ICANN News

Melbourne IT sells stake in NeuLevel

2006-03-07T11:13:00.000-05:00

From The Age:

Melbourne IT sold its stake to NeuLevel's majority shareholder, NeuStar. Internet services provider Melbourne IT Ltd said that the sale of its 10 per cent stake in domain name registry NeuLevel for $5.8 million ($US4.3 million) would enable the company to consider lifting its dividend payout ratio. The transaction would be reflected in its profits for 2006 in the amount of $4.47 million (Melbourne IT's original investment in NeuLevel in 2001 was $US3.4 million).

"The proceeds from the sale of the NeuLevel stake will increase Melbourne IT's cash balance to more than $32 million which will further strengthen our already healthy cash position and with it, our ability to pursue acquisitions both in Australia and overseas," Melbourne IT chief executive Theo Hnarakis said.

Melbourne IT was six cents higher at $1.58 at 1419 AEDT on Tuesday.

NRO IGF Input

2006-03-03T12:51:00.000-05:00

Number Resource Organization: INPUT ON THE INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM

The NRO sees the creation of the IGF with interest and expectation, as we believe it will be a useful tool for dealing with those issues which constitute real problems for the community and for which there are no adequate governance mechanisms. In view of the consultation meeting to be held on February 16-17, 2006, we believe it is an appropriate time for us to express our opinion regarding the characteristics which this forum should have.

Although many aspects relating to the forum have already been considered under the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, it is likewise important for us to highlight some of them. The IGF must be a multi-stakeholder forum without decision making attributions. The different stakeholders must participate on a level playing field, all of them having exactly the same privileges. The archives of IGF meeting minutes and documents must be accessible to anyone without the need for accreditation. These basic and fundamental aspects must constitute the foundation on which the IGF is built.

Structure

The NRO shares the idea that the IGF should not be a bureau but a Programmatic Committee. These Programmatic Committee members should be designated by the UN Secretary General after consultation with different stakeholders. All the stakeholders should be represented in the Committee to include governments, civil society, private sector, and Internet organizations. Its composition should be balanced from regional, gender and stakeholder representation point of view. There could be a need for permanent support provided by a secretariat; this secretariat should then be very small and independent.

Frequency of Meetings and Forms of Participation

The current agenda of meetings having to deal with different aspects of Internet Governance is quite intense. The sheer number of events could be a barrier for stakeholders from countries with limited economic possibilities, as they could not meet the costs incurred to participate in all these events. Therefore, while it seems important for the IGF to meet periodically, it is also important that the number of meetings being limited. We suggest one meeting per year with the possibility, through consensus, to call for more meetings if necessary. For us, the availability of participation tools and mechanisms is more important than the number of meetings. The IGF must be use broad participation mechanisms such as on-line discussions, electronic forums, public consultations via electronic means, and webcasting for remote participation in face-to-face meetings.

Consensus Mechanisms

A mechanism based on discussion and consensus commonly used in various Internet forums should be considered as model for the IGF discussion mechanism.

Location of the IGF

The NRO recommends that the IGF not be based in any particular city, and that its meetings always be held back-to-back with other important meetings on related subjects. For instance, indistinctly and on a rotational basis, IGF meetings could be held together with the meetings of organizations such as the ICANN, the ITU, the IETF, the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), the Internet Society, etc. IGF meetings should last no more than two days (so that they can be scheduled jointly with other meetings) and must ensure regional diversity criterion, by taking place alternatively in different regions of the world. The format of the WGIG consultation meetings could be used as a model for the IGF's working methodology. If the IGF establishes a permanent secretariat, its location must be chosen by the UN Secretary General only after consultation with stakeholders, which could be undertaken during consultations on the composition of the Programmatic Committee.

Issues to be dealt with by the IGF

In our opinion, the IGF can be a very useful tool for the community if it deals with issues which are identified as real problems, instead of launching duplicate ideological discussions which have already taken place within the framework of the WSIS. The community has great expectations that the IGF could successfully deal with issues such as Cybercrime, Privacy Rights, SPAM, Interconnection Costs and Capacity Building. We believe these are the important topics which should be tackled by the IGF. Within the framework of the , changes were recommended to organizations dealing with Internet Governance so that each stakeholder can fulfill their roles and responsibilities.
IGF could also play an important role as a forum where reports on the evolution of the above mentioned changes could be presented and monitored.

Summary

The NRO recommends that the IGF have a Programmatic Committee which is responsible for preparing the agenda of meetings, and a very light secretariat to provide logistic support. The IGF should meet once a year, unless there is consensus on the need for extraordinary meetings. Working mechanisms should be implemented so that consensus can be achieved. The mechanisms should be based on those currently used in various Internet forums. IGF meetings should rotate among the different regions. In addition, its meetings should always be held back-to-back with meetings of other organizations dealing with related issues. There should be broad participation mechanisms in place, including broad participation tools, on-line discussions and remote participation to face-to-face meetings. The IGF agenda should consider issues which are real problems for the community; the IGF should not be used to reopen discussions of ideological nature which already took place within the framework of the WSIS.

Raul Echeberria
Chair
Number Resource Organization

Final GNSO PDP Terms of Reference

2006-03-03T11:09:00.000-05:00

Terms of Reference for PDP-Feb06

Context

The GNSO initiated a policy development process in December 2005 [PDP-Dec05] to develop policy around whether to introduce new gTLDs, and if so, determine the selection criteria, allocation methods, and contractual conditions.

During 2005, ICANN commenced a process of revising the .net and .com agreements. There has been substantial discussion amongst members of the GNSO community around both the recently signed .net agreement (dated 29
June 2005), and the proposed .com agreements (dated 24 October 2005 and 29 January 2006). As a result, the GNSO Council recognized that issues such as renewal could be considered as part of the broader issue of
contractual conditions for existing gTLDs, and that it may be more appropriate to have policies that apply to gTLDs generally on some of the matters raised by GNSO members, rather than be treated as matters to negotiate on a contract by contract basis.

Subsequently on the 17 January 2006, GNSO Council requested that the ICANN staff produce an issues report "related to the dot COM proposed agreement in relation to the various views that have been expressed by the constituencies." This issues report is available at:
http://www.gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg01951.html
.
Section D of this issues report provides a discussion of many of the issues that had been raised by the GNSO community in response to the proposed revisions to the .com agreement. In the issues report the ICANN General Counsel advised that it would not be appropriate to consider a policy development process that specifically targets the .com registry agreement.

At its meeting on 6 February 2006, members of the GNSO Council clarified that the intention of the request for the issues report was to seek an issues report on the topic of the broader policy issues that relate to the contractual conditions of gTLD agreements, which have been identified from the various views expressed by the GNSO constituencies on the proposed .com agreement.

At its meeting on 6 February 2006 the GNSO Council recognised that while the PDP initiated in December 2005 [PDP-Dec05] included within its terms of reference the topic of contractual conditions, a possible outcome of
that PDP would be that there should be no additional gTLDs, and thus the Council could not depend on this PDP to address the issues raised by the GNSO community.

Thus at its meeting on 6 February 2006, the GNSO Council, by a super-majority decision, decided to initiate a separate PDP [PDP-Feb06] to look at specific areas of contractual conditions of existing gTLDs.

The work of PDP-Feb06 will naturally be conducted within the context of the work on PDP-Dec05, and if it is decided that new gTLDS should be introduced, the policy work of PDP-Feb06 will be incorporated into a single gTLD policy.

Goal

The overall goal of this PDP therefore is to determine what policies are appropriate, for the long term future of gTLDs within the context of ICANN's mission and core values, that relate to the issues identified in the specific terms of reference below.

Terms of Reference

1. Registry agreement renewal

1a. Examine whether or not there should be a policy guiding renewal, and if so, what the elements of that policy should be.

1b. Recognizing that not all existing registry agreements share the same Rights of Renewal, use the findings from above to determine whether or not these conditions should be standardized across all future agreements.

2. Relationship between registry agreements and consensus policies

2a. Examine whether consensus policy limitations in registry agreements are appropriate and how these limitations should be determined.

2b. Examine whether the delegation of certain policy making responsibility to sponsored TLD operators is appropriate, and if so, what if any changes are needed.

3. Policy for price controls for registry services

3a. Examine whether or not there should be a policy regarding price controls, and if so, what the elements of that policy should be. (note examples of price controls include price caps, and the same pricing for all registrars)

3b. Examine objective measures (cost calculation method, cost elements, reasonable profit margin) for approving an application for a price increase when a price cap exists.

4. ICANN fees

4a. Examine whether or not there should be a policy guiding registry fees to ICANN, and if so, what the elements of that policy should be.

4b. Determine how ICANN's public budgeting process should relate to the negotiation of ICANN fees.

5. Uses of registry data

Registry data is available to the registry as a consequence of registry operation. Examples of registry data could include information on domain name registrants, information in domain name records, and traffic data associated with providing the DNS resolution services associated with the registry.

5a Examine whether or not there should be a policy regarding the use of registry data for purposes other than for which it was collected, and if so, what the elements of that policy should be.

5b. Determine whether any policy is necessary to ensure non-discriminatory access to registry data that is made available to third parties.

6. Investments in development and infrastructure

6a. Examine whether or not there should be a policy guiding investments in development and infrastructure, and if so, what the elements of that policy should be.

Individual Statements From Board Members

2006-03-03T10:26:00.000-05:00

Separate Individual Statements Submitted for Publication by ICANN Directors

The following are individual statements made by Board Members relating to the 28 February 2006 Special Board Meeting, although some of the comments are the same or are clarifications of statements made during the Board Meeting:

Separate Statement by Board Member Paul Twomey (President and CEO) as delivered during the Board Meeting

I just want to make three points.

First of all, I want to express, both as the CEO and as a board member, my appreciation to all the members of the community who have been involved in dialogue on this proposed settlement and agreement. I have very much appreciated the thought and the input and the interest and the concerns they have expressed.

The input from the community was very valuable and has certainly contributed, I think, to a better outcome.

Secondly, I'd like to recognize that this particular issue has been something that in some respects has dominated the last two years of my being the president, indeed since the beginning of the Site Finder episode. I would like to express for myself and for the staff who have been involved, and I know for all board members, past and present, who have been involved in this whole process, that it has been a very difficult process, constrained by a lot of what is the possible as opposed to what one would like to really achieve, constrained by the realities of past decisions and the related multi-party nature of the related agreements, made more complex by the laws governing public announcements concerning listed companies, as well as the "simple" pressures of the discussions.

But I would also like to recognize, that in their striving to achieve the best that one possibly can within limitations, the board and staff's dedication to trying to achieve the best possible outcome for the ICANN community. And that I know this process has been controversial and has caused lots of discussion, but I remain very impressed and pleased by that commitment that I have seen amongst my colleagues to try to constantly ask the questions: what's the best thing for the ICANN community and the best thing for the Internet, as we have gone through this process.

The final part of my statement is that as a community we now have a lot of other issues that are very pressing, and I hope that we find opportunities now to really talk to those. In particular, I think the whole issue of new gTLDs and how they introduced and the issues of internationalized domain names in the TLDs, to give just two examples, are defining issues for the ICANN community over the next year or two. And I really hope we can direct our attentions now to, as Mouhamet said, really addressing a lot of issues that we have before us that are important for the wider body of Internet users.

Thank you.

_________________________________

Separate Statement by Board Member Raimundo Beca to clarify comments/statement made during Board Meeting that could not be transcribed due to Technical Difficulties

Given:

1) That VRSN litigation against ICANN doesn´t cover the existing 0 % price cap on top of the current $US 6 rate;

2) That VRSN offered a $US 3 rate on its recent bid on .net;

3) That nevertheless, the settlement agreement under consideration provides the right to VRSN to increase its rates in a 7 % a year in four out of the 6 following years, without the need to justify on costs this rise;

4) That the agreement provides also the right to VRSN to increase its rates in the remaining 2 years if justified by costs;

5) That the role played by the DOC and the DOJ in the achievement of this agreement has not been really clarified to the Board;

6) That settlements of price ceilings are price regulations, which normally are based on cost studies, which doesn´t seem to be the case in this agreement; and

7) That I have a personal background and experience in price settlements, which implies that it's absolutely unacceptable for me to aprove a 7 % annual rise on rates not justified by costs;

I have asked unsuccesfully that a new round of negotiations be held with VRSN on this clause.

To this extent, I'm forced to vote no on this agreement. For the rest of the issues of this agreement, I fully suscribe the statement made by Susan Crawford at this regard.

_____________________________________

Separate Statement by Board Member Susan Crawford

The proposed new Registry Agreement with VeriSign poses unacceptable risks to the values that underly ICANN's mission. For this reason, entry into this proposed agreement is not in ICANN's best interest. ICANN is facing extensive criticism around the world, and its top priority should be to act in accordance with its values of increasing competition, acting transparently, and being accountable to the Internet community. This approach has the advantage of being both pragmatic and principled.

First, entry into this agreement will undermine ICANN's integrity. The lawsuit initiated by VeriSign primarily concerned the absence of a predictable process for the rollout of new Registry Services. That process has now been the subject of an extensive policy development effort, and the policies resulting from that process can be made part of the .com agreement when it is renewed in November 2007. Most of the energy behind the lawsuit has dissipated. The claims made by VeriSign have have either been dismissed (as has happened to the antitrust claims) or resolved (as has happened to most of the "registry service" unhappiness). Yet ICANN is taking the occasion of this almost-irrelevant lawsuit to ensure a major source of funding for itself that appears to be based on the assumption of an (as-yet-unapproved) $50 million/year budget. In exchange, the proposed agreement provides that the existing price cap on .com registrations be raised.

All of this raises the spectre of substantial institutional self-dealing, carried out with a particular litigious registry. If ICANN is going to succeed on the world stage, it should set its budgets with reference to the costs of accomplishing its core mission, not on what it can extract from such negotiations. If ICANN has reached the view that it should not regulate prices and should get out of the business of governing registry business models, then that would be a welcome development. But this ought to be an explicit deregulatory policy adopted across the board that affects all relevant actors.

Because ICANN is not a government, it cannot tax. Because it is not a for-profit corporation, it cannot sell shares. All it can do is use its reputation and excellence in service provision to attract funding. This agreement does not enhance ICANN's reputation.

Second, the proposed VeriSign registry agreement undermines ICANN's mission as a forum for policy development. Although financial terms are not a matter for consensus policies that can be automatically mandated for registries under contract with ICANN, some items removed from the consensus policy realm by this agreement (such as the use of data and the process for registry services) are appropriate for consensus policy development. Additionally, the ICANN forums that now have responsibility for policy development would like to advise the Board and the community as to their views on the financial terms to which registries should be subject. Avoiding all of this undermines these policy processes. ICANN has often appropriately claimed that its legitimacy is founded on its bottom-up private policy generation. To sidetrack this experiment in private rule-making by allowing a single litigious registry to get a better deal than others undermines ICANN's core mission. ICANN should strive to be a model of private self-governance.

Third, the proposed VeriSign registry agreement will undermine ICANN's effectiveness. We seem to be trading off the support offered ICANN by those active in ICANN processes in favor of our budgetary needs. No constituency within ICANN has supported this arrangement, and most (not all with monetary aims) have opposed it. Although I am sympathetic to ICANN's need for funding, this particular tradeoff does not seem wise. I am not saying that we should be ruled by a mob. But this is not a mob: these are the people and the groups that are likely to be active in supporting or undermining ICANN's legitimacy in international fora in the years to come. Their views are relevant. We have not adequately taken them into account.

It is not necessarily true that rejecting the proposed registry agreement will automatically cost ICANN $5 million in legal fees, because another resolution of the litigation may be reached. If projections of the litigation burdens here stem from threats by VeriSign to impose litigation costs on ICANN that are not reasonably related to the issues actually being litigated, then that is yet another reason not to enter into this proposed agreement. Our actions now must be informed by the values that underly ICANN's operations, and those values are to promote competition, act transparently, and remain accountable to the Internet community. We should avoid the appearance of carrying out special deals that shore up our treasury at the expense of our accountability to that community. We should reject the proposed new registry agreement.

Rejecting this agreement will require ICANN to litigate with VeriSign. We have excellent legal representation in which I am personally highly confident. This litigation might be settled by entry into the settlement agreement to which ICANN and VeriSign have already agreed, without tying settlement to the proposed registry agreement. The existing registry agreement can be conformed in 2007 to the then-current registry agreements. (I realize that it takes two parties to settle, but that also means that ICANN's agreement to this set of arrangements should not be taken for granted.) We will also need to work on explicitly adopting, with the advice of the community, a deregulatory set of policies towards registries, and we will need to increase competition to .com by continuing to open new gTLDs on a measured basis. We will need to speak openly about how ICANN's budget can be best tied to ICANN's mission, and how that budget should be funded. Most importantly, we will need to evaluate how ICANN should be structured and should operate for the future, so that crises of confidence like that created by this proposed agreement can be avoided. We should take this opportunity to engage together to make ICANN into a "city on the hill" — a model of private self-governance. This is the most pragmatic approach available, and it is in the best interests of ICANN.

_________________________________

Separate Statement by Board Member Demi Getschko

This is a very difficult decision. I'm really not comfortable with many aspects of this settlement: the ceiling clause, the "possible perpetual" renewal and so on...

I really would like to have more time and room for negotiations on this. Giving that, as the available information to us points, we are really restricted on time to take this decision, and giving that there are a lot of more international and even more important issues to discuss, at this particular opportunity I'm voting to proceed.

My vote is yes.

______________________________________

Separate Statement by Board Member Joichi Ito

I would like to express my appreciation to the ICANN community and to the staff and others involved in the settlement negotiations for all of the work and input during this very difficult period. I had great trouble formulating my final view on this decision which involved a number of layers and interests. Having considered all of the feedback from the community as well as the conflicting opinions of people I respect very highly, I have decided to vote "no" on the approval of the settlement because my belief is that although the settlement has a great number of short term merits, not approving the settlement might have a greater benefit for ICANN and the community in the long run. However, if the board decides to approve the settlement, I will support this decision and commit to supporting the ICANN community and staff in every way to most effectively move forward on this basis.

_______________________________________

Separate Statement By Board Member Veni Markovski as clarified from statement delivered during the Board Meeting

Now, there will be many questions, many pros and contras, but for me the main question is that finally this discussion is over.

Here's what I think about my vote and the agreement itself.

I think the agreement is a positive step forwards, as it puts an end to a long-lasting tension, which was driving ICANN away from its main job. I also think it's important to note that now the agreement needs to be approved by the DoC before it's really enacted. That's additional step, which makes sure that agreement by ICANN are taken in accordance with the laws.

I don't believe ICANN integrity will be undermined by this agreement. It is true that for some of the US-companies this agreement means less profits, and for some - more profits. But there's no possibility to have both parties right and happy. But, what is more important - I don't think the registrants will feel difference in pricing. In some ways, it will actually encourage competition - with other top-level domains (TLDs), and hopefully - with the .us, which is not a very popular TLD in the USA.

