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Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Good morning, everybody. There's plenty of seats up at the front here. Don't be scared. We'll start in a couple of minutes' time.

Okay. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the first day of the ccNSO members' meeting. Just before we start, most of you will have noticed that we have a table at the back of the room with two people sitting there with headphones on and computers and they're actually scribing this meeting. However, it's not going to appear up on the screen. It's being scribed effectively for the record and also so that they can practice, I think, basically right.

What that actually means -- what that actually means is that if when you -- if you say something -- if you stand up to say something, if you could say your name, that would be great. And perhaps if you would, in the break, if you have said something and said your name, you might want to go and check with them that they've actually spelled it properly for the record. Okay.

We're going to start the meeting with our discussion on regions, and Dave Archbold is going to come do that, so if you want to come up and do that.

Basically, the I've asked Dave to have a look at this because he's one of the people who is most affected by the current position. Over to you.

>>DAVID ARCHBOLD: I'm not switched on.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can we have -- is the projector not on? Okay. First issue of the morning, no projector. How do we turn it on? Let me guess. Use the "on" switch, right? Fantastic. Thank you.

>>DAVID ARCHBOLD: Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Dave Archbold, and before I start, I should perhaps get Chris out from under.

These are my views; they are not views that I've discussed with Chris or with the council in any way. So this is Dave Archbold's presentation.

Before I move on from the title screen, you might like to actually have a look at the map that's there. It is just a bit of clipart, but I've tried to show with the coloring what the actual present ICANN regions roughly are. But it is just roughly.

Perhaps worth noting before we go on, the size of the blue area. And you might also like to note, if you can see, I'm going to be talking about both the Caribbean islands here, and some of the islands down in the Pacific down here, and their relationship with Europe, and just bear in mind in the distances involved.

An introduction is that although you may think that this discussion is not particularly relevant to you, you may find by the end of the presentation that perhaps it is. And even if it's not, those that are affected really need your support. So please bear with me as I go through some of the issues.

The agenda, then, for my brief presentation is: Why are there geographical regions? What are the problems? Why are we looking at them now? How did we get to where we are? What's happened so far? What were the survey of results? And I'll talk about the survey in a moment. And then where do we go from here?

So let's start with the definition of the regions. The definition is in the ICANN bylaws, in the section on international representation. I won't read right through it, but you will notice that they are predefined as five regions: Europe, Asia-Australia-Pacific, Latin America-Caribbean islands, Africa, and North America.

Why do we have regions? Well, they were introduced to achieve geographical diversity of representation on the ICANN board, the At-Large Advisory Committee, and the ccNSO council. And as a result, the ALAC and ccNSO regional organizations are or will be based on the same regions. And in my view, it's a top-down structure, rather than a bottom-up one.

So what are the problems? The majority of the existing ICANN community can probably live with the status quo. But what about the Internet community that is not yet involved in ICANN?

A small number of nations -- let's call them that for the moment -- typically from amongst the dependent or overseas territories, consider that they've been put in the wrong region. And others make a case for increasing the number of regions from five to six or even seven.

So let's talk about some of the overseas territories because that's the one I can really speak for, coming from Cayman.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm located like this: Physically, I'm in the western Caribbean. The U.N. statistics office puts me in Latin America and Caribbean. But even they hedge their bets because there's a note at the bottom of the same table that says that North America comprises North America, Caribbean, and Central America, so maybe I'm in both Americas, but not according to ICANN bylaws. They say I'm in Europe.

But ICANN's Address Supporting Organization for practical reasons puts me under ARIN, together with the U.S. and Canada. And then ICANN itself, in setting up its regional liaison organization, puts me with Canada and the rest of the Caribbean.

So what are the consequences apart from personal confusion?

Well, no one from Cayman Islands can realistically stand for election to the councils of the ccNSO or ALAC, because they're required to be nominated and elected by members of the EU region. Individuals they don't know and have never met.

It would also be impractical for anyone from the Cayman Islands to participate in or benefit from the work of a ccNSO regional organization or RALO, and they're not entitled to participate in the work of any other region.

And it's not just the Cayman Islands. Potentially -- and I do emphasize "potentially" -- this is a list -- I'm not sure how well you can see it -- of various territories that fall into this category.

Turning to the question, are there too few regions, many people suggest that the Asia-Pacific-Australia region is too large and when they say "too large," they tend to mean for regional participation because the distances that you have to travel to get together are so big.

Moreover, the U.N. statistics office designates six regions, so why does ICANN have five?

Some regions with clear cultural and economic ties would like their own region. For example, the 22 countries of the Arab league. And just in case you're not sure where the Arab league is, there's where the Arab league is, and those are the participant countries.

I think you will notice that at the moment, some of those countries are in Asia-Pacific and some are in Africa.

Why is this all a concern now? Well, as the membership of the ccNSO has grown, so has the pressure -- largely from me and a few others -- to sort out the anomalies in the regional structure. It was discussed by the ccNSO council in Marrakech, and the concerns were reported to the ICANN board.

A survey of ccNSO survey has now been completed recently, and the results I'll show you in a moment.

The bylaws require at least a three-yearly review and a review is due this year, and a discussion paper has been issued by ICANN.

So how did we get here? Five regions contained -- the reference to five regions were contained in the original ICANN proposal in response to the RFP from the Commerce Department. There was no explanation on the public record that I have been able to find that says why the number five was selected. And it wasn't just me, because the same question was asked at various times during public discussions in 1999 and 2000, and, again, there's no response on the public record. At the Yokohama meeting in 2000, the board had to assign countries to regions anger it was quite a priority item because they wanted to get the ALAC elections off the ground. GAC was asked to advise and in their communique said simply to use international norms. That was their only comment.

ICANN staff proposed the use of the U.N. stats allocation, and this was accepted. However, as I've mentioned already, the U.N. stats had six regions, because they included Oceania, which were mapped into the five ICANN regions, but as far as I can tell, there was no discussion of that on the public record.

Staff also said persons from areas that are not countries would be grouped together with the country of citizenship for that area. Again, no explanation.

In Montreal in 2003, allocation was reviewed in accordance with the bylaws. The topic paper actually implied treatment of the territories was advised by GAC. Not that I can see.

Allocation was again endorsed with much discussion, but three directors abstained and one voted against.

So what were the procedural errors that I perceive? Well, there was no discussion with the people impacted. They weren't even represented at the discussions. GAC didn't advise. There's reference to a comment which, in some public discussion, it was admitted that this was in a quite separate context.

The wording of the motions in 2000 and 2003 only approved the allocation in accordance with the U.N. stats. It did not authorize compression to five regions or the allocation of the territories.

Supposedly -- the territories were supposedly allocated on the basis of citizenship, but this wasn't applied correctly or consistently.

For example, some territories are not citizens of the mother country, and this was supposedly based on citizenship, and that includes the citizens then of the British overseas territories, also American Samoa, to mention a couple.

Just to recap a little bit on what's happened so far, as I said there was discussion at the last ccNSO meeting in Wellington. Concerns were reported to the ICANN board at the New Zealand meeting, and this resulted in some interesting discussions during the public session. Then there were further discussions of the -- our council which resulted in a recent survey of ccTLDs on the subject, and I can now show you the results of these.

Firstly, I would say it wasn't -- I'm not suggesting it's a scientific survey. It was to try and get a feel for people's views. By my reckoning, and I may be wrong, the total number of ccTLDs at the moment are something like 242, and latest count in the ccNSO, I think, is 51.

The number of responses that we got to the survey was 41. Of those, 21 came from ccNSO members and, by a quick bit of difficult math, I worked out that that left 20 from non-ccNSO members.

These are the questions. I shan't run through them all. You can see them on the screen. And in each case, respondents were asked to make comment if they agreed or if they said yes to the questions. We actually -- they weren't actually asked for comment if they said no.

Okay. The first question, I haven't analyzed because I thought it was simple and straightforward: Which region are you in?

In fact, there were some different responses to that. People weren't -- or didn't appear to be sure whether they were being asked which region were they currently in, or which region did they think they ought to be in, and some actually just gave the name of their country.

Moving on to Question 2, are you in the correct region, not surprising total responses 36 said yes. That's 88%. And 4 said no, 10%. There was one no-response.

The question was, in some circumstances, should the ccTLD manager be allowed to choose which region he's in. Yes said 13% -- said 13 overall. That's 32%. 18 said we don't care. Perhaps it should be we don't mind. There were 9 no's and one no-response. And you'll see the ccNSO responses, there was a slightly higher bias to the yes.

Now, the reason I put -- split that out is, I felt that there was a slightly better chance that the ccNSO members had listened to the previous discussion in Wellington and, therefore, were perhaps a little bit better aware of the circumstances.

Should there be more ICANN regions? You can see the results there. I'm not going to spell them out.

The last question: Do the current regions impede participation? I've got to say that in a number of the questions, looking then at the comments that were made, I think there was some misunderstanding of some of the questions. I think people weren't sure whether, for example, this question they were being asked do the current regions impede your representation -- your participation or whether they thought it was participation overall.

So in summary, some ccTLDs think they're in the wrong region, but one solution doesn't fit all. It depends on the culture and the language, et cetera.

The majority of respondents either support allowing them to change or don't mind if they do. Some ccTLDs think there should be more regions. Comments made include Asia-Pacific is too large, Arab states would like a region, there's some mention of the Middle East. However, the majority of respondents either support or do not object to this view.

Okay. Moving on to my personal conclusions from all this.

I don't think the present ICANN position is sustainable. In my view it runs counter to the ICANN core value of seeking and supporting broad, informed participation, reflecting the functional geographic and cultural diversity of the Internet.

There have been too many procedural errors. At the very least, a similar motion would have to be reworded to authorize the reduction to five and the present treatment of the dependent territories.

In my view, whilst attempting to achieve an expedient politically correct solution, ICANN has confused the issues of sovereignty, nationality, and citizenship which are not the same thing.

Regions should be about maximizing participation and representation, and, therefore, should be built, in my view, from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Looking at the existing bylaws on diversity, I think they would work, without amendment, as far as the ICANN board is concerned if the number of regions were increased. But there would be implications for the structure of the ccNSO council and at-large committee.

However, any proposal to change the number of regions could reopen the debate about regional influence, politics, and the basis for representation. So that's the downside.

Where do we go from here? These are options and/or in each case.

We, the ccNSO, could use Article IX, Section 4, Para 4, to allow a ccNSO member to self-select their region where the correct region is in doubt. And I hope my little bit on where I stand proves that at least I'm in doubt.

This would be a quick fix for territories that wish to change region. The ccNSO could define its own regions for its own purposes, and this would presumably need a task force and/or a PDP and/or we can respond to the ICANN consultation urging ICANN to set up a task force to examine the issue at ICANN level, which would involve at least ALAC, the ccNSO, and the GAC, I would suspect. In mentioning the ALAC, there has been some concern expressed by individual members of ALAC as well about similar issues.

Okay. Just before I end, this is -- this was the original clipart that I doctored for my opening slide. This is as it came from -- I think it's called worldmap.com -- and it's just interesting that this shows the regions -- the world regions as they see them, and you'll notice here we've got North America including Iceland. Iceland apparently isn't in Europe, as ICANN says.

The -- South America. Europe. They've put in a Middle East region there. Oceania down here. So Asia-Pacific is a little bit smaller. And of course Africa. And that's it. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

[Applause]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Dave. Can we -- has anyone got any questions that they want to ask before we look at where we can go from here? Lesley? Just -- thanks.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: Okay. Now I'm on. Lesley Cowley from Nominet U.K. I just wanted to cover off the point about where in doubt, the CC might select an alternative region, and wondered whether you'd considered whether that might be somewhat broader than that.

For example, if there are extraordinary circumstances where, for example, the cc is surrounded by hostile countries and actually participating in that region might be very difficult for them, in those circumstances. But that would have to be perhaps extraordinary circumstances.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It's coming out through the speakers, so if you can't hear, take your headphones off and you'll be able to hear me. Exactly.

The reason why it was in there in the first place, it wasn't intended to cover off --

[Speaker off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Is that okay? Okay. Good. It was intended to cover a circumstance where the boundaries, the actual boundaries weren't clear, so it certainly wasn't intended to cover something like Cayman, which is in one of those things that is supposedly a dependent territory. It was more intended to cover -- and I can't think of an example but where it wasn't clear, whether -- the country was on the border of a region, so I don't know, Mexico maybe. Don't know. But that's what it was intended to cover.

However, it doesn't say any of that. It just says "in doubt." And as Dave has quite rightly said, really we could interpret it any way, within reason, any way we choose. But you're right. I mean, certainly it would, in my view, cover something like that. But it's -- and I think it's best characterized as you have as a quick fix, and it's probably not actually -- you know, it might work in the short term but it's not really a solution. Anyone else have any questions? Ron? Can I get the microphone to stay down here and we'll pass it -- we'll pass it around amongst ourselves? We're quite good at that. We've had some practice. Ron, put your hand up.

>>RON SHERWOOD: Hello. Ron Sherwood, dot vi. My question is a simple one. Thank you for your presentation, but if you had a choice, where would you put Cayman?

>>DAVID ARCHBOLD: North America.

>>RON SHERWOOD: That's really interesting. And you feel that you would have some influence in the North American region?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: You could argue the North American region is the one you can have the most influence over because it's got the smallest number of members.

[Laughter]

>>RON SHERWOOD: The reason I say that is, of course, the United States Virgin Islands is considered part of the North American region, but the likelihood of a Virgin Islands representing North America is, as you said in your presentation, pretty remote.

>>DAVID ARCHBOLD: Sure. I understand, but at least I have a chance equally from a regional perspective, at least there will be an opportunity for my Internet community to get involved in regional functions of any kind at a reasonable cost.

There's no way they're going to fly across the Atlantic to do it.

>>RON SHERWOOD: May I just follow up, please? I understand that. But I do have another question, and that is: You didn't mention anywhere language, and it seems to me that I've been working with the ALAC as the liaison from the ccNSO, and the language difficulty is one that we're encountering right now, and in the Caribbean, for example, where you have, I think, three different language bases, you didn't mention that perhaps that choice might be made on the ability to communicate well.

>>DAVID ARCHBOLD: Actually, I did. I think in -- I said, you know, there wasn't -- one solution doesn't fit all and it depends upon culture, language, et cetera, et cetera, so I did include that.

>>RON SHERWOOD: And you cover that by choice, self-choice. Thank you.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Possibly, yes. There's a, can -- okay. You go -- you don't mind if Hilda goes first? Hilda.

>>HILDE THUNEM: Hilde Thunem from Norwegian registry. As a comment to the bottom-up process, I would just like to point out that the regional organizations, like APTLD, LACTLD, et cetera, doesn't have to care about the ICANN regions. And I see no reason why we should tie our membership to the ICANN regions. I mean, I know that CENTR for a fact doesn't. Anyone can join if they feel that they can benefit from that. And so while I definitely think that we should discussing the ICANN regions in relation to what they do to the ICANN organization's life, the ccNSO council, for example, or the ALAC or other things, let's not tie that to the regional organizations where you may participate or not, depending on what you want, I think, and not depending on which region ICANN put you in.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Hilde, thank you. There's a couple of things, if I can just respond to -- now Patricio. Can you hold on for a second? Sorry.

Just a couple of things, Hilde.

You're right. I mean, APTLD and I think LACTLD choose to -- to map the ICANN region for membership. Is that -- is that right?

[Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: But the other thing is -- the other thing is that whilst what you say is correct, CENTR can have members from wherever. Technically so can APTLD. The current rules only allow a regional -- a liaison region -- to liaise with us -- with us, so CENTR is the European liaison with us and that's only with respect to the ICANN defined European region, so there are clashes, if you like, but I acknowledge completely what you're saying. The gentleman behind Patricio and then Patricio.

>>STEPHANE BORTZMEYER:

Stephane Bortzmeyer from the French registry. You mentioned the possibility for a ccTLD to choose its region, but what about the opinion of the ccTLD while already in the region on who may disagree with the new arrival? I mean, do you think it would be a good idea to give some sort of veto right for the people who are already in the region, because North America, for instance, could change from three or four ccTLDs to a dozen or two dozens.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It could. I don't actually think that's very likely but it's possible. I -- I'm not sure that we would, as -- that as an organization, the ccNSO would be keen on getting into giving countries the ability to say to another country, "We don't want you in our region." I think we're quite happy for people to leave a region, but I don't think we would want to say, "No, I'm terribly sorry, you're not coming into our region," I don't think. But it's -- I mean, it's a valid point. Could you pass the microphone to Patricio?

>>PATRICIO POBLETE: In the LAT TLD meeting we just had, we realized language can be a very important issue. All business is conducted in the meeting and on the mainland is conducted in Spanish or Portuguese or a mixture of both. An even though non-Spanish or Portuguese-speaking countries are welcome, they somehow feel their participation becomes a lot harder under those conditions. So I would feel they might reasonably be -- feel that they should be entitled to choose. And, perhaps, we should be speaking about defining regions that are overlapping. Like, for instance, there is LAC, Latin-American-Caribbean. There could also be NAC, North American-Caribbean. Those countries that happen to be to be in both in intersection, the can choose which region they are more comfortable to be in here.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Absolutely. Excuse me. Here, thank you.

>>PAULOS NYIRENDA: Thanks, Chris. I just want to follow up on the opinion of the other members of the region. I think it may be important to take this into consideration. For example -- maybe pick Africa, for example. It may be worthwhile to consider whether Africa want to be repartitioned into Arab-Africa and the rest of Africa. It may be a significant point.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I understand the point you are making, and it is especially relevant to Africa because it is the same land mass. But, surely, if -- I am not saying this is the case. But if there are countries in Africa -- in the African continent that would prefer to be in -- say, in an Arab Nation region, that's not actually partitioning Africa. That's just giving them a choice to have -- to be in a different region for the purposes of whatever -- for the ccNSO or ICANN or whatever.

And I don't think you can fairly say that -- because the majority of countries -- the African region exists because the majority of the countries in the region say that it should remain as it currently is, then it should remain as it currently is. That's actually almost colonialism in the sense that what you are doing -- you are saying unless all of us agree, you can't go. And that doesn't make sense in the context of what we are talking about, I don't think.

But I think you have got an absolutely valid point about talking amongst yourselves as a region about what should happen. Hilde?

>>HILDE THUNEM: I will play devil's advocate on that point. That is, when we are talking about moving from one region to another, we are talking about, in ICANN sense at least, a shift of power because how many members are in the region does effect how large a chance of success for being chosen to the ccNSO council.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Absolutely.

>>HILDE THUNEM: In Europe, you would have to run against 72 other ccTLDs. In North America, you would have to run against seven or eight others, I think. We are talking about something that will affect power.

And when you are then talking about splitting up into new regions, that does raise some problems and should they then have as a region new seats on the ccNSO council because then we might want a Scandinavian region, for example. We are a little part and somebody might be able to join us in the Scandinavian region.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. [laughter]

Anyone can have a new region except for Scandinavia, that's the rule, okay?

[Laughter]

>>HILDE THUNEM: Just to raise the point if we're starting to -- I can see your concern in splitting up from Africa, not just -- not to keep them in sort of a colonial part. But when you are talking about making new regions, you have to be very careful. Why should you make and what should be there to have a new region.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I agree. Dotty, while you are getting the microphone. Hilde, you are absolutely right, but two things. One, in reality, for all practical purposes, when we talk about changing the numbers of regions or increasing the number of regions, we all know there is really only one region that would be a stand-alone region and that's the Arab Nations. And there is a push from them to have a region. And in respect to the Caribbean, there are issues that need to be solved. It doesn't necessarily mean they need a new region. Patricio has a suggestion about having crossover with North America is actually a very good suggestion. Of course, are we opening the flood gates to a Scandinavian region? Is the Netherlands suddenly going to expand upon our wildest dreams? Dotty.

>>DOTTY SPARKS DE BLANC: This is just an observation. It would take two countries out of North America. It would take out America Samoa and Guam.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Isn't that what the U.S. wants? It wants to be on its own in its own region. Right? That's the whole point, surely. Exactly.

Speaking on behalf of Australia, I don't think -- there is not a push on from Australia or from New Zealand, I don't think, for Oceania to be carved out as a region. I think we are quite comfortable at least for the moment being in the Asia-Pacific region. But I think as part of the Asia-Pacific region, we recognize that it is a major challenge for the Arab Nations.

It also makes it a major challenge for the Asia-Pacific region because it is so huge. If we have an apTLD meeting -- we choose the apTLD to follow the ICANN regions. We have an apTLD meeting, we have it on the Arab side ,nobody from the Pacific side can come. It is too expensive and too far. It just makes it impossible. So if there were.

But what we need to do right now is just to agree, I think, so the council can take a resolution forward. Can we agree on the fact that we should at least attempt to prepare a submission to the ICANN regional discussion? And if we can get a consensus paper from the ccNSO that that would be a good thing. Can we also agree that where -- you can look at this on a couple of levels.

You can look at this as a regional thing and say this is what we think ICANN should do in respect to regions across ICANN and/or you can say if that's too hard, then that's not a problem, we just want to do this for the ccNSO.

No one says that the ccNSO structure regions has to be the same as the ALAC or as the ICANN regions. And, in fact, the RIRs up until very recently had a very different regional structure because they had four regions and now they have five. Sorry?

Dotty first and then Roland.

>>DOTTY SPARKS DE BLANC: Can the Arab representatives identify themselves here and speak to the question.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I am not sure -- thank you, Olivier. Dave and I have spent some time on e-mail with Charles Shaban who is not with us, and also with Mohammed Al Shabir who is not with us. Do we have anybody that would consider themselves to be an Arab Nation?

I don't think we do in the room, Dotty. I can tell you -- we have a joint -- the ccNSO-GAC liaison working group had a meeting yesterday afternoon where we talked about the sorts of issues that might be coming up where there is input from both of us.

One of the GAC representatives is from the government of Egypt and it was pretty clear that they think that that actually might be quite a nice idea, to have an Arabic region.

>>DOTTY SPARKS DE BLANC: I just think it is kind of strange for this body to propose there will be an Arab region when there is nobody --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We are not proposing that.

>>DOTTY SPARKS DE BLANC: We're not? That's what it sounded like.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No. I am proposing we agree -- I am proposing we agree we should prepare a consensus paper. In order to do that we need to form a small working group which I am going to suggest Dave leads which will draft some documentation to go to the members for discussion on our e-mail list, et cetera, and see if we can reach consensus. We may not be able to reach consensus. If we can, then we should try to.

>>BART VASTENBURG: Just for clarification purposes, and your proposal would be to have the focus of this working group would include both levels you just discussed? As well as advising ICANN as well as advising ccNSO on internal matters?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We could just put in a paper that says with respect to the ccNSO, we think there should be crossover as Patricio suggested, for example, crossover regions and so on. We can also put in a paper that actually says we think the structure would work at the ICANN level as well. It is important to remember that the actual ICANN board and the GNSO do not have anything like the same amount of regional restrictions, if you like, that we do. The board does not have to have two board members from one reason and two board members from another.

The way their regional thing works you must not have more than five from one region and they must strive for geographical diversity. They don't have the same structures we have. So you are coming from a different base with respect to that. Is everyone happy -- did you want to say something, Ron?

>>ROELOF MEIJER: So, I take it you want to stop the discussion on the content of the document now (row 1 seat 3 right). You don't want to continue the discussion?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I am happy if anybody has anything else to say.

>>ROELOF MEIJER: May I?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, of course.

>>ROELOF MEIJER: I got the impression that part of the confusion that David showed in his presentation -- the beginning of his presentation is caused by the fact that different organizations or different bodies don't use the same standard.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That's right.

>> ROELOF MEIJER: So I would be very careful with forwarding any recommendation other than follow an internationally recognized standard. Although I sympathize with David's situation, I think it would be very unwise to say ICANN has its own system and we as ccNSO come up with another one. It will only add to the confusion.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sure. I accept that. However, it wouldn't surprise me to discover that if we look hard enough, we will be able to find an international standard of that of some sort.

>> ROELOF MEIJER: You won't find one that solves all problems.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No, of course not. Of course not. Does anyone else have anything to add at the moment? Okay.

So what I'm going to ask then is that -- the way we normally do this is that we will send a note out to the members' list and the wwTLD discuss list to ask for volunteers to sit on a working group to come up with a paper on the regions.

And those of you who are interested, those of you who are concerned about it, can volunteer. That would be great. Donna, we don't currently have a time constraint but there will presumably be a time constraint at some point?

>> OLIVIER GUILLARD: (inaudible).

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Let's wait and see who volunteers, first, shall we, Olivier? You never know. Scandinavia is definitely going to volunteer because they want their own region now. We have started something.

So, Donna, is it likely to be a closed date for comment before Lisbon, at Lisbon? Before Lisbon? Okay.

>>DONNA AUSTIN: (inaudible).

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Given the Christmas holiday break, et cetera, sometime the end of February type of thing or beginning of March maybe.

>> DONNA AUSTIN: I would suspect earlier.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay, whatever. If we send out a note to the lists today or tomorrow, it would be good to have maybe five or six people on this working group. That usually is the best number that seems to be able to get the most efficient amount of work done in the time required and the goal is to -- the goal is not necessarily to come up with a series of suggestions as to how the regions should be structured or how we should deal with dependent territories.

The goal could be to simply push ICANN to form a formal review, like a task force, to formally review the regions rather than just putting out a paper that says "what do you think."

My sense of this is that it is so complicated and so politically difficult that it may actually be simply better for us to say we think it needs to be looked at properly, we think it needs to be looked at across ICANN and we think it needs to be looked at with everyone involved, so please set up a task force, et cetera, et cetera.

But that's the working group will work on that. Okay, David, thank you very, very much. We are moving on to the next session now.

I can see various ICANN board members making their way slowly to the front. Good morning, Dr. Cerf. How are you? Are you feeling any better?

>>VINT CERF: No.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We do have room around the room. I am sorry it is a bit crowded in here. Please feel free.

>>VINT CERF: (inaudible).

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Donna, can you see if we can get Michael or someone to maybe get another row in here or something, some more chairs. Yes, please. Donna? It is okay. We are going to get some more chairs, everybody. So if you hang on for just a second, we will get some more chairs in the room. And you can sit at the very front and stare at us.

We will just wait until the chairs come in and people can be comfortable.

>>VINT CERF: I can't help but observe this is an extremely clever way of getting the board to meet the ccNSO members by making them sit in seats that are scattered all around in the room. It is a beautiful, fabulous idea. You should keep doing it.

If you wait long enough, eventually.

>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Good morning, how are you?

>>PAUL TWOMEY: I'm lost.

>>VINT CERF: There is that problem.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: But now you are found.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the next session which is something that has become a bit of a tradition for us which is to get an update from the ICANN CEO and chair. So, welcome, Vint and Paul and also to the other ICANN board members liberally spread around the room, welcome. There are some more chairs coming. But I am just going to pass over to you now and you can do your thing.

