a tie-in and talk with your hands when you're holding a walkie-talkie button. >>ROB HOGGARTH: Just for clarification, you're referring to the two- step process for potential new constituencies. The first step is the notice of intent to form. You're talking about a group fulfilling the second step, which would be a formal petition to the board. >>AVRI DORIA: So I think that that's great. We probably should just check it on the list and make sure. But we don't have any that are in that state today, so we have a certain amount of time. And then we start planning a next meeting to start going through the pieces of the work that we have to do and making recommendations. Any issues or questions on that quickly now? I do want to cut this meeting, thank Rob, and allow people to get upstairs. But -- >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Just a comment on bylaws. I would hope that bylaw changes, which will be necessary, can nevertheless be fairly generic. Things like there will be a chairman of the new council. There will be two vice chairmen. And anything more than that, you know, is unnecessary. So I think there's a lot of stuff in terms of timing that can happen in the new bylaws without the underlying detail necessarily being there. Because I think including such underlying detail and then changing it two months later or finding it's unsuitable is just a mess. So I think that would be -- the bylaws should lay out the things without going into immense detail. >>AVRI DORIA: Especially since that's in keeping with part of the understanding I have of the board committee's recommendation that there be bylaws but that more of these flexible things be moved into the council's own management. That they needed to write down practices, they needed to write down their own stuff, but that the bylaws could be more general, looser, just say you must have a timing. You know? And not what that timing is. And you must have a this. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Because a term of office as determined by council's guidelines. Yeah. And then you refer it outside. >>ROB HOGGARTH: From a bylaws perspective, I don't see the challenge being so much some of these transition issues. But, as staff is going - - basically, what we have done is undertaken a project to go through the bylaws line by line to basically determine what may need to be changed in view of the new structure. What we've determined is that there will be certain areas with respect to stakeholder groups and constituencies where we'll want to have community inputting guidance with respect to how certain concepts are phrased or characterized in the bylaws. And we're working to get that together as quickly as possible so that we can have community input on that. The one major area of caution I think we have in terms of the time frames and the timetables that I think Philip alluded to earlier is that, if you look at the four or five stakeholder group petitions that have come in, they don't necessarily follow some of the recommendations that the board approved in the BGC or take different approaches to reaching different conclusions or the same conclusions. As a result, as the board evaluates things over the next six weeks or so, that April time frame will be very critical. Will they make a firm decision and say yes stakeholder groups, no stakeholder groups? Will they recommend changes or additions? Will they provide recommendations to the drafters to go back and do other things? Those are some of the uncertainties that still exist. But I think, if you all can come to some agreements on these now less than 19 items, I think you will have at least done the work that the board expected of the council and will be very comfortable in having completed that mandate. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you, Rob. Thank you, all. I'm going to close this one down now so that we can get upstairs in time for the GAC/GNSO meeting and talk to you all online about it. Thank you, guys. Two days. Thank you, guys.