I think that the policy development in this case did not happen the way it should have (now, some question whether this was a policy development question). But I don't think it's ICANN's fault. I think it's a failure of the ICANN community, and the continuous processing in which it has been involved for quite a while. I told a number of times the ICANN community, during our meetings with them - don't just tell us the problems, we know them. Suggest the solutions, participate in their formation. That didn't happen. Further, we never heard from the ICANN community their conflicts of interests, and we could never be sure when someone speaks whose interests they represent.

I don't think ICANN is betraying the people who genuinely supported ICANN throughout the years by settling this case. I think that we took a very difficult decision, but it's the usual way - people expect the Board to give them solutions, so that they can criticize both them, and ICANN Board. I am already used to this...

I also think that the people we heard in the previous months are the usual ICANN community - it's not the global internet community that ICANN is supposed to protect and make sure the Internet runs for them, too. We basically heard only the US-business, and the businesses that deal with .com domains. There are several explanations about it - a) the others are not so noisy, b) the others don't care, c) the others agree with the a).

I am not concerned about the budget that ICANN would / might have. Actually the Board is the one to approve the budget. I would urge the community to pay close attention to the structure of the budget, and participate actively in its formation. That's the way to deal with it, and make sure that if there is any excess money, it should be used for projects in developing countries.

And I don't think that the big achievement of this agreement is the saving of USD Millions for litigation, although it's still a feature, not a bug.

The agreement is not a victory for VeriSign or for ICANN, it's a common sense in action. To blame ICANN with the words, "VeriSign wins" or "it's a victory for VeriSign", or "ICANN lost" means not to have in mind all aspects of the agreement but only one. That's not fair to ICANN, to ICANN Board, and to ICANN staff.

I agree with Susan that we need to start to talk about ICANN and its role in a changing environment - although again I think this is probably one of the wrong ways to do it - top-bottom, instead of bottom-up process.

I fully agree with the following by her, "Most importantly, we will need to evaluate how ICANN should be structured and should operate for the future, so that crises of confidence like that created by this proposed agreement can be avoided. We should take this opportunity to engage together to make ICANN into a âOe city on the hillâ- â*oe a model of private self-governance. This is the most pragmatic approach available, and it is in the best interests of ICANN."

I hope it's a good day for the Internet, and I hope that now it's over, we'll be able to focus again on the important issues, which have been put on the second stage by the urgent ones.

P.S. After reading my notes again, and seeing some of the comments on the vote, I need to make some edits; instead of changing my notes above, I'd rather add some here.

My decision was not easy; it would have been much easier to abstain or vote against it - I wouldn't need to explain anything, certain people would love me for my position... And for sure, if I have been thinking of running again for the Board this year, a negative vote would have made my chances higher ;-) I think though, that the fact all of the people whose term expires this year, have voted in favour of the agreement should signal the critics that either none of us wants to run again, or that we are taking our duty as directors more seriously than people believed we were able to. Because exactly that fact signals that we were more free to take the decision, not having to carry the burden of thinking, "Oh, how are we going to live with this until the end of my term." And, by the way, I don't think this decision solves only the litigation (regardless of my belief that even the bad out-of-court agreement is better than the good court verdict). It solves many problems, and the solution is in the interest of the development of the Internet.

But at the same time, knowing it would have been a very popular vote, I have to admit I am not fighting for glory, and certainly not for glory in the ICANN environment. What I want from ICANN is the Internet to run smoothly, the DNS to work, and to be able to get an IP address for my servers. And for every user that is on line.

However, every person around ICANN has their own opinion on every issue discussed by the Board. And everyone believes their opinion is the right one.

Some people blame the Board as if it is working in conspiracy - regardless of the fact that there are 15 Board directors, some of them famous bloggers, with active blogs, and no one has stopped a director from publishing anything, afaik.

Some people claim that the Board follows staff recommendations without challenging them.

And some people believe that ICANN is not needed at all, and it should not exist.

I am not so sure all of the above is right.

Well, it has always been easier to criticize than to send positive contribution to ICANN. Why not, I can criticize ICANN on my own quite well!

Note that I always use "some" - because I don't believe all people around ICANN are thinking the same way.

In any case, we'll see soon whether this was a "good day for the Internet", or a "death sentence" for ICANN.

_________________________________

Separate Statement by Board Member Hualin Qian

Based on the following consideration, I voted in favor of the proposed settlement and agreement between ICANN and VeriSign.

1, the ICANN Board and Staffs have been working very hard and did their best on the related issues. The feedbacks from the community have been also seriously considered. There is no perfect solution to satisfy everyone's requirement of the Internet community and stakeholders.

2, the most important thing for the Internet community is to keep the Internet as stable and reliable as possible. Therefore, paying a few more dollars for each registration to help the infrastructure become more sustainable and survivable from different kind of serious attacks is worthy.

3, to encourage long term investment to strengthen the DNS system are also important for the stability of the system. From the competition point of view, registrants have alternatives of choosing different registrars or even different gTLDs. This will eventually set pressure on the registry operators, and the price and service quality will be improved by this kind of competition.

4, therefore, I believe my decision is a better choice to protect the interests of the majority of Internet community. And I beg pardon from those whose interests might be impacted by my decision.

_________________________________

Separate Statement by Board Member Njeri Rionge

Herewith my statement.

I have considered deeply all concerns from the community and appreciate the extensiveness of the inputs and shared thoughts with me and the rest of the board. I have objections about some points of the agreement, further perceptions from within the community on the reasoning behind the proposed negotiations. It's also my belief that the best efforts were taken from the Board, the staff, the legal representatives and other persons or constituencies from ICANN in order to achieve the best possible agreement.

I also have considered the amount of work, time and funds already spent on this subject, remembering that such money comes from the community, while we have many other pending issues for the Board, which are on hold due to the discussions on .com agreement; we need to improve the efficiency of our work in the interest of the community and doing so to avoid bringing to ICANN, risks that should have been agreed before hand with the communities involved.

I'm obviously worried about the difficulties and obstacles that shall arise from ICANN's decision on the .com agreement, but at the end, we need to balance the pros & cons. I have conclude that rejecting the agreement may not contribute to improve the agreement itself, and may postpone many other issues the community requires ICANN to address. But, the community with whom we are representing are clearly not in favour of this agreement and for this reason I vote No.

_________________________________

Separate Statement by Board Member Vanda Scartezini

I have considered deeply all concerns from the community and appreciate all that shared their thoughts with me. I still have important objections about some points of the agreement, as the data use and the perpetuity clause. It's also my belief that the best efforts were taken from the Board, the staff, the counselors and every other person or entity from ICANN in order to achieve the best possible agreement. I also have considered the amount of efforts, work, time and funds already spent with this subject, remembering that such money comes from the community, while we have many other issues in the Board's pipeline, and that are on hold due to the discussions about .com agreement;

We need to improve the contribution of our work to the community and doing so to avoid bring to ICANN's many issues that should be agreed before hand with the parts involved. I'm obviously worried about the difficulties and obstacles that shall arise from ICANN decision on the .com agreement, but at the end, balancing the pros & cons, I have conclude that rejecting the agreement won't contribute to improve the agreement itself, and may postpone many other issues the community is also claiming to be addressed;.

As a consequence of this considerations my vote is yes.

________________________________________

Separate Statement by Board Member Peter Dengate Thrush as delivered during the Board Meeting

I vote no, and I'd just like to say that I appreciate it's a tough issue and that lots of good work has been done by all concerned in the community and the board and by the staff. But my eventual conclusion by a narrow margin is that the agreement, linked with the .COM renewal is not in the best interest of ICANN.

I am concerned about the concept of perpetual renewal and would have preferred that (which was not approved by the community when it was first started) was something we should have been looking to renegotiate back. And I think linking that with price issues, again without reference to the community, is not appropriate.

I am also concerned about other matters which have been raised extensively by the community, and just mention at this stage the exclusion of data mining.

I think we have had a problem in that with our policy development process, some of the timing is out of step. That's now caught up and agrees with much of what's in the agreement. I think VeriSign's main concenrns) has now really been dealt with by that process and that we don't need to link .COM renewal to the litigation.

I am also concerned about the almost unanimous outcry from the community, but I would, as a director, have no hesitation in voting for this if I thought it was in ICANN's best interests.. But as I don't, I have become very much concerned about the consequences of the lack of support at this time in the community.

I'm also concerned about the linking of the ICANN budget with all of this process and the fact that as far as the community was concerned, it was all negotiated behind closed doors.

So I'm voting no.

ICANN's Dying Statement

2006-03-03T10:23:00.000-05:00

Joint Statement from Affirmative Voting Board Members

02 March 2006

28 February 2006: Today, the ICANN Board voted to approve the settlement with VeriSign, which includes the new .COM registry agreement. We, the undersigned members of the ICANN Board, have asked that this additional statement accompany ICANN's announcement of the Board's decision.

We wish to thank the numerous members of the ICANN community for submitting their thoughts regarding the two different posted versions of the proposed settlement and registry agreement. Those comments sharpened the focus of our debate considerably and in some instances resulted in ICANN obtaining additional favorable changes in terms, as set out in the Summary of Revisions to the Proposed Agreement, posted at http://www.icann.org/topics/vrsn-settlement/revision-matrix-09feb06.pdf .

We recognize that many members of the community have communicated their opposition to the new registry agreement for various reasons. This made our decision even more challenging, but in the end, our responsibility is to the entire Internet community, and we have made our decision with that community at the forefront of our thoughts.

Our decision to approve the proposed agreement was made based on many factors, but we wanted to highlight four of those factors.

First, while some opposed the new registry agreement because of the terms of the "renewal" clause, in truth, the renewal clause in the new agreement is little changed from the 2001 .COM agreement. In 2001, ICANN agreed to give VeriSign a presumptive right of renewal for .COM in return for VeriSign's agreement to give up the right to operate .ORG and to agree to a competitive bidding process for the renewal of .NET. ICANN made that decision because it believed that it was very unlikely and not necessarily desirable that the .COM registry operator would change, absent very extreme circumstances, and thus conceding that point (in return for concessions by VeriSign that were viewed as having real value) was conceding very little as a practical matter. The new agreement, again as a practical matter, merely clarifies this point, and does not, in our judgment, make any substantive change. Thus, this is not a reason to oppose this new agreement.

Second, while we recognize that the litigation with VeriSign could, if resolved entirely in ICANN's favor, affect VeriSign's rights under the 2001 agreement, we are hesitant to spend millions of more dollars in litigation, and the associated time of ICANN's staff and Board and outside counsel, attempting to obtain what we believe ICANN already has obtained in the new .COM agreement. Indeed, insofar as the disputes that lead to the litigation with VeriSign, the new agreement resolves those disputes entirely in ICANN's favor and gives ICANN the rights it has always claimed it had with respect to VeriSign's operations and, in particular, VeriSign's right to introduce new Registry Services. In short, we are hard-pressed to decline to accept a settlement of litigation that, for all practical purposes, gives ICANN all the relief that it could hope to obtain from the existing litigation.

Third, many objections have been raised regarding the process of obtaining a settlement with VeriSign. These objections seem to be the following: the reasons for the inclusion of the .COM Registry Agreement in the settlement agreement structure, the private nature of the negotiations, and the lack of community participation in the negotiations. The .COM Registry Agreement is included in the settlement because it is the focal point of the legal conflict between ICANN and VeriSign and it would be impossible to remedy the outstanding issues without creating a new .COM Registry Agreement. Also, it is recognized by the Board that a private negotiation process was an essential element of ICANN’s ability to obtain an agreement. As to the private nature of the negotiations, VeriSign is a publicly held company and it was reasonable for them to not want to negotiate a settlement to a lawsuit in public. Also, it did not seem likely that ICANN would be able to obtain a community consensus on how to approach VeriSign to resolve these disputes and even if ICANN tried the consensus process it is unsuited for the negotiation of an agreement with a third party. The new agreement is consistent with all existing gTLD and other ICANN policies. Additionally, it is impossible and was never contemplated that the community would be able to participate in the negotiation of the terms of each registry agreement. An important element of these negotiations has been the knowledge that the settlement documents would be posted for public comment and were on two different occasions before we reached this approval. Following the first set of public comments, this board authorized ICANN staff to negotiate further modifications based upon the feedback. It is also important to note that approval of the 1999 and 2001 versions of the .COM registry agreements followed a similar approval and public comment process. Accordingly, we have reviewed these process related objections and are confident that the process followed was necessary in order to end this long-standing dispute and litigation.

Finally, we appreciate the community's concerns regarding the price of .COM names. However, we firmly believe that ICANN is not equipped to be a price regulator, and we also believe that the rationale for such provisions in registry agreements is much weaker now than it was at the time the VeriSign agreement was originally made in 1998. At that time, VeriSign was the only gTLD registry operator, and .COM was, as a practical matter, the only commercially focused gTLD. Today, there are a number of gTLD alternatives to .COM, and several ccTLDs that have become much stronger alternatives than they were in years past. In addition, the incredibly competitive registrar market means that the opportunities for new gTLDs, both in existence and undoubtedly to come in the future, are greater than they have ever been. It may well be that .COM offers to at least some domain name registrants some value that other registries cannot offer, and thus the competitive price for a .COM registration may well be higher than for some alternatives. But price is only one metric in a competitive marketplace, and relative prices will affect consumer choices at the margin, so over time, we expect the registry market to become increasingly competitive. One way to hasten that evolution is to loosen the artificial constraints that have existed on the pricing of .COM and other registries. We began this process with the .NET agreement, and we now continue it with the .COM agreement, and we expect to continue along this path as we renegotiate agreements with other registries.

In order to protect existing registrants from adverse consequences during this transition period, we have adopted various devices. In the proposed .COM Registry Agreement, we have created different transition devices, including a six-month notice period and the right to enter into ten-year registrations at the existing price. In addition, the modifications in the agreement following the initial community reaction will further limit the amount of price flexibility that VeriSign will have over the life of the contract. To the extent any registry operator charges a price that consumers view as inconsistent with the value offered by that registry, the alternatives available in the market will generate the necessary market adjustments.

Again, we thank the members of the global Internet community for their input with respect to this difficult decision. We believe the decision is in the best interests of the Internet and its stakeholders.

ICANN Registries Challenge the GNSO Council

2006-03-03T09:39:00.000-05:00

Statement of the Registry Constituency:

Bruce Tonkin, Chair of the Council of the GNSO, on 26 February 2006, distributed a Draft Terms of Reference for PDP-Feb06 (the "ToR"). The Registry Constituency (RyC) of the GNSO is responding to this draft with comments and suggested revisions of the ToR. As a preface to these comments, the RyC submits this position statement:

For the reasons stated herein, the RyC submits that any further proceedings on this PDP are outside the legal powers of the GNSO, and can have no effect on the subject matter of contractual conditions for existing generic top level domains.

The draft ToR is the result of a supermajority vote of the GNSO to initiate a PDP despite the clear recommendation in an ICANN Staff Issues Report that concluded against recommending a dedicated PDP "on this matter as framed by the GNSO Council." As framed by the GNSO Council, the issue was "the dot COM proposed agreement in relation to the various views that have been expressed by the constituencies."

The report further said, "There are aspects identified by the GNSO Constituencies which could be used to inform policy development within the framework of the ongoing PDP regarding new gTLDs." These aspects are, however, not the subject matter of the current PDP. Notwithstanding the explicit limitations expressed in the Staff Issues Report, the GNSO has proceeded to launch a PDP on an entirely new and different subject "contractual conditions for existing generic top level domains," a subject that is clearly not "within the framework of the ongoing PDP regarding new gTLDs", as suggested by the Staff Issues Report.

This PDP is not only unauthorized and out of scope, it is without legal foundation. It purports to impose possible conclusions of a PDP on subject matter that is exclusively within the responsibility of the Board of Directors of ICANN.

The participation of RyC in commenting on the proposed text of the ToR should be viewed in the context of this preface. Any comments are without prejudice to the position of RyC that the proceedings are out of scope and without legal foundation.

ICANN Director Veni Markovski: on the Settlement

2006-03-02T08:08:00.000-05:00

"Now, there will be many questions, many pros and contras, but for me the main question is that finally this discussion is over.

Here’s what I think about my vote and the agreement itself.

I think the agreement is a positive step forwards, as it puts an end to a long-lasting tension, which was driving ICANN away from its main job. I also think it’s important to note that now the agreement needs to be approved by the DoC, before it’s really enacted. That’s additional step, which makes sure that agreement by ICANN are taken in accordance with the laws.

I don’t believe ICANN integrity will be undermined by this agreement. It is true that for some of the US-companies this agreement means less profits, and for some - more profits. But there’s no possibility to have both parties right and happy. But, what is more important - I don’t think the registrants will feel difference in pricing. In some ways, it will actually encourage competition - with other top-level domains (TLDs), and hopefully - with the .us, which is not a
very popular TLD in the USA.

I think that the policy development in this case did not happen the way it should have (now, some question
whether this was a policy development question). But I don’t think it’s ICANN’s fault. I think it’s a failure
of the ICANN community, and the continuous processing in which it has been involved for quite a while. I
told a number of times the ICANN community, during our meetings with them - don’t just tell us the problems,
we know them. Suggest the solutions, participate in their formation. That didn’t happen. Further, we never
heard from the ICANN community their conflicts of interests, and we could never be sure when someone
speaks whose interests they represent.

I don’t think ICANN is betraying the people who genuinely supported ICANN throughout the years by settling this case. I think that we took a very difficult decision, but it’s the usual way - people expect the Board to give them solutions, so that they can criticize both them, and ICANN Board. I am already used to this…

I also think that the people we heard in the previous months are the usual ICANN community - it’s not the global internet community that ICANN is supposed to protect and make sure the Internet runs for them, too. We basically heard only the US-business, and the businesses that deal with .com domains. There are several explanations about it - a) the others are not so noisy, b) the others don’t care, c) the others agree with the a).

I am not concerned about the budget that ICANN would / might have. Actually the Board is the one to approve the budget. I would urge the community to pay close attention to the structure of the budget, and participate actively in its formation. That’s the way to deal with it, and make sure that if there is any excess money, it should be used for projects in developing countries.

And I don’t think that the big achievement of this agreement is the saving of USD Millions for litigation, although it’s still a feature, not a bug.

The agreement is not a victory for VeriSign or for ICANN, it’s a common sense in action. To blame ICANN with the words, “VeriSign wins” or “it’s a victory for VeriSign”, or “ICANN lost” means not to have in mind all aspects of the agreement but only one. That’s not fair to ICANN, to ICANN Board, and to ICANN staff.

I agree with Susan that we need to start to talk about ICANN and its role in a changing environment - although again I think this is probably one of the wrong ways to do it - top-bottom, instead of bottom-up process.