>>VINT CERF: (Making arm movements.)

I really don't have much voice left.

>>PAUL TWOMEY: He is doing that whenever he wants to lead off but we will see how long he remains silent for.

(Chuckles).

Thank you very much, Chris. Pleased to be here. I will work a little bit on the assumption that people -- at least some people in this room got to see the opening public forum yesterday because I think part of the idea of reforming the way the week works was to have a situation where people like myself give a presentation once and most people see it as opposed to people like myself giving the same presentation ten times.

So there is probably already three topics that I would like to raise. One is in the presentation, I talked about ICANN's contingency planning process. And I wanted to reiterate -- because I know many of you, at least some of you, potentially have the same issues emerging in your own operations or potentially your interactions with your government, which is this issue of what happens in the contingency of the failure of the particular organization. In our case it is the failure of ICANN. Now, we have thought of this -- the board has thought about this a lot and we have had a lot of work this in 2003/2004. And the key thing that we really thought through was one is the usual stuff, what do you do in case of emergency fires, bombs; if you are based in Los Angeles, earthquakes. And that's sort of standard stuff.

But the second stuff is what do you do if you look like you have got business failure coming up.

I suppose probably the key thing in our analysis was to put an extra layer of corporate governance thinking inside ICANN, particularly upon the chairman's responsibilities and also, for that matter, on staff supporting the chairman of early warning of the risk and then a process for the community to be reconvened to look after -- A, to ensure the functions keep operating and, B, potentially a new entity is created to look after the functions if the existing entity looks like it is going to go into business failure. In other words, the way to try to save the core functions and have them reorganized and how they are represented, rethought through. In some respects, for those people who were involved in the discussions in '96, '97, '98 on the originally formed ICANN, in our perspective we have a committee which is basically representatives of all those communities again brought together to talk about what the -- what should we do in terms of a new entity.

A couple of points I would like to make about that because it is worth making. You will see in all the contingency planning which the United States government requested under the Memorandum of Understanding No. 6 in which they accepted and said fine, you will notice the United States government does not have a special role. It is the community that is convened.

There is the expectation, I have to say, that there would be an eminent person brought in to chair these things and I would suspect some sort of eminent person is, some sort of eminent person who was a person of authority and recognized authority would probably be useful in that process. But I just wanted to reinforce that for you because part of our thinking at the time was influenced by the KPNQwest bankruptcy, the problem some of you may have known many cc's had secondaries sitting on servers inside KPNQwest and the issue of what to do with the secondaries and can you move them and were they property or not and who owned them and did the administrator have them. I don't know what the Dutch word is, but at least in my jurisdiction we used the word administrator.

What's the Dutch word -- Dutch position of the person that comes in if you are in bankruptcy?

>> (inaudible).

>>PAUL TWOMEY: It was the actual KPNQwest experience that drove us to think about we need to have a step before. So before we are formally in the bankruptcy courts in California, we have actually dealt with this particular issue. We also very much take the view and defend in the courts regularly -- we are actually doing it at the moment -- that the registries, the IANA functions, the allocation of ccTLDs is not property and we spend a lot of time and effort making that position and defending their position that these things are not property.

So I just thought I would give you a little bit more background behind that contingency planning and then make the plea that we are looking for nominees for the key positions so that we have got those names in a drawer. So if on a Thursday afternoon -- I have to ring Vinton on a Thursday morning he says we have to convene, then on Monday we have a list of names and we can work that quickly.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That's representatives from each of the SOs?

>>PAUL TWOMEY: For this particular SOs it is one representative for each region.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We always had a regional discussion and we are up to ten regions now. [laughter]

Scandinavia has its own region, it has decided. So you want one nominee, okay.

>>VINT CERF: I just want to make one tiny observation about this process. It will be really valuable after any party is nominated to such a position to have a fairly regular mechanism to make sure we actually know how to reach that person because if it is anything like every other list I can think of, as time goes on, the information -- the coordinate information gets stale and the one thing you don't want to have happen in a crisis like this is not being able to gain a quorum of people in order to carry out the recovery process.

So whatever mechanism we use probably has to have a background pinging thing that's sending an e-mail out every month to make sure it is still live.

It sounds like a trivial thing; but in a crisis you really, really need to know that you can find those people.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Paul, if you can send -- we can probably get you names from our council meeting tomorrow, if you can send me a note formally asking me to do it. Then I will see if the council can resolve tomorrow to give you a name from each region.

>>PAUL TWOMEY: We suspect we should formally ask the constituency and the supporting organizations each year on an annual basis. There will be an opportunity for rotation if that's appropriate.

The secondary, I thought, were being raised was -- in that president's report yesterday was on consultation processes for the strategic plan. I just wanted to remind people here that there are consultations taking place in four languages this week and I know you have got your own meetings, but we really do appreciate people participating in the consultation process. And our experience has been -- particularly for people's whose native tongue is not English, these consultation processes have probably been the richest.

Our experience to be truthful, the English language consultation process during the meetings is probably the least valuable in terms of the input we get. It is the input we get in other languages which is richest. We really would exhort people's whose native tongue is being included in a consultation to attend if you can.

The third item was on transparency and accountability which I know is a major topic for many of you. And I would direct you to, again, the set of consultations we are doing on management operating principles.

The board passed a key resolution on September 29 outlining what it thinks some of its key responsibilities, one of which is to ensure the development of these principles. And in those principles, we have a series of consultations underway now. I mentioned there was a special agency we are engaging to help us work through materials, and we will have a greater presentation back in Lisbon.

But any input that you have or thoughts that you have or very importantly undoubtedly you will have the same requirements, the same concerns, the same voice inside your own communities. If there are any lessons you have learned, any tricks you've got, any things you do that you think work really well, we would love to hear about them.

I would just exhort, again, members of this supporting organization to be involved in the process because I know many of you did have concerns. Also, if you have got examples of things you'd do, we would like to hear about them.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We are having a session this afternoon and Paul Levins is -- and Patrick are coming to that to talk to start the ball rolling with us talking about it. I am fairly sure there will be some input.

>>PAUL TWOMEY: Similarly, for input, the President's Strategy Committee posted its draft -- its first draft on the recommendations on the set of questions it considered earlier this year. I went through those again yesterday. I won't go through them again now. I would think many of the topics in that would be directly relevant to this supporting organization and to its members and we are having more consultations including a town hall meeting in February-- and online town hall meeting in February. And, again, I would exhort you to have a look at that report, particularly as it deals with some international aspects of ICANN's identity. You may have thoughts you may want to contribute. You may want to listen to the input.

So, again, I think I am just reinforcing that message. I think there are items in that set of recommendations that I think country codes organization may find of interest.

The final point I will put on my list of sort of reminders, I suppose, is IDNs, Internationalized Domain Names. In our last meetings, particularly in Marrakech, there was quite some discussions amongst constituencies and in the hallways about the idea of the concept of an internationalized country code TLD if we can use that phrase, an iccTLD. In other words, a TLD in the character set of a particular geographic region.

And there's been quite some discussion about, you know, if there's a need for that. And I could tell you, frankly, in what I get told in my travels and discussions, that in certain parts of the world, they're very keen to have such a thing. Particularly eastern Europe, Russia, east Asia, south Asia, and the Arab-speaking world, the Middle East. In those regions, I get very strong feedback on that particular topic.

The -- and there was talk about potentially how do we go forward with that, how would we -- how would we potentially have a parallel table, perhaps, to the ISO 3166 Part 1 table, so I know there's been discussion. There's nothing formal has yet emerged.

I just wanted to share that I think at the moment, the sense of some in the board and in the technical community, both in the IETF and the President's Strategy Committee, particularly in some of the IETF work that's underway at the moment, is that before we progress with that idea, it's probably useful to know what parameters would need to be set for any request.

And there is still quite a lot of work, actually intense work, going on inside the IETF dealing with some very difficult problems, and this is something that Vint can talk in detail and with passion about.

And as a consequence, I think the present judgment is that it might not yet be ripe to come formally out with such a request, until we actually know what parameters or limitations may have to be put upon the request.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Just talking about technical --

>>PAUL TWOMEY: Technical limitations, that's right.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, right.

>>PAUL TWOMEY: I don't know whether you want to talk more to this.

>>VINT CERF: I actually do, but --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I just wanted to say, the idea of an internationalized country code top-level domain has been discussed. You know, in the hallways people have talked about it as potentially a thing that might emerge out of the IDN environment, one. Two, in those discussions -- and I've heard this clearly -- a major role for the cc managers, you know, in any discussion. (c), there's clearly also governments have shown a lot of interest in such a thing, in those parts of the world that I mentioned.

But, four, it's not yet a ripe idea because we don't -- there's still a lot of technical uncertainties that need to be worked through, so I just wanted to give some sort of feedback on that.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can I just -- before you say anything, can I just respond?

As you know, because you'll have seen the agenda, we're doing a session this morning, after this and after our break, on IDNs at the cc level. Not technical, but the politics and the policy, which you'll be amazed to hear there's a fair bit of. And it's -- I think those of us who have been discussing it, and hopefully by the time we finish this morning everyone else in this room will realize just how incredibly complicated it is, not least of which is that there is currently no definition anywhere of what a ccTLD is. It simply says, both in RFC-1591 and ICP-1, it simply says they're built around those two-letter thingies on the ISO list, but there's nothing else anywhere to describe what they are.

And of course if you say they're built around the two-letter codes on the ISO list, then that's all they are, and therefore there is no way you can have a dot idn ccTLD unless you change the definition or you have a new list.

So we're going to get into that in some depth this morning, acknowledging that there's a whole heap of technical stuff to be done and I would accept that. However, I would say there is also so much of the other stuff to be done that we should probably start doing that as well, on the assumption that the technical stuff will eventually be sorted out.

>>PAUL TWOMEY: Can I just make an observation on your observation? From the little that I have read and talked to people about the origin of it, and the discussions that it originated potentially the introduction of the two-letter codes, it may not be an accident that there is no definition.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes. Sure.

>>PAUL TWOMEY: And that potentially, one of the safest ways to progress was simply have no definition and just have the list.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, exactly.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, Steve.

>>STEVE CROCKER: Thank you. Steve Crocker. I like -- to follow up on your comment, if you're going to take this up within this forum, one of the things that I would find particularly interesting is: What questions would you want answered in the -- in creating a definition of a -- what a ccTLD is? So even if you don't have an answer to what it is, what questions are driving that? So if I knew what a ccTLD is, I'd know the answer to the following kinds of questions.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. I'm not actually -- I'm not saying we necessarily do need to know what a ccTLD is. I'm using that as an illustration of the fact that it's fairly complicated. But the sorts of questions are: What -- do you -- are you transliterating two ASCII characters into something in a different script? Are you translating it? Are you simply coming up with a representation of a country name? How many -- how many symbols? Two? Three? Four? Who can choose? Who manages? Is it a CCT -- what happens to the -- at the next level down, what happens to the ccNSO where, for example, there are five dot idn ccTLDs in one country run by possibly five different registries? Does that mean they have five members? For example -- I mean that's -- you know, that's the next level of policy and politics but something that we need to talk about at some point.

What I suppose my answer to your question, Steve, would be that if -- if -- and, again, I agree with Paul, it may not necessarily be a good idea, but if there was a definition, then at least you'd be able to say -- you might be able to say that within the confines of that definition, some of the subsidiary questions have been answered. Because if you say, for example, that a ccTLD is the sponsoring organization -- is the two-letter country code managed by the sponsoring organization listed in the IANA database, then you could -- you could possibly argue that in that case, that is the only organization that can apply for a dot idn ccTLD and manage it, just as an example. But we also -- again, I don't want to get too ahead of the debate because we'll be discussing this later on, but we also have -- there may also be some security and stability questions that need to be answered by the -- by your committee about whether, for example, it does have any security implications to!

have two -- two cc's or the same cc in different scripts run by two different registries.

>>STEVE CROCKER: [Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No, I understand, yeah, yeah.

>>PAUL TWOMEY: Okay. Well, seeing I won't be here for your discussion, can I throw two more things that you may want to consider.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sure.

>>PAUL TWOMEY: And, again, I'm going to reflect things that get asked of me by particularly governments.

One is, you may want to ask the question, I know some -- it's been raised by me -- raised with me by some European governments that they potentially, under their competition laws, think it would be useful for them to have another national TLD that competes with their ccTLD --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah, sure.

>>PAUL TWOMEY:- And how would that interplay with an IDN thing.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah.

>>PAUL TWOMEY: And in -- certainly in -- in a Cyrillic-based country, it was pointed out to me that they've already decided not only what the string will be, but what glyph it has to appear in. And, you know, this came from on high.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah.

>>PAUL TWOMEY: So a degree. So that's another -- you may want to add to your list has in your community anybody discussed what -- what this should be already?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah.

>>PAUL TWOMEY: I think you'll find we understand in China that conversations are already taking place, too, for instance.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. Vint?

>>VINT CERF: I don't know if I'm audible or not. Is it working okay?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yep.

>>VINT CERF: Just a comment about this dilemma about who can apply for one of these internationalized ccTLDs. It occurs to me that we don't necessarily have to adopt the view that every entry in the 3166-1 table should necessarily have an internationalized variant. And so we could choose -- this is a matter of decision and policy. We could choose that there are only certain classes of entities that are permitted to apply for and to produce these things.

I'm not advocating anything here. Only to say that we shouldn't be bound solely by the ccTLD table in 3166-1, although I would suggest to you that it would be probably smart to be no more than a subset of that table, because as soon as you depart from 3166-1, you start getting into some very complex territory about, for example, what's a country, who is the representative of the country.

A comment on IDNs in general. First of all, there are a series of very, very difficult steps to decide which characters of the Unicode tables will be included in the characters that are permitted to be used in IDNs. We've gone away from the original plan, which was to say, let's make a list of excluded characters and say everything else is okay. We discovered everything else wasn't okay. And so the original designs for IDNs are now being adapted by going through the Unicode tables and discarding -- excluding characters -- making a list of only those ones that should be included in IDNs. The job is not done, and there's a very complex process in the IETF.

There are some very useful documents coming out of the IETF -- John Klensin in particular -- and I'm going to suggest that we get those documents available to ICANN participants. And Paul, I'm sure we can arrange that. John Klensin gave a very helpful tutorial to the board earlier this week, which I think should be shared.

So that's just useful input for you.

The second issue with regard to IDNs is that even in the context of the IDN ccTLD, even after you get past the technical decision about which characters are allowed, after anything is selected, there are bound to be potential issues to countries using the same scripts end up for some reason wanting the same sequence, or maybe there is a sequence which could be construed to compete with an existing gTLD, by some peculiar happenstance.

Words in one language mean -- you know, representations of words in one language can be interpreted as something else in a different language.

The third problem, not every country has only one language. India has 22. So when you -- you can't refer to a country as a Cyrillic country, necessarily. You can only refer to a country as a country whose languages are the following, using the following scripts.

So I think that there are a whole bunch of issues whose resolution process we will want to decide ahead of time before we actually start proposing strings to be used, so that if there are issues, we already know how we will address disagreements, disputes, and problems. Whether they range from trademark or -- or competitive issues or other things.

So I would just argue that -- that in the process of trying to introduce these IDNs, we'd better have processes in place to cope with disagreements. So let me give you one last example, coming from our experience with the existing ASCII-based domain names.

You all know that there is this uniform dispute resolution process which is not necessarily used everywhere in the world. It's certainly used with the gTLDs.

One of the problems that IDNs are now going to introduce is that the Punycode representation of an IDN -- that's an ASCII string that starts out with xn-- and then more lowercase ASCII, and numeric characters -- those Punycode strings are not going to be hidden. They're going to wind up being visible.

We've already seen examples of user software, browsers and the like, that expose the Punycode representations of the IDN strings.

The problem with that exposure is that there are valid words in ASCII which will show up as the results of mapping the IDN down into the Punycode, so just to give you a few examples, xn--VeriSign, xn Cerf, xn-- I don't remember. There are a whole bunch of examples of strings that look perfectly normal except that they were derived from a particular IDN that might have started out as a Thai character sequence or a Chinese character sequence. We don't necessarily know right now what to do about unhappiness that those Punycode strings are made visible.

You can imagine some of them could be offensive. Some of them could be even illegal. In some countries, it's improper to make reference to the king, for example, in some inappropriate way.

You can imagine people deliberately registering an IDN for the purpose of getting the Punycode string that that person wants, and then having it be visible.

So this is complicated territory, and I would that your particular body that will be most likely affected by this, because you are the group that's most likely going to be using these kinds of IDNs, whether it's at the top level or elsewhere, so I only bring that up just to give you another headache.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you very much. Young Eum, do you have a question?

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: Actually, it's more more a comment rather than a question. I would like to add one more problem to your list of issues related to IDNs in terms of -- not just in terms of technical problems but in terms of who gets to register, which is that IDNs were first brought up by a specific language community, and although --

>>VINT CERF: I'm sorry, I actually can't hear you very well and you're hiding behind the microphone and you're also go hiding behind the person in front of you. So if you don't mind standing up, it would be a huge help.

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: Yes. Let me stand up. My name is Young Eum Lee. I'm from dot kr. I'd also like to point out that IDNs were initially brought up --

>>VINT CERF: Now your microphone is hiding your mouth and for a guy like me, lipreading helps, even at this distance, so I apologize for all the problems.

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: Okay. I would like to emphasize that IDNs were first brought up by a specific language community, and although in the process of technical difficulties, it all came down to script, I would still like to emphasize that there is a specific language script-sharing community that needs to be considered, and that needs to be able to have a major voice in who gets to register the IDNs. I would just like to point that out.

>>VINT CERF: Absolutely agree.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Anyone else got any -- Nigel?

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: Thank you. Nigel Roberts, dot gg. Can you hear me okay? I'm trying to --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Shout. That's it.

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: I think Young Eum makes a good point, and I think everyone who comes from a non-different script environment is making the same mistake whenever they talk about IDNs, and I hear it amongst just about everybody I hear speaking on IDN. IDNs are not about languages. They are not in any way about languages. They are about scripts.

When you start talking about languages, you start talking about national identity and nations. No nation owns a script. Many nations share the script that we all use, and in other countries you can't say that this is the script for this language because in some countries, you have one language, two scripts. In former Yugoslavia, for example, they had one language. It's split into different languages now, but they had one language and two scripts. So please, let's all talk about scripts, and then you defuse a lot of these problems.

>>VINT CERF: So, first of all, I -- I do agree that this is a script issue, but I do want to point out that in the -- just as in the existing UDRP mechanism, when someone has an objection about a particular registration, the reasons for that objection could be quite varied. One of those reasons might be that that particular registration or domain name is troublesome for a variety of reasons in country A, B or C because of the term, the interpretation of the term.

So I'm agreeing with you that this is a script issue, but I think it's also fair to say that when there are issues about registrations, they could be about quite a variety of things, including the meaning of that particular registration in this language. Is that -- is that compatible with what you're thinking?

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: I think it is but I wouldn't overemphasize that because I can suggest to you that in a western country, a -- an IDN which happens to look like a particular not-very-nice picture might be a problem.

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Anyone else? Paul, did you have anything else you wanted to cover? Vint? Did you?

>>VINT CERF: No. Unless there are questions or issues.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. So we're going to get into this IDN thing in even more detail in about 20 minutes time, so that's -- thank you very much for loading some more stuff onto the cart for us.

Okay. Anyone else? Does anybody want to ask Paul or Vint anything about anything else?

>>PAUL TWOMEY: Or other members of the board.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Or other members of the board. I'm sorry. Yes. Of course. Why should they get off?

>>VINT CERF: I'm sorry, I made a bad mistake and didn't introduce one of the newest members of the board, Goldstein. Steve, will you just stand up for a second?

Steve is joining the board officially at the end of the meeting this week. Some of you, I hope, know of his history. Steve was very, very involved at the U.S. National Science Foundation in running the international connections program, and for many years, the reasons that a large portion of the international academic community was part of the Internet was thanks to Steve's work, making those connections happen, funding them in particular. So I want to welcome him specifically to the board.

I don't know -- our other member, Ramaraj, is not here. He had to go off to his son's wedding. And the third member of the board is -- has been with us for a while but is joining now as a voting member, and that's Roberto Gaetano, who is standing over here. Roberto is a really interesting character in our board because he's been the liaison for the ALAC for as long as I can remember, and now becomes a formal voting director. We are going to be very benefitted by his joining the board in that forum, so the rest of the board members are as they have been, and I welcome your opportunities to ask them questions or the rest of us here.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Vint. Can I just -- it occurs to me that I should perhaps take this opportunity to give you a heads-up, if you like. As I said earlier on, we spent some bit of time this morning talking about regions, and you have a regional discussion document, whatever, out for comment.

>>VINT CERF: Yeah.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I don't want to preempt anything that we decide, but I suspect that at the very least, we will be coming back to you and saying, "This is far too complicated an issue to deal with in this way," and we would like a -- some sort of formal task force across ICANN to actually deal with this -- this regional issue, which matters to us perhaps a lot more than some others, but we've -- what we've established this morning without too much doubt is it's actually pretty -- pretty complicated.

>>PAUL TWOMEY: Talking personally, I have scars on my psyche and body, probably, about this discussion since 1997. I just wanted to point out something.

We have a newsletter and news alert function now for the ICANN Web sites, which are -- which are also themselves going to undergo a lot of extensive change in the next six months, but I would recommend that you also register for getting those news alerts so that you can -- and electronic newsletters, so that you can, you know, see what we're doing or respond quickly or send an e-mail and say, "You jerks, what are you doing!"

The -- one particular newsletter which -- for those of you who have been registered for the newsletter, there was a newsletter which went out with a summation of some stuff on country -- on regions just recently. You will notice that the newsletter that went out, and what is now posted -- I don't know if they're the same thing -- the newsletter showed an updating of the 2003 agreed set of tables. What is now posted leaves it much more open for feedback which could include feedback on regions as a whole, not just on particular -- particular assignments. So there was some quick -- the -- we will continue to do this. We will continue to err on the side of speed of communications. Occasionally that will mean we'll have to do some corrections but I just wanted to point that out.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes. Well, I was delighted to read it because it, in fact, indicated that there would be a sixth region, albeit Antarctica, but nonetheless, it's... Alex? Do we have the microphone, please?

>>ALEJANDRO PISANTY: I have a microphone.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: You have a microphone.

>>ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you. Thanks, Chris, for arranging for us to not only be welcome in this room but even have enough seats. Your careful preparation to make it look improvised was really a masterly act.

[Laughter]

>>ALEJANDRO PISANTY: I hate one aspect of these meetings. I'm really -- I have heard the words "sick and fed up" used for some things and I am sick and fed up of one aspect of our meetings, particularly like the one we're having right now, which is that even the physical framing makes it confrontational, makes it only concentrate in requests going either way, complaints going either way, and very little reporting of common success, so I would like to build on the outreach theme for something that I think has been successful, has been a merry and happy occasion, at least in our region, in Latin America, and we think that can be built upon in many other ones.

I think that there is, indeed, a situation in which ICANN staff and ICANN board are separate and in many ways opposite to ccTLD managers, to gTLD constituencies, to the ASO, and so forth.

But there's a huge environment out there in which we have a common cause, which you may or may not want to call "ICANN" as a common cause, but certainly it's the promotion and sometimes the defense of the Internet environment as a creative, flat communications environment that helps people actually grow.

We have had a very successful meeting in Latin America a couple of months ago which was held by-- in our case, it's facilitated by a couple of factors. It was held by interactive videoconference between 11 cities at the same time, plus Webcasts and IM participation and so forth, which was a common effort of ICANN board, ICANN staff, ccTLD managers, GAC representatives, a couple of people of the gTLD community, and the addressing community, to mention the main actors only.

And we would like to encourage this kind of activity to be better known, to build upon models that have also been successful in other regions. We're very aware, for example, that in Australia and England and a few other places, there have been successful ccTLD plus government presentations, and that we can further share and build upon this. The factor that has helped the Latin American region in particular is the commonality of languages between the continent -- at least among the continent and a few of the island countries in the Caribbean, and the narrowness of the time zones, so that we can really put in people from all countries speaking together at the same time for a full day.

Maybe this is not equally applicable in the Asia-Pacific region, stretching from -- as Paul reminds us from Cyprus to close to Hawaii, and some other models have to be applied, but I think that looking at more cooperative efforts of this kind, starting with the outreach, but they go deep into the deep thinking and the day-to-day operations would be very useful and we -- I'd like to concentrate for once on positive news instead of just, you know, firing at each other.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Alex.

I thought we'd actually been very positive all the way through.

[Laughter]

>>PAUL TWOMEY: I didn't come loaded for bear but, you know...

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Anyone else? Anything -- anyone have anything they need to say before we wrap this up? Steve?

>>STEVE GOLDSTEIN: Thanks. I would just like to point out that in homage to our Brazilian hosts, the first attempt that I know of to get the Latin American countries to cooperate with each other in Internet was held in 1991 in Rio. And at that point, Brazil was connected to the rest of the Internet by two lines of 9.6 kilobits --

>>VINT CERF: Unbelievable.

>>STEVE GOLDSTEIN: And the meeting that we held was at the institute for pure and applied mathematics, INPA, in the hills of Rio and INPA was connected to the -- wherever the Internet node was by 1200 baud.

>>VINT CERF: Oh.

>>STEVE GOLDSTEIN: So that was 1991, Latin America got together first in Rio.

>>VINT CERF: That's incredible.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. And we've come a long way since then, it would seem.

Okay. We're going to wrap it up. Thanks very much, indeed. We have a break now and we reconvene at 11:00 sharp for bucketloads of IDN.

[Break]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Ladies and gentlemen, if you could take your seats please, we will be starting very soon.

Okay. Welcome back, everybody, we will get started. This session is all about dot IDN which is IDN ccTLDs and we had already an interesting discussion about that with Vint and Paul.

I have asked Tina Dam to start by giving us a very brief presentation on where ICANN is up to with IDN. Demi is going to talk briefly, from the board's side of things as one of our representatives on the board. Kim is really here just to provide technical overview so when somebody suggests something that simply won't work, he will tell us simply it won't work. And I am here to provide a completely naive view of everything because I doubt Australia would be interested in having a dot IDN in any other character set than ASCII. So I figure if I can understand the complex issues involved, then anyone can understand the complex issues involved.

This session is -- once we have gone through the presentation -- Also, Young Eum Lee will also give us a very brief presentation from the dot kr view of things.

Once we have done that, then I want to have a debate about what the issues are and how complicated and complex it all is and what sort of possible ways we can deal with it to move forward.

So can we start with you, Tina, if that's okay?

>>TINA DAM: Sure, great. So is this -- Can you actually hear me?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I think so.

