No Such Weblog

Note: Alexander has also scribed the communiqué part of the session; his notes are available here.

Paul Twomey begins with communiqué. Extensive dialogue of GAC. Dedicated much time to developing a statement on ICANN reform. Attached in appendix to Communique. Dialogue with ccTLD community and ICANN. Joint working groups with ccTLD. Improve interaction between ICANN, local government, ccTLDs. Dot-info country names: Discussed implementation aspects. IPv6: GAC wants ICANN session on this. Consultation process: GAC needs to receive important documents in a timely fashion. Precise language in documents: Internet terms may not be understandable and subject to interpretation.

Statement on ICANN evolution and reform. GAC endorses principles behind ICANN’s foundation. Observations on blueprint and previous document. Note: Some members of GAC don’t support this; annexes to written statement. GAC satisfied with mission statement and core values. (Twomey then reads the mission and core value bullet points from the blueprint in full length.) Suggest revised core value 11; US govt disagrees with change suggestion. (…) Proposal for private-public partnership: Essential to ICANN’s future success. ccTLD principles. Majority of GAC members (except Germany, France) agrees that GAC is principal public policy body for discussion of ICANN. Relation to govts, public authorities crucial for ICANN’s success. Don’t want to fund ICANN, with exception of GAC secretariat. Beneficaries should pay. Funding crucial. Sufficient staffing important for policy-making and technical functions. (…) Board composition: Majority of GAC members supports non-voting liaison function for GAC chair. DE, FR, ES, CH don’t support participation of GAC liaison on board. DE: Smaller board. GAC encourages board to discuss better multi-way communication channels. No strong opinion on nominating committee. Internal corporate governance. FR, DE: Discomfort with nominating committee. DE: Evaluating individuals by blueprint criteria subjective. (…) Structure of nominating committee would mean to replace bottom-up by top-down. ES: Discomfort at having GAC delegate on nominating committee. (…) No view by intl. treaty organizations. GAC does not support public authority employees on board. Transparency, fairness, diversity, representation. Number of regions should be reexamined. Liaison to SOs and adv. committees. Most support voting (?) ex-officio liaison position of organisations on board. (…) Liaison with IANA. Majority support establishment of contact point. Policy-development and process: GAC expects that all proposals are circulated to constituencies, including GAC. Timely notice!! DE, ES: Disassociate from wording. Alternative language in annex. Mechanism for GAC to put issues to board directly. Consultation process should ensure that advice of GAC on public policy is taken into account in the policy-making. Inform GAC on how advice has been taken into account. In case of conflicting views between GAC and board, try to find consensus. Best judgement of board in case of no consensus. DE: Alternative language. GAC supports external advice, in particular: Public policy. Competition, consumer protection, IP protection. Constructive participation by intl. treaty organizations. WIPO’s beneficial contribution to UDRP. Institutionalize ability of board to reach external expertise. Relevant inter-governmental organizations have significant contribution to make. Accountability. Transition: GAC expects close involvement. Contiune to operate registry and root server? Progress on ccTLD delegations needs continued action.

Annexes. Alternative wording suggested by some delegations, in particular DE, ES, FR.

The agenda has slightly changed, it seems: Right now, the IDN committee’s report (originally schedule for 11:20 Bucharest time) is only beginning now. The GAC report is supposed to be the next item on the agenda, followed by the evolution and reform discussion, and the WLS proposal.

E&R committee has taken some things into account, other things to be desired. Discussion in the afternoon. Will publish response to blueprint. Considered functions and service level required from IANA. Establish differentiated processes for different types of database update requests which can be made by ccTLD managers. Expedite routine requests. Automatically process all requests from ccTLD manager which don’t relate to change of manager. Devise authentication mechanism. Formal change control system, so changes to database can be tracked. Maintain audit trail available to ccTLD managers. Procedure for emergency or urgent technical changes. Time zone differences! KPNQwest failure has underlined need, highlights stability risks in absence of procedure. Reports that ICANN has refused or delayed urgent technical changes for procedural reasons; requested zone transfer. Regret that Internet stability was impacted as a result. RFC 1591 sole guidance. ccTLD managers committed to funding of necessary IANA services. Contribution to more general community services, like coming to ICANN meetings. Joint WGs with GAC on certain topics. Useful and constructive discussions.

Cerf, Andy MM: Issue to be addressed, problem to be solved. Amadeu: Technical changes most frequently mentioned problem. Wants table of different situations which can arise around change requests.

For more on the problems related to the KPNQest failure, you may also wish to look at this draft, which was linked earlier from ICANNwatch. The ccTLD managers’ communiqué (which is essentially what was read in the public forum, see above) is also available online.