I fully agree with the following by her, “Most importantly, we will need to evaluate how ICANN should be structured and should operate for the future, so that crises of confidence like that created by this proposed agreement can be avoided. We should take this opportunity to engage together to make ICANN into a “city on the hill” a model of private self-governance. This is the most pragmatic approach available, and it is in the best interests of ICANN.”

I hope it’s a good day for the Internet, and I hope that now it’s over, we’ll be able to focus again on the important issues, which have been put on the second stage by the urgent ones.

P.S. After reading my notes again, and seeing some of the comments on the vote, I need to make some edits;
instead of changing my notes above, I’d rather add some here.

My decision was not easy; it would have been much easier to abstain or vote against it - I wouldn’t need to explain anything, certain people would love me for my position… And for sure, if I have been thinking of running again for the Board this year, a negative vote would have made my chances higher I think though, that the fact all of the people whose term expires this year, have voted in favour of the agreement should signal the critics that either none of us wants to run again, or that we are taking our duty as directors more seriously than people believed we were able to. Because exactly that fact signals that we were more free to take the decision, not having to carry the burden of thinking, “Oh, how are we going to live with this until the end of my term.” And, by the way, I don’t think this decision solves only the litigation (regardless of my belief that even the bad out-of-court agreement is better than the good court verdict). It solves many problems, and the solution is in the interest of the development of the Internet.

But at the same time, knowing it would have been a very popular vote, I have to admit I am not fighting for glory, and certainly not for glory in the ICANN environment. What I want from ICANN is the Internet to run smoothly, the DNS to work, and to be able to get an IP address for my servers. And for every user that is on line.

However, every person around ICANN has their own opinion on every issue discussed by the Board. And everyone believes their opinion is the right one. Some people blame the Board as if it is working in conspiracy - regardless of the fact that there are 15 Board directors, some of them famous bloggers, with active blogs, and no one has stopped a director from publishing anything, afaik.

Some people claim that the Board follows staff recommendations without challenging them. And some people believe that ICANN is not needed at all, and it should not exist. I am not so sure all of the above is right. Well, it has always been easier to criticize than to send positive contribution to ICANN. Why not, I can criticize ICANN on my own quite well!

Note that I always use “some” - because I don’t believe all people around ICANN are thinking the same way.

In anycase, we’ll see soon whether this was a good day for the Internet, or a death sentence for ICANN."

--- Veni's blog may be found here ---

The Death of Consensus-based Decision-making

2006-03-01T09:35:00.000-05:00

In spite of overwhelming community consensus in opposition to the proposed .com agreement the ICANN Board has approved the VeriSign Settlement Agreements.

From the ICANN press release:

Marina del Rey, California, 28 February 2006: Today, ICANN's Board of Directors approved, by a majority vote, a set of agreements settling a long time dispute between ICANN and VeriSign, the registry operator for the .COM registry.

These settlement documents include a new registry agreement relating to the operation of the .COM registry. The new .COM registry agreement will now proceed to the U.S. Department of Commerce for final approval, and the entire settlement is dependent upon this approval before it is finalized. USDOC approval is required due to the unique history of the .COM generic top-level domain and it is the only gTLD which requires such approval. If approved, this settlement will clear the way for a new and productive relationship between ICANN and VeriSign facilitating ICANN's stewardship and technical coordination of the Internet's domain name system.

ICANN's Board voted 9 to 5 in favor of the settlement agreements with one director abstaining. Affirmative votes were cast by the following Board Members: Vint Cerf (Chairman), Alejandro Pisanty (Vice-Chairman), Mouhamet Diop, Demi Getschko, Hagen Hultzsch, Veni Markovski, Vanda Scartezini, Paul Twomey (President and CEO), and Hualin Qian. Directors who voted against the approval of the settlement documents were: Raimundo Beca, Susan Crawford, Joichi Ito, Njeri Rionge, and Peter Dengate Thrush. Director Michael Palage abstained. Statements by Board members on their votes will be posted on the ICANN website within the next two days.

Today's Special Meeting of the Board

2006-02-28T12:18:00.000-05:00

Surprise! The agenda for today's ICANN Special Meeting of the Board has finally been posted:

Follow up from remaining agenda items from previous meetings
Discussion of VeriSign Settlement Agreements
Consideration of ccNSO's ccPDP Results and Recommendations on Proposed ICANN Bylaws Changes
Approval of Director's Expense
Conflicts Committee recommendation on Director's Annual Statements
Other Business

China confirms alternate root for TLDs

2006-02-28T10:46:00.000-05:00

From the People's Daily Online:

"China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII) has made adjustment to China's Internet domain name system in accordance with Article 6 of China Internet Domain Names Regulations. After the adjustment, ".MIL" will be added under the top-level domain (TLD) name of "CN". A new Internet domain name system will take effect as of March 1 in China.

Under the new system, besides "CN", three Chinese TLD names "CN", "COM" and "NET" are temporarily set. It means Internet users don't have to surf the Web via the servers under the management of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) of the United States.

The new regulations stipulate that under "CN", two types of second-level domain names, namely categorized domain names and those for administrative regions. There'll be seven categories: "AC" for research institutions; "EDU" for Chinese educational institutions; "GOV" for Chinese government departments and "MIL" for Chinese defense departments.

There'll be 34 domain names for the organizations of China's provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities directly under central government, and special administrative regions. They are mainly composed of the first letters of the Romanized spelling of the names of the regions, for example Beijing's domain name is "BJ" and Shanghai's is "SH". "

Initial commentary from the DNS community has been swift with Michael Geist stating [excerpt]:

"In other words, the Chinese Internet becomes a reality tomorrow. With it, the rules of the game may change as 110 million Internet users will suddenly have access to a competing dot-com (albeit in a different character set) and will no longer rely exclusively on ICANN for the resolution of Internet domain name queries. This change was probably inevitable regardless of the status of ICANN, however, the U.S. position can't possibly have helped matters. Indeed, some might note that while Congress has been criticizing U.S. companies for harming Internet freedoms by cooperating with Chinese law enforcement, those same Congressional leaders may have done the same by refusing to even consider surrendering some control over the Internet root to the international community and thereby opening the door to an alternate root that could prove even worse from a freedom perspective."

Editor's note: The Chinese have successfully routed around ICANN's heavy-handed ICP-3 policy regarding alternate roots proving once again that the ICANN's policies were badly misguided (as many in ICANN's General Assembly had warned). Maybe ICANN will finally start listening now...

The GNSO Review Has Commenced

2006-02-28T08:20:00.000-05:00

Later today a press release will be issued and a posting to the ICANN website will announce that the London School of Economics' Public Policy Group has been chosen by the ICANN Board to conduct the GNSO Review. The Review team, lead by Professor Patrick Dunleavy, have begun their work and will be in touch with Constituency Chairs seeking the assistance of constituency members in responding to the Review. A key element of the Review will be an online survey which will be launched later this week. In addition, face to face interviews and sessions will be conducted by the Review team at the Wellington meetings.

Employment opportunity: ISOC Manager of Public Policy

2006-02-27T20:32:00.000-05:00

The Internet Society (ISOC), an international, not-for-profit, professional Internet membership organization founded in 1992 to provide leadership in Internet related standards, education, and policy, seeks a qualified individual to assist build and implement its public policy programs. This is a full-time position reporting to the Society’s Director of Public Policy.

The successful applicant will possess all of the following qualifications:

-- Familiarity with Internet-related public policy issues, the development of Internet standards, and policy issues concerning access to the Internet for countries in the process of developing their Internet capabilities.
-- The experience, poise, and confidence necessary to represent the Internet Society effectively and professionally in national and international public policy forums.
-- Prior experience in an Internet-related public policy position at the national or international level.
-- The ability to work effectively with a broad spectrum of people and groups, including national governments, national and international standards and public policy organizations, civil society and private sector groups.
-- Experience working with international and intergovernmental organizations
-- The willingness and ability to travel.
-- The ability to communicate clearly and effectively in English
-- Minimum of five (5) years relevant public policy experience (as per above).
-- Familiarity and comfort with Internet based communication and work tools. Proven experience in working with active on-line communication mediums/forums and building consensus on-line.

The following qualifications are also highly desirable, and will be considered in the evaluation of candidates:

-- Proven ability to communicate clearly and effectively in one or more languages other than English.
-- Experience writing technical/policy documents for a range of audiences, including governments.
-- International experience, with possible regional expertise.

The successful applicant will play a central role in fulfilling the public policy goals of the society.

Information about the Internet Society and its public policy activities may be found at http://www.isoc.org.

Compensation for this position will be competitively commensurate with the successful applicant’s qualifications.

Applicants should forward a resume, references, and any other relevant materials, with a cover letter explaining why they feel they are the right person for this position, in an email to jobs-policy@isoc.org.

Applications will be evaluated beginning immediately and thereafter until the post has been filled. The list of applicants will not be posted publicly, and will be reviewed in confidence by members of the evaluation committee.

February 28 ICANN Board Meeting Agenda

2006-02-27T19:44:00.000-05:00

ICANN Bylaws:
ARTICLE III: TRANSPARENCY Section 4. MEETING NOTICES AND AGENDAS
At least seven days in advance of each Board meeting (or if not practicable, as far in advance as is practicable), a notice of such meeting and, to the extent known, an agenda for the meeting shall be posted.

It seems that the 28 February 2006 Special Meeting of the Board will occur without the benefit of an advance agenda being posted. It's sad that the Board can't seem to manage to follow it's own bylaws.

Chinese Alternate Root?

2006-02-27T15:00:00.000-05:00

Tim Wang's eLearning Blog has the following post:

China Fully in Control of .CN domain names

Starting from March 1st 2006, the Chinese government will completely control the distribution of all .CN domain names. This include the four critical domain sublets: COM.CN, AC.CN, GOV.CN, and MIL.CN. Before the date, most Chinese domain registrations relied on DNS (Domain Name Servers) of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) in the US. (Fact: ICANN controlled 1,500,000 Chinese domain names and the Chinese DNS servers control the other 1,090,000 domain names)

Starting in March, all of the Chinese government and military organization domain distributions and domain name mapping request will be processed by Chinese DNS. This means the request statistics of the government and military organization web site can be covered and hidden from the US much easier. These web sites and email services are no longer under foreign "surveillance".

It sure sounds like .CN has created it's own set of root servers. Perhaps official confirmation will be forthcoming sometime soon.

Commentary: ICANN Registrars & Antitrust Law

2006-02-27T11:16:00.000-05:00

From the Sherman Act:

Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.

I cite this passage in view of an effort on the part of the ICANN registrar constituency to promote the requirement that registries use only ICANN accredited registrars. ICANN accreditation is not much more than (a) paying a fee to ICANN; (b) demonstrating that you have $70,000 in the bank; (c) having the technological tools and staff to perform the job.

As the registries will necessarily check to ensure that a registrar's equipment is functional and interoperable before it is plugged into their system anyway, ICANN accreditation amounts to nothing more than a payment to ICANN while opening your bankbook for cursory inspection.

Forcing those that already have the necessary skills, tools and business acumen required to run a registrar operation to pay a fee to ICANN just so that they may function as an "accredited" registrar (or otherwise be denied a legitimate business opportunity) strikes me as an unnecessary restraint of trade that may indeed violate antitrust law (all the moreso if actually promoted by a registrar constituency).

New Top Level Domain Selection Criteria

2006-02-27T10:46:00.000-05:00

At the Washington D.C. Meeting of ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organization, each ICANN constituency put forth a list of proposed selection criteria to guide the introduction of new TLDs. And so the policy battle begins...

The Selection Criteria:

Business constituency:

sound business, technical and operational plan
will comply with ICANN policies
eligibility criteria for the registrant is limited to a defined category

Registry constituency:

consistent with ICANN's limited technical coordination mission
provide objectivity that will encourage members of the private sector to participate in a new selection round
allow market forces to work freely in contrast to pre-determine Internet user demands
should encourage TLD operators/sponsors to differentiate TLD from other TLDs by offering users differentiated options beyond the obvious choice of TLD e.g customer service levels, registry policies etc.
should allow for policy decisions to made in the best interests and with participation of relevant user communities in contrast to centrally pre-determining all applicable policies for all TLDs
ensure the technical security and stability of the Internet
TLD application criteria should require compliance with ICANN guidelines for IDNs
applicants that seek to launch a TLD with a primary purpose being to serve needs within a defined geographic territory (or territories) should be asked to identify the specific market of users
where the territory is a developing country - describe measures that will encourage use of the Internet within that country
no applicant should be allowed to propose a TLD that is either a transliteration of an existing TLD or a lexical or semantic equivalent of an existing TLD.

Registrar Constituency:

Applicants must meet minimum technical requirements
Registry operators accredited with minimum technical, operational, financial and insurance requirements
Maintain the requirement that registries use ICANN accredited registrars

Non-commercial constituency:

Neutral, objective and predictable selection process
Minimal technical and operational criteria

ISP constituency:

A representative from a well defined Community must be an applicant for a new TLD, and registrants are limited to members of that Community
The applicant must show that the new TLD has support in the Community
TLD application criteria should require compliance with ICANN guidelines for IDNs; the applicant must use technology and have operations that can implement IDNs at the second level
The string chosen by the applicant must be differentiated from other TLD strings
The string chosen must not infringe the intellectual property rights of others
No applicant should be allowed to propose a TLD that is either a transliteration of an existing TLD or a lexical or semantic equivalent of an existing TLD.

Intellectual Property constituency:

Predictable, straight forward transparent and objective procedures
State in what way the new TLD maximizes benefits for the public interest
The applicant must show added value, which will bring user demand, which in turn will enhance competition
Must be a clearly differentiated space and satisfy needs that cannot reasonably be met by existing TLDs
Registrants are limited to members of a well-defined Community
The applicant must show that the new TLD has support in the Community
The applicant must have mechanisms to ensure compliance with the charter of the TLD, and addressing violations
Accurate verification of registrant eligibility
Technical, financial, business, compliance policies
Maintenance of UDRP and robust database publicly accessible in real-time and without cost to those query it (compliance ICANN policy)

Terms of Reference for New GNSO PDP

2006-02-26T15:22:00.000-05:00

From the GNSO Council list:

The GNSO initiated a policy development process in December 2005 [PDP-Dec05] to develop policy around whether to introduce new gTLDs, and if so, determine the selection criteria, allocation methods, and contractual conditions.

During 2005, ICANN commenced a process of revising the .net and .com agreements. There has been substantial discussion amongst members of the GNSO community around both the recently signed .net agreement (dated 29 June 2005), and the proposed .com agreements (dated 24 October 2005 and 29 January 2006). As a result, the GNSO Council recognized that issues such as renewal could be considered as part of the broader issue of contractual conditions for existing gTLDs, and that it may be more appropriate to have policies that apply to gTLDs generally on some of the matters raised by GNSO members, rather than be treated as matters to negotiate on a contract by contract basis.

Subsequently on the 17 January 2006, GNSO Council requested that the ICANN staff produce an issues report "related to the dot COM proposed agreement in relation to the various views that have been expressed by the constituencies." This issues report is available at:
http://www.gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg01951.html

Section D of this issues report provides a discussion of many of the issues that had been raised by the GNSO community in response to the proposed revisions to the .com agreement. In the issues report the ICANN General Counsel advised that it would not be appropriate to consider a policy development process that specifically targets the .com registry agreement.

At its meeting on 6 February 2006, members of the GNSO Council clarified that the intention of the request for the issues report was to seek an issues report on the topic of the broader policy issues that relate to the contractual conditions of gTLD agreements, which have been identified from the various views expressed by the GNSO constituencies on the proposed .com agreement.

At its meeting on 6 February 2006 the GNSO Council recognised that while the PDP initiated in December 2005 [PDP-Dec05] included within its terms of reference the topic of contractual conditions, a possible outcome of that PDP would be that there should be no additional gTLDs, and thus the Council could not depend on this PDP to address the issues raised by the GNSO community.

Thus at its meeting on 6 February 2006, the GNSO Council, by a super-majority decision, decided to initiate a separate PDP [PDP-Feb06] to look at specific areas of contractual conditions of existing gTLDs.

The work of PDP-Feb06 will naturally be conducted within the context of the work on PDP-Dec05, and if it is decided that new gTLDS should be introduced, the policy work of PDP-Feb06 will be incorporated into a single gTLD policy.

Goal

The overall goal of this PDP therefore is to determine what policies are appropriate, for the long term future of gTLDs within the context of ICANN's mission, that relate to the issues identified in the specific terms of reference below.

Terms of Reference

1. Registry agreement renewal

1a. Examine whether or not there should be a policy guiding renewal, and
if so, what the elements of that policy should be.

1b. Recognizing that not all existing registry agreements share the same
Rights of Renewal, use the findings from above to determine whether or
not these conditions should be standardized across all future
agreements.

2. Relationship between registry agreements and consensus policies

2a. Examine whether consensus policy limitations in registry agreements are appropriate and how these limitations should be determined.

2b. Examine whether the delegation of certain policy making responsibility to sponsored TLD operators is appropriate, and if so, what if any changes are needed.

3. Policy for price controls for registry services

3a. Examine whether or not there should be a policy regarding price controls, and if so, what the elements of that policy should be. (note examples of price controls include price caps, and the same pricing for all registrars)

3b. Examine objective measures (cost calculation method, cost elements, reasonable profit margin) for approving an application for a price increase when a price cap exists.

4. ICANN fees

4a. Examine whether or not there should be a policy guiding registry fees to ICANN, and if so, what the elements of that policy should be.

4b. Determine how ICANN's public budgeting process should relate to the negotiation of ICANN fees.

5. Uses of registry data

Registry data is available to the registry as a consequence of registry operation. Examples of registry data could include information on domain name registrants, information in domain name records, and traffic data associated with providing the DNS resolution services associated with the registry.

5a Examine whether or not there should be a policy regarding the use of registry data for purposes other than for which it was collected, and if so, what the elements of that policy should be.

5b. Determine whether any policy is necessary to ensure non-discriminatory access to registry data that is made available to third parties.

6. Investments in development and infrastructure

6a. Examine whether or not there should be a policy guiding investments in development and infrastructure, and if so, what the elements of that policy should be.

ICANN's Washington DC GNSO Policy Session

2006-02-26T13:54:00.000-05:00

After two days of intensive discussions in Washington ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organization is moving toward consensus on policies to guide the introduction of new TLDs. The overall sentiment expressed by the constituencies is that new gTLDs should be introduced. Although one party to this discussion (the Business Constituency) maintained that some of their members do not want any new TLDs, they have not adopted a constituency position that formally opposes their introduction.

The Washington GNSO meeting has produced the following position:

"Taking into account the lessons learnt from the limited introduction of new TLDs since 2000, the GNSO supports the continued introduction of new gTLDs. Prior to introducing new TLDs, the GNSO recognizes that the lessons learnt, the submissions made in response to PDP-Dec05 and further input, should be taken into account to identify and develop consensus on the selection criteria, allocation methods, and implementation processes."