>>TINA DAM: I thought I would just give you a quick briefing on a couple of things that are going on related to IDNs that I think are important for you to keep in mind as you move forward into policy discussions.

One is a project with ICANN and technical test. The other one is the protocol revision that lies within the IETF. And then I have a slide with a couple of examples with some policy-related things to try to move things in that direction for the ccNSO.

From the technical test overview, we have the testing plans divided into two phases. One is a laboratory setting where we are testing root server software and the resolver and testing out stability in that when you insert Punycode strings.

The second half is -- the second phase is predeployment testing for -- that expands out to application and user interface testing. It is really split up that way purposely so that we can see how the DNS core functionality is working first and if that is a positive result, then move outwards in different layers in the DNS.

I will make these slides available for you. I put some more information in that I really want to spend time in, but the laboratory testing are basically NS records of Punycode strings that are inserted into a closed replication of the way that the root zone is functioning today.

The status quo of it is that the design of how to test is going to proceed -- was developed by Autonomica, a Swedish company we hired to facilitate these testings. It was submitted to the RSSAC for comments. And my slide says to be posted online for comments, and it was actually posted this morning so it is available there and you can go check it out. And there is a common form if you are interested.

Autonomica did a feasibility test and it was successful, so they are just waiting for comments and potentially changes to the design before the test will be finalized. There was one instance of testing this all the way out to the end user level just because we kind of couldn't wait, we are pretty excited to see how this was working. We hook the computer up to the set up and tried it out in two different browsers and the result was in museum dot and then a 63 character-long top-level domain string. The result was successful in one browser and not so successful in the other one. We thought it had to do with how the protocol was implemented in the other browser. It turned out that was not the case. It was a bug they already had found and it was being corrected. So there were successful results there.

As I said, as this is being finalized and if it continues proving to be successful as it is finalized and all the different software is tested and we move onwards with the application testing, it is important that the IDN protocol lays at the application level that it also is working for application software.

This doesn't mean that ICANN is going to come and tell all application developers that you have to implement IDNs or the IDN protocol. But at least we can make some test and make some more detailed information available. The plans for that are being discussed right now and it will be published just like the laboratory test design is being published.

Second thing, within the IETF, the protocol is being revised. And the reason why the protocol for IDNs is being revised is that it was built on Unicode 3.2. And we are now up to Unicode 5.0, which holds a lot more characters and all characters that were inserted in Unicode between the version 3.2 and 5.0 are right now not available to be used within Internationalized Domain Names, so that was the first reason for upgrading the protocol.

As that work was being discussed and is currently underway with some different suggestions for how to solve different areas, we also took a look at how the specific functionality has been working and that is based on experience and implementation for both registries and application providers.

The main issues related to IDNs have been discussed in the RFC 4690 and then in addition or in correspondence with that, there has been three Internet drafts published recently that proposes some different suggestion for solutions to some of those issues.

There is going to be a status report on Wednesday, I guess that's tomorrow, at the IDN workshop. John Klensin will give a status report on how this protocol revision is moving forward.

But I think it is really important for ccNSO policy and also GNSO policy, for that matter, standpoint, it has a lot to do with which characters are actually going to be available and in an inclusion-based model. And if the characters that you are using to write down your language is not in there, how do we work towards making sure that they can get inserted in there in a secure manner.

And with that, my last slide is just a couple of things to throw out there on the table hopefully for discussion. Implementation practices, and think about this, as internationalized top level labels and for ccNSO and for ccTLDs. RC standards, guidelines, how do we make shorter things work pretty much the same way to avoid end-user confusion. Should everybody be required to make sure that if you do a to ASCII and then to a Unicode conversion on the original string that what you get back is the original string because the protocol doesn't work that way with everything. I think most IDN TLD registries have that requirement in there and are following it, but how do we make sure that works forward. Dispute resolution policies, issues around language and script confusions, problems around how same script can be used by different languages and how is the confusability around that solved, how same language can be used by multiple scripts, written in multiple scripts and in so!

me cases mixed scripts; visual confusables the Latin A looks a lot like the Cyrillic A; how does that affect top-level decisions. ccTLD, gTLD joint work, what is an internationalized ccTLD? How do we educate the users? For example, Punycode is going to be visible to them. How are we going to make sure that doesn't damage the way that IDNs is working for them. And what do we do to move forward in terms of application implementation practices.

So that's just a bunch of questions.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Tina.

>>TINA DAM: In IDS.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Obviously, some of those issues are issues for IDN and some of those issues are issues for dot IDN and some of those issues for idn.idn. The specifics we need to start looking at over the next few months are in respect to the dot IDN, ccIDNs.

Demi, can you do your presentation and then Young Eum, can you come up and do yours when Demi is finished?

Demi is going to present his personal view. We underline this, Demi's personal view of some of the aspects of IDNs, dot IDN for ccTLDs.

>>DEMI GETSCHKO: Okay. My presentation will be from the side of the one that has implemented in some way in the second level here in Brazil, IDNs. And some thoughts about how we can go ahead with this at the root level. As Chris said very clearly, this is my opinions, not the common understanding of these things.

Anyway, just to put some observations from the user implementation point of view, normally you have some confusion about natural language and domain names. You have to be aware all the time that we are not talking about expressing things in matter of language, but we have also to deal with syntactic considerations and other kinds of protocols. You have e-mail, Telnet, FTPR all aware of this.

The goal to have all the URL expressed in a string of natural languages, of course, not a real expectation. It is not feasible because we have dots and we have slashes and we have colons and all the other parts of the composition of URL. And we have parts that are sensitive to the operational system, the file system we are using that is in the right side of the left slash. We are dealing with names inside the file system of the specific computer. And this is another kind of complication.

I understand that the IDN needs -- varies very much from country to country and the expectations are quite different and just to have a reality check, we know the Internet is growing at a very fast rate. Even we don't have dot IDN in non-Occidental countries. We have to weigh this against the problems we introduce into the system.

Today mainly implementations are at second level. For example, in Brazil, we have a note when you try to raise a dot IDN (inaudible) it will not be working in any browser, will not be working in any e-mail. It will not work if you don't have the keyboard mapping all right. Then we were in some way advising the user to be very careful in the expectations they have when they are trying to register an IDN. This is part of the known big success of IDN. In Brazil, all the time telling the customers to be cautious about.

We choose a very strict script, the accents -- the vowels with accents in Brazil. We also do another kind of restriction that we map all the strings to the ASCII -- the pure ASCII string. And then if you have name without the accent, it can be the only same name with accent. We cannot allow another user to get the same name with accent if there is already a name without accent. This is a way to prevent dispute considerations and also maybe kind of fraud or something like this.

But this works for Brazil but maybe not work for other scripts or other countries.

In our experience, we saw the implementation is quite less problem than the original expectation. I am not sure if this common rule, but in Brazil it is quite true.

Talking a little bit about at the root level. Implementation, of course, depends on extensive technical testing. Tina told us about this. You can check with them.

I understand, I suppose IDN is related to cultural and language and because of that is related to countries. The next lines I use countries between codes because it is a kind of country in the ISO 1633 understanding, not the ISO -- not another country at large.

I suppose we -- ICANN cannot decide what is the appropriate character set for each country. We cannot decide what is the correct way to express the name of that country, only choose character set. We are not in this business. And we cannot also decide if there is or is not a consensus on the name chosen by a given country. There will be some problems in this area, and I expect we are not inside this kind of debate.

And I think also there must be a fair and uniform rule for all countries to define the way for introducing new IDNs, things at the root.

Finally, as a simple proposal to be discussed to see if there is flaws or not, I think -- ICANN has an advisory committee, the GAC, that seems to be adequate forum for this kind of discussions. I cannot state the technical rules that are to be strictly observed the string formations for IDN. And then GAC could discuss this and come -- with a tentative table, say one string per country to be fair and to be neutral. And this table has to be consensed beforehand to avoid any political incorrectness.

In my point of view, there is a community, ccTLDs natural candidate to operate this new TLD coordination with the local government and the understanding of the way it was chosen. As I said, it is to throw on the table for discussion. It is not really discussed inside of the board. It is just my opinion.

But I see two or three good points on this. First of all, is that if you look at the WSIS/WGIG ending that phrase of an enhanced cooporation. What is an enhanced coorporation? It is to give the governance more a piece of saying in this process. I suppose for us the best is to have the true GAC existing forum inside ICANN structure and since the beginning we have some fighting with GAC, in the cc community inside of GAC. But I suppose the things are much better. We have to pursue a best understanding between the GAC and the cc community and maybe there will be a wise way to go forward to try to put this enhanced coorporation inside the ICANN structure, in the GAC forum, and put this in the GAC hands. They will have things to do, things to discuss. This is exactly what kind of thing I think they have to discuss and this can lead to a better corporation between cc's and their government and I suppose it gives other cc's as natural candidate as operator in the country n!

ew leverage. Thank you.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Demi. Okay. So Young Eum is going to do a brief presentation on the Korean dot kr views and then we will get into some discussion about the issues there are to be dealt with.

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: While this is setting up -- turning on, let me just tell you where I am coming from. Dot kr is now currently -- basically run by the government. And the Korean language itself which has been mentioned a couple of times is a language that has a couple -- has one or -- actually three scripts that are currently being used so it is a multiple script language.

But most of the scripts -- I mean, the language is being used currently by the Korean-speaking community which is about 80 million currently. About 50 million of which is -- which currently has the South Korean nationality, but 25 million has North Korean nationality and the rest of the people are Koreans living overseas. So dot kr is faced with a very unique situation in IDNs, you can say.

That's where this position is coming from. And I don't want to say that this is a position that we expect all the cc's to share. I don't expect to have the agreement of all the cc's, but I would like to point out that when it comes to IDNs that dot kr has specific issues and I would like to present those issues to you.

Well, the importance -- the first couple of statements are very matter of fact. It is very commonsensical. The importance and need for introduction of fully localized domain names has been consistently brought up and there have been ongoing discussions on IDNs that -- IDN TLDs within the GNSO, ccNSO and the GAC. And taking into account the distinct characteristics of IDN TLD issues, there are several issues that need to be considered.

First of all, IDN TLDs should be created and regarded as a separate name space from the existing gTLD space or ccTLD space. This does not mean that we do not agree that the existing ccTLDs should be considered primarily for -- as the entity to be responsible for running the new IDN TLD or IDN ccTLD.

This just refers to the generic IDN TLDs that may result from the current discussions. So in any occasion, IDN TLDs should not be understood to replace the existing TLDs in a different character set or to extend the present TLDs' scope into different language scripts. And that IDN TLDs does have its own community of interest. And this is what we would, again, like to emphasize and this is what I try to emphasize before in our discussions with Paul Twomey and Vint Cerf which is that that language or more precisely a language script sharing community exists and that this property is quite different from cc's and that this community of interest should be considered. Second, IDN registry is to be designated by language script sharing community and has a duty to serve that community.

So what label string of IDN TLD should be selected and which -- or who would operate the registry should be supported by the community, and this is what we would like to mostly emphasize. IDN TLD governance should be open to all the legitimate language script-sharing parties, and this is another thing that I think has to do with a specific language script-sharing community.

Third, governments could also play a catalyst role in introducing IDN TLDs, especially in cases like Korea where the government is responsible for most of the matters dealing with the Internet, and so the introduction of IDN TLDs should be -- should consider their sociocultural and linguistic context.

But in any occasion, any other stakeholders' participation should not be excluded and rather, be encouraged from the language script-sharing community, as long as they belong to it.

Those principles of multistakeholder participation, bottom-up consensus, openness and transparency should be coherently taken in creating IDN TLDs.

In principle, to avoid confusing similarity -- this, again, addresses some of the technical difficulties -- it would rather be better that IDN TLD label strings is to be decoupled with the existing TLDs in terms of graphics, semantics and sound. Particularly when at least two criteria are applied to the proposed IDN TLD label stream.

For the security and stability of the Internet, the possible homographic danger particularly in TLD strings should be cautiously avoided in introducing IDN TLD strings. And this is another technical issue that has been addressed.

At the moment, guidelines for the implementation of Internationalized Domain Names Version 2.0, which was endorsed by the ICANN board on November 8th, 2005, could be primarily taken into account and observed by the IDN TLD registry. But then as technology evolves, more optimal solutions could and should be explored.

IDN TLDs could be steadily introduced whenever the demand of the language script-sharing community and its readiness which is to be confirmed on the IDN language table list registered in IANA are to be identified. At the first round of IDN TLD -- so this encourages not a fast but a slow and steady introduction of IDN TLDs. So at the first round of IDN TLD, only one TLD per registered language script could be allocated.

And the last one has to do with DRP, which says that it also should be developed primarily by each language script-sharing community. Thank you.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Young Eum, is it fair to say that the majority of those comments were at least originally intended to deal with IDNs in the gTLD space?

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: Basically -- well, IDNs in the gTLD space. I don't know if you want to even discuss IDNs in the gTLD space. IDNs are separate. I don't I think that we would like to consider IDNs in the gTLD space.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So your -- so the -- so the Korean -- Korean position would be that it should not be --

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: Your microphone is not working.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No, it's not going to work, is it.

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: It's not going to work.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Well, it's sort of a waste of time having it, really. So the Korean position would be that --

>>SABINE DOLDERER: Chris, just one question?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. One sec.

The Korean position would be that you wouldn't want, for example, an existing registry to have a Korean language -- Korean script-based version of their gTLD.

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: Well, as long as that existing registry is a part of the language script-sharing community, that's --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Right. So -- I mean, okay. So VeriSign, which I'm assuming isn't a part of the language script-sharing community, therefore, the Korean position would be that VeriSign should not be allowed to register dot-com in a Korean script.

>>TINA DAM:.

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: Unless they have the support of the language script-sharing community.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: All right. I just wanted to be clear on that.

Sabine, did you have a question?

>>SABINE DOLDERER: Yes, just a question of clarification. Did I get it right to say that at the first round of IDN TLD, only one TLD per registered language script should be allocated? Does it mean registered language script in that country or does it mean registered language script as a whole?

Just as an example, you have, let's say, the Korean language script shared by two countries, as I see it at the moment. Do you think that means one language -- one IDN TLD per country and registered language script, or language script as a whole as shared by South Korea and North Korea, just to take the example? Because I don't get the argument quite right.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah.

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: Right. I -- I completely understand where you're coming from. And I guess this basically has to do with the Korean language. I don't intend to --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Draw a distinction between the North Korean and the south Korean -- right.

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: Or have this apply -- this principle be applied to the Chinese-speaking community, for example. I don't think that's very fair of us to be the -- addressing that.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Yeah. Demi first and then Tina.

>>DEMI GETSCHKO: Just a comment on this. I agree totally with the approach about the scripts and the language, but in a practical way, I suppose we have to confine these two countries because otherwise it will be an unsolvable problem. We can find differences in between scripts in countries or maybe political differences that can prevent us to have some kind of practical implementation. And I totally agree with the approach, but I will try to -- to map this in existing countries to have a way to go forward.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay.

>>DEMI GETSCHKO: This is my opinion.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Tina?

>>TINA DAM: So just sort of like a follow-up I think on what Sabine was heading at, I don't think -- I don't think it's a good idea to limit things within one country because languages are spoken across the world and sometimes one language is spoken in different regions of the world.

And there's also a lot of languages spoken across different countries that use the same script, and you have to keep in mind that computers do not really know what language it is that you have in mind when you type something into it. If you type in a domain name, all that the browser will figure out is what script is this in and what codepoint is associated with it.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah.

>>TINA DAM: So the question is, you know: How -- if we're going towards this language script-based community, how do we define that?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sure.

>>TINA DAM: How is that defined.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. And I mean that's a really good question. There's a -- yep. Do you have the mic? Yes.

>>MING-CHEN LIANG: Yeah. This is Ming Chen from TWNIC. I think the IDN itself is a complicated problem because it have localized characteristics, so that the people using the script will tend to think that maybe you should have something related to that. But I would suggest that maybe in this discussion, we should have a separate discussion about the gTLD and the ccTLD because --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah, this is not about gTLD. That's exactly --

>>MING-CHENG LIANG: Yeah. Because I think the presentation by KRNIC will have implication. If it's gTLD, I think that implication will be bigger because then I would think that maybe dot com in Chinese, even in traditional Chinese, or simplified Chinese may be owned by different people, so there may be some business implication on that. But for ccTLD, that might be different and it might be just a script that's shared by a common -- a set of people that maybe commonly use that. And I agree with Tina about it, because in the case that the Internet itself is globalized, but the IDN itself might be localized by a certain type of people. So we need to have a balance between how to make it still be usable by global community --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes.

>>MING-CHENG LIANG: -- but still be able to identifiable by localized people. Thank you.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes. I agree. I agree, and I think what I was going to say before you asked your question was I think we need to make sure that part of the problem with IDNs is it's so complicated. There are so many different issues that not -- that things tend not to happen because everyone thinks this will be too difficult. So what I'd really like to do is to concentrate on the -- on the ccTLD aspects of.idn specifically, because that is quite clearly that this community needs to get really clear about, and a knowledge that's going to take quite some considerable time. Now, I've got a whole -- I've got a number of questions that I wanted to ask and deal with, but wall of you wanted to say something first. Could we have the microphone down here, please? Hello? Could we have the microphone, please? Thank you.

>>OLOF NORDLING: I still would like to elaborate a little on the necessity for a single TLD for a particular script. What I think would be necessary would be to have one authoritative language script label, and that's --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sure.

>>OLOF NORDLING: -- a particular problem. But once we have that and everybody agreed to that is the one to be used, what would be the complications with having multiple TLDs in the particular script or --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: My understanding is that it's -- and I -- let me into if I've got this right, because if I can understand it, then hopefully everyone can. I think it's to do with a belief that the language is owned, that the script is owned by the community, and that it shouldn't be used by just any -- by just anybody.

Now, I'd actually -- I don't agree with that, but I understand the point. So it's -- it's an ownership thing of the -- of the -- of the script, if you like. And I think that's the reasoning behind the Korean position.

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: Uh-huh.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Hilde.

>>TINA DAM: Who answers scripts.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Well, yeah, exactly. The language-sharing community owns the script.

>>TINA DAM: There's nobody that owns a language except for the user.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Please. Okay. But I really -- for right now, this is a sidetrack for us so I'll let it go for one more question or possibly two, because if I do let Eberhard speak, he'll kill me.

>>DR. EBERHARD LISSE: [Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: You'll send me a rude e-mail. Yes, exactly. Two questions and then we've got to deal with the cc stuff. Yes, Hilde.

>>HILDE THUNEM: Well, I think I just want to mention on your question list for things to deal with afterwards --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah.

>>HILDE THUNEM: -- the point that Young Eum raises is relevant, and that is what is local in the community of a dot idn because the local community of a ccTLD, we tend to think of it in geographical terms, local Internet community of dot no is Norway. It's a geographic area.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes.

>>HILDE THUNEM: Is that the same for a dot idn or is it a language local Internet community like Spanish, which is -- I mean, Norwegian hasn't spread very far so this won't affect us very much anyway, because we've failed in our invasion of Europe.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: But you're now trying to do that by getting a region in the ccTLD.

>>HILDE THUNEM: Yes, exactly, that's my secret plan. But what is the local input community? Is it larger? Is it smaller? We do have some people in Norway we're actually supporting -- we have IDNs under dot no and we're supporting five different languages but should we then start thinking that there should be a dot idn TLD that would just embrace a small part of the people living in Norway because they speak one language.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. And that is one of the questions that we need to consider. Eberhard?

>>DR. EBERHARD LISSE: Eberhard Lisse from dot na. I'm a fervent supporter of RFC-1591, as you know, which says that IANA is not in the business of deciding what a country is.

>>DR. EBERHARD LISSE: I don't think we should start deciding what a language is and what a script is, and whether South Korea may have to decide what Korea can use, in this particular example. We should leave this to people who can take the heat.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I -- absolutely. I agree. The only question is who they might be.

Okay. Can I start then by-- can I -- is this about -- what's this about?

>>JOSHUA LEE: Yeah. Can you allow me to talk about something for one minute, please? This is my first --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sure. Go ahead. Can you stand up?

>>JOSHUA LEE: Thank you very much. Actually, I agree with -- partially with this gentleman, and Tina, but I want to see this matter in a different view. I mean we're talking about IDN as a TLD, but what I believe is, IDN is somehow responsible for not only TLD but also second-level domain. That's why the language community is important. I mean, the current IDN was introduced by VeriSign in 2001. I still remember that was big tales. I mean not many problem is being created since 2001 because it's not being used. I mean everybody registered on it, but nobody really use it because it's so inconvenient, but still a lot of problem. Let me give -- let me give an example.

Like one Korean guy registered Hitachii.com, which is a well-known electric company of Japan. But it's not phonetically very similar to Hitachi. I can't write down in Hitachi about 10 different forms in Korean. Also, dot-net, I can't write down that Korean script about three or four different types of scripts. That's how -- where IDN should be supported by like common language sharing community.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I understand. But -- I understand completely the point, and it's a relevant discussion overall for IDNs. What we -- but it's not -- it's not specific discussion for this community to have in respect to what is effectively -- what we're talking about is a script IDN for a ccTLD. What happens behind the dot is a matter for -- for the country concerned. The question -- well, perhaps if we start at the very beginning, it might -- we might get -- we might start getting somewhere. The first question, as somebody who has -- comes from a country, speaks a language that doesn't need an IDN, comes from a country of birth and a country that I'm living in that basically wouldn't have any reason for an IDN, I have some questions that I think are relevant to this community, and what I would like to suggest is that if we go through these, if I throw something -- if I say something that's relevant at some -- that people have comments on, and people want to discuss, !

then we -- then we do that, because I think otherwise we're just going to go round and round in circles.

The first question is: Is the principle of an IDN ccTLD, is such a thing -- should they be there?

Now, I think everyone probably accepts the answer to that is yes, on the basis that, you know, no doubt Korea would like a dot something to represent Korea in the Korean script and Japan would like a dot something to represent Japan in the Japanese script and so on.

So if we assume that that's the case, and if we assume that there is a desire for there to be a dot IDN ccTLD, then we have to start working on a whole heap of -- a whole heap of things that arise. And the first one was one I talked about with Vint and Paul, which is: Well, what is a ccTLD?

Now, RFC-1591 and ICP-1 don't define it. They simply make reference to the two-letter country code on the ISO -- on the ISO list, so what they say is that a ccTLD is a TLD that uses the two-letter country code on the ISO list. That's what they say. That doesn't actually define what a ccTLD is. It just says that if you've got -- if you're -- if you're someone who is using -- managing a two-letter code on the Internet, then you are a ccTLD. I don't know that we actually do need to define what a ccTLD is. I don't know. May -- I have some sympathy with Paul's view that probably it's the last thing that we want to be doing, but nonetheless it's a question that we need to think about. Then you got to move down to the next level -- anything like this he will, did you want to say something on that.

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: Yeah. It's very easy. ccTLD --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: A ccTLD is something in the Anne database. Observation. So that means that dot com is also a ccTLD then.

>>NIGEL ROBERTS:. [Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. So a ccTLD is a two-letter code in the IANA database, so that means a ccTLD can't be anything other than two letters.

[Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: And what about -- yeah. Anyway, look, and I acknowledge there's all sorts of ways you could define it. So if you -- I asked Hiro if he would give me a slide of what the IDN would be for Japan. Now, this is to start looking at some of the issues that arise.

The first point is, it's -- you can't just take dot jp and translate dot jp into the Japanese script because there is no Japanese equivalent of j or p, and it -- because it's a pictographic script, it doesn't work that way.

You could take dot gr -- I think Greece is dot gr. You could take dot gr and transliterate that into dot gr using the Greek alphabet, probably, because there is an equivalent letter g and an equivalent letter r. So the first thing we can see is that not all countries are the same in the way that they can deal with it.

Second thing is, from a Japanese point of view, is that if even if you could translate dot jp into Japanese script, that doesn't mean anything in Japan because the Japanese don't call themselves Japan. We call them Japan, but in Japan it's Nippon. Is that right, Hiro?

>>HIRO HOTTA: Yeah.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Nippon.

So how do you decide what you're going to use for your IDN dot -- your IDN ccTLD is not an easy question to answer because there isn't always an easy solution. Yes, Eberhard.

>>DR. EBERHARD LISSE: I have a question. Do you speak a language that your and anything like this he's speak and what do they call Australia in their language?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: There are at least a hundred languages spoken by the different tribes of the aboriginal populations in Australia, and I have absolutely no idea what they call Australia. I can, however, tell you -- I can, however, tell you that the kangaroo is called the kangaroo because when captain cook arrived in botany bay in 18-whenever it was -- he and his crew saw kangaroos bouncing past in the distance, and asked one of the aboriginals what that was, and the and ridgy replied "kangaroo," which means in his tongue, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So --

>> [Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah, exactly. Demi, did you want to say something.

>>DEMI GETSCHKO: Just to follow on on what Eberhard says. I suppose this shows clearly that we are in a position to decide anything about the strings that will be chosen by the specific country or culture, and another problematic thing is that if you deal with the Spanish culture, for example, we cannot decide who belongs or not to this kind of culture. Then the best way is to leave these decisions to the countries.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Well, that's fine, and that's certainly one view. But there are other -- there are other topics that need -- I mean there are other things you need to think about before you make a simple -- you know, a simple statement like that. Because there is -- there is a -- there's a duty to the community as a whole. Even if you can't -- even if you do say, "Okay, government of Japan, you decide what the -- what the symbol is going to be for dot jp," well, that's fine, but then what happens if there's a clash with another -- with another symbol in the same script or what happens if you use -- perhaps not quite the same with pictographic languages, but let's say that am I -- is Australia -- does Australia have the right to prevent dot au being registered in any other language script, any other script around -- around the world? Now, I can't imagine anybody would want to, but they might in the gTLD space, for example, want to register. So the example that I -- I!

've used to describe this which probably helps the most is that the largest Greek population outside of Athens lives in Australia. In Melbourne, actually.

If the Greek population of Melbourne got together and put in an application for a gTLD for dot ua in the Greek script, is that -- is that acceptable from the ccTLD point of view? So do we have to now have a series of reserved -- so every country code is reserved. But the problem is, how do you reserve the Japanese pictographic ccTLD IDN in a -- there is no other -- there's no equivalent of it in any other language. So is it -- is it the way it's said? Or is it just jp. It's very hard to work those sorts of things out. Do you want -- oh, you're just nodding, okay. So I mean those -- those questions, at some point, are going to need to be -- are going to need to be answered. I don't know by whom, but...

>>TINA DAM: Can I add on to that.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. Can Roelof into the microphone please? Yes, Tina.

>>ROELOF MEIJER: Okay. My name is Roelof Meijer from SIDN. I'm afraid about by opposing all those questions, we risk overcomplicating the issue because there will be so many questions to answer that in 10 years, we'll still be trying to answer them.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sure.