Elliot Noss, Tim Denton, and Ross Rader from Tucows have published a public discussion draft concerning “ICANN’s role in relation to contracted parties.” In that document, they call for the establishment of a process by which registrars and registries could resolve commercial disputes arising out of the respective ICANN agreement: We are talking about creating an adjudication process for commercial disputes, and a process of confirmation, referral, amendment, or denial of these adjudications by the Board of ICANN. The document does not push for a “contracted parties SO” separate from the DNSO.

In Germany, there is a saying: “The opposite of ‘well done’ is ‘well meant.'” Applied to dot-org, this means that I get somewhat skeptical when a proposal like GNR’s (which looks technically solid – after all, they do run a registry already) indirectly promises funding to the NCDNHC, and wants to have that constituency’s leadership on a so-called Steering Committee. In fact, I’m wondering how this mixes with the NCDNHC’s demand to play a more active role in the evaluation of the proposals. Conflicts of interest, anyone?

Note that I don’t have any objections against the travel funding suggested (indeed, that’s an extremely good idea which should be pursued by more of the wealthy players in the ICANN process), or against philantropy in general – but some of this just looks too well-targeted in this particular context.

Writing from the point of view of an individual .org domain name holder, I hope that the board will mostly base its decision on the .org redelegation on the technical merits of the respective proposals (and on business stability), and use the community aspects of proposals only as auxiliary factor in its decision-making.

Bold (and possibly even risky) experiments with TLDs are fine – as long as they happen with new TLDs, and every registrant knows what’s possibly going to happen. With a well-established TLD such as dot-org, there’s considerably less room for experiments.

I was curious enough about this to finally take the time to thoroughly read that part of the application. If I understand this correctly, “validation” is suggested to be a separate service which could only be purchased by .org registrants. Registrants themselves would make certain statements subject to third-party validation (examples given include category of organization, financial policies and practices, governance structures, and the like). The validation status would be available online, and the organization would have the right to put a “DotORG seal” onto its web page, with a link to validation results. Included with the package would be an SSL server certificate.

Alexander Svensson has sent in a summary for the Bucharest Protocols.

Bret Fausett is providing coverage of the current .org re-delegation presentations; I’ll drop out of the webcast again in a couple of minutes. If I interpret the webcast correctly, there’s also some professional real-time scribing going on, so we should see an archive of what’s being said in these presentations in a couple of days (I’m optimistic).

The one presentation which I partially saw and listened to (until the audio feed went away) was the one by DotOrg Foundation. One of their “interesting” elements (and one of the first things mentioned in the presentation) seem to be some kind of Validation services. Quite frankly, I neither understand how these are supposed to work, nor do I understand what they’d mean for simple, individual .org domain name holder like myself. Maybe someone in the know can shed some light on this?

The notes I took during today’s Names Council meeting in Bucharest (which I attended through the realaudio/video feed) are available in the blog items below. If you want to have something which is sorted chronologically (and not blog-wards), and can reasonably be bookmarked, you can go to the Bucharest Protocols version of the notes. Misunderstandings are mine, of course, and I encourage anyone who notices any misleading notes to e-mail me.

Harold Feld has introduced this on behalf of NCDNHC. A number of bidders made presentations to NCDNHC. Briefing helpful. But: Concerned that there is need to fully participate in evaluation of applications. Constituency believes to have expertise. Board should instruct staff to work closely with team headed by NCDNHC, including volunteers from other constituencies. Portion of funds collected from applicants should be given to NCDNHC, so they can do due diligence and produce input to ICANN board for consideration of applications. Would seek foundation funding to assist in this significant undertaking. Hopes that NC would at least make request to board. Further: Request that board makes .org decision during open telephone conference. Because questions regarding conflict of interests have been raised, this is particularly important. At the very least record meeting, and place recording on web page. Wants stable delegation, avoid law-suits. Last point is adopted by NC.

J Scott Evans (IPC): Experience from new gTLD process, discussion with applicants. NCDNHC could do this too. Doesn’t want NC recommendation. Board has fiduciary duty. No need for special procedure.

Roger Cochetti: Necessary to evaluate ability of applicants to reach out into non-profit sector. If reach-out, may remind them (board? applicants?) about NCDNHC. Even absent such procedures, can remind board of existence of this constituency.

J Scott Evans: Excellent suggestion to remind them. But much different than what Harold has suggested.

M. Cade: Not just non-commercials in .org.

Bruce Tonkin: Asking for public comment more appropriate; .org incredibly diverse.

Harold Feld: 1. JSE: Request grows out of gTLD delegation experience. Treatment of DNSO report by board. Found difference between having consultive relationship and asking staff to work directly work with constituency. Will do their best in the time frame allotted to provide input to decision-making process. In this particular instance: Consistently identified as (“most”) interested constituency, greatest expertise in how non-profits are run. Board should direct staff, so experience can effectively be shared. Money request: Useful that money paid for evaluation should be used by NCDNHC to evaluate aspects within constituency’s expertise. Will enhance process, prevent questions as to the legitimacy of the process.

P. Sheppard is going to remind board of interested constituencies.