Disclaimer: Please note that this statement has not yet been put to a vote, but the clear expectation is that it will soon be ratified.

The agenda topics for this session included only the first two points in the GNSO Terms of Reference, namely should new TLDs be introduced, and what selection criteria should be used.

With respect to selection criteria, a consensus is emerging that such criteria, the RFPs, and the subsequent contracts should all be "thinner". From my vantage point it appeared that the organization is moving toward an extremely lightweight de minimus approach (with constituencies such as the Registrars advocating not much more than bare-bones minimal technical criteria).

In view of the minimal approach being contemplated with respect to criteria, ICANN Vice-President of Business Operations Kurt Pritz has signalled that ICANN Staff is positioned to handle a good many new TLDs per year (that is to say, they have the resources which would allow for processing of at least 50-100 new TLDs per annum, perhaps more -- they pointed to their processing of significant numbers of registrar accreditation applications as an example of their ability to gear up to meet the challenge posed by a large number of applications).

The issue of quantity and periodicity of new TLDs was not broached at this session, but at least we know that sufficient staff resources are now in place that would allow for more than a limited introduction of new TLDs if that becomes the will of the community.

Bruce Tonkin, Chair of the GNSO, has provided the following overall set of observations regarding new TLDs (not necessarily a consensus view) that resulted from the Washington brainstorming session:

-- Negligible impact on security and stability.

-- New strings and strings with more than 3 characters that were not interoperable with End-user application software caused reliability problems.

-- Whole system needs to absorb a new TLD across all software before fully interoperable.

-- No institutional mechanism to inform technical, software development community and potential users.

-- Not enough education that new TLDs have been introduced. Little knowledge amongst Internet users of the new TLDs.

-- Selection and implementation process time consuming, expensive and unpredictable

-- Registry-registrar protocol was standardised (EPP)

-- Sunrise program difficult to design

-- Limitation on the number added caused problems for other applicants that met selection criteria

-- Independent evaluators an improvement after first round

-- Some Selection criteria not objective, clearly defined, and measurable enough to allow independent evaluation to be effective

-- Contracts too constraining to allow a registry operator to evolve their business model in response to market needs

-- No guarantee of financial gains from operating a new TLD

-- Long established TLDs have a powerful legacy advantage over new TLDs.

-- The switching costs for an existing registrant of a domain name from one TLD to another is significant.

-- The legacy TLDs are still continuing to grow strongly in registrations and at higher rate than the new TLDs.

-- Selection process was not a good judge of what succeeded in the market.

-- Selection process doesn't scale.

-- Individual negotiations of registry agreements after Board approves new TLD also time consuming.

-- Discretionary processes can be hijacked politically.

-- Registry operator business models may be limited by the distribution channel of all ICANN accredited registrars.

-- Small TLD is OK if meets the needs of the community that has put forward and doesn't exclude others that are within that Community.

-- The new gtlds introduced so far do not yet cater for parts of the international community that use character sets other than the limited set from the ASCII character range. This has also led to a growth in alternative root implementations and applications work arounds (e.g browser plug-ins).

-- A policy is required for the introduction of IDNs at the top level, and need to consider the political and cultural environments as demand for these IDNs is
increasing.

-- Core of the Internet adapts faster than the edges of the Internet.

-- Participation of registries, registrars and resellers, end users required in testing, and identifying clearly the objectives of the test, policy implications, and measuring the outcomes of the test.

-- Need to consider whether to set a price and if so, how price is set in the registry agreement and how it impacts end-users.

-- Describe reasoning/objectives behind "proof-of-concept" rounds and whether objectives of new TLD introductions have been met.

-- Concern about whether open TLDs have resulted in new registrants compared to existing registrants in a legacy TLD simply registering to protect the brand.

-- For existing registrants in a legacy TLD that register in a new TLD, how many of these use the new registration to create a separate website, or a separate user of email, rather than simply use email or URL forwarding to the existing registration in the legacy TLD, or change their advertising/marketing materials to explicitly
reference the new TLD in an email or website address.

-- Registry operators have learnt more about the market for new TLDs which may assist a new operator when launching a new TLD.

Finally, I am pleased to report that ICANN staff has read every single comment put forth by the public and by participants on ICANN's General Assembly discussion list; the work has been appreciated and has contributed significantly to the overall emerging consensus.

The Politics of Technology

2006-02-26T12:05:00.000-05:00

What Price New York City Wireless: The Politics of Technology

New York City Council Member Gale Brewer, Chair of the Technology Committee, will be joining the Internet Society of New York, on March 1, to discuss broadband and public access issues in a public forum. Discussion will include pending legislation and an update of policy development and other work being done by the committee. There will be time for Q&A.

[editor's note: The earlier proposal tendered by Tom Lowenhaupt of Queen's Community Board #3 regarding a .nyc top level domain initiative will probably be discussed in view of the expectation that ICANN will soon act to introduce new gTLDs. Tom's proposal was concurrent with the .berlin initiative championed by Dirk Krischenowski -- see Berlin May Get Its Own Domain].

The event is free, open to the public and the site is fully accessible.

March 1, 2006
6:00 - 8:00 p. m.

Jefferson Market Branch Library
425 Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue), at Tenth Street

For additional information on participants see:

Internet Society of New York:
http://www.isoc-ny.org/

Gale Brewer:
http://www.nyccouncil.info/constituent/member_details.cfm?Con_ID=28

Jefferson Market Branch Library (including travel directions):
http://www.nypl.org/branch/local/man/jmr.cfm

ICANN Manager of Public Participation to be Hired

2006-02-26T11:03:00.000-05:00

The following correspondence has been received subsequent to a complaint filed with the ICANN Ombudsman concerning ICANN's failure to fill the post of Manager of Public Participation as required by the bylaws:

Thank you again for having contacted the Office of the Ombudsman with your concerns about the post of Manager, Public Participation at ICANN. You have indicated to me that as your are a member of ICANN's public, and therefore, you feel that you are a person directly affected by decisions or actions by ICANN concerning this position. Based on that personal interest, I have conducted an investigation under the authority given to me through Bylaw V.

I have made enquiries with ICANN Executive Staff, and others, to determine whether or not there has been any action, decision, or inaction which would be an unfairness to you or the overall community.

Based on my review, I can inform you that is my opinion that while the post has been vacant for a period of time that this fact alone does not constitute a violation of The Code of Administrative Justice.

Based on my investigation I can inform you that, while it is perhaps regrettable that any staff position would stand open, that there have been active steps taken by ICANN to review staffing requirements for this post, to look at resumes on hand, and to take the opportunity to define and re-craft the job description for the position, based on the operational experiences.

I can also inform you that my review has indicated that much of the work of the Manager, Public Participation has been ably and competently carried out by various members of the ICANN staff in the interim.

I can find no evidence that there has been any intentional decision which would negatively impact or delay the staffing of this post. In fact, I feel comfortable in informing you that the staffing and selection process should be underway in the near future. Please do check from time to time at the ICANN Career Vacancies page found at http://www.icann.org/general/jobs.htm.

If you do not see the job posted on this site within the next 28 days, please feel free to re-contact me and I will follow up within ICANN.

Again, thank you for contacting the Office of the Ombudsman with your concerns.

Best regards,
Frank Fowlie

Registry Operators: On Objections to Settlement

2006-02-23T13:45:00.000-05:00

From the Registry Constituency website:

Registry Operators’ Submission
Re: Objections to the Proposed Verisign Settlement

The undersigned registry operators submit this statement in response to certain objections being voiced with respect to the proposed registry agreement between ICANN and Verisign for operation of the .com registry. We are concerned that many of the objections being voiced in this debate reflect either (i) a serious misreading of the actual terms of the proposed agreement or (ii) a very worrisome perspective about the extent to which individual members of the ICANN community can and/or should be empowered to dictate the terms and conditions contained in ICANN’s commercial agreements with DNS service providers. While this statement is submitted by the undersigned members of the registry constituency, our concerns involve fundamental checks and balances built into the ICANN process that are designed to protect both registries and registrars alike.

A Brief History of ICANN’s Policy Authority

ICANN was conceived from the beginning as an organization with a limited charter. This understanding is reflected in ICANN’s by-laws, which contemplate policy development only on issues within ICANN’s mission statement. As specifically set forth in the ICANN by-laws, for examples, only mission-related issues are properly the subject of a PDP.

As articulated in its mission statement, ICANN is responsible for coordinating specified technical functions including:

The allocation and assignment of domain names, IP addresses and numbers, and protocol port and parameter numbers; and
The operation and evolution of the DNS root name server system.
ICANN is also responsible for policy development “reasonably and appropriately related to these technical functions.”

The limited nature of ICANN’s mission is also reflected in the original contracts between ICANN and NSI, and in every registry agreement (RA) and registrar accreditation agreement (RAA) executed since that time. In its original agreements with ICANN, for example, NSI agreed to comply with “consensus” policies adopted by ICANN provided (i) that such policies did not unreasonably restrain competition and (ii) that the policies related to:

Issues for which uniform or coordinated resolution is reasonably necessary to facilitate interoperability, technical reliability and/or stable operation of the Internet or domain-name system;

Registry policies reasonably necessary to implement consensus policies relating to registries and/or registrars; or

Resolution of disputes regarding the registration of domain names (as opposed to the use of such domain names).
The parties also acknowledge that ICANN should have policy-making authority in certain other areas (e.g., to develop the UDRP) involving issues that, while specifically considered in the White Paper, may not have been strictly technical in nature. To avoid subsequent disagreements about these issues, the original registry agreements and registrar accreditation agreements contained a list of specific areas in which ICANN was deemed to have legacy policy authority, as follows:

Allocation principles (e.g., first-come/first-served, timely renewal, holding period after expiration; surviving registrars);

Prohibitions on warehousing or speculation;

Reservation of SLD names that may not be registered initially or that may not be renewed due to reasons reasonably related to (a) avoidance of confusion among or misleading of users, (b) intellectual property, or (c) the technical management of the DNS or the Internet (e.g., "example.com" and single-letter/digit names); and

Dispute resolution policies related to registration of domain names.

Taken together, the general policy making authority granted to ICANN to preserve the stability and security of the DNS and the legacy policy authority listed above created a “picket fence” around ICANN’s authority. ICANN could establish policy and/or best practices affecting issues outside the picket fence, but could not mandate registry and registrar compliance with such policies. ICANN’s ability to impose policy prospectively on registries and registrars was further constrained by procedural safeguards (ICANN’s first PDP) designed to demonstrate the presence of a “true consensus” - i.e., the absence of substantial objections.

When the first new TLDs came online in 2001, the “picket fence” was retained, with only minor refinements. This was no accident: even though operators of the new registries had virtually no bargaining power, the agreements reflected the community’s settled understanding about ICANN’s authority. ICANN was empowered to impose policies - even prospectively - on DNS service providers in a limited number of areas related to interoperability, technical reliability, operational stability, the safety and integrity of the Registry Database.

By 2002, it was widely (but not universally) conceded that the standard for measuring consensus laid out in the Registry Agreements and the Registrar Accreditation Agreements was unworkable. The standard by which consensus was measured - the absence of substantial opposition - was a barrier to policy development. Accordingly, as part of ICANN’s “evolution and reform (ERC)” process, ICANN amended its by-laws to include the GNSO PDP process. Under that process, ICANN could develop and adopt consensus policies, even in the face of substantial opposition, so long as the policy area was within ICANN’s mission statement and ICANN followed specified procedures in developing such policies.

The ERC process not only embraced the concept of the “picket fence” - it incorporated those substantive constraints into ICANN’s bylaws in the form of a mission statement. Post-ERC registry and registrar agreements continued (as they do to this day) to limit the scope of permissible topics for mandatory specifications and policies. In effect, registrars and registry operators confirmed their agreement to abide by subsequently developed ICANN policies so long as those policies were (i) necessary to facilitate interoperability, technical reliability, operational stability on the DNS or the Internet, and the safety and integrity of the Registry Database, or (ii) covered by ICANN’s legacy authority.

Some might argue that the constraints on ICANN’s policy authority are artificial, and should be abandoned. That would be a mistake. The protections of the picket fence and the procedural safeguards are today - just as they were when first agreed - the ultimate source of ICANN’s legitimacy. Private commercial actors - registries and registrars - voluntarily ceded to ICANN, via contractual undertakings, the authority it needed to fulfill ICANN’s legitimate mission. ICANN’s authority is legitimate because the delegation of authority was necessary, but no more than needed, to create policy in areas requiring coordination. ICANN is recognized as a legitimate private standards setting body because its authority answers but does not exceed that needed to perform its legitimate coordinating functions. Absent these constraints, ICANN’s authority would be vulnerable to challenges under the competition laws of most countries participating in ICANN through the GAC.

The Registry Agreement

Notwithstanding the arguments of some of those opposed to the Verisign settlement, the new agreements - including the Verisign agreement - are, with regards to fundamental policy considerations, entirely consistent with the prior agreements.

First, the new agreements obligate registry operators to agree in advance to comply with consensus policies as they are developed in the future.

Second, the new agreements include a picket fence not dissimilar to those found in every registry agreement since 1999. Registry operators must promise to comply with existing and prospective “consensus policies" relating to a very familiar set of issues, including:
Issues for which uniform or coordinated resolution is reasonably necessary to facilitate interoperability, security and/or stability of the Internet or DNS; Functional and performance specifications for the provision of registry services;
Security and stability of the registry database for the TLD;
Registry policies reasonably necessary to implement consensus policies relating to registry operations or registrars; or
Resolution of disputes regarding the registration of domain names (as opposed to the use of such domain names).
As before, the agreements specifically grandfather policies relating to name allocation, warehousing, speculation, IP protection, Whois data, and registration disputes.

As a result, the undersigned registry operators believe that in general, while registries are not equal and there are fundamental differences between sponsored and non-sponsored TLDs, the future agreements and contract renewals should be made consistent with the .com agreement as applicable, and that Registries should be treated on an equitable basis.

Those objecting to the proposed agreement for .com ignore the fundamental continuity and focus instead on presumptions of renewal and the pricing authority. But unless those who object can make a reasonable case that the disputed terms and conditions threaten ICANN’s ability to preserve interoperability, stability, and security, they are not properly the subject of ICANN consensus policy-making.

As a threshold matter, consensus policies must fit within the constraints ICANN has acknowledged from the start - i.e., in order to be binding on registries and registrars, the resulting policies must be reasonably necessary to facilitate interoperability, security and stability of the Internet or the DNS, or relate to the resolution of disputes regarding the registration (as opposed to the use) of domain names.

The GNSO has recently undertaken to draft terms of reference for a PDP to establish the terms and conditions under which existing registry agreements will be renewed. Because this draft TOR is presumably motivated by dissatisfaction about the new registry agreements in general, and the proposed agreement for .com in particular, it provides important context for the objections to the proposed registry agreement for the .com TLD. Accordingly, the scope of the proposed PDP is relevant to the Board’s consideration of the Verisign settlement, and weaddress below certain provisions of the draft TOR that appear to be parallel objections to the .com agreement.

Registry Agreement Renewal. The draft TOR asks “What benefits does the ICANN community derive from presumptive rights of renewal?” This is simply the wrong question. Unless a reasonable case can be made that such presumptions pose a threat to interoperability, security, and/or stability, the question of renewal presumptions can not be a subject for consensus policy making and must, we submit, be resolved through commercial negotiations. Again, that is not to say that the GNSO council is not entitled to develop a view. For example, the draft PDP TOR might appropriately ask:

Do presumptions of renewal pose a threat to interoperability, security, and stability of the Internet and DNS, or undermine existing consensus policies on name allocation, warehousing, Whois data, and registration disputes?

While the undersigned registry operators believe that the answer is a rather emphatic “no,” we have no objection to a serious debate on the question.

Registry Agreements and Consensus Policies. The draft TOR asks whether registry contract provisions should ever be immune from the obligation to abide by consensus policies. This could be an interesting question, and properly constructed, within the scope of a PDP. But it is simply not on the table in connection with the new registry agreements: nothing in any of the new sTLD agreements, in the .net agreement or in the proposed .com agreement with Verisign permits a registry operator to ignore a policy that is (1) adopted in accordance with the PDP procedures, and (2) necessary to preserve the interoperability, security, and stability of the Internet.

Whatever one thinks about proposed agreement between ICANN and Verisign for the .com registry, it does not except Verisign from the obligation that all registry operators have to comply with applicable consensus policies. To the extent that the proposed contract has language that does not appear in other new agreements, that language is nothing more than a belt-and-suspenders exercise that, given the circumstances under which this contract was negotiated, should surprise no one. The fact that ICANN cannot expand the scope of its consensus policy authority beyond interoperability, stability, and security and the legacy policy authority areas is consistent with ICANN’s mission statement and reflected in every registry agreement ever negotiated. Simply put, ICANN does not have the authority to adopt a new mission and then unilaterally obligate registries or registrars to comply with related policies.

The Importance of Negotiating Flexibility

The GNSO is, of course, free to recommend whatever course of action its members agree on. Likewise, individual members of the ICANN community are free to express their views on the proposed settlement. But the community should understand that an issue outside the picket fence cannot be moved inside simply by considering it under the procedural rules set out in the GNSO PDP. Policies and policy recommendations related to issues outside the picket fence simply are not “consensus policies” and are not, as a result, binding on either registries or registrars except as a result of commercial negotiations.
In our view, the vast majority of objections to the .com agreement pertain to issues that are not within the picket fence and that have to date been addressed in commercial negotiations. Those who object to the agreement are, in effect, second-guessing the ICANN Board, and demanding a seat at the negotiating table to negotiate issues outside of ICANN’s mission. The ICANN Board should proceed with extreme caution, and address its critiques head on, without setting a precedent that will complicate ICANN’s ability to take care of business for years to come.

The job of the ICANN Board is to serve the community by exercising its informed judgment based on the best available information. Some of that important information may be proprietary, and not on the public record. Some of that information may relate to the fiduciary obligations of the ICANN Board and properly not on the public record. By acceding to the demands of a few with respect to commercial issues outside of ICANN’s core mission the Board deprives the community of its informed judgment, limits its future negotiating flexibility and, at the same time, makes it increasingly difficult to resist those who would use ICANN’s agreements with DNS service providers to create an anti-competitive regulatory regime. In negotiating agreements with registry operators, ICANN must retain the authority to respond to the commercial realities in which any particular registry operates. This requires that ICANN have the ability to modify its position with respect to fees, renewal terms, the introduction of new registry services, and other issues that may well vary from registry to registry. The Board must retain the authority to actually make a deal that the registry operators on the other side of the table can rely on. Tying the hands of the ICANN board in these areas makes little sense.