>>ROELOF MEIJER: And -- well, just your example, I don't see any problem with the Chinese international ccTLD extension if you translate it meaning the same as au in our character set. Because there's no Australian company probably that -- in competition with --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sure.

>>ROELOF MEIJER: -- auDA will register under that extension. So I think we should all try to keep it as simple as possible, and if I -- if I may make a comparison, for instance, with fully numeric domain names, you can also make that into a very complicated issue by asking yourself, should we allow numeric domain names that resemble telephone numbers or Social Security numbers or car license plate numbers or whatever.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Uh-huh.

>>ROELOF MEIJER: And if you go along that line, you'll be -- you will be arriving at 100 questions to answer and you'll be discussing again for 10 years.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Uh-huh.

>>ROELOF MEIJER: And I think you should consider that it might be very answer and it is yes, we will allow it. We see no problem.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sure.

>>ROELOF MEIJER: I'm not trying to oversimplify the issue.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No, no, I understand.

>>ROELOF MEIJER: But you should not be trying to over-applicant it either.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I accept that. I agree that some of the questions get so deep that it becomes almost impossible to work out what the -- what the solution is, and it may be so unlikely to occur that it simply doesn't -- doesn't matter.

>>ROELOF MEIJER: You might consider, along your position, you might consider asking every country that is interested in an IDN extension --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes.

>>ROELOF MEIJER: -- to come up with a proposal and then you check it for technical problems.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay.

>>ROELOF MEIJER: And if there are none, then they'll get it.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So can I ask a question -- yes, okay. You could do that but --

>>ROELOF MEIJER: The problem will be: What is a country?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Well, assuming that it is defined as anything that has an existing -- you could define it as something that has an existing CCT -- existing code.

>>ROELOF MEIJER: Yeah.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Now, if you then say, "And what we'll do is we'll ask the government of that country," so the first question is, do they have any reason to have -- do they have a different script? Lots and lots of countries don't have a different script, so that narrows down the -- narrows down the -- the cause. The next question is: What status does the script have to be in that country? Does -- does it have to be an official language script of that country? Or does it simply have to be something that is spoken or used in that country.

Because in India, for example, has I think 16 or 17 different scripts -- no, different languages in about seven scripts, I think. So are they all possible ccTLD IDNs?

>>ROELOF MEIJER: Altogether. But I would -- if I had my way, I think I would start with saying to every country you can have -- for the time being, to make sure that we make progress, instead of that we continue discussing for another 10 years on exactly this kind of an issue, you can have one for the time being.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay.

>>ROELOF MEIJER: And tell us which one it is. And if it's an official script or a nonofficial script, I wouldn't care, but you come up with one so that we make progress.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Just -- that's fine.

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: Actually, I would like to agree with Roelof, but I would like to just bring the issue back to where it began.

IDNs were raised because people spoke a certain language. There was a -- people within a country, people across a couple countries that spoke a different language, a language that is different from ASCII, and that's -- those people wanted to express their language -- or their language expressed as domain names, and that's how it started, and now I mean to answer Tina's question about how to define a language script community, well, I know it's very difficult, but -- and I'm not trying to say that I can clearly define the language script-speaking community for Koreans, even, although it is much simpler than others.

But it is those people that want and need and will be using that domain name, that new IDN, and so I -- I guess what I'm just trying to say is, let's -- I mean, go back to who actually needs and wants and will be using the script, and --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: But what happens if that crosses borders? What happens -- I mean, given that we're talking in the context of a ccTLD IDN, what happens if that crosses borders?

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: I am not saying one country should have the authority for one specific script.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Right.

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: All I am trying to say there is a community that shares a certain script, and that community needs to be addressed when we are talking about IDNs. Well, maybe, the role of that community currently is limited to coming up with an IDN table and that has been the role so far. But when we are talking about extended IDN TLDs, that community really needs to be addressed. The needs of that community needs to be addressed.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can I take Nigel's question and then I want to ask you a question and then Tina has something to say.

>> Nigel Roberts: Thank you, Chris. There are two things actually. Some of what I said earlier, there seems to be a lot of confusion between language and script. There seems to be a lot of confusion between the concept of ccTLD -- IDN ccTLD in the root and gTLD in the root. And both concepts are very valuable to talk about. But I sense that some people are talking about one thing and some people are talking about another.

The reason I stood up five minutes ago is a particular point you made about official scripts. We have a particular IDN community -- or potential IDN community, we don't have a particular demand, which would be, should we say, analogous to the French IDN community. We are not likely to worry about what's in the root, as in the string in the root.

However, what happens when in, let's say, Korean or Japanese or something like that the string gg, something that looks very, very like gg and somebody wants to start a registry because it means something important -- this is a gTLD -- potentially an IDN gTLD in the root but it looks like a ccTLD. It is, to use the expression, confusingly similar.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It could be a ccTLD.

>> Nigel Roberts: It could even be a ccTLD. It is not restricted to whether it is cc or g. It is not so much a concern of what you do on the registrar, if there is a potential to registrar something that looks exactly something like gg or very similar, then do you allow us to register it and duplicate our database? Do you allow us to block anyone else from using it? What is your policy? This is the exact sort of thing that ICANN should be discussing. This is something which cannot be discussed at the local level. It has got to be discussed globally. It is one of the few things where we have something to talk about.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: You mean, you have come up with something that's fits under the global policy? That deserves a round of applause, Nigel.

[ Applause ]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Tina?

>>TINA DAM: I am going to skip my turn.

>>KIM DAVIES: I just wanted to say, if we assume there is a correlation between the ccTLDs and whatever the new domains might be, a lot of the policy that surrounds ccTLDs is based on subsidiarity, local law, local Internet community and once the borders diverge from that, we will have a lot more complication about how to run these things that is catered for by national law. It is one thing to consider when you talk about having communities of interests that are beyond borders. A lot of mechanisms you have to resolve disputes within country perhaps might not apply.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I agree with that. I would argue specifically in the ccTLD space -- leaving aside your issue about ownership, if you like, of the script, in the ccTLD space, specifically, your boundary is your country. To go back to Hilde's point, in order to be a ccTLD, it needs to be a representation of the name of your country in a script that is different from the ASCII script. The size of your community is irrelevant from the point. It is specifically a representation of the name of your country in a different -- in a script that is different from the current ASCII script.

So my question before was how -- is it up to each country to decide that they have a sufficient use of the script in their country to justify doing it or does it have to be an official language, if you like, of the country, listed in an active parliament or something as being an official language.

Canada is the easiest example to use simply because -- although French is not an IDN, simply because they have two official languages so signs are both in French and English.

There is a gentleman in the back who wants to ask a question and then you want to say something?

>>KENNY HUANG: Thank you. My name is Kenny Huang. I am pretty much appreciate the idea of language community to share in the IDN practice. Actually when we are talking about which language the ccTLD should choose or which language community we can accreditate basically is very tough issue because for some language community they are quite ready and eager to have IDN practice.

Some language community they are not so ready. So it is really depends on the language community, whatever they have sufficient capability to take over the IDN operation, and we are talking about it is a hot issue right now.

Basically even hotter in three or four years ago when we propose IDN should take a guideline. At that time, when we proposed the frame of all ccTLD registration guideline, it is even difficult to find a table hosting organization. We are looking for uniform consortium but they were scared to death. They were not willing to host at the table. Eventually I am not willing to host the table. So we put the table to IANA to become some like a garbage bin collector table. But anyway, sorry to giving the burden to Derek Conner to hosting the table.

Right now I think it is time to have a list of recognition to recognize IANA should be the table hosting organization or even the official recognition to IANA. I think that's one way to do it. By this kind of approach, if the language community, they are ready and they have a solid table to submit to IANA, that pretty much means they are ready to have IDN deployment. That's my suggestion. Thank you.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. Demi, did you want -- were you first? And then Tina.

>>DEMI GETSCHKO: I am an engineer. I was trying to keep it simple. First of all, what is the ccTLD community? It is a ISO table that has a linkage from each entry to the table to a string in ASCII. ASCII letter, digit or hyphen [inaudible].

If you extend this approach, the IDN will be using the same ISO table, we have to attach another string to each entry and this string will be a subset of Punycode and a huge amount of characters, and we leave to the entry to choose what kind of subset of this Punycode they want to register at IANA database and use this as his representation under this table.

Then there is another way to link to the same entry in ISO3166 table.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Tina?

>>TINA DAM: I just wanted to mention about the thing around official languages because -- I'm not trying to make this more difficult than it is already, but different countries have different way of defining what an official language is and one not so good example, Sweden does not have Swedish listed as an official language. They have other official languages but not the one used mainly in the country. And my colleague is --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Olof was about to say that.

>>TINA DAM: I think in turns of trying to move forward, I think it might be a good idea to have a conversation with the GAC because I think there is a lot of things that we are discussing here that has a lot to do with what the GAC might be able to make recommendations on.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I agree. We will get to that point a bit later on. I want to go through a few more issues first and then we can talk about how we move forward. Did you still want to say something, Olof?

>> OLOF NORDLING: I didn't introduce myself. Apologies for. Olof Nordling, ICANN staff. Perhaps and hopefully an easy question, today we have an clear distinction of ccTLD being ASCII characters and everything that's three and beyond is gTLD.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Is not, yes.

>>OLOF NORDLING: Now for the future, if we jump into the IDN domain name space, is there a necessity or desirability to have a distinction, a visual distinction between IDN cc's and IDN g's? And if so, could it be useful to have -- and now we don't want to talk about IDN characters or symbols or pictographs. But let's call it Unisource codepoints to have two unisource codepoints, that length reserved for IDN cc's while three and beyond would be open for the g's -- IDN g's. And knowing that probably not a good idea to confine the IDN cc's to only having two because quite a few of the Arab -- or Arabic countries, they don't see that as a very good idea ,but I shouldn't speak for them. But they shouldn't be abbreviated. They should be full length. Well, at least two Unicode codepoints reserved for the cc's at length, but with a possibility to expand even if there is a risk of confusion.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: You're suggesting that only a ccTLD can have a two-symbol codepoint.

>>OLOF NORDLING: Is that useful?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: But could have more. I don't know. Yes, it may be currently if we know if it has got two letters then it is a ccTLD. If it has got more than two, it isn't. But if you are going to -- that distinction ceases to be relevant if the moment you allow ccTLDs to have more than two. So I don't know. But I know -- I do know that Arabic nations would struggle with two. They need more than that to represent in any way something that's worth having, I think. That's my understanding any way. Certainly it is one of the questions on here is how many characters do you -- you know, do you just say -- do you just mandate that, for example, that an IDN ccTLD must be the name of the country in full?

For example -- because then that way you solve any issues about whether it is an acceptable abbreviation or not. Because if you try and work out abbreviations, then you run into difficulties of two countries possibly wanting the same abbreviation, for example. Nigel? I'm sorry. Olivier?

>>OLIVIER GUILLARD: Just a quick one. I tried to identify what we could do as a community to help in progressing and I am a bit confused actually. So, yeah. If I understand, there is a demand for IDNs. That's one.

I think that ICANN has already addressed this issue for some spaces. You have, for example, some gTLDs allocated for a particular language with Canada, for example. It is already addressed in some points within the gTLD space.

I have an issue also -- just to move forward with some things that have been said before. I think that there is a problem today with the consistency between the ccTLD list and the ISO list already without IDNs. And I am just wondering if adding IDN -- what would produce adding IDNs as a new reference for the stability of this consistency? Is this consistency still relevant? Just a question.

And a concrete question about Tina's presentation. I think that Tina said we need to have user education and it was precisely about Punycode which is visible but I think it is a wider issue and I would be happy to hear about what you mean by user education in your ICANN project -- at the ICANN level. Sorry, two questions.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Do you want to answer that, Tina?

>>TINA DAM: Sure. When I say education, there can be a lot of confusion when IDNs are rolled out at the top level more than we already have. We need to try to make the technology available and the policies available so there is as little confusion as possible but I don't think we can eliminate everything. So, for example, I think it is fairly well-known that if we only have ASCII domain names that the letter "l" and the digit 1 looks a lot alike and people are fairly aware of that. So there needs to be some user education towards what is the necessary knowledge for people to have as we get IDNs in there.

The Punycode was just another example. And if you enter an IDN in a browser, there is a good chance today that what it will display today is the Punycode label. Sometimes it doesn't really make any sense and at other times, unfortunately, it is actually XN-- and then a trademark even though that trademark has nothing to do with the original IDN string.

If that -- and that information was never really intended to be shown to users.

>>OLIVIER GUILLARD: (inaudible).

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: This has nothing to do with the ccTLD issues. This is all of the other issues.

>>TINA DAM: I was just putting a bunch of things out there and said here is some different things that we need to consider moving forward as well as the two technical topics I had.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Nigel.

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: Thank you. Again, I think the way to start this is to actually decide what is the difference, if any, between an IDN ccTLD and an IDN gTLD ,and I don't think that's clear.

I think the thing --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: You are not satisfied with my description --

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: No, not yet.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: -- of it being a description of the name of the country?

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: I will tell you why.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay.

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: Which name of the country?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Well, if you are going to allow the country -- And let's not worry about who in the country for now. But if you are going to allow the country to choose its IDN abbreviation, you presumably are going to allow them to choose to use the name of that country in that script.

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: Okay. What is the name of the country for Belgium that you would choose?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: The name of what?

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: The name of the country for Belgium.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Why would Belgium have an IDN ccTLD? Who said that?

[Laughter]

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: Let's not go down that road. Belgium is a country obviously.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Obviously. Clearly, to some people it is not.

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: Belgium might want to have, for example, a Chinese character TLD.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Now you are -- see, now you are raising another question which is -- which kind of sews back to my original point, what does the status of the script have to be in the country in order for you to apply for the ccTLD?

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: The point is many countries, ours included, do not have such a thing as an official script. There is no such concept in law.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I am sure that's right. I have only made it as a suggestion. There has to be some other way of doing it.

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: The point is this. I don't want to particularly feed the ego of the esteemed Dr. Lisse.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: But you're going to anyway?

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: But I'm going to anyway. RFC 1591 and the IANA database or the ISO list are what defines a ccTLD.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Actually, they're not. I will take it as a reference point from which the ccTLD --

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: If we can't agree on that, the rest of discussion won't follow. The point is this, perhaps we say there shouldn't be ccTLD IDNs. Perhaps we should just do gTLD IDNs. Perhaps we should say, the thing with the ISO list and the ASCII ccTLDS is this, there is a list somewhere maintained by some DLs that we can blame and that was John Postel's wisdom many years ago who made that decision. We are not in that position with IDN ccTLDs.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Correct.

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: You actually have to say do you want ccTLD IDNs? And then what process do you use to select character strings? And the idea of restricting it to two codepoints, quite frankly, is ridiculous because pictographs do not map the letters so that blows that out of the water.

The next thing is who decides who maintains the list and do you get one for each script in the world? Because let's face it, freedom of expression is such that you don't restrict to me. If I want to write all my letters to you in Cyrillic, you are not going to stop me because Cyrillic is not an official language --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I won't understand them, but you are very welcome to try.

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: That's my problem, not yours.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sabine was next. Nigel, I agree with that. It is a perfectly valid argument. I personally don't hold it, but it is a perfectly valid document that you should be able to find out that the -- the same way that every time there is a new gTLD we go through this thing about are certain country names reserved so nobody can have Australia.pro or whatever. Well, you could argue that what you should do is reserve dot au or dot au's equivalent or a representation of Australia if you prefer in every script that is available for IDN, you could argue. I am not suggesting you should, but you could. Sabine.

>>SABINE DOLDERER: We are starting to talk a little bit on the details. And I think we lost the brilliant idea Chris put on the table, and I want to go back to the idea and support that. The idea is really brilliant to say every ccTLD or every country is allowed to register its name in a representation in a different script than ASCII. I think that's a brilliant idea because that's actually -- if we are saying in which script it is now allowed or not, I think we can go even further. I don't care if it is allowed to register in Germany the script of Chinese. I think if there is a Chinese community in Germany and the people came to me and say, yes, we want to have Germany written in Chinese script, frankly, I think it is a good idea. I will propose it to my board and maybe they will support it.

If they don't support it, then we don't do it. But I think it is an brilliant idea and maybe we should discuss that idea.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can I ask you a question? Would you say representation of Deutschland or representation of Germany or do you think it is the same and it doesn't matter?

>>SABINE DOLDERER: I would say something which is -- we have the discussion in the public forum where Vint always puts forward his idea about there should be a dispute resolution policy. And I think if somebody is coming and, say, there is three different representations of Germany, you can say Germany, you can say Deutschland, you can say Alemania if you go to France, but it is still Germany. It is not Austria.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No, clearly.

>>SABINE DOLDERER: [laughter]

You can be very flexible about that. And I think that should be chosen by the local community and maybe if you go to -- let's say if there is a French script or script which is used in French language and not used in German language, supposing we have a community speaking these French, which is represented in a different script, that maybe choose to use Alemania in these script representation. Why not?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Just so we are clear, you are not talking about lots of different representations in ASCII. You are talking about a different script. That script -- that script -- it may be that those people whoever you they are choose the French version of Germany or whatever.

>>SABINE DOLDERER: Correct.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Now, what my next question for you is this, is DENIC the only possible organization to run it?

>>SABINE DOLDERER: If you ask me as DENIC, of course, it is. If you ask me as a member of the Germany Internet community, I would say no, of course, not. I would say there are very good reasons that there is a process in the country coming up with a registry model and hopefully if the registry is settled and the country came up with a good solution, it may in a lot of possibilities be the local registry. I don't think we should enforce it as a global rule globally because it is nice to have such a position as a local registry and if somebody guarantees you that you get a lot of other incentives.

On the other hand side, as a local registry, you have to gain support from your local community and ICANN.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you for that. The example I have been using is to say, for example, in India, say, there may be a region of India that has a particular language and a particular script and the registry, they be in the very north of the country and the registry in the very south and not even speak that language. Clearly, there are going to be examples that you will want to have a registry run in that region, perhaps.

Okay. Does anyone else want to pick up the ball? Yes, Eberhard.

>>DR. EBERHARD LISSE: There is a concept of official languages, I just looked it up. It has something to do with access to courts' due process, so in Germany this is defined at least on the mid-level court system by some expert.

When I was Googling this, I found something much more interesting I think that needs to be served. In New Zealand and Austria, there are two official languages that I find relatively difficult to put on a computer. How would you include the official sign language for deaf which are official languages in New Zealand and Austria in this system?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Uh, yeah. [laughter]

Good question. I speak as somebody who has -- AUDA has launched a series of podcasts on our Web site. I speak as somebody who has been severely attacked by the Internet community in Australia for not -- how do deaf people listen to the podcasts was the question I was asked. And the answer is, well, I guess they don't.

We should -- I mean, it is actually a very valid question, Eberhard. Kim?

>>KIM DAVIES: I wanted to talk to the point about the model of having countries self-nominate what they believe a particular code should be. At the moment, we have a model where the ISO 3166 maintenance agency effectively makes the final call on what a code can be. I guess such a model would need to consider how a conflict is resolved.

I suspect in the fullness of time, there will be certain characters that are shared in the same script between different countries. Each country might feel they have a valid hold on the rights to those letters. How will that be resolved?

The moment we have an independent organization we can push it out to, IANA in particular I am referring to, can absolve any responsibility for making that call and this model doesn't seem to have the same mechanism. I am putting that on the table as an issue to consider.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: You are right. I understand that ISO had been asked if they will consider doing it and they said no. Is that right?

>>TINA DAM: They were asked, I think, several years ago. And at that point in time they were not interested in managing that table. I assume we can ask them again and see if they change their point of view, but they did say no.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Hilde then Olivier.

>>HILDE THUNEM: When we introduced IDNs in Norway, on the dot no, one of the things we thought was that we are a registry. We really, really don't want to get into the question of defining what is an official language or what is really the characters of that language because it gets incredibly political. That's inside one country.

That's before we start adding the international mess of several countries claiming the right to the same name, not wanting to sit in the same room if there is somebody else that has printed the name of their country because they are claiming that name.

I understand that we need to come up with some advisor, some input or whatever but I think as a community we should try to stay away from this country, if there is an U.N. list, if there is somebody else's list, if there is an ISO list, but leave the politicians to deal with what is the proper name of a country, what is the proper script of a country because if we as ccTLDs get into it or if IANA, ICANN gets into it, we are going to get smashed until we are totally flat.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Olivier is next. Hilde, just to make sure I understand what you are saying. You are saying it should be for the government to -- or the country by whatever mechanism to decide whether they want to apply for a ccTLD in a particular script and what that -- and on what the representation of that script should be?

>>HILDE THUNEM: (inaudible) Actually, I would like for there to be governments, countries together in some kind of --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Like ISO only --

>>HILDE THUNEM: Yeah. Where they have to deal with the fact that there might be look-alikes as well while the Cyrillic alphabet and Latin characters look alike so you can get two-letter character codes or other words that look exactly the same but aren't the same and at least Norway as the registry responsible for trying to represent the local Internet community in Norway would be very upset if people started registering things that looked exactly like dot no in the root because our users would not be able to see the difference.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. No, no, hang on. Olivier is next and -- oh, yeah, and then Sabine.

>>OLIVIER GUILLARD: I think this question is connected to Hilde --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Speak up.

>>OLIVIER GUILLARD: Sorry. Olivier Guillard, France NIC. I think this question is mentioned to the point of Hilde. Somebody mentioned that the GAC had been consulted on this issue and --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No -- well, yes and no.

>>OLIVIER GUILLARD: Yeah, I wanted to know how and what was the response.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We had the -- the ccNSO has a working group, a joint working group with the GAC. Its job is to liaise between the two organizations to make -- to try and improve the level of communication. So it's not its job to deal with dot idn, for example, but it's job to talk, so we had a meeting of that group yesterday to talk about how we're going to improve the communication and specifically to talk about what we're going to do in Lisbon, which is the next -- the next meeting.

And when we finish kind of going through all of the logistical things about setting up a proper joint meeting in Lisbon, et cetera, we also talked about what were on our -- what were on our respective agendas coming up that involved both of us, and dot idn is on their agenda and it's on our agenda, so they have a -- they have an IDN working group which is looking at IDNs completely, so not just ccTLD IDN, but IDN. But what we've talked about is the possibility of putting together a joint working group. We haven't gotten any further than just talking about it, putting together a joint working group to look at the cc issues around dot idn possibly, okay? Sabine had a question -- a question. Olivier do you have the -- Sabine had a question. Just while -- and the other thing is that, just so everybody's clear, we could have caught -- I'm not even remotely suggesting we should do this, but we could, if we chose to do so, run a -- run a policy development process on this iss!

ue, and I can see a lot of screwed-up faces in the room going, "For God's sake, don't do that."

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That's why I said I wasn't suggesting we should. I'm just saying we could. Sabine.

>>SABINE DOLDERER: Actually, I want to go back to the argument of Hilde that this should be a list of whatever official names.

There is actually a list of the official name with all countries at the U.N. in their national languages, but I don't think they're very helpful, because in this list, you will see for Germany the Bundesrepublik von Deutschland --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes.

>>SABINE DOLDERER: -- which is very describing and very nice representation for our country, but unfortunately it would not be very useful to be used on the Internet as an identifier because it's a little bit long.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah.

>>SABINE DOLDERER: I think that will happen to a lot of other countries, when I think about their official name. I know at least that China, in the translation of Volksrepublik China or People's Republic of China. So we have very long in describing official names of the countries, and we have to go for something which is useful in the Internet. Maybe we can -- to avoid the problems Hilde has pointed out, we can award that countries actually use a sort of two-letter abbreviation of their country in whatever script, which is able to be a letter-based script.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah.

>>SABINE DOLDERER: But I don't think that it -- we should point to some nonexisting ISO list which has to be developed, because I think that will delay really the process for all the people who have an urgent need for an IDN in their country and, therefore, we should go forward with pragmatic solutions. I think a good solution is really let the country define what their -- what their name is, how they want to be represented, set up something which Vint has proposed, like this year's policies are proposed to the public, and if nobody really starts crying, then it's obviously something which is more or less sensible. At least for the country.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. I understand. And I think you're right. Your point is -- your point about, you know, there are some countries that -- I mean, I'm assuming, Young Eum, that Korea would be pretty clear about what the -- the string would be for dot kr, the equivalent of dot kr.

>>TINA DAM: Yes.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: And Taiwan, I assume would be pretty clear. In fact, I've got the Taiwanese one here. Now, Japan is -- here on suggests there could be three. Would you like to -- would you just like to stand up and explain, Hiro, about the Japanese ccTLD?

>>HIRO HOTTA: Thank you, Chris. Dot jp, the country name of Japan it's represented usually in country gee. Country gee is a shared script with Chinese and Korean, but the -- the string Nippon is -- doesn't have confusion with --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It's unique.

>>HIRO HOTTA: Yeah. With some Korean words or some Chinese words, I believe. So dot anyplace you know in country gee would be the first option of our country name for the jp. And we have another script, Hirogana and Katagna. We can represent our country name by that script, but they are not popular written in Japan, so the first option will be ours.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can I just ask you a question?

>>HIRO HOTTA: Okay.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So there is -- there are three possible scripts.

>>HIRO HOTTA: Right.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That you could use.

>>HIRO HOTTA: Right.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Would you -- would you be interested in registering all three?

>>HIRO HOTTA: No. Just --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:Just one.

>>HIRO HOTTA: For the popular one.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Can we perhaps, in the time we've got left on this, consider where we should -- what we should do next?

I wonder if we shouldn't consider -- Hiro, we have an IDN working group, don't we?

>>HIRO HOTTA: Yeah.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Which is currently you and Charles and Mohammed. Yeah?

>>HIRO HOTTA:. [Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Who else?

>>DONNA AUSTIN: Slobodan.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Slobodan?

>>DONNA AUSTIN: [Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Ah, yes. Okay. Okay. What I think -- what I think we should maybe do is to consider getting that working -- two things. One, consider getting that working group to start putting together a questions document, if you like, with all the things that we need to consider, and are -- you know, sort of following on from the discussions that we've had today. Going right back to basics, the things that Nigel has been talking about, making sure we're clear about the difference between a ccTLD and a gTLD, even the question should we even -- you know, should we even be contemplating anything other than an ASCII -- an ISO list ccTLD representation, is it just not a ccTLD.

And then we -- then that discussion paper can form the basis of our discussions amongst our lists, but also can form the basis of a discussion with the GAC because what I'm going to suggest is that we agree to -- I've asked the GAC to ask their people to agree to having a joint group that actually starts looking at these issues, so if they approve that and we approve that, then we can actually start working together. Because I think it's pretty clear that most of us are not happy about taking the responsibility for deciding what the represent -- some of us are, but most of us are not happy about taking the responsibility. I think what we would all like, were it -- in an ideal world is for there to just be a list, but there isn't, and it doesn't look possible that there will be one.