While ICANN’s mission includes the promotion of competition, this role is best fulfilled through the measured expansion of the name space and the facilitation of innovative approaches to the delivery of domain name registry services. Neither ICANN nor the GNSO have the authority or expertise to act as anti-trust regulators. Fortunately, many governments around the world do have this expertise and authority, and do not hesitate to exercise it in appropriate circumstances.

Signed by:

Afilias (.info)
Employ Media (.jobs)
Global Name Registry (.name)
NeuLevel (.biz)
PIR (.org)
VeriSign (.com and .net)

February 20, 2006

Forrester Research Disparages .travel sTLD

2006-02-23T13:23:00.000-05:00

From the Forrester Research website:

"The .travel sponsored domain name is now live. Like a mosquito buzzing around your picnic, .travel is an annoying inconvenience. Only three groups are expected to benefit: the sponsor, Tralliance; destination marketing organizations; and small niche travel firms."

CircleID has a good follow-up interview with .travel's Ron Andruff here.

DOC Technical and Economic Assessment of IPv6

2006-02-23T13:03:00.000-05:00

From the NTIA website: The U. S. Department of Commerce has released the final report on the technical and economic issues related to IPv6 adoption in the United States, including the appropriate role of government, international interoperability, security in transition, and costs and benefits of IPv6 deployment. The report was developed by the IPv6 Task Force, led by NTIA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The report is here and includes this comment pertaining to ICANN: "To capture fully the address benefits of IPv6, those entities involved in the process should continue working to ensure that IPv6 addresses are allocated fairly and efficiently. The North American IPv6 Task Force (NAv6TF) indicates that some organizations have had trouble getting IPv6 addresses recently and suggests that allocation procedures may need to be changed so that IPv6 addresses can be obtained more easily."

Draft Agenda for 29th CENTR General Assembly

2006-02-23T12:01:00.000-05:00

The full draft agenda for CENTR's upcoming meeting (2nd – 3rd March 2006, Sheraton Hotel, Heathrow Airport, London) is here, but day number two should be especially promising with the following speakers/events scheduled:

Registry update

Experiences of DNSSEC deployment under .se, Anne-Marie Eklund-Löwinder, .se
SIDN’s Public Consultation, Bart Vastenburg, .nl
Development of .xxx TLD, Stuart Lawley, ICM Registry

Internet Governance

IGF update, Markus Kummer, WGIG secretariat
Participation in the IGF process, David Hendon & Martin Boyle of UK Gov.
European Commission perspective, William Dee

ICANN-related Issues

Changes in IANA Service, Kim Davies, IANA

DOC/NTIA "Request for Information" on the IANA Functions

2006-02-23T08:36:00.000-05:00

D -- Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

General Information

Document Type: Sources Sought Notice
Solicitation Number: Reference-Number-DOCNTIARFI0001
Posted Date: Feb 21, 2006
Original Response Date: Mar 07, 2006
Current Response Date: Mar 07, 2006
Original Archive Date: Mar 22, 2006
Current Archive Date: Mar 22, 2006
Classification Code: D -- Information technology services, including telecommunications services
Naics Code: 541519 -- Other Computer Related Services

Contracting Office Address
Department of Commerce, Office of the Secretary, Commerce Acquisition Solutions, Commerce Information Technology Solutions, 1401 Constitution Avenue, N.W. Room 6514, Washington, DC, 20230

Description
THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY ? Solicitations are not available at this time. Requests for a solicitation will not receive a response. This notice does not constitute a commitment by the United States Government.

The Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (DOC/NTIA) is exploring options for Contractor performance of three, interdependent technical Internet coordinating functions. In support of the operation of the Internet domain name and addressing system, a Contractor would furnish the necessary personnel, material, equipment, services, and facilities to perform the following services.

First, the Contractor would coordinate the assignment of technical protocol parameters.
This function would involve the review and assignment of unique values to numerous parameters (e.g., operation codes, port numbers, object identifiers, protocol numbers) used in various Internet protocols. This function would also include dissemination of listings of assigned parameters through various means (including on-line publication) and the review of technical documents for consistency with assigned values.

Second, the Contractor would perform administrative functions associated with root management. This function would primarily involve facilitation and coordination of the root zone of the Internet domain name and addressing system. It would include receiving requests for and making routine updates of the country code top level domain contact and nameserver information.

Third, the Contractor would allocate IPv4 and IPv6 delegations of IP address space. This function would include delegation of IP address blocks to regional registries for routine allocation, typically through downstream providers, to Internet end-users within the regions served by those registries. It would also include reservation and direct allocation of space for special purposes, such as multicast addressing, addresses for private networks, and globally specified applications.

The DOC/NTIA is seeking the following information:

1. Potential Respondents shall describe how they would propose to successfully perform each of the three services, assuming that all services provided by Respondent would be accomplished in accordance with all applicable U.S. laws, regulations, policies, and procedures.

2. Potential Respondents shall describe both their existing relationships with the following entities and the extent to which such relationships would enable Respondents to successfully perform each of the three services:

a. the Internet engineering community,

b. Internet standards development organizations,

c. Regional Internet Registries,

d. country code top level domain operators,

e. generic and sponsored top level domain operators, and

f. national governments or public authorities associated with specific country code top level domains.

3. Currently, the services are performed under contract at no cost to the United States Government. Potential Respondents shall describe proposed financial plans, including, if appropriate, the manner in which charges levied for services rendered would be derived. Charges cannot be based on cost plus a percentage of cost.

Respondents shall not be obligated to provide the services described herein and it is understood by the United States Government that the cost estimates provided as a result of this request are ?best? estimates only.

All information submitted in response to this announcement is voluntary; the United States Government will not pay for information requested nor will it compensate any respondent for any cost incurred in developing information provided to the United States Government. The response date for this market research is March 7, 2006. No collect calls will be accepted. All responses to this RFI may be submitted via e-mail to Carol Silverman, Contracting Officer, at csilverman@doc.gov, courtesy copy to Brendon Johnson, Contracting Officer, at bjohnson@doc.gov and with a hard copy to the U. S. Department of Commerce, Office of Acquisition Management and Financial Assistance, Commerce Acquisition Solutions Division, 1401 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Room 6521, Washington, D.C. 20230.

Point of Contact
Carol Silverman, Contracting Officer, Phone 202-482-5543 (Room 6521), Fax 202-482-4988, Email csilverman@doc.gov - Brendon Johnson, Contracting Officer, Phone 202-482-7401, Fax 202-482-1711, Email bjohnson@doc.gov

Commentary: ALAC -- The Broken Conduit

2006-02-23T08:02:00.000-05:00

The At-Large Advisory Committee is unlike any other ICANN advisory body; it is not merely a collection of appointed advisors (like the members of the Security and Stability Advisory Committee or the members of the DNS Root Server System Advisory Committee), but rather it is a group charged with channeling the input from grassroots organizations up to the ICANN Board. Thus far the ALAC has a total of 49 accredited and candidate organizations in its tent.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the ALAC as a conduit that transmits bottom-up input to the Board, one only has to look at the sum total of the contributions provided by these at-large "structures" on any topic... and to be fair to the ALAC, one should be looking at the responsiveness to volatile major issues that command everyone's attention rather than looking at some relatively arcane DNS topic-matter.

So, you might wonder exactly how many of these organizations (the at-large structures) have provided input into the ICANN-VeriSign settlement agreement discussions that have been ongoing in ernest over the course of the last four months. The answer is "none". Not one. Zero.

Clearly, we have a problem.

The ICANN Board needs to have a long, hard look at the ALAC's operations and structure since the current paradigm has failed to produce results.

Has ICANN's ISP Constituency Died?

2006-02-22T13:18:00.000-05:00

While it may have been an anomaly that no one from the ISP Constituency bothered to put forward any comments in response to the GNSO PDP on new gTLD policy (the constituency's position had to be drafted by their Secretariat as no one from this ICANN constituency responded to requests for input), we now notice that in response to a 2 February call for comments on the hot-button issue of the year -- the proposed ICANN-VeriSign settlement agreement -- not one single comment has been received... and, as you know, the public comment period has just ended.

So, is it time to fold up this non-responsive constituency? It sure looks like it -- even roadkill moves around a bit in the breeze...

CFIT & FOIA

2006-02-22T12:30:00.000-05:00

From the website of the Coalition for ICANN Transparency:

"CFIT today filed an appeal to its original FOIA request, filed on Dec. 1, 2005, challenging the Commerce Department’s disclosure exemptions within more than 100 pages of meeting reports, memos and electronic communications between the Department, ICANN and VeriSign on matters relating to both the .NET and .COM registry agreements. CFIT also filed a second FOIA Request with expanded search terms for more inclusive data dating back to Jan. 1, 2004. "

FYI: CFIT's latest litigation hearing date was set for Feb. 21, 2006... still awaiting results...

A Sudden At-Large Interest in ICANN?

2006-02-22T12:00:00.000-05:00

A sudden surge in European At-Large Structure applications all within the span of one week has left people wondering if there is an effort afoot to ensure that ISOC doesn't capture ICANN's planned EURALO (European Regional At-Large Organization). The newcomers:

As all these groups appear to be German, one can readily surmise that the hand of Annette Mulhberg is at work...

her earlier impassioned call to action has been supported by:
Peter Bittner, Computer Science Forum for Peace and Social Responsibility;Forum InformatikerInnen Frieden und gesellschaftlicheVerantwortung, (FIfF)
Markus Beckedahl, Co-chair of network new media (nnm)
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Kleinwaechter, ICANN-Studienkreis, University of Aarhus
Andy Mueller-Maguhn, Chaos Computer Club
Dr. Volker Grassmuck, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, Humboldt-Universität, Berlin

WECANN! now in English

2006-02-22T10:58:00.000-05:00

Annette Mühlberg's WECANN! blog is "not any longer in German but in English - for Europe At-Large and all of you" according to a recent post to ICANN's ALAC discussion list. Her first article in Shakespeare's tongue, "US-Government's Role in ICANN-VeriSign Struggle", discusses the Mike Roberts submission to CircleID and notes that "the question of the internet infrastructure as a public good and what legal framework is needed to give that concept a stable basis would be a very interesting issue for the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Athens this year."

Mueller responds to Roberts and Sims

2006-02-22T10:51:00.000-05:00

Responding to comments from Mike Roberts and Joe Sims posted at CircleID, Milton Mueller states:

I can’t help feeling amused by this debate. Perhaps the most amusing thing is that all sides can agree that the bogeyman of “international control” is far, far worse than what is happening now. More about that later.

Equally amusing, I find myself agreeing with Mike Roberts and Joe Sims on significant points (though not the entire package).

Mike Roberts is on target when he says, “ICANN, VeriSign and the government currently are bound to each other in an incestuous legal triangle in front of which an appearance of public-private partnership is maintained.”

Joe Sims is on target when he says that “providing what amounted to a de facto perpetual right to operate .com was giving up little or nothing, since it was unlikely as a practical matter that operation of this most important of the DNS registries was likely to be moved to different hands, and in return we obtained the ability to redelegate .org and to rebid .net.” More generally, domain name registries that succeed in building up value in their TLDs deserve to benefit from the future value of their investment in physical infrastructure and brand equity. Any other policy would erode the long-term economic sustainability of DNS.

But I’ve got to quibble with Sims about that “ability to redelegate...net”
Because we didn’t really redelegate .net, did we? And the reason is that VeriSign was able to work its lobbying magic in the U.S. Congress and play the “national security” card (which we all know is bogus, at least as far as OUR security is concerned). So public interest was sacrificed to nationalistic politics and Washington-based capture.

Will someone explain to me then what is so terrible about bringing some international political and legal forces into play here? Since it’s true that the USG, VeriSign and ICANN are locked in an unlovely embrace of interdependence and there is no domestic political impetus to get us out of that, why is the UN-based process viewed with such trepidation?

Is it because the US is a paragon of freedom and the rest of the world full of mindless authoritarians just waiting to put the brakes on the internet’s freedom? Give me a break! We have a US President who literally claims that he can make up laws justifying his actions and ignore ones he doesn’t like. We have an NSA that claims it can ask for anyone’s email regardless of whether it’s domestic or foreign and ISPs that are willing to turn it over.

And as someone who has been deeply engaged in ICANN’s policy making processes, complaining about the “slowness” of international processes is gargantuan hypocrisy - we are now in year 8 of ICANN’s existence and it doesn’t have a stable policy toward new TLD additions, it hasn’t reformed the Whois-privacy relationship after 6 years, it is just getting a ccNSO into place after 8 years, etc. etc. The days are long past when we can talk about private sector self-regulation as if it were “nimble” unless one is into making really bad jokes.

Address Council Structural/Operational Review

2006-02-22T10:37:00.000-05:00

From the minutes of the ASO AC teleconference held on Wednesday, February 1, 2006:

Olof Nordling stated that recently ICANN had launched a review of the GNSO. This the second review in accordance with the ICANN Bylaws Article 4 regarding accountability and calls for review of not only the GNSO but the supporting organizations and ASO AC, if feasible, every three years. He explained it was an on-going program and would continue with the SO’s and AC. Olof Nordling called for suggestions on when the review should be, and what should be reviewed. He explained he was providing this provision of the Bylaws as an informational item to the Council and requested the Council think about where they want it to be, and what issues will be important. He further explained that the review will be requested in a more formal fashion in the future.

Karl Auerbach on the Revised Settlement Agreement

2006-02-22T08:49:00.000-05:00

As far as I can tell the revised agreement has repaired not even one of the numerous fatal flaws that were found in the draft discussed in Vancouver.

Has data mining been removed? No. ICANN grants Verisign an entirely unwarranted contractual right to mine DNS usage data for the profit of Verisign with no benefit to those who have paid for domain names or to those who use DNS. Data mining not only adds nothing to internet stability but actually undermines it by distracting Verisign from the primary goal to be obtained, the operation of a reliable, unbiased, efficient TLD registry with associated TLD servers.

Nor does ICANN obligate Verisign to offer prompt, unbiased, and accurate domain name responses to domain name queries.

Has the "Add Grace" period been eliminated? No. ICANN still enables one of the worst of domain name business practices, one that relies on deception and adds utterly nothing to internet stability.

Has presumptive renewal been removed? No.

Is Verisign being driving to establish registry prices that reflect actual costs? No, ICANN simply presumes that price increases are warranted without even a dribble of analysis and in the face of clear and obvious evidence that the underlying costs are actually dropping rather than increasing.

All-in-all, this agreement is unacceptable. The agreement damages the stability of the internet by defocusing the registry operator and suggesting that the registry operator subordinate reliable and accurate operation to whatever profit opportunities may be possible through data mining. The agreement has arbitrary and unsubstantited pricing terms that are not tied to any costs but which must be borne by all users of .com, as a recurring cost year-in-and-year out. And finally, ICANN continues through this agreement the completely outrageous practices enabled by the strange creature known as "add grace".

ICANN's staff should reject this agreement.

If not ICANN's board should do two things:

1) Fire ICANN's staff (and the law firm they use) because they are clearly deaf to the demands of both the internet community and the idea that the overriding purpose of ICANN and this agreement is the reliable, accurate, efficient, and unbiased provision of domain name registration services and domain name query resolution services to internet users.

2) Reject this agreement.

--karl--

Business Constituency on ICANN-VeriSign Settlement

2006-02-22T08:44:00.000-05:00

Dear Vint

It has come to our attention that there is discussion on the Board to consider voting soon on the proposed 2006 version of the litigation negotiation agreement with VeriSign, which includes a revised proposed .com Registry Agreement. The Business Constituency officers would like to remind you and other members of the Board of the GNSO resolution sent to the Board during the Vancouver ICANN meeting: "That the ICANN Board should postpone
adoption of the proposed settlement while the Council fully investigates the policy issues raised by the proposed changes."

The Board should be aware that the GNSO Council is advancing that investigation promptly:

* On January 17, 2006 the Council requested an Issues Report related to the policy concerns raised by all constituencies

* On January 29, 2006 a revised set of documents were posted by ICANN, including a revised proposed .com Registry Agreement

* On February 6, 2006 the GNSO Council voted, by a two thirds majority, to launch a PDP to address the broader policy issues inherent to all registry agreements

* On February 16, 2006 the Council began detailed discussion of the Terms of Reference; a second call on Friday, February 24, 2006 is expected to complete that discussion

The Business Constituency's officers have examined the present draft .com agreement in detail. Two of the officers and several BC members were able to participate in a call with the ICANN senior staff last week to gain further insights. We thank the ICANN staff for this opportunity. That discussion revealed that there was no material change in the core areas that concerned the BC membership which all impact on competition:

* Exclusion from ICANN consensus policy for new registry services;

* a presumption right of renewal;

* the ability of an upstream monopoly to leverage its monopoly downstream to such areas as uses of traffic data.

The ICANN Board has a mechanism to address these concerns. It is the GNSO Policy Development Process to provide policy related to gTLD registries, and such a process is underway. Lacking the guidance that the PDP will provide to the Board, the officers of the BC do not believe that the Board should approve the proposed agreement.

As noted in our response to the first call for comment on the proposed .com award and settlement agreement, the BC is supportive of the settlement of the litigation. We identified several areas that needed changing in the
proposed .com award at that time. As stated above, these areas of concern remain in the revised 2006 .com proposed agreement. It remains clear that tying the litigation settlement to an early renewal of the .com registry
agreement is problematic, given the proposed approach in the proposed .com agreement to some significant policy areas that are likely to affect all existing registry agreements. As noted above, that has led to the initiation
of a policy development process (PDP) by the gNSO Council.

The BC officers are firmly of the view that the litigation should be settled in its own right, or seen to its natural conclusion through the courts without any settlement being linked to the early renewal of the .com registry agreement. Once the two are not linked, the Board and the ICANN community can take the appropriate time to consider the important policy implications of the suggested changes to the registry agreements.

Sincerely

The Officers of the Commercial and Business Constituency (BC)

Marilyn Cade
Philip Sheppard
Grant Forsyth

IPC on VeriSign Settlement Agreement

2006-02-22T08:34:00.000-05:00

The Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) appreciates this opportunity to comment on the proposed revised settlement agreement between ICANN and Verisign, and in particular on the proposed revised .com registry agreement that forms part of this settlement.

The IPC reiterates the comments made in its December 7, 2005 statement and incorporates them herein by reference (See http://www.icann.org/topics/vrsn-settlement/IPC-statement-re-VRSN-settlement-07dec05.pdf).
With respect to the process for approval of new registry services, the IPC is pleased to see that the revised .com registry agreement reduces from 3 to 2 years the timeframe in which Verisign would categorically not be subject to the procedure for approval of new registry services (NRS) developed by the GNSO Council in accordance with the Policy Development Process (PDP) in Appendix A of ICANN's By-Laws. However, the IPC believes that Verisign's proposed immunity from the approved NRS procedure for any length of time has not been justified.

We believe Verisign should be subject to this procedure from the Effective Date of the Agreement, as are all other TLD registries, unless a specific justification for a deviation can be articulated and justified. We also strongly believe that this same NRS procedure should apply to new registry services that involve the use of traffic data. The apparent
total exemption of such new services from any review procedure remains unjustified, in our view.