So if we can maybe get the working group to start preparing a discussion paper, liaising with the -- liaising with the -- with the GAC, and make this subject a topic for our joint GAC ccNSO meeting in Lisbon, by which time hopefully we will have done a fair bit of work on getting people's opinions together, I suspect the opinions will be diverse, but at least we'll know what they are.

There's been a tendency in the past for those of us who are not involved personally in IDNs because it doesn't matter to our particular country to not get involved, and I would strongly encourage every -- I mean, you know, it's been great that Nigel has spoken today about it and, I mean, you know, the chances of dot gg, you know, having a sort of an IDN ccTLD are relatively small, I'd suggest, Nigel, unless you've got some weird language script that I don't know anything about.

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: It's called French.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Well, yes. Ah, which actually brings me to an interesting point.

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Which actually brings me to an interesting point. Is that an IDN? you see there's three types of -- there's three types. There's ASCII, there's an I -- different IDN character set and there's ASCII with a few changes. So French is a -- is an ASCII, but it's got some accents and stuff. In Norway, you've got one or two letters that are slightly different, but they're -- so does that make it an IDN? Who knows? I don't know. No idea.

So if we can do -- if we can -- and if everyone can be encouraged to involve themselves in the -- in the debate, that would be -- that would be fantastic.

>>TINA DAM: Could we open up a --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sorry.

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: Could we open up the question to more volunteers?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, we can. I'm conscious, however, that the larger working groups get the more difficult data to manage but I'm quite happy to do that, and, in fact, we'll talk about that in the council -- in the council tomorrow. But yes, I think that's perfectly fine.

There was something else I was going to say. What was it? No, it's gone. Does any -- Tina, Kim, Demi, do you have anything else they want -- anybody else in the room they want to deliver in respect to dot idn?

>>DEMI GETSCHKO: Again, just to go to the original concept of the ccNSO table, when the table was created, there was an entry for each entry in the ISO table, despite the fact if there is or not interactivity connection to that country or if the country is ready or not to be on the net. Then in my view, we have to have the same neutral and regular approach to any other entries in any other way. Then it's not our mission to discuss if that country has some kind of script or not, but to provide an entry to let them express what they want in their script written language, this is why maybe we can have some kind of ISO initiative to define the new table. Maybe GAC is involved on this. I am not proposing any -- any solution.

But just that we don't enter into the mess of discussion of what would be the national language or what would be the convenient script or way to represent an entry for each country. The same solution was used 20 years ago and a table was created without consideration if the countries are not connected to the Internet, if they want or not to have access and so on.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Demi. Olof, you had something?

>>OLOF NORDLING: Very briefly, as has already been mentioned, the GNSO has launched very recently its own IDN working group, and I just want to highlight that they have, in their charter, to liaise with the ccNSO corresponding working group.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, yes.

>>OLOF NORDLING: And I suppose that's very welcome from both sides.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. In fact, there's a breakfast on Thursday morning between the GNSO IDN working group and those of the ccNSO -- current ccNSO IDN working group who are here, which is Hiro and Slobodan, and you might want to go to that.

>>YOUNG EUM LEE: Yeah.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Any -- are we done? Okay. Excellent. Now, much more important topic. Lunch.

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Lunch will be in the main hotel restaurant. Lunch is courtesy of -- of Nominet, which means that we don't have to have a selling presentation before we go to lunch, which is -- makes a change.

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: However, having said that, I have a -- Roland La Plante from Afilias has -- given that they've sponsored countless lunches for us and are intending to continue to do so, has asked if he can speak to us later on today and I've said yes, but lunch is in the -- in the restaurant. There's a section set aside for the ccTLDs. It's on the left and there should be a sign hopefully that says "ccNSO." It's sponsored by Nominet in celebration of their 10th birthday, and in celebration of becoming a member of the ccNSO. Lesley thank you very much indeed.

[Applause]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I was going to suggest that we sang happy birthday, but the council couldn't decide what language we should use --

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: -- to sing it.

>> Welsh!

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We're reconvening at 2:00, and it's a session on accountability and transparency, an issue that I know is dear to the heart of most of you. Please be on time. Thank you.

Oh, yes, do we have security in the room during lunch?

Don't know.

[Lunch Break]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We will start in about five minutes. Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome back. Thank you for coming back so promptly. Lesley, thank you for the lunch.

[ applause ]

Lesley was up all night preparing that on the bus, yes. You went on the bus tour of rainy Sao Paulo. Lucky, lucky you.

This session is on accountability and transparency. Most of you, if not all of you, will know that ICANN has published a starting paper, if I can call it that on accountability and transparency and we have Paul Levins and Patrick Sharry to talk to us about that and how we move forward. So, Paul.

>>PAUL LEVINS: I'm on, good. Hi, everyone. Paul Levins is my name. For those who don't know me, I'm the vice president of corporate affairs and executive officer for ICANN. Finally been with the organization probably about six months now. But I am enjoying it and this is my second meeting.

As Chris mentioned, we are going to take you through the process. I will give a bit of a slide presentation here based on some material that Paul Twomey provided to the public session yesterday morning but with some embellishments as we travel along.

On the 16th of October this year, we announced that we were going to have a consultation on a set of management operating principles for transparency and accountability. The reason we did that is because for some time the community has -- the issue of transparency and accountability has been front of mind for the community. We -- in addition to that, as part of the joint partnership agreement that was signed at the end of September, there was an affirmation of responsibilities for ICANN's private sector management going forward and Points 2 and 3 of those responsibilities refer to ICANN's need to continue to improve processes and procedures that encourage improved transparency and accountability.

So this is no longer just something that's front of mind but it is also a task that the board has agreed that it will commit itself to.

We posted -- we posted a number of questions on the 16th of October which revolved -- which were the following, how would you define transparency in the ICANN context? What standards of transparency are appropriate in ICANN operations and activity? How would you define accountability in the ICANN context? What standards of accountability are appropriate in ICANN operations? What specific processes and activities need to be included to ensure these standards are met and are there any innovative ideas on transparency and accountability that you believe have not yet been implemented that might apply to ICANN?

We had a rather ambitious consultation deadline. We were hoping -- given the community's interest in this and the urgency with which many people considered the issue need to be dealt with, we were hoping to have a draft set of principles available at this meeting.

Many of the responses that we received during the consultation phase, the early part of the consultation phase, made it quite clear that this was not to be rushed, that our timetable was, in fact, too ambitious. And so we have listed that and we said, we agree. We have modified that timetable and we are now looking at taking initial responses on those questions and, indeed, on the broader issues of accountability and transparency through 31 December.

I am not quite sure why this is not producing the result that I want it to produce.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We are getting technical help on its way as we speak.

Sorry about this. It is a very transparent process, this. Let me start talking to some of these so I don't delay you any longer. A summary of -- as part of the summary of these responses that we have received so far, people considered that we needed to be, as I said, not rushing, not rushing this process at all. Every one of the respondents so far have identified the need for improvement in the responses that we have -- terrific. Thanks, Alex.

Okay. Many of the comments have focused on the need for more transparent board decision-making process. There were some comments that staff have too much influence on policy but then there was an alternative view that staff in any organization have influence by nature of their role and that the solution to that in short problem is that you need to employ good staff.

And there is some suggestions that meetings should be open and/or recorded, that's all meetings, not just some.

The communication style and the Web site also have been identified as transparency issues. And, again, we agree with that and have commenced a process of dramatically trying to recast the Web site.

Effective appeal -- there needs to be much more effective appeal and review processes identified as to -- as a key to accountability measures. And there are a number of suggestions to put in place a set of standards that performance could be measured against. That's our transparency performance.

The other proposal that was put forward was that -- and one also that we've recognized as we've gone through this process thus far is that we need some expert assistance. So we are wanting to engage some external assistance in improving accountability and transparency issues including an approach which would involve conducting benchmarking, working with us to identify areas of weakness, assisting with implementation of plans for improvement and advising on construction of management operating principles themselves for consultation with the community.

We've decided to go with an organization called One World Trust and we have reviewed a number of organizations with expertise in this accountability and transparency area and with a special expertise in looking at the international arena.

So telling you more about -- for goodness sake -- more about One World Trust. The mission is to promote education, training and research into the changes required within global organizations in order to make them more answerable to the people they affect. You can read there the core framework; and as I mentioned to you at the beginning of this, these slides are available in Paul Twomey's presentation which you got in the public forum yesterday morning and they are now online on this site.

They are responsible for what they describe as a global accountability index and some of the organizations that they -- and companies that they have run this index over in the past, you can see above ,Anglo American, Nestle, Toyota, Wal-Mart, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and Oxfam and so on. So the process we are undertaking, as I mentioned, will involve an initial consultation phase which will conclude on the 31st of December, a discussion which we hope will take place on Thursday in the public forum here in Sao Paulo.

Then the development of terms of reference for One World Trust, we want to undertake that by the 31st of December. The summary of all of the initial comments received by 31st of December which will post during January 2007. The informal benchmarking by One World Trust which will include recommendations for improvement we want that to be released for the Lisbon meeting. We had early ambitions that we would have a draft set of management operating principles for approval by the board by Lisbon. But we now, as I said, have decided that we will work with One World Trust in order to make sure we have these recommendations for improvement, at least at the Lisbon meeting and go forward from there.

From there we will be looking at the development of these management operating principles, and hopefully also release those just before the Lisbon meeting for further consultation with the view that the management operating principles themselves will be adopted at the April meeting. One of the things that Paul Twomey also explained yesterday, I think, is some concentration. At the moment -- if you go to the bylaws ,there are some very, very clearly expressed processes for the dealing -- for the management of various consultations and various processes that ICANN has to undertake. Some of those are outlined up there.

But as you can see some of them -- it is consistent for some of them and not for others and that's a trend which is identifiable. We are not consistently applying the transparency mechanisms outlined in the bylaws.

But then there is an additional complicating factor, and that is, as Paul mentioned yesterday, how do we start an issue? There is some confusion about how issues are actually started and what -- the reason that's of concern to us, and also, I think, of concern to the community, is that what's been happening is that at meetings like this or separately a constituency group or an individual will raise a matter with a staff member and a process is commenced.

So often, there is not an authorized commencement of that process. The first the community discovers about this -- the commencement of the process is when it is posted on the Web site. It comes out of the blue, as it were.

So that gives you an overview of where we are heading in terms of a roadmap for the development of these principles and we are being assisted in that task by Patrick Sharry who is on my left. Many of you might know Patrick from his work on the operating plan so far with ICANN.

So I will leave it there, Chris. And if people have questions, I am more than happy to take them.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Well, perhaps I could maybe start the ball rolling. What -- are we talking about limiting this debate to issues of administrative accountability and transparency for now? Or are we -- is everything on the table? And the example -- perhaps the best example I could give you of everything being on the table is, for example, the Nominating Committee, a vastly accountable and transparent organization, not. Is that something that you are looking for input on or is that receiving a separate review process?

>>PAUL LEVINS: These operating principles are very much about the administration at this stage. You would have seen from the comments that people made in the consultation phase thus far that there was a lot of focus on the administration, the way that ICANN administers decisions taken by the board.

So they are focused very much on that. Having said that, the issue of transparency is one, as I mentioned before, that's been top of mind for some time. It has been made very clear out of the joint -- the signing of the joint project agreement and the discussions that have taken place around that, that it's an issue that certainly needs to be resolved, if -- within 18 months -- we want to satisfy the Department of Commerce that the community has confidence in ICANN as an organization. Put it this way, we certainly won't be rejecting comments that focus on other elements of the organization as far as transparency are concerned, but they are focused on the administration. Do you want to add anything to that, Patrick?

>>PATRICK SHARRY: A couple of things. Chris, one thing you have intimated, there is the strategic plan which we will talk about later this afternoon that says we should be doing a review of the Nominating Committee, so there will be that process in place.

We will on Thursday be asking for input into the terms of reference for the One World Trust work so there is a chance for the community to shape what the terms of reference might be And if, for example, a Nominating Committee is something you feel strongly about in that context, there will be an opportunity to make those sorts of comments.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: But -- yes, but the One World assist is it limited to your administrative board staff, administrative accountability and transparency?

>>PATRICK SHARRY: That's not decided because we haven't finalized.

>>PAUL LEVINS: I would add, yes, the focus is on this process to start with. If we decide as a result of the processes Patrick has outlined it would be a useful idea for One World Trust to also assist us with examinations of transparency in other parts of the organization.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I am asking for a couple of reasons. One is that I am concerned -- not that I am concerned that the NomCom will get reviewed. That will happen. I suspect reviewing things like the NomCom will take significantly longer than a timetable that sees you doing stuff in Lisbon. That's really why I am trying to make sure we are clear that what we are talking about is the admin stuff.

I have some other questions but Lesley had her hand up.

>> LESLEY COWLEY: As Patrick is aware, we had some comments on the strategic plan in terms of both NomCom and accountability and transparency but also the suggestion that the governance review incorporating the latest governance best perhaps and, indeed, I have seen in the most recent version of the strategic plan there is a nod to that. I suppose my point is you can look at these issues in several different levels, NomCom is one of the levels. Accountability and transparency is one of the other ones. Benchmarking, which I think is great, is another area. But there is a big general umbrella here which is about corporate governance and I think some of those things are subsections of that. And I am just really suggesting if there is a way to bring a number of these things together rather than looking at them individually.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can I maybe pick up that point and take it a little bit further? You have already acknowledged that most of the feedback you got in respect to this was, Well, hold on, you can't do this in two days, you have to slow down.

I think that most -- I can't remember if people were speaking themselves. I suspect most of us would not have an issue with taking a longer period of time to act -- and dealing with it as an overall, overarching review, if you will. If that takes a year, it takes a year as long as we could, perhaps, put in place some sort of temporary measures to deal specifically with the very issue that actually ended up with us telling you were going too fast, which is that there is currently no standard for the way that consultation papers are dealt with.

If there was a temporary -- if you like, a temporary template that said, while we are doing all of this which may take some time, in the meantime we are going to do this. And this is just an example, all papers will be published with the same time frame. So we know that a paper gets published and there will be an initial review people of 30 days or 40 days or 50 days and then there will be this and there will be that.

That would actually satisfy to a degree the -- for me anyway, the unease about the way it appears it depends on which particular branch of the staff is publishing something whether or not it has a long enough time or not a long enough time or et cetera.

If that were to happen, then in the bigger picture, you could be doing what Lesley is saying which is to effectively do a corporate governance review of which accountability and transparency forms a fairly large part.

Lesley, does that -- yeah. Do you want to comment?

>> LESLEY COWLEY: (inaudible).

>>PAUL LEVINS: Sure. We can certainly take that on board. I suppose what I was alluding to earlier when I showed that material that there were some processes in place and not in others, is that if we just apply the measures that are outlined in the bylaws and we do that meticulously and uniformly then we will go a long way, frankly, to demonstrating transparency. Now, one of the reasons I was brought on was to assist with that process. And it strikes me in the first reading -- in a few readings of the bylaws that if we just do that, if we stick to the script, as it were, we will reach the point that you are talking about.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Hang on. Do the bylaws say papers should be published for a comment period of X days?

>>PAUL LEVINS: They are very clear about -- sorry, if you want to weigh in.

>>PATRICK SHARRY: In particular circumstances they are very specific about that.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We have our own specific time frame for a ccNSO PDP, for example. But generally speaking, my understanding is that a lot of these papers, a lot of consultation things that get looked at don't have a bylaw -- the review -- the review-on is currently an example. It currently doesn't have an end date, which is not a bad thing.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Chris, I guess what I am saying is the model is there; and if we apply the model consistently, then we will be a long way down the track. And if what you are suggesting is we have a set of temporary measures that we put in place, sure, we can look at that. But I also in the short time I have been here am aware that one of the risks of that, is that people will say, well, you are trying to second-guess -- you are actually trying to convince this of a process. ICANN has already made its mind up. This is what it wants. We will be subject to all sorts of accusations as well. But I do hear what you are saying that we can -- we should be capable of having a set of guidelines in place that provide confidence in the community once we also do the longer term work.

>>PAUL LEVINS: But I do want to come back, one of the reasons I'm slightly nervous about the "Well, let's just -- it has to take as long as it has to take," is because of the point that I mentioned about the joint project agreement. It's -- the discussion -- both in the joint project agreement and the affirmation of responsibilities and the conversations and public conversations that took place around the establishment of that agreement, it's been made very clear that if -- that if ICANN wants to be moved to full autonomy, then it has to have a set of transparency and accountability issue -- measures in place and those issues need to be resolved and the community has to have satisfaction.

Now, the last thing we want is to have a process that doesn't enable us to also take that into consideration.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: But -- yes. But unless I've misread it, it doesn't actually say accountability and transparency in respect to administrative functions. It says accountability and transparency.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Uh-huh.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So one imagines that that is intended -- I can't be sure but one imagines that is intended to mean --

>>PAUL LEVINS: Uh-huh.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: -- the overarching accountability and transparency, rather than the nonetheless very important administrative accountability and transparency.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Uh-huh.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I would argue that -- and this is just a personal opinion. I would argue that moving forwards to 18 months' time and getting sign-off from the USG on accountability and transparency with something like the existing noncom in place just -- I mean, you just can't do it. It's not accountable, it's not transparent, and, therefore, how can you possibly convince the USG that -- I mean, I would say, were I asked if the existing situation were maintained with the noncom that you haven't satisfied the accountability and transparency requirement.

So my -- the point is, I think, that maybe it's about -- maybe it's about making it a bigger -- I've got no issue with you dealing with stuff in bits. I mean, that's fine. It's the only way to eat an elephant is piece by piece.

But what I'm concerned about is that this process that you've described, which takes us through to Lisbon, is seen to be what you are doing about accountability and transparency when, in fact, it isn't. It's what you're doing about a bit of accountability and transparency.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Sure. No, that's a good point.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So that's, you know -- I think it's important that we get the feeling that -- and I'm not saying it's going to be possible right now, but we get the feeling that, you know, yes, these things are on the table and, yes, they -- they are all going to be part of this accountability and transparency framework thing that you're working on.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Uh-huh.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I think it's great that you've got these people -- what are they called, One World --

>>PAUL LEVINS: One World Trust.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That is actually the name of the British Airways travel --

>>PAUL LEVINS: Alliance, yes.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. That's great. But then you see you could argue, well, what process did you go through to appoint them, then? I'm not suggesting that -- I'm just saying, you know, you can take this down to the nth degree by saying you've gone ahead and appointed them and we didn't know anything about it until it turned up yesterday morning.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Absolutely. You could argue that.

[Laughter]

>>PAUL LEVINS: But at the end of the day, you know, you don't buy a dog and then do your own barking. You know, you do employ people to make sensible decisions --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sure. I understand that.

>>PAUL LEVINS: -- based on, you know, experience and knowledge and a review of the research.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sure. And I acknowledge that. Does anyone else have a question or a comment to make about what we're discussing?

Okay. Good. Well, that means everyone either is very, very happy or no one can --

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can I make the point that --

>>PAUL LEVINS: Well, actually I would -- sorry. Can I just --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah, sure.

>>PAUL LEVINS: -- interpose? In -- I mean this is a community that's all about consultation and I would be interested in feedback. I mean if we're doing this wrong, tell us. You know, this -- tell us. I want the feedback, so that we can actually be transparent in this process, and if -- you know, if there is a strong view that there should be an all-encompassing review done by, you know, One World Trust or --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Whoever.

>>PAUL LEVINS: -- whoever, that it should be all-encompassing and, you know, not done in parts, then provide us with that feedback. I mean, there -- you know --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can we maybe ask for just an indication of -- show of hands of whether people think that an overarching corporate governance, whatever you want to call it, accountability and transparency review is what should be happening for this process?

[Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Well, what I'd be suggesting -- Lesley, do you want a crack at just explaining again what you think?

>>LESLEY COWLEY: Thank you for that.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It's my pleasure.

[Laughter]

>>LESLEY COWLEY: What I was trying to say is I think there are various levels of things.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: And speaking as somebody who has gone through a corporate governance review, I do realize the pain we're inflicting here. But there is a level way you look at processes and that's fine. That's relatively simple. By comparison.

There's a level way you benchmark against other organizations and see what learning you can bring back.

There's then the level with noncom and other bits of the corporate governance structure. And then you look at the whole thing put together and say, "Okay. Have we achieved accountability, transparency? Have we followed best practice?" And what I'm talking about is the big thing at the top and I think what you are talking about is elements below that.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Yes.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So if I could take some examples, Dotty -- that might help you Dotty, and these are again just my thoughts. It seems to me that if you -- you've got to look at -- you've got to look the everything. You've got to look at the noncom, we've said. You've got to look at the board structure and say how accountable is the board. Should the board -- how transparent, if indeed the board is meant to be transparent. You've got to look at the composition of the board. You've got to look at rules and principles around that. To take a very specific example, you have certain officers that are appointed by the board to be the chair, the vice chair, to be chairs of committees, et cetera. Are there any rules and regulations around those that should actually be put in place? And as several of you know, I've said this often, I personally do not believe it's appropriate for an elected member of the board to sit as the chair. Because I think there are major issues wi!

th that. And that's just my personal opinion. I think that the chair should be independent. And that's, again, my opinion but those sorts of things are the sorts of things we need to be looking at. Lesley?

>>LESLEY COWLEY: Yeah. Can I just add? We have already made that feedback as part of the strategic plan feedback. From my point of view, anyway.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. So those are the sorts of things. Dotty?

>>DOTTY SPARKS DE BLANC: Can I ask you: Was this in response to Canada withdrawing because of what they called --

>>PAUL LEVINS: Oh, no.

>>DOTTY SPARKS DE BLANC: It was not.

>>PAUL LEVINS: No.

>>DOTTY SPARKS DE BLANC: But if that's the kind of thing that's happening, I would think that you'd have to consider that. I mean, I -- it's -- the problem with transparency and accountability is that they're very soft deliverables, and when you go into -- when you go into a tug of war over them or are trying to pinpoint and decide whether somebody's transparent and accountable, it's a very difficult thing to do.

But that seems to be the Achilles heel of ICANN, and so I looked at that list but I didn't catch every one, but the large majority of them, except for Chamber of Commerce -- maybe you could put that back up again -- were basically for-profit corporations where transparency and accountability --

>>PAUL LEVINS: No. Well, I'm not sure that's entirely true. It might be just the compilation of the list, but Patrick has done reasonable research with this organization. I would like him to comment.

>>PATRICK SHARRY: Yeah. If you actually have a look at the Web site, when you get a chance, Dotty, the current index has 30 organizations on it, and it covers NGOs, INGOs, and large corporations. So it's actually quite a diverse list that we benchmarked against.

>>DOTTY SPARKS DE BLANC: Have you seen a report, even without names that they produce?

>>PATRICK SHARRY: Sorry. Have I...

>>DOTTY SPARKS DE BLANC: Have you seen a report that they produce?

>>PATRICK SHARRY: Their first formal index was actually released this week. They've been doing it since 2003, sort of in a building-up-expertise way.

>>DOTTY SPARKS DE BLANC: Well, do they also hold little seminars and trainings and help the people within the organization learn how to be transparent and accountable?

>>PATRICK SHARRY: Two thoughts on that. One is that, yes, they do provide a consultancy service that does a little bit of that. We shouldn't think that they might provide all the training and the complete answer to everything. And we may need to get other trainings from other places as well.

But they have a certain expertise that seems most suitable at the moment. That won't be the complete answer.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: One of the other things that if you're going to go back to this -- what is an overarching review, one of the most difficult challenging questions that an overarching review would need to answer is: To whom is ICANN actually accountable?

Because in a company, you're accountable to your shareholders. In a membership organization such as auDA we're accountable to our members and, in fact, we're also accountable to the local Internet community as well. But from a purely organizational point of view, we're accountable to our members.

ICANN's structure is such that, in fact, there are no members, there is no one to -- there is no easy definition, and it might help to -- it might assist with the accountability and transparency issues lower down the chain, if you like, to have handled the issue -- now, don't get me wrong. I don't think there's necessarily an answer to that question, to whom is ICANN accountable? I'm not sure there is one. It may be that that's such a big question that that does actually have to be put to one side and be dealt with on the basis of saying, "We acknowledge that there is an issue here. We don't know -- we actually don't know what the answer is. We'll try and figure out a way of doing it." But...

>>PAUL LEVINS: If we're just in the land of reflection --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes.

>>PAUL LEVINS: -- I sometimes wonder -- I've heard that question over and over and over again. To whom is ICANN accountable?

I'm wondering whether we're applying all parameters and all experiences of existing models to what is a new model.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Entirely possibly so.

>>PAUL LEVINS: We're struggling with a new model here. We're trying to -- well, it's certainly been brought to birth, and it's probably in its irascible teenage years or something. I'm not sure what the phase of its chronology is, but -- what phase we're at. But I'm just wondering, when we ask that question to whom is it accountable, I mean to whom do we want it to be accountable? I mean, do the -- I mean, we're operating -- we're asking that question out of a response to traditional models of accountability, and I'm not sure that's what we've got here. But that's a -- a personal and unpaid view.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No, that -- I mean, I agree. That may very well be the answer. You can certainly -- I can certainly see an area -- areas where you say where in respect to some things, we're accountable to these people and in respect to other things, we're accountable to these people, and that in itself is a very unusual set of circumstances. Clyde?

>>CLYDE BEATTIE: Yes. I suggest that the organization is either accountable or it's not accountable.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Right.

>>CLYDE BEATTIE: And if it's accountable, then it has to be accountable to somebody, so I suggest that they get to work and figure out who that is.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Well, I'd suggest that the community help us to get to work -- because if we -- if we say, "Well, we're accountable to X," the response will be, "Well, how did you come up with that conclusion?"

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No, no. Paul, that's absolutely correct, and no one is suggesting -- I don't think anyone's suggesting that you go away and suggest that you're accountable to the penguins in the Heard and McDonald Islands, but I think what we're saying is that we're trying to tease out the sorts of things that an overarching review would look at if -- as opposed to looking at the accountability and transparency at an administrative level and you've got to accept the logic of saying, "Well, what is the point of putting in accountability at an administrative level if you don't actually know who you have to satisfy that you're actually being accountable?" Dotty and then Nigel.

>>DOTTY SPARKS DE BLANC: It seems to me that the whole setup is that ICANN is accountable to the world, or any potential Internet user that there is, and you can't separate it out and say that it -- at an administrative level, they're accountable to X.

There -- it's a goldfish bowl.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah.

>>DOTTY SPARKS DE BLANC: And, you know, everybody's supposed to be able to see everything.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: But Dotty, I mean that's true, but -- but Paul's point is a very valid point, which is that normally when you're talking about accountability, what it actually means is there are people who can take -- can sack you, effectively. What you -- so in other words --

>>DOTTY SPARKS DE BLANC: Sack you.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah, who can fire you. Sorry, who can fire you. Sack. S-a -- yeah. Okay. Moving right along.