It is worth recalling that the PDP was created as a result of ICANN's Blueprint for Reform (http://www.icann.org/committees/evol-reform/blueprint-20jun02.htm)
which recognized that any process for names policy development must (i) encourage broad, informed participation reflecting the functional, geographic, and cultural diversity of the Internet; (ii) be open and transparent; (iii) promote well-informed decisions based on participation by affected and interested parties and, where appropriate, expert advice; (iv) ensure that those entities most affected have an appropriate role in the policy development process; and (v) encourage bottom-up policy development.

In fact, one of the PDP's first uses was in connection with the very issue as to which Verisign would, under the terms of the proposed revised agreement, be able to bypass it, namely new registry services. Specifically, in late 2003, ICANN's Staff Manager recognized the need for a predictable procedure for the introduction of new registry services and recommended that the GNSO initiate a PDP on this issue
(http://www.icann.org/gnso/issue-reports/registry-svcs-report-19nov03.htm). As support for this recommendation, the Staff Manager recognized the diverse characteristics of new or modified services that had led to different results for different requests, without a clear articulation of the reasons for each decision.

While we understand that the SiteFinder service itself is carved out of the proposed revised agreement, the fact remains that, were the proposed revised .com registry agreement to go into effect as is, Verisign would be empowered to unilaterally and without any review procedure roll out a new registry service involving traffic data that was just as controversial as SiteFinder. Indeed, for any other new registry service, no matter how controversial, Verisign would be allowed to bypass the NRS review procedure established via the PDP process. The potential for further disputes involving ICANN, Verisign, and ICANN constituencies could be significant. Surely this cannot be in ICANN's interests.

As a result, the IPC strongly recommends that the proposed .com registry agreement be amended to require Verisign to be subject to the NRS procedure developed in the PDP for new registry services, including for new registry services based on the use of traffic data, unless a specific exception can be articulated and justified.

Finally, we do not consider the statement that "Verisign has provided confidential reports to ICANN" as responsive to our expressed concern about how if at all Verisign has lived up to its obligations under Appendix W of the existing agreement. This does not bode well for the prospect that ICANN will improve on its current level of performance
with regard to contract compliance and enforcement.

Submitted by Caroline G. Chicoine,
Vice President of the IPC,
on behalf of the IPC.

The Stratton Sclavos Letter

2006-02-22T08:14:00.000-05:00

Dr. Vinton G. Cerf
Chairman of the Board
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
Marina del Ray, California 90292-6601

Re: Board Approval of Proposed .com Registry Agreement

Dear Dr. Cerf:

The approval of the proposed .com Registry Agreement currently is before the Board of ICANN. Through approval of the agreement, ICANN has an opportunity to resolve years of business disputes and litigation that have been expensive and disruptive not only to VeriSign and ICANN, but to the broader Internet community as well, and to put in place between the parties a principled agreement that both broadens ICANN’s supervision of the DNS and insures the necessary investment in the DNS infrastructure. Representatives of ICANN and VeriSign have invested extensive resources and considered effort in analyzing and negotiating the proposed .com agreement, as well as soliciting input from appropriate government agencies.

One Billion Internet users, over 15 Billion daily DNS queries, and over $1.7 Trillion of e-commerce depend on the continued secure and reliable operation of the .com registry. The .com registry is unique in scope and in the requirements it places on the registry operator to build and maintain a secure and reliable infrastructure. Nonetheless, VeriSign’s operation of the registry at all times has met the highest standards. Indeed, there is no precedent or evidence that any other organization or company could meet VeriSign’s extraordinary record of performance, including its achievement of 100% DNS availability. VeriSign’s stewardship of the .com registry is critical to a secure and reliable DNS, especially now when the security and stability of the Internet and DNS face new and increasing threats of attack and increasing demands for reliability. The proposed .com agreement establishes the structural and economic framework necessary to preserve a stable and secure DNS.

Further, the proposed .com agreement broadens ICANN’s role in, and supervision of, the operation of the registry, maintains caps on registry prices, and provides a stable basis to fund ICANN’s ongoing mission. First, the agreement requires all proposed services that only the registry operator is capable of providing by reason of its designation as registry operator to proceed through a review process by ICANN, including with respect to the implications of the proposed service for security, stability and competition. Such broad supervisory authority did not exist in the past. Issues over the scope of ICANN’s authority in this regard under the 2001 .com agreement have led to disputes and litigation and a deceleration of innovation within the DNS.

Second, the proposed agreement firmly maintains price caps into the future. While VeriSign does not agree that restrictions on price are necessary in view of the growth of a competitive market among registries worldwide, we have agreed to continue price caps in the proposed agreement as an accommodation to competing viewpoints. VeriSign’s registration prices have been frozen for approximately eight years, unlike the prices of businesses in virtually any other area of commerce, despite increased service, demand, and threats to the secure and stable operation of this critical infrastructure. Some market based pricing flexibility is necessary in the future, however, to insure appropriate investment in the security and stability of the DNS infrastructure. The current proposed .com agreement fairly strikes a balance between these competing interests.

Third, the proposed .com agreement provides ICANN for the first time a source of regular and secure funding for its operations, unencumbered by concurrent policy expectations and demands. In the past, interested parties have tried to use ICANN’s budget to threaten and coerce ICANN into taking action in the narrow interests of those parties and contrary to and in spite of the broader interests of the Internet. The proposed agreement guarantees ICANN the independence it needs to properly fulfill its espoused mission.

For all of these reasons as well as others, approval of the proposed .com Registry Agreement, and its submission to the Department of Commerce, should proceed without delay.

We are aware of a recent letter to you from eight registrars who are attempting to influence ICANN’s processes with respect to the proposed agreement. These eight registrars plainly neither speak on behalf of the larger Internet community, nor evince an understanding of, or concern for, the requirements for a stable and secure operation of the DNS. They speak only in their own narrow economic interests.

The eight registrars raise two issues with respect to the agreement. First, the registrars object to the level of the price caps. This small group of registrars is seeking to prevent infrastructure investment among registry operators through a freeze on registry prices which would result in the registrars maximizing their profits at the expense of the broader Internet community and continued investment in the DNS infrastructure. It is notable that none of these registrars reduced the price of their services to consumers when VeriSign recently reduced the price of registration in the .net domain. Instead, these registrars maintained their prices and claimed the benefit of the price reductions, not for the Internet community or consumers, but rather for themselves.

Second, the eight registrars object to the renewal clause of the proposed .com agreement as newly providing for automatic renewal. The renewal clause of the existing 2001 .com Registry Agreement, however, guarantees VeriSign an automatic renewal on terms such as those included in the proposed .com agreement. In addition, the proposed .com agreement preserves for ICANN the right to conduct a re-bid in the event VeriSign does not live up to its responsibilities under the agreement. So long as a registry operator complies with its responsibilities, however, certainty of renewal -- a firmly established principal in the operation of critical infrastructure -- is necessary for an operator to have the proper means and incentives to invest on an ongoing basis in the security and reliability of the DNS infrastructure.

The secure and reliable operation of the .com registry and the DNS are too important to the international and Internet community to be placed at risk by delaying the approval of the proposed .com registry agreement or yielding to the threats of a few who may be willing to place their interests ahead of those of the larger Internet community. We urge a prompt approval of the proposed agreement by the Board.

Sincerely,

Stratton Sclavos
Chairman and CEO
VeriSign Inc.

GNSO Review Update

2006-02-22T07:51:00.000-05:00

ICANN Senior Policy Counselor Liz Williams writes:

As the senior staff member responsible for the GNSO Review, I will soon be able to provide much more detailed information on the way in which the Review will be proceeding now that the appropriate formalities from last night's Board meeting are completed.

For the benefit of Council members who have not been involved in the establishment of the Review, I've provided some easy to navigate background. I hope this also helps other Council members with their preparation for the Review.

1. The July 2005 Luxembourg Resolution initiated the Review and started a process of discussion between the Board, Council, and Staff on the establishment of the Terms of Reference.
http://www.icann.org/minutes/resolutions-15jul05.htm#p4

2. The December 2005 Vancouver Resolution approved the Terms of Reference which had been developed in consultation with individual members of the Board, Council and Staff
http://www.icann.org/minutes/resolutions-04dec05.htm
A 21 day public comment period about the draft Terms of Reference was conducted between 27 October 2005 and 17 November 2005. The archive of comments is at http://forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-review-tor/

3. The 14 December 2005 ICANN website posting sought requests for proposals from independent evaluators http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-14dec05.htm

4. The 21 Feb 2006 Board Resolution approved the appointment of an independent team of evaluators but is not available online as yet.

5. Background documents on the GNSO Review can be found at
http:// www.icann.org/gnso/review-tor-background-04nov05.htm.
These include the recommendations from the GNSO Council Review, the relevant ICANN By laws and other helpful information.

6. The Terms of Reference can be found at http://www.icann.org/gnso/review-reference-terms-27oct05.htm.

7. Article IV Section 4 of ICANN's Bylaws (http://www.icann.org/general/archive-bylaws/bylaws-08apr05.htm#IV) gives guidance about the conduct of the review and I've copied it here for easy reference. I have added some emphasis which may provide clarification about the process.

1. The Board shall cause a periodic review, if feasible no less frequently than every three years, of the performance and operation of each Supporting Organization, each Supporting Organization Council, each Advisory Committee (other than the Governmental Advisory Committee), and the Nominating Committee by an entity or entities independent of the organization under review. The goal of the review, to be undertaken pursuant to such criteria and standards as the Board shall direct, shall be to determine (i) whether that organization has a continuing purpose in the ICANN structure, and (ii) if so, whether any change in structure or operations is desirable to improve its effectiveness. The results of such reviews shall be posted on the Website for public review and comment, and shall be considered by the Board no later than the second scheduled meeting of the Board after such results have been posted for 30 days. The consideration by the Board includes the ability to revise the structure or operation of the parts of ICANN being reviewed by a two- thirds vote of all members of the Board.

Finally, ICANN Bylaws Article X, Section 5 which deals with the GNSO's operating procedures.

ICANN-VeriSign Settlement Agreement Update

2006-02-22T07:45:00.000-05:00

Dear Council Members:

The ICANN Board just concluded its teleconference today and took the following actions.

(1) Approval of São Paulo, Brazil as the venue for the 2006 ICANN annual meeting the first week in December; and

(2) Approved funds to pay the evaluators for their work in connection with the review of the GNSO;

Although there was a discussion regarding the VeriSign settlement negotiation, there was no action taking. There is a scheduled call for next week 28-Feb-2006. Although the Chair and secretariat have not yet finalized the agenda for that call it is most likely to involve further VeriSign discussions as well as those items which have not yet been completed from today's call. As always, I will try to keep the council informed of any developments.

Best regards,

Michael D. Palage

Internet Governance Forum Takes Shape

2006-02-21T15:44:00.000-05:00

Milton Mueller posts to ICANN's Non-Commercial Constituency discussion list:

Desai asks for advice on "themes" and program committee; no date set for first meeting. IGP encourages civil society actors to submit preferred "themes" such as human rights, freedom of expression and privacy, as few governmental or business entities are interested in those topics.

February 20, 2006. The open consultation in Geneva on the emerging Internet Governance Forum Feb. 16-17 managed to build consensus around a few features of the new institution, including open participation, a 4-day time span for the first meeting, and a structure that combines large plenaries with breakout groups.

The Chair of the meeting, India's Nitin Desai, concluded by issuing a call for participants to propose a structure for the "multistakeholder group" that would vet the Forum's agenda, and asked for more public input on the "themes" or discussion topics for the agenda of the first meeting in Athens. The meeting was marked by tensions over "multistakeholder governance" and efforts by some governments and business interests to make certain topics off-limits to the Forum.

Nearly everyone who spoke gave rhetorical support to the "multistakeholder principle" - the idea that governments, business and civil society should be equal partners in developing policies through the IGF. In reality, governments of all types constantly chafed at the new model, and repeatedly threatened to revert to old ways. The government of Iran openly complained that it had to listen to so many civil society voices. The European Union, though committed enough to the principle to set up a special meeting with civil society actors, had similar trouble accepting diverse views. Some governments even proposed that the forum have three separate Bureaus, one for governments, one for business, and one for civil society -- an idea that, if implemented, would confine the different stakeholders to separate decision making silos and eliminate true cross-sector dialogue. Nevertheless, the meeting itself was run on an equal status basis.

Sharp exchanges took place over the nature and scope of the themes or issues the IGF could take up. As expected, business and Western governments urged the IGF to avoid anything controversial or anything that intersected with the activities of existing international organizations. They tended to favor spam and cybercrime as focal topics. Some complained that these participants viewed the IGF as a once-off annual meeting rather than as a true policy development process feeding into more authoritative venues. Brazil and other G77 nations, on the other hand, wanted to use the Forum to develop "public policy principles" for the coordination of internet resources, and -- picking up on a proposal from the IGP -- saw a role for it as a vehicle for the development of an Internet framework convention. It became apparent that efforts by the EU and Australia to keep the IGF away from those topics was motivated by their attempt to resolve the unfinished WSIS business by means of private, bilateral, government-to-government negotiations with the United States. Civil society actors present at the meeting strongly opposed those efforts, noting that if the truly important and controversial issues were removed from the Forum and confined to govt-govt meetings, then para 72 of the WSIS agenda has been completely abandoned and the Forum's promise of broader, more open and inclusive form of policy development has been rendered hollow.

The structure of a IGF "Program Committee" or "Bureau" was another key area of controversy. This would be the representative body designed to make decisions about agenda and some content. IGP proposed a 12-person council, composed of 5 government representatives (one from each geographic region), 2 business, 2 civil society, and 2 academic/technical, plus the chair. Most Western governments, the private sector and civil society supported a small body, which they preferred to call a "program committee" in order to emphasize its limited powers. Some governments, however, wanted a larger body which they could populate with representatives of their preference, turning the thing into a top-heavy and politicized decision-making authority.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Desai summarized the results as follows:
* A date for the first IGF will be announced in a few days.
* The Forum will have open participation.
* The first IGF meeting in Athens will take 4 days
* There will be a plenary and space for smaller meetings.
* Participants were asked to fix their ideas on three major themes and transmit them to the Secretariat by March 31.
* It will be a UN process and thus will need a host country agreement
* There was no consensus on a management structure, or even on what to call
the representative decision making body. Desai did, however, rule out separate bureaus. He asked participants (especially governments) to consider this issue and respond by Feb. 28. Once the UN process constitutes it, they will solicit names from the various stakeholders and that will take several weeks.
* In a victory for the civil society advocates, Desai concluded that the text of the WSIS Agenda doesn't rule out any topic. What the Forum discusses, he said, is
just a matter of priorities.

There were strong demands for some kind of regional process to accompany things. Desai noted that such a process can't get off the ground easily, as it must involve the regional commissions. All in all, the outlines of the new Forum are still hard to discern, but in those areas where consensus was reached the results were not bad.

Re: The Taming of the Shill

2006-02-21T12:49:00.000-05:00

Ross Rader has pointed to yet another coordinated letter writing campaign orchestrated by VeriSign. We saw sufficient evidence of this in Round One of the proposed ICANN-VeriSign settlement agreement, and it begs the question: if VeriSign remains willing to suborn the Public Comment process, then how can anyone regard them as a responsible trustee for any namespace (let alone .com)?

Joe Sims & the VeriSign Settlement Agreement

2006-02-21T09:40:00.000-05:00

CircleID has posted a well-written article by former ICANN CEO Mike Roberts entitled "The Villain in the ICANN-VeriSign Struggle is the U.S. Government". The article is followed by equally intriguing commentary from Karl Auerbach and by former outside ICANN Counsel Joe Sims who seems to be in the thick of the current VeriSign-ICANN negotiations.

Joe writes: "So there are multiple protections built into the agreement against exploitation of registrants—not perfect, because the market for domain name registrations is not perfectly competitive, but in our judgment sufficient under the circumstances."

One has to wonder whether it was Joe, rather than VeriSign, that initially proposed the seven percent price hike for .com registrants. But that aside, more important is the question as to whether Joe has been influencing ICANN Staff to pursue a course that sets ICANN squarely in the role of a regulator that acts on periodic price increase requests. Readers are reminded to review the article, "What Joe Sims Doesn't Get" by David Johnson and Susan Crawford (a current ICANN Board member).

CORE writes to ICANN director Palage

2006-02-21T08:52:00.000-05:00

Hi Mike,

I think the settlement agreement is what concerns all of us registrars. In that respect I have several requests:

- please ask the Board members to *carefully* study the aspects and importance of this decision. I know that some Board members are not even aware of the competition issue..

- I have to advise to treat staff information with care. Staff will recommend to sign the deal. In our teleconf with staff we were not able to learn why they have this position. I feel that staff was not prepared for the settlement negotiation and certainly did not negotiate a good deal, see
http://forum.icann.org/lists/revised-settlement/msg00149.html

- All Board members should study all posts on the public comment forum. Yes, this will take 3 hours for everyone to read. But the importance of this matter should be enough justification. For the reason mentioned above, I would not rely on a summary prepared by staff. Also, if there is a simple pro-against count, the numbers will not be accurate due to the paid lobbyists on the forum, see http://forum.icann.org/lists/revised-settlement/msg00148.html

- I invite you to use my pro-con summary, which I think expresses the view of (not only) the registrars http://forum.icann.org/lists/revised-settlement/msg00154.html

In short, the biggest danger we face is an uninformed decision or a decision that relies on misrepresented information. ICANN's own mission statement calls for well-informed decisions.

PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT EVERYONE IS WELL-INFORMED. If you feel that some Board members are not up to speed, ask them to work on it. This is a crucial test for ICANN. We must not fail because of misinformation.

Thanks,
Marcus
CORE Council of Registrars

The ALAC Deceives Vint Cerf

2006-02-21T08:20:00.000-05:00

1. The ALAC's Bret Fausett sent the following e-mail to Vint Cerf:

From: Bret Fausett
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2006 3:36 PM
To: Vint Cerf; revised-settlement@icann.org
Subject: ALAC Input on ICANN-VRSN Agreement

Dear Dr. Cerf and Members of the Board of Directors:

The At Large Advisory Committee ("ALAC") has carefully reviewed and considered the revised agreements between ICANN and Verisign and does not believe that the revisions address the serious concerns of registrants previously described by the ALAC in both its written submissions and its meeting with the Board in Vancouver. In order to fulfill ICANN's role of
promoting and sustaining a competitive environment, the ALAC recommends that the Board take the following actions:

1. Reject the proposed settlement agreement;
2. Proceed to trial with Verisign; and
3. Begin a renewal/rebid process for .COM in accord with the renewal
provisions of the existing agreement.

The ALAC understands that ICANN Staff believes that one of the litigation risks to ICANN is that the legal foundation on which ICANN was built will be eroded. We believe that this is a risk worth taking. An ICANN that cannot ensure competition and protect registrants from
monopolistic pricing is not an ICANN worth retaining.

Respectfully submitted,
At Large Advisory Committee

2. Vint Cerf replies:

Brett, is this a unanimous expression?

Vint

Vinton G Cerf
Chief Internet Evangelist
Google/Regus
Suite 384
13800 Coppermine Road
Herndon, VA 20171
+1 703 234-1823
+1 703-234-5822 (f)
vint@google.com
www.google.com

3. Bret responds:

Yes, this was agreed by the Committee without any dissent.

Bret

4. The problem:

According to the public record, only two thirds of the members of the ALAC agreed with the position put forward; the other third of the Committee did not comment, and candidly the Committee failed to even discuss the revised settlement agreement. Stating that there was no dissent when a topic has only been under consideration for two days is stretching the truth substantially.

This statement is no more than a shallow response that is totally unsupported by the fruits of discourse. Nowhere do we see a discussion as to why ICANN should proceed to trial with VeriSign instead of engaging in another round of negotiations. Nowhere do we see legitimate reasons stated as to why this proposed settlement should be scrapped. This is not an example of substantive decision-making... this is nothing more than shooting from the hip on the part of those that aren't inclined to fully evaluate and discuss a proposed settlement.

The ALAC did not conduct a vote of it's membership. It merely scrambled to release a pithy comment bereft of supporting reasoning. The ALAC wants the proposed settlement agreement rejected -- it would be nice to know why. The ALAC wants the trial to resume -- it would be nice to know why. Of course, we'll never know why since no real discussion of the issues has ever transpired. Let's just hope that the board recognizes uninformed opinion.

Public Comment Period Begins, Again

2006-02-21T08:10:00.000-05:00

The second round of public comments pursuant to the GNSO Initial Report on the Introduction of New Generic Top-Level Domains has started. Public comments are open from 20 February to 13 March 2006. The Initial Report may be read here.

Comments may be submitted to new-gtlds-pdp-initial-report@icann.org. The comment archives are at http://forum.icann.org/lists/new-gtlds-pdp-initial-report .

PDP2: Draft Terms of Reference

2006-02-21T08:02:00.000-05:00

ICANN's Staff Manager Olof Nordling has posted a draft Terms of Reference for the GNSO's second major PDP:

Terms of Reference for a PDP to guide Contractual Conditions for existing generic top-level domains:

1. Registry agreement renewal

1a. Examine whether presumptive rights of renewal in registry agreements serve to promote ICANN's core mission and values, including promotion of competition, DNS stability and security.

1b. Examine whether or not the term, expiry and cancellation conditions, and rebid considerations (“Rights of Renewal”) provide benefits to the ICANN community and if so, what they are, including whether such conditions encourage long term investment in registry operations.

1c. Recognizing that not all registry agreements share the same Rights of Renewal, use the findings from above to determine whether or not these conditions should be standardized across all agreements.

2. Relationship between registry agreements and consensus policies

2a. Examine whether consensus policy limitations in registry agreements are appropriate and how these limitations should be determined.

2b. Examine whether the diversity of sponsored TLD policy making should be redefined and if so, what changes would be needed, and under what circumstances such changes would be applied.

2c. Recognizing that current registry agreements include varying limitations on scope and applicability of consensus policy, examine the extent to which registry agreements could state that consensus policies may not affect certain terms of the agreement and determine whether future registry agreements should be restricted to a uniform scope and applicability of consensus policies.

3. Policy for price controls for registry services

3a. Examine in what ways price controls contribute to ICANN's core mission and values, especially the promotion of competition and the net effects on end users.

3b. While not discussing the prices of registry services, examine what conditions might justify price controls policy for particular registries.

3c. Examine objective measures (cost calculation method, cost elements, reasonable profit margin) for approving an application for a price increase when price control is applied.

3d. In view of the findings, determine if registry agreements should prescribe or limit the prices for registry services.

4. ICANN fees

4a. Examine whether ICANN fees defined in registry agreements should be subject to policy determination.

4b. Examine whether ICANN fees should be tailored to registry business models.

4c. Determine how ICANN's public budgeting process should relate to the negotiation of ICANN fees.

5. Uses of registry data

Registry data is available to the registry as a consequence of registry operation. Examples of registry data could include information on domain name registrants, information in domain name records, and traffic data associated with providing the DNS resolution services associated with the registry.

5a. Examine the differences in registry data available to "thin" and "thick" registries and which privacy rights exist in such registry data.

5b. Examine how the use of registry data can enhance services to registry clients.

5c. Determine whether any allowances should be made for non-discriminatory access to registry data.

5d. Determine whether the uses of registry data should be restricted.

6. Investments in development and infrastructure

6a. Examine how requirements for specific investment levels in registry agreements promote ICANN's core mission and values, especially as to promoting competition and ensuring DNS stability and security.

6b. Determine whether registry agreements should require specific investment levels in the areas of development and infrastructure.

6c. Determine whether security and stability goals should be reflected in registry agreements as specific commitments, either as customer service levels or as investment targets.

No More Anonymity in .us Namespace

2006-02-19T07:58:00.000-05:00

In a stunning blow to anonymity rights on the Internet a judge has ruled that the NTIA may continue to prohibit proxy registrations in the .us namespace. From the pcpcity.us website:

Peterson v. NTIA:

"On the hearing of this date, the federal judge denied the Plaintiff’s motion to enjoin the NTIA’s termination of proxy registrations. According to an informal report, the Plaintiff’s attorney was permitted to speak only in response to question by the judge. The judge then read a lengthy and pre-prepared ruling. That judge ruled

(a) that the Plaintiff does not have injury-in-fact because he posts his name on his website and his address can be found, [not factually true] and
(b) that under the public contract exception to the Administrative Procedure Act, NTIA was not required to give public notice and allow comment regarding its decision to prohibit proxy registrations.

The judge also suggested (though it is not sure if he ruled) that the government has a compelling interest in disallowing proxy registrations."

In view of this ruling against proxy registrations, it will be interesting to see what action, if any, ICANN takes with respect to anonymizing services (proxy registrations) in the remainder of the gTLDs.

Where is the ALAC Transparency?

2006-02-17T13:16:00.000-05:00

ALAC conference call minutes are posted for August 2005, September 2005, October 2005 and
November 2005. Then they stop. No posted minutes from the Vancouver session, none from January and none from early February even though this month's agenda was noted on the ALAC discussion list.

ICANN's ALAC seems to be turning into a private little club.

Dance of the Lemmings

2006-02-17T12:27:00.000-05:00

Watching the GNSO Councilors busily at work on formulations for the Terms of Reference for their most recent PDP initiative is a truly amusing yet pointless waste of time. The ICANN GNSO Council industriously crafts these Terms of Reference as if the very act itself was a commandment laid down by God Almighty. They are oh so very serious about each and every proposed term...

Then they go ahead and produce their Constituency Statements that totally and completely ignore the Terms of Reference. Go figure. It's nuts.

Meanwhile, we are still waiting for the required Public Comment Period that's supposed to follow the submission of the Staff Manager's Initial Report on the first PDP. I'm told it's coming soon.

Manager of Public Participation Anthropophobic?

2006-02-17T09:55:00.000-05:00

ICANN today announced a series of new hires (all regional liaisons). The list of new appointments includes Giovanni Seppia -- whom this blog predicted would be hired -- as European liaison.

But still no Manager of Public Participation has been hired. The position, required to be filled by the bylaws, has gone unfilled for over three years. This remains an insult to the Internet community and it reinforces the belief that ICANN just doesn't give a damn about the general public.

No Room at the Inn

2006-02-17T09:35:00.000-05:00

The GNSO Council is in the process of organizing their second major policy development process -- this time the focus will be on everything that they have so far failed to even start to discuss in the prior PDP. As part of the organization process (which is still lacking the bylaws-required Public Comment period -- yes, it should have started ten days ago already), the Council has decided to form a task force that will exclude participants from the GNSO General Assembly.

On 16/17 February 2006, Council unanimously passed the following motion:

"The Council resolves:

That the Council wishes to appoint a task force for the PDP initiated on 6 February 2006 (PDP-Feb06) that consists of the full Council, including the Council members appointed by the Nominating Committee, the At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) and the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) liaisons.

That constituencies have the option to appoint representatives to the task force in place of their Council members.

That the Council recommends that the constituencies ensure that there is at least one council member from the constituency on the task force.

That Council members, who are not members of the task force, have observer status on the task force, and thus receive mail from the mailing lists and be able to attend task force calls and meetings as observers."

ICANN Counsel Nixes Proxy Voting

2006-02-17T09:27:00.000-05:00

John Jeffrey, ICANN General Counsel and Secretary, writes:

"Thank you for your inquiry concerning the practice of "proxy" voting which occurs during the GNSO Council meetings. In follow up to your inquiry and in furtherance to our discussion earlier today here is some additional information and my office's opinion regarding the same.

We agree with you that there is no provision for proxy voting under the current ICANN Bylaws . The current Bylaws (Article X, Section 4) include the following provision concerning GNSO Council Procedures:

"The GNSO Council is responsible for managing the policy development process of the GNSO. It shall adopt such procedures as it sees fit to carry out that responsibility, provided that such procedures are approved by the Board, and further provided that, until any modifications are recommended by the GNSO Council and approved by the Board, the applicable procedures shall be as set forth in Section 6 of this Article. ..."

Bylaws Article X, Section 6, provides that "Initially, the policy-development procedures to be followed by the GNSO shall be as stated in Annex A to these Bylaws. These procedures may be supplemented or revised in the manner stated in Section 3(4) of this Article."

Since no modified procedures have been recommended by Council or approved by the Board, the only relevant procedures are those stated in Bylaws Annex A ("GNSO Policy-Development Process") .

You provided a link to the "Rules of Procedure of the DNSO Names Council, Version 7" , but that document is no longer in effect. The DNSO document indicates that it was last amended on 18 April 2002. That entire document was obsoleted and superceded by the adoption of ICANN's "New Bylaws" on 15 December 2002. The new Bylaws provisions on the GNSO (which assumed the responsibilities of the former DNSO) continued a substantial portion of the old procedures from the DNSO procedures document, but the New Bylaws also clearly did not retain other features of the old procedures (including any reference to "proxies").

The GNSO Council's practice of allowing Council members to participate in a meeting (by casting a vote) even though they are not "present" does not appear to be consistent with Bylaws Article X, Section 3(8), which provides (in part) that "... the GNSO Council shall act at meetings. Members of the GNSO Council may participate in a meeting of the GNSO Council through use of (i) conference telephone or similar communications equipment, provided that all members participating in such a meeting can speak to and hear one another ..." In other words, under the current Bylaws a Council member who is unable to speak to or hear other Councillors may not "participate" (including voting) in a Council meeting held in person or by telephone.

That same section of the Bylaws (X-3.8) provides that "Members entitled to cast a majority of the total number of votes of GNSO Council members then in office shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business, and acts by a majority vote of the GNSO Council members present at any meeting at which there is a quorum shall be acts of the GNSO Council ..." This language concerning members "entitled to cast a majority of the total number of votes" appears to relate to the weighted voting provision and not to any otherwise unreferenced scheme for voting by proxy.

We recognize that this may be a "long standing process", but the Council should take prompt action to come into compliance with the Bylaws' requirements. The Council is free to recommend modifications to these procedures (including perhaps a modification to anticipate the participation of deaf or hard of hearing people on the Council). If you'd like Dan and I would be happy to work with you to craft whatever procedures would be inline with the Council's preferences, provided they are in accordance with ICANN's other Bylaws, mission and core values."

I guess this means that GNSO Councilors will have to start showing up to do their jobs...

ALAC position on ICANN/Verisign deal?

2006-02-16T16:42:00.000-05:00

The first set of ALAC comments on the proposed ICANN-VeriSign settlement agreement have appeared:

1. Reject the agreement.
2. Proceed to trial.
3. Begin renewal/rebid process for .COM.

Thanks to Bret Fausett for the succinct statement.

Draft Agenda for GNSO Washington DC Session

2006-02-16T16:35:00.000-05:00

per Bruce Tonkin:

Friday 24 Feb

(1) 9:00 - 10:00 am
- Review ICANN mission and core values
- identify core values that are relevant to introducing new gTLDs

[From ICANN bylaws: Any ICANN body making a recommendation or decision shall exercise its judgment to determine which core values are most relevant and how they apply to the specific circumstances of the case at
hand, and to determine, if necessary, an appropriate and defensible balance among competing values.]

(2) 10:00 am - 12:00 noon
- Review papers submitted (around 10)
(see http://www.gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/new-gtld-pdp-input.htm)
- Invite authors to make a short 10 mins presentation if they wish (must supply a A4 summary of presentation in advance), followed by 5 minutes of questions

(3) 12:00 noon - 1:30pm lunchbreak onsite

(4) 1:30pm - 3:30pm - PART 1 Should we have new gTLDs?
THE AIM OF PART ONE IS TO TAKE AN OPEN MIND ABOUT NEW IDEAS AND PERSPECTIVES ON THIS ISSUE. THIS IS NOT THE PHASE TO CRITIQUE THE INPUT.
- review impact of tlds added since 2000
- review constituency papers and compare with positions prior to 2000
- have the constituency position statements changed in any way based on the experience of the past 5 years?
- review information from submitted papers plus public comments relevant to this question
- review external influences - e.g alternative roots (both ASCII and IDN based), search engines, tld (cctld and gtld) registry competition, growth in Internet users that are non-English speaking and users that use different character sets
- identify advantages and disadvantages

(5) 3:30pm to 4:00pm - Afternoon tea break

(6) 4pm to 6pm - PART 2 Should we have new gTLDs?
- Yes or no?
- Attempt to draft an initial policy position that has some level of consensus support from the GNSO constituencies
- if consensus can't be reached - then see if there is a clear majority/minority position that can be developed. If so, identify clearly the reasons for each of these positions.
- any output from this meeting will become part of an initial report for further feedback from constituencies and the public

(7) 6pm - identify a local place for dinner for those that want to attend (assuming that participants are still on speaking terms after the debate above!)

Saturday 25 Feb

(1) 9am to 9:30am
- review outcomes from Friday
(note if the clear consensus on Friday is to have no new TLDs - whether ASCII or IDN based - then we can go home at this point :-))

(2) 9:30am to 12:00noon PART 1 Selection Criteria for new tlds
- review selection criteria from the first round (Aug 2000)
http://www.icann.org/tlds/tld-criteria-15aug00.htm
- review selection criteria from the second round (Dec 2003)
http://www.icann.org/tlds/new-stld-rfp/new-stld-application-parta-15dec03.htm
- review constituency statements - compare with those prior to 2000
- review information from submitted papers plus public comments relevant to this question
- identify list of possible criteria
- categorise these criteria - e.g technical, financial, market (purpose of TLD)

(3) 12:00noon to 1pm - lunch break

(4) 1pm to 3pm - PART 2 Selection Criteria for new tlds
- analyse possible selection criteria
- Attempt to identify which criteria have a degree of consensus support from the GNSO constituencies
- For criteria that don't have clear consensus - attempt to identify which criteria have support from more than one interest group
- any output from this meeting will become part of an initial report for further feedback from constituencies and the public

(5) 3pm onwards - volunteers who don't need to rush to catch flights - to assist in tidying the venue

GNSO Washington D.C. Meeting Details

2006-02-15T10:45:00.000-05:00

The ICANN GNSO Secretariat writes:

Please find some details for the Washington meetings.
A more detailed agenda to follow.

Schedule:
9am - 6pm on Friday 24 February 2006
8:30am - 3pm on Saturday 25 February 2006

Location:

2nd floor
Look for the sign on the door of the conf room: "ICANN GNSO Council working session"
1133 21st Street, N.W.,
Washington, DC

EURALO: "It looks like a coup"

2006-02-15T10:28:00.000-05:00

Comments from Wolfgang Kleinwächter
to the “Principles Paper towards a “European Regional At Large Organisation”,
released by former and current European ALAC Members on January, 17th, 2006

1. I do not understand why some (former and current) European members of ALAC have started the initiative for an EU-RALO now. The call for an EU-RALO is on the table since three years. The arguments in 2003, 2004 and 2005 not to start with the EU-RALO have been that the number of ALS was seen as too small and not representative enough. “Give us more time for outreach” was the answer when I raised this issue in AL meetings in Capetown (December 2004) and Mar del Plata (March 2005). In September 2004 there were seven accredited ALS in Europe. Now, after another 17 months, we have eight members plus one pending application from a rather unknown Italian group “tldworld.info”. I can not see that this is a new quality, more representative than it was two years ago. In contrary, it is a big shame that within the last 17 months the European ALAC members have been unable to attract more European Internet user groups and organisations.

2. With regard to the accredited eight ALS, I have no problems that these groups are mainly ISOC chapters. The problem is that the big European ISOC chapters – like UK, France or Germany – are not accredited members. Also other big European consumer and user organisations, representing national organisations with much more members than some of the accredited ISOC Chapters, have ignored so far the ALAC invitation. As I said in an earlier mail, to establish an EU-RALO under this circumstances is like organising the Champions League without the Champions. The risk here is that governments will take this as a joke when EU-RALO will speak “on behalf of the Internet users in Europe”. You feed arguments by governmental representatives that the governments represent the interests of the European Internet users and not the user groups themselves. To be frank, I like FITUG, but Michael Leibrand, the German GAC member, will not be impressed by statements coming from this group. Why FITUG was unable to attract ISOC Germany, CCC and all the other Internet User groups with thousands of members, coming together to dozens of meetings every year? Why FITUG as the only German User groups so far, does not come to the Domain Pulse meetings, organized by the German speaking ccTLD Registries (where the majority of Internet end users in Germany, Austria and Switzerland have their registration) and is advertising the At Large idea?

3. What I miss totally in the proposed draft is a chapter which defines the aims and principles of an European RALO. Para. 3 in Chapter II says only that the purpose of the EU-RALO is to provide a “channel for participation by the European individual Internet users into the activities of ICANN”. This is only a formal and procedural point. Why you did not define some content and value related criteria which would make Internet user involvement different from the involvement of other stakeholders? I think there is a need to describe more in details the special role and responsibility of Internet users and their organisations in the ICANN context from a European perspective.

4. While I fully support to have two categories of members – institutional and individual - I do not see a right balance between the two categories in the proposed draft. As it stands now, individuals are rather marginalized in the proposed “Executive Board” (EC). What will be the outcome if the EU-RALO would be established now? We have now 8 (or 9) ALS that means each would get one seat in the EC. With the low level of outreach so far I would be surprised to see more than 20 or 30 individual members within the next three months. With other words, the EC would have ten members, nine from the accredited ALS. This looks like a closed club which does not like “foreign members” but want to give the impression that they are “open”. Such a structure is exclusive, not inclusive. It keeps people out and decourages individuals to join.