>>PAUL LEVINS: I never thought I'd be in a position of being a translator. It's wonderful.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you very much.

So --

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So in normal commercial terms, that's what actually happens. You're accountable -- we're accountable to -- I'm accountable to my board, my board is accountable to the members, the members can overturn the board and fire me. That's what accountability amounts to.

So what Paul's point is, this is a unique organization in the -- to the extent that it doesn't quite work in those -- in that way. Now, maybe it should, but it doesn't.

>>DOTTY SPARKS DE BLANC:.

[Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, I agree. But that's a different -- that's a -- that's the only -- that's the only thing you can do. Hang on. Lesley, then I'm going to anything like this he will, because I promised I would, then I'm going to to Clyde.

>>LESLEY COWLEY:Okay. Paul, you referred earlier to the agreement with the U.S. DOC, so like any good Internet person, I thought I'd go and look that back up again whilst I'm here. Accountability in that context referred to ICANN being responsive to global Internet stakeholders so I think that sort of answers some of the accountability question perhaps.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Yes. And -- I'm sorry.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: My other point was, you made the point, of course, you know, had do you know when we achieve that, and I think, again, that was reasonably well iterated in that agreement, because it was talking about ICANN aspiring to be a leader in the area of transparency for organizations involved in private-sector management. That's a pretty high hurdle to -- to leap, I'm sure. And I don't think it will be achieved by the current scope of the review.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Nigel?

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: Thank you. You may accuse me of being a little disingenuous here.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Probably.

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: However --

>>PAUL LEVINS: Sorry. I just can't see him.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can you stand up, Nigel?

>>NIGEL ROBERTS: I think I actually might disagree with Dotty. I don't think ICANN -- and we're talking about accountability in the sense of being able to sack somebody or fire somebody, or making people accountable in a corporate sense.

I don't think ICANN is accountable at all, and I think that's because it was designed that way. It was designed to have no members and it was designed so that it didn't have to be accountable to anybody.

Now, I don't personally think that's particularly satisfactory, but it's something we've lived with for 10 years, and I'd ask whether or not the accountability review is going to address that.

>>PAUL LEVINS: That was precisely my point. That was the point that I was inadequately articulating.

I think we are dealing with a very different model here, and we have to ask some searching questions about what accountability really does mean in this context.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Clyde?

>>CLYDE BEATTIE: I agree with Dotty. The organization's accountable to the entire world, except the entire world is not able to speak for itself. Therefore, the entire world needs some representative to speak for it. So all we would like to do is see some --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Are you putting your name forward? Is that --

>>CLYDE BEATTIE: Pardon?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Are you putting your name forward?

>>CLYDE BEATTIE: No, I'm not, no. But I think it's not that difficult to establish a process to identify some group of humans who would be capable of representing the world's interests, and holding this organization accountable.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: To account, yeah.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Well, at the risk of being cheeky, if it's not that difficult, I look forward to the submission.

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Becky. There's a hand up over there.

>>BECKY BURR: The notion of being accountable to the world, I understand where that comes from, but ICANN also has to be accountable to each and every one of you as individual operations. So if we just focus on being accountable -- I mean, I think that's the way in which this really is a new creature. There is this sort of social accountability. But then there is a very specific individual way in which ICANN can impact every, you know, business player, whether they're commercial or not-for-profit or for-profit, and so that's the concern I have about where you get to in accountability.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Could I ask, are we sufficiently down the track to -- for me to go back and ask for a show of hands on whether people feel that an overarching accountability and transparency corporate governance review is what we -- is what should be happening, and that the administrative side of it is only a part of that? Can I ask that those who think that's correct to put their hands up?

[Show of hands]

[Show of hands]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Can I ask those who think that's incorrect to put their hands up?

[No response]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So the rest of you don't care, obviously.

[Speaker is off microphone]

>>OLIVIER GUILLARD: It's a difficult issue --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah.

>>OLIVIER GUILLARD: -- so...

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: But I think --

>>OLIVIER GUILLARD: -- no comment.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I think, Paul -- but no comment made so well.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Absolutely.

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I think, Paul, that certainly you'd get an indication, would you not, from the room that there's a fairly strong view that -- that those that have an opinion have a fairly strong opinion that it should be -- there should be some kind of global overarching kind of corporate governance thing.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Sure. Yeah.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Well, hang on. Now you get away with half and half. That doesn't work. If it was half the people voting no and half the people voting yes, I'd agree with you but that's actually not the case. No one voted no.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Half with no comment.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No one voted no. Dave?

>>DAVID ARCHBOLD: Can I just make the comment that as well as looking at an overall corporate thing, I would expect to see a plan laid out saying that it is covering it all, and that these are the stages and phases that we're going to go through. Then people would have even greater confidence that it was going to happen.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, exactly. It's not don't -- it's not "Don't do Lisbon." It's "Tell us that that's part of it and there's a whole heap of other stuff happening and it will happen by X." That would be -- that would be good.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Yeah. And if you get -- absolutely. Yes, I agree. And part of -- part of that informing has already taken place. If you look on the Web site, you'll see the posting on this. There was a clarification of the process as well, which outlines a fairly clear timetable down to dates that we're having to accord with.

The other thing that just very quickly, Chris, I came to --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No, no problem. Happy to go on for --

>>PAUL LEVINS: -- is, you know, please do -- I just reiterate what I said at the beginning. Please do participate in this process. We've had -- after -- notwithstanding the ambitiousness -- the ambition of the timetable, we've had it now open for comments since the 16th of October, and we've had 17 responses.

So I'd be most keen, if it's an issue that's top of mind, for the community, that we get more than 17 responses.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So the -- the way that this supporting organization works would make it almost impossible for us to formally respond to you --

>>PAUL LEVINS: Right.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: -- in the sort of time frame that you're talking about, even assuming we ever could formally respond to you by reaching some sort of consensus.

But certainly for the individual ccTLD managers, be they members or not, to put in responses ought not to be too much of a problem.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Yeah.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: And I would encourage everyone, especially those who had an opinion to express, to put -- to put -- to put comment in. My experience with these things is it usually just takes one or two of us to do something and then what happens is everyone else comes along and says, "Yeah, actually I agree with that" or "I agree with most of that" or "I'll take issue with this point," so that's certainly one way of starting the ball rolling.

Are there any other comments or input for Paul and Patrick?

Okay. Well, thank you.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Can I make -- this gentleman had a final comment.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sorry, sorry. You always wait to the last moment.

>>DAVID ARCHBOLD: Yeah. With a little bit of a wry smile. You asked for comment. One of my concerns about transparency and accountability is that we so seldom get any comment back on our comments.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes. That's a very valid point. See, now you started the bull running again. Clyde. No, no, no. Wait for the microphone.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Sorry. Just while the mic is being passed, are you saying -- I'm asking this for clarification purposes genuinely, not as an observation. Are you saying that we need to -- for example, with this group of comments that we've received, this summary, we should opine a view about whether we think that's right or wrong? Or should -- or what --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Or not a way, sometimes.

[Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: If you look at what -- if you look at what's going on in the GNSO right now, they've put out their draft uTLD paper, and the staff have put out a response paper, which they've said is not complete, and it's not -- it doesn't handle every point, et cetera, et cetera, but it is nonetheless the response.

Now, that is actually called dialogue, and that contributes to transparency and openness because we can -- look, none of us are stupid enough to imagine that the people who work in ICANN don't have opinions. Of course they do. We all do, and we don't -- except for Olivier, we all do, and so of course they're going to have thoughts and input, and it's -- I'm one who subscribes to the point -- the bullet point about they don't have too much influence but it's perfectly acceptable that they should have influence because otherwise they're not engaged.

So it's good to have responses sometimes.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Good, good.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Clyde? Hang on.

>>CLYDE BEATTIE: I just want to note that --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Wait, wait, wait.

>>CLYDE BEATTIE: -- rather than only half the people here being -- instead of half the people here being in favor of this position, I'd like it to be recorded that a hundred percent of the people that had an opinion were unified in that opinion.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes. I think that's absolutely -- that's absolutely right.

Okay.

>>PAUL LEVINS: Can I just make a closing statement.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, you may.

>>PAUL LEVINS: At the risk of stating the obvious, you know, none of us -- certainly in the administration of ICANN -- want an opaque arrangement. We want -- we want transparency, obviously. But we'll need help to get there, and if -- and if we need, you know, the process of dialogue along the way, then terrific. We should have that.

So thanks. Appreciate it very, very much, and we'll distill this process with even greater clarity.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Patrick.

Okay. We're going to move on to discuss briefly, a brief session on a report on the Internet Governance Forum, which Lesley and I are going to do because Lesley's doing it from the view of somebody who was attending the Internet Governance Forum and I'm doing it from the point of view of somebody who was organizing the Internet Governance Forum. Yeah.

So I'll start, I think, and how many of you were in the public forum yesterday when Markus and -- Markus and Lynn St. Amour and Ayesha gave their --

[Show of hands]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Some of you were. Okay. Well, let me tell you a little bit about the Internet Governance Forum from the organizational point of view.

You all know it happened in Athens. You know the lead-up to it, et cetera.

It actually went -- it went well. It was -- it was, generally speaking, well-organized. There were some lessons to be learned on the wireless connection which didn't work properly for much of the time, and there was some lessons to be learned on the size of -- the size of panels.

We -- they had four open -- four large sessions and a whole series of workshops and the four large sessions had panels ranging from sort of 18 to 25 people, which made it very difficult to get into any substantive discussion because everybody wanted to make sure that they had their say.

I think that it was -- it was a -- it was a very worthwhile exercise for a whole heap of reasons, but I'll let Lesley give her views first.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: Okay. My views as a participant, the number of people there was very impressive. Over 1,600, which I think was more than double that anticipated, so that led to some interesting logistical challenges.

There were some -- many familiar faces, but also there was a much wider cross-section of people than we see at ICANN meetings. Government and civil society, in particular, were very well represented, I think.

And there were some really good efforts to encourage remote participation that I'm sure we can draw upon from the point of view of participation in ICANN.

The U.N. server crashed as a result of the traffic, I'm told.

By contrast, the -- the business community wasn't well represented, and I think it's a real challenge to demonstrate to the business community how the issues being discussed there can affect business, both positively and negatively.

As Chris said, there were some really big panels and certainly participation from the floor, nigh on impossible at times, I think. There really wasn't an opportunity to get a dialogue going between the panels and the floor, which was disappointing from my point of view as a participant, although I know some learning took place from that for the next meeting.

The interesting thing was that there was a use of facilitators to actually push some of the panelists on discussion. In particular, some of the very good ones were very experienced journalists, and so there was, for example, an interesting discussion with a representative from China who I'm sure felt quit wriggly in his seat on the stage when he was being pressed about censorship of the net, for example.

Different participants made their inputs in different ways and I think from those of us from the Internet community, we're quite used to standing up and saying what we think. People from the government community approach that inquiry a different way so it was quite an education as to how those interventions contrast with the ones that we are probably more familiar with.

A real important thing for cc's was that a number of the participants there were pushing for a reopening of the discussion about the U.S. government's role in ICANN and it was clear to me that I felt there would be some strong moves to put that back on the agenda for the next meeting. Particularly as I understand it that the host country is very keen to reopen that discussion. There were a very good number of cc's present, especially from the developing countries, colleagues from cc's that I have never even met before. And I view that as a very good thing and makes the IGF another place where we can share and develop best practice and perhaps develop a bit more information with the people who don't normally attend ICANN meetings. If we were to make the best of that community then we would really need to be better planned as a community and think about how we can coordinate input, whether it be best practice workshops or exhibitions for future meetings.

And, finally, I would like to say thank you to Chris and others on the advisory group. My colleague, Emily, was a participant in that group and I am very much aware of how much work and effort went into making it a good meeting.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Lesley. If I can pick up on a couple of points you have made, the main one being the DNS management issue. In IGF-speak it is -- code for discussing ICANN is DNS management that's the topic. We managed to -- this time around we managed to keep it off the agenda on the basis that paragraph something of WSIS says that the IGF should not involve itself in discussing issues that are being handled by other organizations -- already handled by other organizations.

But my personal opinion is that that is not going to succeed again. I am very strongly -- I am almost certain that they will win to get it onto the agenda for next time and my view is that we should probably just accept that and make sure that we handle it in a way that delivers the right messages.

When I say "talk about it," it was talked about at the IGF. We ran an ISOC/ICANN/ccNSO and various -- ccTLD community ran a workshop for people to learn how ICANN is structured and how the cc's are structured and that sort of thing. There was another workshop run on DNS management sponsored by the Brazilian government so it was talked about.

When I say it was going to be on the agenda, it is like in the big room with the 800, 900 people and a huge panel. Hopefully, a slightly smaller panel than the last time. Lesley's point about us getting our act together as a community and actually making sure we deliver our messages is a very timely and valid point because the chances are that in November next year at the IGF in Rio, this topic will be a major item and we need to ensure that -- obviously ICANN will be there, and they will do their thing and presumably the RIRs and so on and so forth. We need to make sure the ccTLD community is in the same position that we can be properly represented and put our point across because the DNS management thing from a government point of view in respect to those governments who think it should be the ITU, not ICANN, is mainly to do with ccTLD management. It is not really that much to do with gTLD stuff. They are not seriously suggesting, for example, that the United Nations!

should be the contractor to VeriSign for running dot com, only the ITU should be the contractor. What they are suggesting when it comes to us, for example, redelegating or changing our servers, rather than having that run past the USG or whoever it is actually run past, some committee of the ITU.

This thing is our thing, and we need to make sure that we are properly represented. Does anyone have any questions that they want to ask about the IGF. Calvin?

>> CALVIN BROWNE: I was hoping to ignore the IGF. It seems to me what you are saying is this could have effects on DNS management and that we should keep our eye on that?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah.

>> CALVIN BROWNE: That's what I am hearing from this feedback.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: What I said at the last meeting was if you were a ccTLD manager who literally just did DNS management registry and nothing else, then there would be enough people at the meeting to represent your interests and unless you particularly wanted to come, there wasn't really a need for you to come. But if you were a ccTLD manager that did other things like had interest in spam and so on and so forth, then you should be there because those were the issues that were going to be discussed.

What I am suggesting is that next time around the actual DNS management stuff may very well be on the agenda.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: I think we have a real role to play there, Calvin, and that may be preventing things happening. But I think that's also about engaging with our local communities that we already have the links with to encourage their own participation in IGF, too.

So it is much broader than just turning out for the meeting itself in my mind. And I think while quite clearly there is a line that the IGF is there for discussion and not to make decisions, it's quite clear that there are moves to try to move that along and to move to some concrete outcomes from the IGF. And that is a concern, I think.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It is a subtle -- it is as subtle as being able to refer to something that the IGF said as being authoritative. And so when we put this together and we decided that we would have -- as well as having the main program, we would have parallel workshops running, we then had to make a decision about what the status of those workshops was and whether we would simply allow anyone to have a workshop, provided it met the criteria of being open and global and multistakeholder and all of that or whether we would start to edit, sensor, if you like, the topics.

What we agreed was, no, it would be anyone who wanted to run a workshop provided they met the parameters that had been set down could run it on any topic they wanted that had to do with the Internet. But then we had to fight about whether they could make statements about their workshop in the IGF forum.

And in the end, we decided they couldn't because the problem if they do make statements is it gets read into the record. And for government, reading into the record, is what they try to achieve all the time, is that it is read into the record that this happened. So in the end, we said, no, there is not going to be any formal reporting on the workshops.

But what I am saying is I suspect this time around it will be beyond workshop and possibly into main agenda. We will try to make it not happen but there is no guarantee. We just need to be aware and watch. Yes, Calvin.

>> CALVIN BROWNE: If it does make it into the main agenda, obviously you want to make it as sensible as possible?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. Yeah, it would be -- I imagine it would be sort -- if you want to sort of -- if you want to look at what it is likely to look like if you go to the IGF Web site, there are a list of the workshops that were run and explains the introduction, if you would like, to the workshop. And the one on DNS management will give you -- should give you a sort of overview of the sort of broader topic that it's likely to be if it happens. We don't even, yet, know if -- to be fair, if the advisory group will even be in existence. It is suspected that it will. And it is expected that at least some of the same people will be on it. But that hasn't actually been decided yet.

Anyone else? Olivier.

>>OLIVIER GUILLARD: Short question to Lesley. You mentioned that you saw cc's that you don't normally see. Could you give -- if you have an idea -- have you been able to talk with some of them and give some information why they are there?

>>LESLEY COWLEY: I have got a list somewhere but not in my head, Olivier. I think the cc's in the main -- particularly because Athens was quite an easy journey for them were from some of the developing countries. Bear in mind, the particular focus for that IGF meeting was talking about emerging issues and encouraging the capacity-building. I think that was a particular interest for them.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Also a number of the cc's that were there were of the type that are government-run cc's and so they were there with a government hat on. And it illustrates to me that one of the things that ICANN needs to do, or at least try and facilitate, is a lifting of the profile of the GAC because a lot of people don't even know that it exists.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: I think increased participation is in the strategic plan.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, yes hopefully. Anyone else before we break for coffee? Okay. So we are going to break -- thank you, Lesley. We will break for coffee. If we can please reconvene in 20 minutes, at 3:30 for the strategic plan discussion and then at 4:00 we will have some updates from various ccTLDs.

After that, because Peter isn't here yet, we are not going to do a board update. We are going to get George in from the NomCom to have a quick chat and there is a couple of other things happening which off the top of my head I can't remember but we will get there. So, half past 3:00. Thanks everyone.

(Break).

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We are going to start in a couple of seconds. I am just getting the presentation ready.

Okay. Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming back so promptly. This session is on the ICANN strategic plan. We are going to get a presentation from Kurt Pritz and so, Kurt, over to you.

>>KURT PRITZ: Hi, everyone. Thank you for giving me part of your time today.

ICANN, as you may well know, divides up its planning cycle into two equal parts during the year. The first half of the fiscal year, which for ICANN is from July through December, is devoted to strategic planning so strategic planning is for ICANN, anyway, long-term planning meaning three years, three-year look-ahead at what we want to accomplish and try to identify those objectives that, if accomplished, will lead toward the accomplishment of the ICANN mission and now technical coordination role that ICANN has.

And the second half of the fiscal year is taken up with operating planning and budgeting. And the operating plan is really that sort of one-year action plan that is a series of projects pointed at accomplishing the missions in the spring plan. That part of the year is taken up with formulating candidate projects and evaluating their benefit and cost and determining which projects then will be prosecuted during the next fiscal year, costing those projects out and creating a budget for the year.

So we are coming to the end of our strategic planning cycle and I wanted to provide some information on the strategic plan and what's been done to date and soliciting from you any feedback you may have regarding the plan itself.

So this planning season really started off with -- in the Marrakech meeting which was in June and consultations were held with the community in four different languages, English, Spanish, French and Arabic, to solicit feedback as to what objectives the community thought were important for ICANN to work on during the next three years, what sort of longer-term goals.

So out of that meeting and out of online public forum and other methods, plus reading last year's strategic plan and soliciting other sources of information, we developed this strategic issues paper, sort of a key priorities document that we posted on September 13th for feedback. And we got significant feedback on that, and that led on November 12th we published the first version of the strategic plan on the Web site at that link that's there.

And we scheduled -- oh, thank you. We scheduled right after that -- because it is a fairly fast-moving process, we scheduled a number of telephonic consultations with all constituencies so letters were sent out to the constituency -- the Supporting Organization chairs, Advisory Committee chairs and asking if they were so interested and so inclined to attend a conference call to discuss the strategic plan and there was quite a bit of participation.

Consultations were held at different times to accommodate different time zones and the result of that was that a red-lined plan was published on December 3rd which is also at the same link.

There were significant red lines to the plan. And that's been posted now. And we have a goal for collecting one more round of feedback here at this meeting and then adding in those last changes so that we can put the plan before the board at the meeting here. I think that's important because as I described before, we have these six-month planning cycles and it is important to move ahead, especially with our budgeting cycle. We want to inform the operations, planning and budgeting cycle as completely as possible but also the strategic plan is a rolling document, so we will take a last round of feedback and incorporate changes and then put that in front of the board.

It is never a perfect document but it is a never-ending document, too. Next year there will be another iteration of the strategic planning cycle and then it will be improved upon and grown as ICANN continues to evolve so that there is always opportunity for feedback into the strategic plan, and here comes one now. Thank you very much.

That's the timetable going forward. Actually ,I sort of discussed the operating plan already and we can discuss that more later. These are -- and we will bring up the plan itself after that. But here is the key changes that were made between the initial posting of the strategic plan and then the red-lined version.

There is key challenges both in the environment and to the organization that are in the initial stages of the plan, so those were revised some. Probably the most significant change to the plan is the second bullet there. And there was significant commentary during these sessions that, you know, here is a very ambitious list that's wide ranging of 50 or so things. Tell me what's really important because my thing is on page 17 ,paragraph 2, subparagraph B and how do I really know you care about that, because there is another 50 of them there.

And so we were asked to not prioritize but select those objectives that were of priority. That's not to say we are not going to enthusiastically prosecute all the objectives in the strategic plan. We are. But in certain cases, we can identify an end to an objective and quantify that and also understand it is very important to people.

So we attempted to identify these priorities as ones that we would move up in the plan just to identify as having that special significance.

Other than that, the plan is sort of laid out in the same format as last year and, that is, we have organizational excellence in operations, excellence in policy development, increasing participation internationally and increasing the efficiency and participation in the stakeholder model and then having to do with our agreements with government.

But there are some differences. So, for example -- and they are highlighted here and I don't need to spend too long on them. But in operations, you know we have augmented our compliance efforts, IDN implementation and deployment has been fleshed out quite a bit. There has been accomplishments, and those accomplishments have allowed us to focus on the end game a little bit more.

There is quite a bit effort going about considering the implementation of new TLDs. And, finally, ICANN has implemented a project management methodology that provides rigger to measuring to what we are trying to do.

If you have read our operating plan, there is a list of over 50 projects. And how do you manage that? You need some sort of standardized management practice. But with the focus on getting things long with creating bureaucracy and so we are trying to make that balance and provide that amount of control.

In policy development, there has been greater focus on improving the policy development process, facilitating the work of Supporting Organizations through sufficient staff report -- staff support, sorry; and providing greater resources towards supporting the policy work, which the policy work is becoming larger in breadth and numbers of policies but also the problems being considered, seem to me anyway, to be markedly more complex.

In Section 3, regarding international participation, IDNs has been traditionally in the operations section by historical accident. That's where the thing is managed within the ICANN organization. But there is -- when you think about the market that IDNs will serve, certainly it will serve to increase international participation and ICANN as a facilitator of the use of a multilingual Internet.

And there is also, you know, meaningfully for this group, but so I want to gainst say it, there is discussion of ICANN support of this organization. In Section 4, there is extra focus on a review of the Nominating Committee which I think has been understood. There has been lots of discussion at this meeting here.

And Section 5 has changed quite a bit because that was the completion of the MOU with the United States Department of Commerce and that MOU is done. The focus of that section had to be done and it focuses more on the transition into a fully independent ICANN by working on the items culled out in the joint project agreement that has been signed with the Department of Commerce with the end in mind that there would be there transition. That's essentially the changes that are in -- wait a second -- in the plan and the methodology.

So are there any comments or questions about that or anything you want to discuss about the strategic process -- strategic planning process or these changes?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I have a comment, or a plea actually. I wonder whether you could aim for the next time around to publish the plan itself slightly earlier in the six-month term. I understand that there needs to be consultation first, et cetera. I'm assuming what would happen the next time around there would be some discussion in Puerto Rico on the beginnings of the opening of the six-month time period. And I just wonder if -- perhaps, if I go back to the -- yeah, see, the strategic issues paper, the 30th of September, yeah, and then the actual plan itself on the 12th of November ,which is effectively two-thirds of the way into the six-month process.

It would be good if that could actually be shifted forward a bit if it is logistically feasible.

>>KURT PRITZ: That's definitely a fair comment. Obviously, the most work occurs between the strategic issues paper and the plan itself, but I understand that comment well.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Anyone else got any comments on this particular -- on this bit before we actually move onto the plan itself? Nope? Okay.

>>KURT PRITZ: Okay. So I think what would be most useful for us is to -- in looking at the plan, just to focus on those items in the new section that we created, that's the items on priority because I enjoy hearing from you whether you think the wording of those things is correct since they are new. And, two, whether there are some things that are in there that are not supposed to be there or things that are not there that should be there. It is down somewhere.

Actually, it is between those two things. It is between page 8 or 9.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: There has to be an easy way of doing this here.

>>KURT PRITZ: Go to page 4. This is a red-lined version of the paper so it indicates the next page. So it indicates the changes that were made to the first version of the plan.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Nope, that's still not it.

>>KURT PRITZ: Multi-colored key priorities.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Very impressive.

>>KURT PRITZ: Can you all see that -- there are nine key priorities. What we can do is scan through them. Anybody just stop me if you wish to make a comment and then we can go back up to the top. It has been pointed out already today -- or asked already if these items are in priority order, and the answer is no. So, perhaps, they shouldn't be numbered, they should be bulleted but they are. Continued improvement of IANA operations, the prosecution of all those objectives that continue to ensure the stability and security, the deployment of IDNs, the implementations of best practices in accountability, transparency and governance. This one item, I don't think, was -- it was mentioned in the last plan but certainly the feedback from the community has been that ICANN should really focus on measuring itself and its effectiveness and accountability and transparency and then this implementation of best practices or improvement.

The implementation of a contractual compliance program, particularly with our relationship with our gTLD customers. They operate through and with agreements with ICANN. And most of the participants in that part of the business wish to see this sort of thing.

An improvement in the cooperation and coordination of activities between the GAC and ICANN and between the GAC and the Supporting Organizations and the GAC and the constituencies in the Supporting Organizations.

The creation of a policy and then a process for the designation of new TLDs. The implementation of independent reviews for SOs and ACs as a continuing, ongoing process. That's been talked about here.

We have received some criticism on this last one but has dictated through community consultation, some implementation of improvements based on the London School of Economics Study of the GNSO, that really should be -- based on the criticism heard at this meeting, that should be more broad. So Number 8 is the implementation of independent reviews and then 9 is taking the results of those independent reviews and understanding what's important with them and implementing some continual improvement both in the abilities of the Supporting Organization and Advisory Committees to do their work and of the policy development processes themselves.

So that's -- that's pretty straightforward reading. But does anybody have any comments that ICANN should or should not be working on these things or that they are misworded? Or can I go back up to the top?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Anybody got anything they want to ask about those priority priorities? Cool.

>>KURT PRITZ: Yes?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Lesley.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: Hi. As you are aware Kurt, I have already participated in the conference calls on the plan. My point I made on the conference call and I will make now, speaking as an organization myself that has gone through a lot of change and growth is that I think the priorities miss covering the development that will need to happen within ICANN and ICANN staff in order to deliver these priorities. And I know you have in sort of various places referred to project management which is obviously a key element but in terms of recruiting staff, retaining staff, training staff and communication across staff, I think that is a priority that should not be underestimated in order to deliver these priorities.

>>KURT PRITZ: I agree. And I think we tried to capture some of the spirit of that but probably not well enough and kind of a funny story is that -- oops, this number -- when we spoke on the phone, Lesley, we were talking about this Number 14 here. And it was remarked in another meeting that this paragraph is taking on the look of -- like a camel or something that has been created by committee. My answer was that we had received comments, other than yours, but significant comment about not only how important this is but that it is very hard to, and we needed to highlight its importance. So, perhaps, just making it bigger down here it needs to be promoted in the way you just described.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: (inaudible).

>>KURT PRITZ: I understand that.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can I -- anyone else want to comment on the priorities? There is a reference in your slide show to a specific -- specific reference to the ccNSO. Are you able to take us to that clause? In your slides, there is a specific reference to an addition of information about the ccNSO or something about the ccNSO. I was just wondering if you could perhaps take us to that.

>>KURT PRITZ:Well, I hope so.

>> KEITH DAVIDSON: Page 13.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Did you say page 13, Keith? Page 15. Thank you, Keith. That's the one.

Anybody have any comments to make about that particular paragraph?

>>HILDE THUNEM: Hilde Thunem from the Norwegian registry. This is not sort of a political statement, although I am sort of saying no. On the point of 2 here, working with the ccNSO develop recommended best practices for technical aspects of dynamics management in ccTLDs, I would like to sort of raise a point that has been heavily discussed both inside and outside the ccNSO and recommend that you put in a "non-binding" before "best practices" because we have had lots of discussions about binding policies versus non-binding.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Hilde. I agree. It is a language thing, often, that in some -- if you are not -- if you are not a native English speaker, you don't always understand that best practices means simply that's what we think is the best you can do rather than that's what we think you must do. So if we could insert "non-binding," that would be great.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Anyone else? Olivier?

>>OLIVIER GUILLARD: Re-echoing, the same point that I addressed in the conf call, actually, how much would it cost precisely? Would it be a costly activity of ICANN to develop such a thing and work with the ccNSO to develop such a thing, to develop best practice for aspect of best management practice in cc's, would it be costly?

>>KURT PRITZ: The truest answer is, I don't know. My guess would be the answer is no because it is a coordination task. In other words, I think there are already best practices that are adopted because everybody is operating a TLD with great reliability and so the facilitation -- the ICANN -- not ICANN staff necessarily, but the ICANN forum provides the forum for sharing best practices that already exist so they can be recognized and adopted or disagreed on slightly in this sort of collaboration. Does that answer your question?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Eberhard.

>>DR. EBERHARD LISSE: We are at the moment from the ccNSO, we have a task force that actually is writing something down. But I most confess whenever I talk to people, we encounter serious objections in any way if this is of any force or binding because it is bilateral relations between the operator and the Internet, so to say. But at the moment, I do not see any cost coming. We have been so far not after any money.

>>KURT PRITZ: Thank you.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Anyone else? Okay. Kurt, is there anything else that you want to cover?

>> KEITH DAVIDSON: Further down the page.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Further down the page there is more? Oh, here we go. Oh, great. Okay. That's fine by me. Don, did you have a question?

>> DON HOLLANDER: I would just like to encourage ICANN to work with the star TLD associations in the various regions to achieve those.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, I think that's a very valid point. To mention perhaps the regional organizations as well as...

Olivier? No, that's fine.

>>OLIVIER GUILLARD: Sorry to come back on the previous point. Could you say a word of why is it strategical for ICANN to develop ccTLD best practices with the ccNSO and DNS management?

>>KURT PRITZ: I think the ccNSO is the right forum, and I think that best practices is in concert with ICANN's role to -- you know, narrow technical mission to ensure stability and security of the Internet. So there's some TL --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Kurt, anything else from you?

>>KURT PRITZ: Cool. No, thank you very much for your time, again, and if there are other questions, I'm the only pritz@icann.org, so --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So just to be clear, you'll take -- you're still taking input --

>>KURT PRITZ: Yeah.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: -- by e-mail or comment form today and tomorrow?

>>KURT PRITZ: Well, that's true. And then in a larger sense, I think that ICANN should always somehow be in a form of taking input. You know, this -- while this is --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sure. But with respect to --

>>KURT PRITZ: For this, yes.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: -- getting the board to sign off on the plan on Friday, then --

>>KURT PRITZ: Yeah.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Excellent. Yes. One more question. Hilde.

>>HILDE THUNEM: Just a small informal question of: Do I have to formally make the input or can I take it as received input on nonbinding best practices? I just have to know whether I have to send an e-mail or not.

>>KURT PRITZ: No, you do not.

>>HILDE THUNEM: Thank you.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It's just as easy for Kurt to ignore your e-mail as it is for him to --

>>KURT PRITZ: That's right.

>>HILDE THUNEM:.

[Speaker is off microphone]

>>KURT PRITZ: Or much too busy taking your complaints to have time for your suggestions.

 

>>HILDE THUNEM: [Speaker is off microphone]

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Thank you very much indeed, Kurt. Thanks a lot. okay. We're going to move on now to the session on updates from ccTLDs. Now, I don't know, there's a -- is an update coming from Brazil from dot br? Ah! Excellent. Would you like to take the first -- the first spot and come up and do that? That would be great. And then I'll do -- then we'll have recently from dot uk, and then we'll have New Zealand and I think that's -- mx, mx, mx. Mx is here. Yes, you are here. It's just that Oscar is not here, so you tend that Mexico is not here, because it's not Oscar.

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Oh, and sorry, yes, yes, yes, I promised.

>>FREDERICO NEVES: Okay. Good afternoon. My name is Federico Neves. I know I -- we have 15 minutes, yeah?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah.

>>FREDERICO NEVES: Yeah. It's just a quick presentation.

This year have been a pretty busy year at the dot br registry, so I will attempt to talk only on the updates we have been doing this year.

So this year, we have introduced EPP model at the dot br registry. Actually, it's a mixed model of we maintained the monolithic registry and still provide direct services to customers, but we have the -- it's a kind of registry/registrar interface, and customers have the ability to choose continuing with direct services or service through what we call service provider, an ISP. It's something that we have been actually doing in practice since the beginning, but now we have an automated interface.

If a customer or an owner of a domain name selects to have a service provider to handle their registration, actually it's exclusively done by the service provider. But we still keep some out-of-band operations, like deletion or transfer of domain names. This still needs to be done directly with the registry, between the registrant and the registry.

And it's a TIC registry.

Regarding the difference between the dot br registry and the traditional registry/registrar model, it's actually -- it's -- there are some other registries around the world that use this kind of mixed model, like the switch with dot ch is almost the same.

We have a strong relationship between registry and registrant in the operations I have already talked, the deletion and transfer, and it's made out of band. It's not available through EPP.

Even the selection of a new kind of service provider or registrar, there is no process of losing registrar and gaining registrar, so there is no ambiguity or fights among registrants and service providers. You talk directly to the registry using the interface and select a new customer.

We do have some rules to not allow like registrants to abuse registrars or service providers, so in some situations the registrants are not allowed to change service providers or he's only allowed to get back to the -- to the registry, the direct relationship.

We do have a strong concept of entity. Normally in the generic gTLDs, you don't have that, so if an entity has like 25 domain names, it normally has 25 information of ownership spread out all over these 25 domain names with different information and contact and so on. This is something we have kept in this way since the beginning, and we know some other big registries are moving to this kind of model.

The main goal of the interface is to -- to provide automated interface for the service providers and to use domain name as only an incident to the chain of services on the Internet. And the strategy service provider, we don't have like an accreditation procedure and you don't have to pay any fee for us. You only need to pass a technical certification procedure. We provide a development kit that is written in C++ and it's available for download. It implements EPP plus our extensions. The relationship between the -- between the -- the legal relationship between the registry and the service provider, it's only to guarantee that the minimum clause of the service provisioning is -- it's present on the relationship between service providers and customers. Actually domain name owners. Because I don't know, probably most of the countries, the law of the -- for services are quite strict here in Brazil, so we need to do that this way.

And we do have an out-of-band administrative interface for service -- I will talk registrars, okay? It's easier for you guys.

But for EPP account recovery, reports regarding registrants, domain names, expiring renewals, history of registrations/renewals transactions.

The dot br protocol extensions that we have are basically extensions to the contact mapping, through a unique external identifier. It is basically the finance ministry document here in Brazil for natural persons and companies.

Responsible contact handle and not designated attorney-at-law. Like for foreign companies that you need to have legal representation here in the country, so we have options for that.

And we have an extension for domain name -- for the domain mapping throughout subordination of the domain names to the registrant object. There's a very strong relationship between the owner of the domain name and the domain, and extra ticket support, it's not an on-line EPP registration services. We extensively use the pool mechanism to -- so you make the request and it's -- it's kept pending, and so we process the queue of registrations, you know, on a certain periodicity, so when the domain name is without any pending and it's registered, you receive a message through e-band, through EPP using the pool mechanism telling you that it's finished.

We provide auto-renews and an extension for our so-called release process, a presentation that I gave some meetings in the past regarding the procedures that we use for the release of domain names that have been removed by nonpayment or cancellations requested by the customers.

We have more information for the protocol. It's available in English because we are trying to push this through the IETF, and it's the first link. And the second link, it's information for ISPs or registrars. Unfortunately, it is only Portuguese.

Anyway, this is the adoption rate. It's not all that big, but we -- the service is now six months in production, and we already have almost five -- 4.4% of the domain names are coming through EPP and we expect this to grow and to achieve near 10% in one year.

As in most of the countries, we have like a small amount of service providers who represent most of the domain name registrations and we have a good adoption of these companies, so it's been quite successful.

So next thing, the DNS QuasiOnLine publication. We moved from -- if you guys have any questions or if you prefer to interrupt me and make questions in the end.

 

>>PATRICIO POBLETE: [Speaker is off microphone] About the registry/registrar relationship, how do you handle pricing? Do you give a special prices to registrars? And that's one question. And the other one is: Do you -- since you are receiving registrations directly at the registry, and also registrars are offering registrations, so you are competing against them, how do you handle the pricing?

>>FREDERICO NEVES: Yeah, we actually are not competing against them, but I will answer the first question.

The price is a little bit lower because we -- as we have a prepaid model with the -- with the service providers, we don't charge them the -- the billing costs that we have.

Today, we only accept one billing model. In Brazil, there is a document, it's like an identified deposit in the banking system, and this has a cost, and we discounted this cost and a little bit more to the -- to the service providers.

And the dot br Steering Committee and even the dot br registry don't think of domain names as a business. As only incident to the domain name -- not to the domain name industry but to the -- all the chain of services. So we don't see domain names as -- how can I say -- a product. But as something that needs to be used for other services in the Internet, like domain name hosting and e-mail addresses and other things. And we don't provide these services. It's only plain old registrations at the dot br registry. We don't provide -- how can I say -- certificates and anything -- so on.

I'm not the correct person to talk about this, actually, because I'm the technical operator, but the Steering Committee guys can answer in these areas. But we have been quite successful in this market here in the country.

>>JAY DALEY: Hi. Jay Daley from Nominet. What are you hoping to do with your extensions to EPP through the IETF?

>>FREDERICO NEVES: We are only pushing them as informational documents, but we have -- the implementation is -- it's following the last drafts that we have produced.

But we don't -- actually, now, at IETF, we don't have a working group working in this area, so it's an individual submission and needs to go through all the process on the EITF, and this it normally takes like two years to pass something like that.

>>JAY DALEY: The nonexistent working group managed to get some new RFCs published recently, so --

>>FREDERICO NEVES: Oh, actually we -- the nonexistent working group -- basically the author of the old RFCs are trying to push the biz documents and we had an RFC in the end of last year of extensions to the -- to carry DS records and keys for DNSSEC, but we -- we are trying to push as individual submissions.

>>JAY DALEY: Okay.

>>FREDERICO NEVES: And actually, these both documents at the IETF came through individual submissions.

>>JAY DALEY: Do you think now from your experiences with EPP that you're ready to sit down with others and start looking for a complete replacement to EPP? One that might actually be easy to extend?

>>FREDERICO NEVES: No, the model fits well in ours and we did only two small extensions. The documents are quite small, and we don't have like -- our model is a little bit tricky, but it work out. We could work out, if you...

Let me continue. I have some more slides.

And the DNS QuasiOnLine it's -- until three months ago, we used to push zones three times a day, every 8 hours, and now we are pushing every 30 minutes. We built some piece of software called the XFR demon and it's obviously a much more efficient method of pushing zones, because we -- in a -- statistics show us that in a 24-hour period, normally the delegation-only zone changes in our case less than 1%, so pushing only difference is very much better, especially when you have very far servers and the big fat pipe problem of TCP. It's -- it's in place, so the only solution is to push less data.

We have included, in our provisioning system, a journal of changes, and this journal is provided by the objects that maintain the persistence of the information.

The journal is read every 30 minutes, and we do optimize it once a day XFR and every 30 minutes AIXFR. And the model was designed for the future. In the end I will explain why.

Regarding the DNS provisioning system, we did a great upgrade this year. We still have five delegated servers, three inside the country, Sao Paulo here and Brazil yeah, and two outside, currently United States and Greece. We are moving all these machines -- some are already clusters. But we are moving to two clusters of machines. We have the so-called anycasting to local. It's multiple routers, switches, and servers doing some kind of balancing. We have two new sites entering production: DENIC substituting Greece, we exchange machines with them; and the Korea NIC.

We did one million domain names a little bit ago, on 24th of October. Our net growth is near 170k new domain names each year in the last two years. This year is a 20% growth in domain names.

The curve on the left, it's the yearly curve, and on the right is since 2000 -- 1996.

We do have on-line statistics of all this data in the URL below.

And the curve is not completely linear because we -- we do domain name removals on Mondays, so it's -- there is a lot of bumps, but, yes, our billing process is weekly. And so the last, but not least, part is it's almost 50 seconds past my time, but anyway, the last part it's only a quick overview of the -- our DNSSEC deployment. It's just a quick overview. The full presentation will be given at the ccTLD technical workshop on Thursday, and basically what you guys see here is our XFR demon with all the boxes from the right beside the signer. It's the -- what we actually have in production now, and we put a new box called the signer, and the only thing that we are doing more -- that we are doing now is that the XFR demon, we have information that it reads from the journal or from the zone, maintains -- or creates -- actually, our DNSSEC deployment, fully DNSSEC biz implementation. We have nothing different from them, so the XFR demon maintains the NSEC chain of -- in --!

from what we -- he-- it reads from the journal or the database and sends this as quasi-wide format records to the signer. The signer receives these as almost opaque data, sign it, and return it to the XFR demon. And this is done as the same way as the -- the way we do now, so we only sign increments, and this is passed to the alternative servers, actually.

So I will give a full presentation about this and our DNSSEC deployment activity on Thursday, so that's it. If you guys have any questions, I will be --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. Thank you. If we can maybe take the questions to the -- to the technical workshop on Thursday.

>>FREDERICO NEVES: Okay.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That would be great. Thanks very much for that. Lesley, do you want to come up?

>>LESLEY COWLEY: Okay. Thank you, Chris. Apologies. I feel as though I'm talking rather than a lot today. It wasn't my intent to have a lot of air time, and I will try and be quiet tomorrow. But I did volunteer to make a presentation on the latest developments in dot uk because there's been rather a lot of them that may well be of interest to cc's as well.

I'm going to talk briefly about the latest developments covering the dot uk market, the scope of Nominet policy, technical excellence and service excellence, and endeavor to get that all within my 15 minutes.

Looking at the -- the U.K. market, we have some statistics for you there because I know we're all fascinated by statistics and percentages, but it's fair to say there's a very healthy U.K. market.

And one of the things we've been really focusing on recently is: Why is that?

We have a very healthy economy in the U.K., a very healthy e-business growth, increasing broadband penetration, and dot uk itself, as a brand, has become increasingly well-known.

Quite interesting that we talked about IDNs earlier, but influenced by cat. I have part of the U.K. such as Wales and Scotland that are now interested in either their own gTLD or second-level domain under dot uk, so my learning point from that -- and I believe it's quite good to try to give other people some of the hindsight things that we have now realized in time -- it's really important to develop a better understanding of the market and the factors and issues that may well develop and impact upon your future growth or, indeed, negatively on your future growth. And I think it's very easy when you're working in this sort of environment to focus on today's problems, and they tend to leave little time for thinking about the future. And that's a learning point for us.

The week before last, we changed the -- the scope of Nominet, and that was a significant thing for us. The scope 10 years ago, set up by Willie Black, who a number of you know and I worked with for many years, was very, very narrow, for good reason. We didn't have the trust of the U.K. community. It was very much viewed as an experiment at that time and, however, it did mean that we were unable to respond to people who were asking us to do other things. In particular, to run the registry for U.K. ENUM that will be put out for bids shortly.

And unfortunately, part of the constitution meant that we needed to get a 90% vote in favor of that change.

I would not recommend a 90% vote in favor of anything in future.

[Laughter]

>>LESLEY COWLEY: It does sound a bit witty, yes.

It was there to protect us, but we then found it actually limited our future. But thankfully, after a great deal of work, we got that change through with a very slim margin.

And one of the things that influenced that, and I think may well become an issue for other cc's, is about registrar participation.

Generally, in member votes that we have, in registrar votes that we have, we have about 10% participation. It took a lot of work, a lot of phone calls, and a lot of e-mails, to double that to 20%, and what we see is that people generally, if you are running things reasonably well and they believe they don't need to interfere, over time they stop participating and, therefore, when you need them to participate, that's very much a challenge.

So anyway, we made the change. We will be bidding for other opportunities when they arise. We're very excited about that internally.

So my hindsight take from that is really check your own constitution and just be mindful if it may actually will -- may actually prevent you from making changes in the future, and don't, for goodness sake, build in a 90% requirement.

Looking at policy in the U.K., we have now got a much faster policy development process. Like many people, our policy development process is quite well established and has developed over time, and the natural tendency is then to add things to that, as opposed to subtract, and so we found that it was taking a very, very long time to actually implement and develop policy on some quite simple issues.

Anyway, we are discussing IDNs. That discussion is still going on. I think it started about 18 months ago. We are consulting on improvements to our dispute resolution service, and I highlight that because I know a number of you have used our own service as a basis for your own.

In particular on that, the discussion is about generic names. We're seeing an increase of disputes on generic names.

And we have a number of discussions planned, including phishing, access limits, registration periods of longer than two years, which follows the gTLD developments, domain naming and dropcatching. There is a very long policy work list and my learning is that the number of policy issues you have will always exceed your policy capacity. And so that's why it's important to look at the process and see how that can be, acquisition possible, but equally can still involve your community in that process.

Technical excellence is another area of much development for us, and thankfully, because I'm not a techie, I have Jay Daley in the audience here who is presenting on Thursday as well. Be nice to him because it's his first ICANN meeting.

And Jay has been leading a whole series of developments on the technical side towards Nominet becoming a center of technical excellence. And just a flavor of those are highlighted there for you.

My learning point as the chief exec is that technical excellence is something you never actually get to. It is a moving target and it does require a significant and ongoing investment of both time, money and end resource. And if anything, I think Nominet uninvested in our technical capacity in previous years and that's something that very much takes a lot of catching up and I think we have caught up, but there is still considerable work there.

Service excellence is another major theme for us. We have been running customer satisfaction surveys for a number of years which basically ask the normal "are you happy with the service you get" questions. But one of the developments we have implemented over the last couple of years is to develop what we call an index and that looks to link the issues that are most important to your customers with how happy they are about them.

People may have an issue, for example, about how your Web site looks but it may actually be more important to them to be able to navigate that Web site. So we try to capture the various things that are important to our customers, and those are the ratings that we have as a result.

We have also introduced a thing that's called a mystery shopper. I don't know how many of you are familiar with that. But basically that means somebody rings up our support team or e-mails our support team pretending to be a customer and goes through the entire query process and we provide a script for that so the people aren't aware that this is a mystery shopper.

And then they are able to give direct feedback to the staff and to the management as to the experience they had as a mystery shopper which has been very, very useful for us in terms of identifying ways in which we can improvement and, for example, one of the major things that came out of that is the speed at which people answer the phone, but also how friendly how the staff sound seems to be more important in some respects with the quality of advice that they got, which was quite interesting.

We've also won a number of awards. I am not highlighting those in order to brag about them, of course, I could do. But I think there has been quite an opportunity that maybe we missed as a company before in terms of benchmarking your company against others and seeing where you can improve.

But, also, the effect that winning an award or being short listed for an award can actually have on the staff and the team concerned and how it actually makes them recognize that the work we are doing is of a standard comparable to other companies in the U.K. and best practice.

And we invest a lot in staff training, external courses is in the region of ?,800 per staff member for those of you that like that sort of benchmark. And that excludes in-house training, and we do a significant amount of in-house training.

For me, there is a key learning here that the more you invest in staff, the more you ensure staff motivation, the easier it is to improve the satisfaction of your customers. And that may be a bit obvious to people but it took us a while to get those dynamics and that process happening. Thank you.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Lesley. Anyone want to ask a question? Olivier. Hang on. Can we have the microphone, please.

>>OLIVIER GUILLARD: A quick one about staff training. With this budget, how many days per person does it mean?

>>LESLEY COWLEY: It varies because the training rate the organizations charge varies depending on the training. I would say probably an average of about three to four days per member of staff on external courses. Internal courses is probably at least the equivalent. I would say about an average of a total of six to eight days a year.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Bart?

>>BART VASTENBURG: Lesley, thanks for an excellent presentation. There is a lot going on within Nominet. That's absolutely clear. And you said there is a lot being invested as well. I assume you meant you were referring to technology. There is a lot going on and I assume that has impact on staff and workload as well.

Could you tell us a bit more about how that workload relates to the number of staff and whether you are understaffed, overstaffed? How you see the normal tendencies? One of the things we are looking at as well in our organization.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: I may will give a different answer than staff, I suspect. We generally do not wish to overwork our staff. We do not have a culture that means you have to work extremely long hours unless you are the chief executive. We don't have people working too late in the office unless they really, really want to.

I have some my highly motivated staff. If you look at Nominet's staff numbers of about, say, four years ago we had 135 staff. We now have 120 staff and that number may very well reduce over time. And what we have been doing is trying to take many more of the processes online and actually only use staff where we really need an element of human judgment in order to provide a customer service that you need a real person to be involved.

So actually, what we have tried to do, Bart, by automation and by taking things online is to decouple the growth of the registry with the growth in numbers of staff because that's not necessarily a thing that scales. You may remember Nominet used to issue paper certificates. And I had my manager of paper certificates when we did them, come to me and say if the growth in the register continues as it currently does, I will need 400 staff. And we realized then that this really would not scale.

>>BART VASTENBURG: Which of the activities were you able to make a quick win with respect to staff reduction and increase of efficiency by taking human hands off?

>>LESLEY COWLEY: There is no quick wins, Bart. There is no quick wins. I think what we have been trying to do over a period of time is automate where we can automate and take things online where we can and focus the activity of staff on the things that need real people to do. But I am happy to discuss with you further.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. Patricio, last question, before we move on.

>>PATRICIO POBLETE: The mystery shopper sounds very interesting and perhaps something we might think of doing. For that, would it be possible to know more about how it was done? I don't mean now but perhaps if the details would be available, like what kind of a script did you use? Did you simulate different kinds of customers? Like a customer that doesn't have a clue or an obnoxious customer and so on?

>>LESLEY COWLEY: We got our fair share of all of those categories, as you can imagine. Yes. Many of the customers that contact Nominet do not have a clue. And so, yes, we did some of those. So, yeah, happy to share further information with you by all means.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: All right. El.

>>DR. EBERHARD LISSE: I can see very clearly I have never phoned you. [laughter]

>>LESLEY COWLEY: Then please do.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you very much indeed, Lesley. We will move on to New Zealand and then Mexico. Dot nz.

>>NICK GRIFFIN: Hi, I'm Nick Griffin. I'm from the registry, so I don't generally comment on policy in nz space because we have a domain name commissioner that has the exclusive right and I live in fear of commenting out of step. But she is not here, so I feel 9,000 kilometers makes me relatively safe until Monday.

A few things going on in the dot nz space. Just in June, Debbie, the domain name commissioner launched the dispute resolution service and it is based on the Nominet. And if you go on Debbie's Web site, you will see that she is given some praise and recognition for that. It is quite economic. If you have got a dispute for a dot nz name, you can lodge that for 1800 New Zealand dollars. That's about 1,000 U.S. And that takes you through and she has got a very high caliber of mediators and also judges to assist her in that process.

So far there has been five decisions to date, which are published. And you can find those on dnc.org.nz Web site.

The other thing that has happened in her arena, we have launched dot parliament.nz. That's slightly different to the dot government. There was a recognition in the parliament arena that there was a difference between parliamentarians and government organizations.

Numbers seem to be exciting for everyone here. We hit 250,000 names. And similar to dot br we have been going -- we have started to increase our percentages over the last couple of years. I went on earlier today and I saw that in our early days, we had percentage growths of 1500% and then we slowed down to around 28 and then dropped down to around 18. We are currently running at 23 this year, 23%, that is. So we are pretty excited about that.

We had a bit of a celebration for 250,000, so I understand when you hit a million or 10 million in some cases that it is a bigger party than what we do.

At the registry, we've done -- we've had quite a busy time. We run a fairly small staff. There is four of us. And we have done a roll-out of -- replaced all our hardware in the last six months, and that's been really quite good because that's improved our performances on our application on the Z registry system.

We have also undertaken a full technical review of the SRS which is the technical Z registry system and also the DNS. The registry system, we went -- as part of that process we went out and found all of our registrars, all of our key stakeholders to comment. We went out and interviewed them. Not all of them because we didn't go offshore. We invited those at the Wellington ICANN meeting to come talk to us and several of them did.

The key findings really is a reasonably big report that we have got. The key findings are that the registry system will, with minor amendments, will take us through 2011 which was our goal.

That said, we have got some work and further investigation into such things as EPP. Do we consider doing a bolt-on similar to Brazil? So we are going to be undertaking a review of that. Our registrars, interestingly enough in New Zealand, said they didn't want to go down that track generally because they have already done the investment. And the offshore registrars that are involved with us didn't have a desire to move to the EPP. That's for the dot nz registry.

We are republishing the SRS on this Friday in Open Source. If you want to buy a really good system for free, just see me and I will give you the link.

And XN-- has had a lot of air play here in the last few days, and there has been a recent policy change and we have taken that you are no longer permitted to do that. You can't have a name with XN-- and we have disabled that function.

We are about to rollout -- I have just received today the final draft of a proposal to roll out a project on IPv6 so we are looking -- I am looking forward to getting into that early next year.

There has been a lot of play on the NICWIC side between the NICWIC corporators. They are in two minds on the value of v6. We believe as an organization that our role -- one of our key functions is to be an enabler. We have to be there before they might require it.

We have a continuous improvement program and culture in New Zealand, and as part of that, we are promoting a benchmark pilot focusing on DNS and DNS architecture. I have spoken to several people here. If there are other people that would like to talk to me about that specifically, please come and tap me on the shoulder in the next couple of days, before Thursday afternoon. I will be happy to talk to you about it. Thank you very much.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. Wonderful. Any questions? Okay. Thank you very much, indeed. And, lastly, but not leastly, Mexico.

>>FRANCISCO ARIAS: Hello. My name is Francisco Arias. I work for NIC Mexico. I am here as a proxy for Oscar as I am the technical side and this is not a technical presentation.

So just let me give you a brief background of what is this about. Since 2003 in Mexico, we have been working on commercialization strategies in order to increase the number of domain names in registry. In Mexico, they -- the situation is quite different from many of the big registries, I guess, like U.K., dot br in which the presence of the ccTLDs are quite big and even better than the generic.

In Mexico, there is quite a, let's say, competence. I mean, we are side by side the generics and the dot mx domains.

Since 2003 we began this efforts and have been having an increase in the number of domains since then.

Now I am going to talk about the joint effort we did with dot br -- I mean, dot org. PIR, which is the sponsor organization of dot org, came to us. We talk about doing a joint effort marketing campaign in Mexico. This is in order to learn how -- to do an awareness strategy in Mexico about dot mx and dot org domain. We try to work together as we are one of the first efforts between ccTLD and gTLD to work together.

We did a premarketing campaign survey in order to see how the market knew about how much -- did they know about domains, dot org and dot mx. Then we did the campaign on October and we are currently now running second market research in order to see the results.

As I was saying, since 2003 we began doing this combination efforts. Since then we have seen that one of the main issues we have in Mexico is that the majority of the people don't even know what domain name is so we have to work in an education -- more in an education on the market before try to have the register of the domain name.

For us, the dot org/dot mx is quite small percentage of the registration we have. Mostly we have domains in dot com/dot mx. So this was the -- how you say? The ambient in which we run this for. Now I am going to pass the microphone to Christine from PIR.

>> CHRISTINE BRUNDAGE: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Christine Brundage from Public Interest Registry. I am business development consultant. Thank you for inviting PIR to your ccNSO meeting. We are happy to be here. As many of you know, PIR is the registry for the dot org domain. We are the non-profit organization serving the global non-commercial community. There are now 5.2 million dot org domain registrations worldwide with over 40% of the data registrations outside of North America. Part of our mission is to educate and empower the global non-commercial community. It is our privilege to partner with dot mx on this initiative in an effort to raise awareness and gain a better understanding of the Mexican market.

First, I would like to begin with our joint -- go back one. First I would like to begin with our joint campaign objectives. It is threefold, to learn and form and educate. We wanted to learn how a ccTLD and a gTLD could work together on a joint marketing campaign. In regards to dot org, we wanted to know our dot org brand awareness was in Mexico.

In addition we wanted to inform the non-commercial community in Mexico of the dot org and dot org/dot mx domains and how they could be used for their organizational goals. Finally, we wanted to educate the consumer about the Internet domain market and that there are choices available and benefits associated with dot org and dot org/dot mx domains for the non-commercial community.

Now that we have discussed the objectives, I would like to go over in detail the campaign overview.

We began our campaign by conducting, as Francisco, said a market research study in the largest cities of Mexico, Mexico City, Monterrey, and Guadalajara. The study was divided by the type of organization. We had small to medium and large size businesses, non-profit organizations and government users. And the purpose of the research study was to gain understanding of brand awareness with dot org and dot org/dot mx. Specifically we wanted to know what the interviewees knew about domains, which domains they utilized and what they associated with each domain.

Advertisements were placed in the local Mexican media Web sites, local newspapers and we also did a sponsorship of the Latin American -- of a Latin American conference in Mexico. And we are currently now conducting the post-campaign marketing research to see the effectiveness of the program.

This is an example of the advertisement that we did for the campaign -- the design we wanted to be a very clear and direct message. I will read the advertisement for you.

It says, (speaking Spanish),

The global home of non-profit organizations on the Internet. The middle section there reads: (Speaking Spanish), today good actions require more than just good intentions.

The bottom portion, dot org/dot mx, (speaking Spanish), there is always a dot mx domain that adapts to your needs.

And the bottom section, if your organization works to improve the world, begin by letting the world know. Register your organization with either a dot org or a dot org/dot mx to make sure everyone knows about your organization.

And then from there from each logo they can then be sent through the NIC Mexico Web site and the PIR Web site where there would be a landing page set up and they can get more information about each domain.

And, finally, after doing the campaign, we have come up with many advantages of doing a co-marketing campaign with NIC Mexico. First, it is a cost-effective method of obtaining valuable market data by pulling together resources. It is a great chance to market your ccTLD. Tying back our primary objective to educate, we can increase domain awareness and usage by promoting ccTLDs and gTLDs. Building confidence and trust around having an online presence and teaching our audience that there are domain name options and that there is value to having a domain as well as finding the correct domain suited for your organization.

And, finally, we would like to thank NIC Mexico for working with us on this initiative. We have learned a great deal about Mexico. It has been a pleasure working with them. That concludes the presentation. Thank you very much.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. Anyone have any questions? Lesley. First, Don. No, not, Don. Okay, Lesley, then Don.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: Just a quick question. I appreciate you are still looking at how the campaign affected awareness. But did you have any statistics on the number of users that clicked through - following the online ad that you just said and whether they actually translated into registrations for either of you?

>> CHRISTINE BRUNDAGE: Since the landing page would direct the user to our PIR Web site which, of course, we can't register a domain through us. NIC Mexico would be the Web site that could track those results. I am not sure they are in the position to have that information yet since it just ended at the end of October.

>> FRANCISCO ARIAS: I know for sure we have the information. But as I say, I am not the one that should give this presentation. I'm sorry, I don't have the information.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Maybe we could e-mail Oscar.

>> CHRISTINE BRUNDAGE: We can make a note of that.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: And perhaps get that information from Oscar. Don, you had a --

>>DON HOLLANDER: I had two questions. The first one is the same one, did it work. And the second one, in terms of dot org, did you land into a Spanish registration page or did you just go into your English?

>> CHRISTINE BRUNDAGE: Actually, it coincided. We launched our Web site in seven different languages, of course, Spanish being one of them. We had the landing page in Spanish and, of course, they can view all the pages of our Web site in Spanish as well.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Anyone else? Okay. Thank you very much. If you could ask Oscar if that information is available, that would be brilliant.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. Okay. We've got a couple -- just a couple of more things to do. Is George Sadowsky in the room, by any chance?

Okay. So there are two things left. One is a presentation from George, a brief presentation from George on the Nominating Committee and their -- their goals for the next 12 months, and he's due here any minute, so hopefully he will arrive and be able to make that presentation.

The final one is by way of a favor. Afilias -- Afilias has sponsored lunch for the ccNSO for a very long time, and on this particular meeting, because Nominet were celebrating their 10th birthday and -- et cetera, et cetera, Nominet took the lunch and we're not actually doing a full day tomorrow, we're doing a half day. But Roland asked if he could come and talk to us anyway, and I said yes.

So Roland, if you want to come up and do your Afilias presentation, that would be fine. And then hopefully by the time that's over, George will be with us and we can move on to the NonCom.

This man needs no introduction to the ccNSO.

[Laughter]

>>ROLAND LaPLANTE: Well, I'm glad you all had a good lunch anyway today.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It was very nice.

>>ROLAND LaPLANTE: And hopefully we'll be back in the lunch business in Lisbon.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Oh, sorry. Before you -- just before you start, could I just ask anyone who has made a presentation on the slides, could they please e-mail their presentation to Donna? That's Donna.austin@icann.org. Donna.austin -- A-u-s-t-i-n- @icann.org. So that we can put them up on the Web site. Thank you very much.

>>ROLAND LaPLANTE: Okay. I know we didn't sponsor the lunch this time, but we have -- we have a makeup toy and Luciene and Margareth are going to pass those out as I'm talking. So it's a USB hub that's kind of handy that you may find useful.

Anyway, thank you again, Chris, for just a couple minutes to go through --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Pleasure.

>>ROLAND LaPLANTE: -- a few slides about Afilias.

For those of you who don't know, Afilias is a Global Registry Services provider. We provide -- we really are a back-end provider. We don't want to do the fronted stuff. We don't want to do policy for you. We just want to run the back end and do the DNS and so forth.

We've earned a fairly positive reputation. We power the third and fourth largest gTLDs. We work with PIR to support dot org. We're the registry operator for info and aero. We do the back end for mobi which just launched and just passed about 300,000 names. And we're also going to be the back-end operator for dot Asia when dot Asia launches in 2007.

We're doing a couple of new things. I know you talked about IDNs this morning. We already have about nine scripts in the market -- German and a number of other ones -- that Afilias is supporting, including Korean. We're going to be launching some INDIC scripts as part of our dot in support in the first quarter as well, so we're gaining some experience with IDNs that will probably be helpful in your businesses as we go along.

We're also doing some work in the DNS area to strengthen the -- our ability to deliver reliable secure DNS, and there will be more news about that later on.

We now have 10 ccTLDs under contract. This is the list. You can chat with your compadres to see what kind of service we provide, and I'm confident that they will provide a positive report on the kind of service we deliver.

The way we do that is through a -- a system called Flex Registry, where all of our ccTLDs except dot India, dot in, run on a common platform. That gives the registrars which are doing virtually all the volume for us an easy one-connection, one-financial-account means of handling a lot of different ccTLDs. Many registrars now get their names through Namestore, and what we're working to do is to create a number of ccTLDs all available through one common platform that will be competitive to that offering.

But there are a lot of distribution channel benefits and I know one of your challenges is to get registrars to carry your domain and promote your domain, and we're trying to make it very easy for the registrars to do that.

It also has a number of registry benefits for you.

We're running world-class EPP technology, so you don't have the maintenance, development expense that's related to keeping current. We do near-realtime WHOIS updating. We have fast, really fast, updates to DNS. From the time a name is registered in our system to the time it's globally available is well within a minute now. We have a very secure DNS offering, and we offer very broad distribution.

Now, we can't make the registrars carry your domain, but we can make it easy for them to do that. We can give them the reasons why they ought to do that. And we're -- and we're seeing, across the domains that we support, increases in distribution all the time.

And we also have a complete reporting package that gives you all the information you need to maintain full control of your domain.

We're supporting nearly 300,000 ccTLD names now. You can see a little pop there where bz was added. We're selling about 10,000 names a month and would like to add yours to this -- to this sales trend.

2006 sales were dominated by Asia. Dot in is the biggest ccTLD we support. It's got a little over 200,000 names in it now, so that's the reason why Asia is so predominant here.

And we have over 70 registrars that are carrying at least one of our ccTLDs, and the little stars here are our top 15 registrars worldwide that are carrying the ccTLDs for us.

So we have a complete ccTLD support system. We'd like to work with you on it. It's a growing portfolio of business for us. We see this as an important part of our future, because the ccTLD segment of the market is growing now and is -- and I expect that it will continue to grow in the future.

It's a good option for you to consider. If you're looking at, you know, your next 5-year plan, where you're going to be, it's a variable-cost model for you. We don't charge up-front expenses, typically, and it's all typically on a -- on a per-domain-year basis.

We've got up-to-date secure SRS and DNS. We're investing millions of dollars all the time in order to provide state-of-the-art technology to keep it all current, and that lets you focus on policy and management of your domain and we can take care of the back end for you.

And that's it. I'm around all during the conference, as Steve Heflin is around all during the conference. Karim is not here at this particular time but there's a few other Afilias people here as well. So I look forward to seeing you in Lisbon and, in the meantime, call me.

[Laughter]

>>ROLAND LaPLANTE: Thank you.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Roland, thank you.

Two things. Don't expect to be able to make a presentation again without giving us lunch.

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: And secondly, you've made one fatal mistake because the chair of the ccNSO hasn't had his present yet.

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. Okay. Got that one sorted. Thanks very much indeed, Roland.

>>ROLAND LaPLANTE: Thank you very much.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. We actually have two more things we need to do, the first of which is George and Adam from the NonCom to come and give us a brief NonCom update, and then I'm going to ask Keith -- Keith Davidson from dot nz to come up to talk briefly about the strategic plan. George?

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: Well, thanks very much for having us here. The original schedule for this meeting had us presenting the 2006 NonCom report on Monday morning, and it was overwhelmed by the degree of interest in the president's strategic plan and the outcome of the Athens IGF meeting, so it will be -- so you don't have the background that I assumed you would have at this point, so we'll go over it very quickly and you'll get more of it if you come Thursday morning to the open forum.

The 2006 NomCom has just about finished its work. It remains to finalize a written document which will be available. I'm not sure exactly when, but probably a few weeks to, at most, a couple of months from now.

The results are in, and you probably know them all, and the result that is of particular interest here is that the NomCom has chosen Becky Burr to be the ccNSO representative from the NomCom for a period of two years? Three years? I forgot.

>>ADAM PEAKE: Three.

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: Three years. Is she here? No.

Every NomCom is different. There is something called a Nominating Committee in the ICANN bylaws, but in fact, there are individual nominating committees for each year, and at the end of the year, we destroy all the records associated with the -- with that particular Nominating Committee and start over the next year.

This year, I've been the chair. Adam Peake has been my associate chair. And the rest of the Nominating Committee has consisted of, this year, 22 members, 17 of whom vote, and the others -- the chair, the associate chair, don't vote, the liaisons do -- don't vote either, and the ccNSO representative to the Nominating Committee is a voting member. Who was that?

>>ADAM PEAKE: It was Mike Silber.

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: Mike Silber last year.

And this year you have nominated somebody else and I can't remember exactly who that is.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Christopher To from Hong Kong.

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: Ah, yes. Christopher To. Is he here?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: He will be on tomorrow.

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: Okay. We wanted to report to you really for a couple of reasons. One is that the NomCom process is composed of distinct phases. We try to make the -- the process outside of the selection process as transparent and visible as possible, but unfortunately there is a core process, which is the actual selection and evaluation of candidates, which is necessarily as opaque and confidential as we can make it. And that's just the way it is because of the nature of the task that we have.

So coming here gives you a chance to ask questions and make comments, if you choose to.

There will be another opportunity to do that, in that the board is obligated by bylaws to constitute a committee to review the NomCom process. It really should have happened this year, 2006, and what we hope is that that committee will be constituted at this meeting and will have 2007 to do its work.

So we're going to be open -- in just a moment we'll be open for discussion, comments, questions.

The other reason that we want to be here is that in the area of recruitment of candidates, it's a difficult thing because every appointment we make is going to demand a lot of time from the people we appoint.

We just heard from a -- a new board member that he had kept track of his hours, his involvement in ICANN, and it was taking him 44% of a normal workweek, fairly consistently, to do the job.

I don't know whether the ccNSO workload is that high, but I suspect it's nontrivial, and the same is true for the other constituencies. We need to find people who are willing to give up that amount of time and dedicate it to the ICANN activities. We also need people who are competent and who can -- who can do the job, and our sense is that the best source of those people are through people like you, who are already involved, who know your colleagues in -- in various fields, and who are in a position to evaluate informally, in your own minds, whether these people would be net additions and, in particular, net strong additions to the ICANN community.

So we ask you to consider yourself an active extension of the Nominating Committee in identifying those people and either encouraging them successfully to submit -- to self-nominate, to submit a statement of interest, or to tell us as soon as we're open for business, as soon as the 2007 committee is open for business, who they are and what you're recommending them for, and then we will do the work of -- of notifying them and trying to persuade them to nominate themselves to be acceptable -- to be accepted for consideration and evaluation for one of the -- one or more of the positions. Comments?

>>ADAM PEAKE: I suppose one obvious thing is that we do share something quite important in common with you and that's Donna.

[Laughter]

>>ADAM PEAKE: When she's not working for you, she's working for the Nominating Committee.

>>DONNA AUSTIN: Do you mind rephrasing that?

[Laughter]

>>ADAM PEAKE: No. And when she's not providing great, you know, support for the Nominating Committee and the ccNSO, she does a good job in SOX, too. But that's -- no, it's -- the most important message is really: Help with candidate recruitment and it's -- you know, if you ever have a bored moment in your meetings, spend some time brainstorming amongst yourselves on who could provide service to ICANN. Not just the ccNSO position or the board, which I think are the logical constant points you'd think about, but people that you know who would serve the GNSO or the ALAC, because we need that broad input of ideas of who could serve ICANN in these positions.

We do struggle to get candidates, so good people would be very welcome.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Anyone got any questions?

Okay. Well, we'll do our best.

>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: I hope so.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. Thank you, George. Thank you, Adam.

Keith, do you want to come and talk to the strat plan?

While I'm waiting for Keith, tomorrow morning we're starting at 9:30. Are -- do you want -- there was a dot fr presentation. Can we do that in the morning? Is that okay?

>>OLIVIER GUILLARD: [Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. Okay. Fine. So we're going to start at 9:30 tomorrow. We've got two sessions of the ccNSO members' meeting. That's a report from Eberhard on the ccNSO technical working group which will be starting at 9:30. Be here or you'll miss it.

And then --

 

>>DR. EBERHARD LISSE:

[inaudible].

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No, it won't.

And at 9:45, we have our usual IANA session. Kim will come and -- Kim and David will come and will talk about the IANA working group. Olivia will talk to us about the IANA working group.

Then we'll have a short break, and then the council will convene at 11:15 to have its usual meeting, which will probably not be particularly long. We'll work out what sort of resolutions, following today and tomorrow, we need to pass. We have a few things we need to -- we need to administratively deal with.

The -- today's proceedings, scribed, will be available on the Web site today? Tomorrow? Not until a week's time? Scribes don't know. They just scribe.

>>DONNA AUSTIN: Ask Steve.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Steve, when will the scribes' words be up on the Web site?

>>STEVE CONTE: Probably within 24 hours. Maybe a little bit after.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. So if you want to check what happened today, the bits you slept through, whatever, you can go and check on the Web site tomorrow.

Keith?

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Oh, thanks, Chris. Is this on?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: All right. Okay. I can't hear myself.

Just what we need at the end of the day is the possibility of a -- just a slight tickle to the strategic plan draft, and I was just sitting thinking and reflecting on the words on the ccNSO parts in the ICANN strategic plan and wondered whether it was all-encompassing enough. And I wondered if we could just go through a bit of a review of what's in the ICANN strategic plan and some suggested wording that I've come up with that could be vastly improved with a bit of input here. But certainly if there's any objection, I won't put it forward, but I wondered, if we could get some go-forward within the ccNSO, then it's vastly more likely that ICANN will take notice of a requested amendment.

So firstly, the first discussion point that we talked about when Kurt was in the room was working with the ccNSO to develop recommended nonbinding best practices for the technical aspects of the DNS management and ccTLDs. We were thinking of adding -- that's 3.2. We were thinking of adding some clauses like 3.2.1: "Work through existing ICANN organizational structures [ALAC, ccNSO, GAC, et cetera] to improve stakeholder participation." With a measure: "Representation from countries and ccTLDs by region and subregions."

Any comments?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sorry. I'm not clear. Is this an intended replacement?

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: No. It's an add-on.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: An add-on for --

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: It's a further clause under --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Under 2. Okay. I'm with you now.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: -- 2, so 2 is actually 3.2, so this would be 3.2.1.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I understand. Yeah. Okay. So this is an additional clause suggesting that as well as working with us in respect to the best practices thing, subject to Hilde's amendment, which we all think is a good idea, so that will be there, "Work through existing ICANN organizational structures to improve stakeholder participation."

Okay. And what -- I'm not clear what the -- what you mean by the "measure." What --

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Oh, just the goal. If they want to know if it was successful, that -- that you'd count the additional representation from --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. So in fact, the measure should be "increased representation from countries and ccTLDs by region or subregion."

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Yeah.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Any -- everyone okay? Anyone -- Lesley?

>>LESLEY COWLEY: The working through existing structures is already in the plan under Priority 3, Section 3. They haven't said how they're going to measure it, though, but it's already in there.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Which clause?

>>LESLEY COWLEY: It's Priority 3, I believe.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Oh, in the beginning of the -- at the beginning of the document?

>>LESLEY COWLEY: No, no, no. Under the section about increased international participation. It's already covered under that priority.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: Unless I'm missing something. Yes, above it. It's above it.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It's above there.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Above there?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It's above that bit.

No, that's his version at the top.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: This is the draft.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That's his draft. The bottom one is the original.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: [Speaker is off microphone]

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: 3? That piece there?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. "In each region with country code managers and operators, local Internet communities, including governments, private sector, and civil society." That one.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: [Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. So Lesley is suggesting that that effectively means the same thing as you've written down.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Okay. So that's gone.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. I mean, I think she -- I think that's probably right. I mean, you can -- you can argue about the exact wording, but fundamentally, it's delivering the same message, I think.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: [Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It's the overriding thing, yeah.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Okay.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So then we go to the next one.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: "3.2. In each region, working through the regional country code top level domain name associations" -- and actually name them so they're included and recognized in the strategic plan.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Where does that fit in the --

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: That would be under 3.2, so it would fit at this point here. I can't do anything with the strategic plan because it's --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No, I understand.

So you're saying that -- you're saying that -- you saying that you need to change your font size.

You're saying that that would sit underneath 2?

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Yeah.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: [Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sorry. Hang on. Lesley is saying that it's already, again, in the bit -- well, it is, but what Keith's saying is they should -- maybe they should be named.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Yeah.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: Yeah. Sorry. It is already referred to in the introduction to that section, but what it doesn't do is name the -- the associations.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Yeah. No, that was the specific desire was to get the names.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: Yeah. But you don't need to add it into the sections below, is what I'm saying.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Okay. But there would be no objection to adding the names?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Well, Eberhard will object because Eberhard doesn't believe that there is such a thing as the African -- whatever it's called -- TOLD, but I -- but then Eberhard, you --

>>DR. EBERHARD LISSE: [Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I know. I've heard it many times.

But I don't know that any ccNSO member would actually -- would actually object.

You better update your files, mate.

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: What have you got here? You're downloading. It says you're doing it.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: I'm not.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So I don't have a problem with it if -- I don't think anybody would -- I don't think anybody -- any of our members would object to that, because I don't think any of our members actually have an issue with the domain -- with the regional organizations.

The only thing I would say is that -- well, no. Actually, they are all recognized now by the ccNSO as being the regional organizations that we deal with, so that's okay.

Next?

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Okay. The next was a new clause particularly with respect to developing in undeveloped countries. "Work to develop the Internet technical skills to facilitate, enhance, the effective use of Internet services."

That's a kind of a bit of a broad one, I know, but ICANN is doing that through its regional operations. But it's not inherently mentioned in the cc context in the strategic plan.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. I think -- I don't think anyone can object -- I mean, as a lawyer, I would say if you're going to capitalize "Internet services," it better be defined somewhere, but leaving that aside, I think we can probably agree with that.

Yeah. No one's objecting, so --

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: No objections?

And 4 currently --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So this is big 4 or little 4? You mean big 4.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Big 4.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. Okay. So you're suggesting that wording is changed to "conduct outreach and education regarding the planned deployment of IDN TLDs, support ccNSO policy development efforts and best practice information."

So that's what you're suggesting we insert is "and best practice information."

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Yeah.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That's okay. That's all right.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: [Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes. Sorry. And "nonbinding," right. While it may be -- yeah, maybe that makes it too hard.

Okay. "Nonbinding." Excellent. That's a nice color. What color is that?

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: That's --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Oh, it's teal. See, it looks like teal up there but it's yellow on your -- does.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: It's definitely yellow.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Did you have one on the last one?

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Yeah. And "5. Encourage ccTLD participation and regional TLD organizations in the ccNSO," so it's not --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: You're going to need to spell "organizations" with a z if you want the spellcheck to knock it out. Yes, Lesley.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: [Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That one is?

>>LESLEY COWLEY: That is already elsewhere in the plan, I believe.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Okay.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: All right. So you can -- so you've got your ones marked in yellow, or whatever color it is --

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Yeah.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: -- are okay. If you want to put those -- if you want to make those suggestions, then we'll -- most -- we're going to support those.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: If it's elsewhere in the plan, Lesley, then --

>>LESLEY COWLEY: [inaudible]

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Okay. No, but -- no. See, Item 5 was your addition, I think, on the teleconference to encourage ccTLD participation.

>>LESLEY COWLEY: It was, indeed, but they've updated the plan since then that includes that suggested amendment.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Ah, okay.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: But with the regions --

>>LESLEY COWLEY: Sorry. You get a bit of a plan junkie here, but...

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So the regions are actually -- there's a -- there's a thing that says "Encourage participation in the regional organizations as well as the ccNSO." Is that right?

>>LESLEY COWLEY: There's certainly something that encourages participation in the ccNSO.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I know. So --

>>LESLEY COWLEY: We need to check the regional TLD organizations.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Fine. Well, so maybe it goes in, but we'll sort that out.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: No. That No. 5 at the bottom was, I thought, your latest incorporation in the plan, which just is "Encourage ccTLD participation in the ccNSO." It was just to add the word "and regional TLDs."

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. Okay.

>>LESLEY COWLEY:. [Speaker is off microphone]

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: So you'd be happy with that?

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Okay. All done.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. Paulos, you have a -- you have something? Hang on. Microphone. Thank you. Yes, Paulos.

>>PAULOS NYIRENDA: Thanks. Paulos from Malawi.

No. 5, I wonder -- I was wondering if we could insert "encourage and facilitate." Would it be too strong?

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: "Encourage and" --

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No. "Facilitate."

Well, yeah, I mean fine by me.

[Speaker is off microphone]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No, you don't get "facilitation." You want to move to the North American region. You're lucky you're even allowed in the room.

[Laughter]

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I'm comfortable with that. I think that's a perfectly legitimate role. I mean, we're not entirely sure what it means, but it's a perfectly legitimate role.

Yeah. Okay.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Okay. All good?

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah, I think so.

>>KEITH DAVIDSON: Sorry to have such a boring session at the end of the day. Thank you.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Keith.

Well, thanks, everybody. We've come to the end of the day. We -- we're on again tomorrow morning. Please come. Please be here for a sharp 9:30 start. And see you in the bar. Thanks.