5. My counter proposal is to establish a Council with ten seats, five filled by the institutional members, five filled by the individual members, based an the principle of geographical diversity, that would mean two members (one individual and one institutional) form Western Europe, two from Northern Europe, two from Eastern Europe, two from Southern Europe and two from Central Europe.

6. I strongly disagree that the officers of the EU-RALO (including the ALAC members) are selected by the Executive Council. This opens the door for a “friend of my friends network” and allows all tricky games behind closed doors. Civil society and At Large stands for bottom up, open and transparent processes. But this is closed, intransparent and top down. This is totally unacceptable. And it is the result of the failure of Chapter II of the proposed draft, where the mission is defined in “technical terms” only and excludes all values and content related orientation.

7. I support in Chapter VI - Funding Mechanism - that the EU-RALO should be in the first 24 months supported by the ICANN budget. But as it stands now, it looks like the former and current ALAC members are asking for money for a half day job for one person in Brussels (selected by the EC) and to guarantee financing of Travel and Accommodation for EC selected people for two years. There is no paragraph which says, that money should be used for local seminars and workshops for further outreach or human capacity building. If money comes from ICANN it should not be spent in five star hotels but to help people on the ground to understand better the challenges of Internet governance from a user perspective.

8. The dateline for Comments – February 15, 2006 – is totally unacceptable. Giving the low level of outreach and publicity, the call for comments has got so far, this can not be taken seriously. The authors of the draft should use the forthcoming IGF consultations in Geneva, February 16 – 17, 2006, to inform about the efforts to build a EU-RALO and to get feedback from the different constituencies, which will come to Geneva. It looks like a coup to create facts before the IGF consultations.

9. So my final recommendation is that the paper should be immediately withdrawn and the former and current members of the ALAC should present a clear and workable plan for outreach and capacity building, based on defined aims, values and principles which serve the interest of the Internet end-users in Europe.

Tracking the ALAC

2006-02-15T10:11:00.000-05:00

Readers might be interested in knowing the topics discussed during the last week by ICANN's At-Large Advisory Committee, the group that's supposed to represent the public in the ICANN process...

What hot burning issues have been under thorough discussion and review? Are they discussing the revised .com agreement which threatens an unwarranted price hike? Are they reviewing new TLD policy matters? Are they attacking issues such as transparency and accountability? Are they discussing the new GNSO PDP? Are they discussing the circumvention of restrictions on certain sTLDs?

Nope. Actually, they aren't doing anything. Nothing. Zip. Not one single post on any topic whatsoever. Not one comment from any of their multiple certified at-large structures. Par for the course for this useless group.

Registrars Rise in Opposition to .com Price Hike

2006-02-15T09:44:00.000-05:00

A letter has been sent to ICANN's Vint Cerf by a coalition of registrars opposed to the proposed ICANN-VeriSign settlement agreement. The open letter signed by GoDaddy, Network Solutions, Tucows, Melbourne IT, Register.com, Schlund+Partner AG, Intercosmos Media Group and BulkRegister points to two damaging provisions in the agreement under consideration:

1. Pricing: The proposed revisions provide VeriSign with the unprecedented capability to increase prices by seven percent annually in four of the next six years without cost justification

2. Perpetual Management Rights: The proposed revisions would modify the renewal clauses so that the contract is essentially non-cancellable and ICANN's right to rebid is taken away.

IAB advocates change in the ICANN Board

2006-02-14T13:19:00.000-05:00

The minutes of the 7 December Internet Architecture Board teleconference have just been posted:

"The IAB discussed two candidates for the IETF position on the ICANN nominating committee. Among other factors, the IAB considered the degree and nature of the candidates' experience with ICANN and the likelihood that the candidates would advocate change in the ICANN board. Consensus emerged for John Klensin; Leslie took the action of informing John."

20,580,207 .com names deleted

2006-02-14T11:55:00.000-05:00

Bruce Tonkin, chair of the ICANN GNSO Council, quoting from the latest VeriSign Monthly Report states:

"During October 2005, there was a total of 43,228,923 .com names under management (up from 42,541,300 in the previous month), however in that single month 20,580,207 .com names were deleted."

These deletions are part of a pattern emerging in the registrar-monetizer sector wherein certain registrars acting in conjunction with the domain name monetizing industry are measuring potential domain name traffic by testing out domain names (at no cost) during the registry's five-day add/grace period; if the prospective domains don't attract a sufficient amount of pay-per-click traffic they are then deleted before the registration becomes final.

What does this development mean for the rest of us that don't have the same wherewithall to game the system? For starters, it means that millions of domain names are unavailable for us to register while the registrars and monetizers engage in these shenanigans.

Beyond that, it is clear that because the monetizers are using semantic association software to generate a series of PPC links on parked pages, those websites that engage in typosquatting will return the highest traffic count -- for example, a domain name such as americanexpresso.com will be semantically analyzed and will return links for american express which, of course, generates a great deal of traffic. Trademark infringement is the resultant byproduct of this process.

This issue has been under discussion at ICANN for more than a year already (at Argentina and Luxembourg). What does it take to get ICANN to recognize that a problem exists and that solutions are required?

Karl Auerbach has proposed one solution -- the elimination of the add/grace period. Another solution might be found in assessing a per domain fee for all names dropped during the add/grace period.

Froomkin to Join ICANN Nominating Committee

2006-02-13T09:51:00.000-05:00

The ALAC selected five volunteers from five different regions of the world to serve as members of ICANN's 2006 Nominating Committee (NomCom).

The 2006 At-Large delegates to the Nominating Committee are:

Mohamed El Fatih El Tigani Ali, Africa region delegate
Madanmohan Rao, Asia/Australia/Pacific region delegate
Wolfgang Kleinwächter, Europe region delegate
José Ovidio Salgueiro A., Latin America/Caribbean region delegate
Michael Froomkin, North America region delegate (and editor of ICANNWatch)

21 February 2006 Special Meeting of the Board

2006-02-13T09:43:00.000-05:00

Proposed Agenda:

Review of Public Comments Regarding VeriSign Settlement Agreements
Litigation Status Update
Discussion of VeriSign Settlement Agreements
Designation of São Paulo as 2006 Annual Meeting
Consideration of ccNSO's ccPDP Results and Recommendations on Proposed ICANN Bylaws Changes
Approval of Contractor to Conduct GNSO Review
Designation of Academic Organization to Select Delegate for ICANN's 2006 Nominating Committee
Approval of Director's Expenses
Other Business

ICANN Board Meetings

2006-02-13T09:18:00.000-05:00

ICANN Board director Michael Palage has written to the GNSO Council advising a tentative schedule for upcoming ICANN Board meetings:

21 February
28 February
31 March - Wellington Meeting
18 April
10 May (tentative)
14 June
29 June - Morocco Meeting
18 July
15 August
13 September
18 October
14 November
early December - Brazil Meeting

NANOG Winter 2006 Meeting

2006-02-09T15:36:00.000-05:00

The winter 2006 NANOG meeting will be held February 12-15 in Dallas, Texas. The agenda, posted here, includes talks on topics such as DNS Infrastructure Distribution, How Prevalent is Prefix Hijacking on the Internet?, Searching for DNS Cache Poisoners and Troubleshooting BGP among others. For registration, please visit this link.

New CIRA Internet Radio Show

2006-02-09T13:52:00.000-05:00

Bernard Turcotte on the ccNSO Council list writes:

Under the heading of shameless self promotion:

CIRA is participating in the creation of an internet based radio show on the internet for the average user - some history, notable figures, Internet scam of the week, safe domain name hints and tips, resources etc. (I am not hosting the show but may appear in a few segments).

This show is being produced by the largest broadcast house in Canada and we will be creating an initial set of 5 one hour shows which begin tomorrow, Thursday February 9th.

Should you be interested in finding out more or listening in please see the CIRA web site at www.cira.ca or go directly to www.thewebtalkshow.ca

Past episodes will be archived on the site the day following "broadcast".

We are hoping that this will be a good tool to reach our LIC and make them aware of some issues while providing a forum for them to ask question and air opinions.

We should have some initial impact results by the time we will be in Wellington.

End of commercial

ISOC Strategic Operating Plan 2006

2006-02-09T11:40:00.000-05:00

The Internet Society has published their Strategic Plan, Programs & Budget for 2006. According to their documents, they expect to be taking a leadership position in the upcoming Internet Governance debates while acting to expand their regional and global public policy initiatives. The Society's budget has increased to $9.4 million -- the bulk of it, $5.5 million, coming by way of the Public Interest Registry (sponsor of the .org top level domain).

Registrant Privacy Rights: PETERSON v. NTIA

2006-02-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

Briefs will be filed tomorrow in a landmark Internet privacy rights case. The National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) has ruled to end, on Jan. 26, 2006, all proxy registrations for .us domain websites (such registrations are roughly analogous to unlisted telephone numbers). Although the agency administers only .us domains, the reasons it gives for such ruling could apply to .com, .net, or to any other domain. ICANN registrar GoDaddy.com is circulating a petition against the agency’s ruling. All the gory details can be found here; the petitoner's brief is here.

Updates will follow as soon as they become available.

Fictitious Registrars, Racketeering & ICANN

2006-02-08T22:25:00.000-05:00

"If it is determined that concealment and deception involving the true ownership of
Internet domain names is the ordinary course of business of ICANN-accredited registrars who
have colluded to misappropriate and counterfeit the names, trademarks and service marks of
other parties in their registration and use of Internet domain names, then it is Transamerica’s
position that such conduct represents the predicate act for a pattern of illegal business activity
within the meaning of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations ("RICO") provisions
of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961-1968 (1982)."

So states Bruce A. McDonald in Transamerica Corporation's Response to Request for Comments Regarding the GNSO's WhoIs Task Force's "Preliminary Task Force Report on the Purpose of WhoIs and of the WhoIs Contacts."

Transamerica lays out a stunning indictment of ICANN's domain registrar sector with a j'accuse example demonstrating fraudulent registrations, multiple fictitious registrars and a web of deceit. This is absolute must reading.

GNSO Council Faces Difficult Choice

2006-02-08T16:10:00.000-05:00

The ICANN GNSO Council is on the horns of a dilemma: will they choose a Task Force or a Committee of the Whole to handle their new Policy Development Process on the policy considerations raised by the .com agreement? This is no small question, as deciding to convene a Task Force will mean drawing participants from the respective constituencies -- and several of the constituencies have absolutely no active members other than the Council reps themselves.

What to do? The Business Constituency's Marilyn Cade proposes:

"I want to better understand the pros and cons of a Council of the whole versus a TF. I am not convinced that a TF will improve the conflicts of time for Council, since there are overlapping issues between the two PDPs. I would instead propose that Council examine the appointment of up to three experts for both PDP processes."

One has to wonder where these three DNS Policy "experts" will be found...

OK to discuss, as long as no action is taken

2006-02-08T14:57:00.000-05:00

Contributions to the Internet Governance Forum are starting to arrive. The latest is from the government of Canada that states: "Canada would like to re-emphasise that the IGF is to provide a platform for policy discussion, not for the development of policy."

Great. Just what we need. More talk with no action. The Coordinating Committee of Business Interlocutors (CCBI) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) produced a similar statement:

"The IGF as a venue for discussion as well as the bureau should not engage in producing any decisions or substantive work products other than those related to the operational aspects of the IGF. It should rather focus on how best to facilitate the exchange of vast amounts of information on key issues that are being produced around the world by many stakeholders."

I'm somewhat surprised that ICANN hasn't yet submitted a contribution. I guess they're just too busy "listening".

Shoving an ICANN RALO down Europe's throat

2006-02-08T13:36:00.000-05:00

Annette Muehlberg of ICANN's At-Large Advisory Committee has posted an article to her blog entitled: Alarm: New European At-Large structure without participation? Annette decries the current effort to shove a RALO (Regional At-Large Organization) down the throats of the European community. Although serious objections have been raised by European At-Large representatives such as Jeanette Hoffman and Wolfgang Kleinwachter, the ALAC's chair Vittorio Bertola seems determined to foist this ICANN monstrosity upon an unreceptive community that refuses to participate in its development.

Annette states: [translation] "Participation could be exhausted here in selecting representatives, who select again representatives, who participate again in a committee, which may become only an advisory body. Bureaucracy lives!"

Additional commentary at metablocker.

Domain name registrar de-authorised

2006-02-08T12:43:00.000-05:00

From the website of the New Zealand Domain Name Commissioner:

"A .nz registrar has been notified that it will lose its status as an authorised registrar.

Domain Name Commissioner Debbie Monahan said the move, against Domain Name Management Services Ltd (DNMSL), was to help ensure a fair and competitive market for those seeking .nz domain names.

The Domain Name Commissioner has been working with DNMSL for an extended period about whether DNMSL met the standards expected of a registrar.

Over the past 12 months there have been various breaches of required standards by DNMSL. These include registering customers’ domain names to a company closely related to DNMSL and allowing that company to speculate in domain names, despite also being a DNMSL reseller. DNMSL received a sanction for both of those breaches. The company has also twice been suspended by the registry for technical breaches.

DNMSL will be the only registrar to have been de-authorised."

Comment: I think that ICANN could learn from this example. There actually is a value in having compliance officers. Too bad that ICANN still hasn't hired any.

Melbourne IT accused of facilitating 419 Fraud

2006-02-08T11:57:00.000-05:00

Derek Smythe has written to ICANN complaining that Melbourne IT, an ICANN accredited registrar, has not responded to requests calling for the cancellation of numerous domains based on invalid whois information supplied during the domain registration process. Apparently Derek's war on 419 fraud is being severely hampered while Melbourne IT busies itself protecting the butts of its unresponsive domain name resellers instead of actually dealing with the situation.

It will be interesting to see how this finally plays out. The issue revolves around this section of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement:

3.7.7.2 A Registered Name Holder's willful provision of inaccurate or unreliable information, its willful failure promptly to update information provided to Registrar, or its failure to respond for over fifteen calendar days to inquiries by Registrar concerning the accuracy of contact details associated with the Registered Name Holder's registration shall constitute a material breach of the Registered Name Holder-registrar contract and be a basis for cancellation of the Registered Name registration.

A "basis for cancellation" still leaves the registrar with the option "not to cancel". As registrars aren't too keen on cancelling the registrations that put money in their pockets, you can probably expect nothing to happen soon unless the Public lashes out at Melbourne IT for indirectly contributing to the continuation of fraudulent 419 activities.

Privacy of Internet Domain Names

2006-02-08T11:32:00.000-05:00

An article written by Dugie Stadeford entitled "Privacy of Internet domain names unresolved" has been published on the Public Interest Registry website. The article is a great overview of the WHOIS dispute that has plagued ICANN since its inception. By the way, don't expect a resolution anytime soon (as consensus on this issue will never emerge within ICANN as long as the Intellectual Property Constituency remains a pig-headed foe opposed to any change). The archives of the never-ever-ending WHOIS Task Force may be read here.

IAB Liaison Report on New TLDs

2006-02-08T10:50:00.000-05:00

Thomas Narten serves as the Internet Architecture Board's liaison to the ICANN Board. This is his Report:

"PDP started on introduction of new TLDs:

The GNSO has kicked of a Policy Develoment Process (PDP) to come up with a revised process for the introduction of new TLDs. There is a widespread feeling that the efforts to date at creating new TLDs have been problematical, and no one seems to be happy. While the ICANN PDP process calls for a very short time frame for getting things done (completely unrealistic, IMO, if the goal is a reasonable document), it seems to be understood that the timeline is a problem and that the process will take longer. But how much longer is unclear. Also, there is some fairly serious concern (among some) that some quality/deep thinking needs to be done on the introduction of new TLDs, yet the existing process is far from guaranteed to achieve that."

We agree with Thomas that the existing process is not yielding quality or deep thinking on new TLD policy. Several constituencies have simply regurgitated prior position papers (some over three years old) and most constituencies have devoted no more than a few days to discussions on the topic (with only a very few constituency members participating). The ICANN GNSO Council has yet to discuss or debate a single new TLD issue and we are already ten weeks into the PDP process. Pathetic.

Domain Pulse Symposium

2006-02-08T10:16:00.000-05:00

Together and alternately the registries of Germany (DENIC), Switzerland (SWITCH) and Austria (nic.at ) present the Domain Pulse symposium every year. The next Domain Pulse, organized by DENIC, will take place in Berlin on February, 9th and 10th 2006. Topics this year include:

Domain Administration in Germany
Domain Administration in Iran: The ccTLD .ir
IDNs - Experiences, Challenges, and Perspectives
DNSSEC
New TLDs - What are they good for
Weblogs and Social Software – a Second Spring
Globale Internet Governance - Perspectives after the Tunis WSIS Summit
IANA and its meaning for TLDs
DNS: What the past tells us about the future
VoIP and ENUM - The Future of Telephony?
Do we have to be afraid of the Internet?
Internet and Security
The Latest from Domain Law: Liability, Garnishments, Criminal Law
Internet and Law - a Journey towards the End of the Night

Commentary: It's Only a Few Dollars...

2006-02-08T09:41:00.000-05:00

There are those that argue: "So what if VeriSign wants to charge a few more bucks for its .com registry service? Why should this get anybody bent of out shape?"

Fair question, if you're an average American wage-earner... but what if you're a domain name registrant from Cambodia or somewhere else in the world? After all, .com is a global TLD.

Norbert Klein, an ICANN GNSO Council member (from Cambodia) reports that "the monthly salary of a high school teacher in Cambodia is between US$25 and US$35." And the costs of Internet access? $13.80 monthly for dial-up, and $77 monthly for broadband." In the Developing World costs matter; domain name registration price increases matter. When you're on the other side of the Digital Divide, it matters.

Objections to Renewal of .AERO

2006-02-08T09:25:00.000-05:00

Edward Hasbrouck writes:

[Excerpt] SITA has not complied with material terms of the sponsorship agreement specifically those related to openness, transparency, and decision-making procedures in Section 4 .2 of the agreement and Section 2 of Attachment 23 to the agreement, as well as those pertaining to representativeness by the sponsor of the sponsored TLD community.

SITA's claim in its renewal application to have complied with the terms of the .aero sponsorship
agreement is clearly false, and appears on its face to have, necessarily, been knowing and deliberate.

These are not minor, innocent, or inadvertent breaches of contract by SITA. These are breaches of the most fundamental rules for the exercise of decision-making authority delegated by ICANN, continuing years after they were brought directly to the attention both of SITA and ICANN, including ICANN's Board of Directors.

Accordingly, I request that ICANN's agreement with SITA for sponsorship of the .aero TLD not be renewed, and that ICANN implement improved procedures for oversight and enforcement of TLD sponsorship agreements.

EURid Press Release

2006-02-08T08:56:00.000-05:00

From the eurid press release:
Europe’s new Internet domain “.eu” today got 71 235 new applications in one hour

Today at 11:00, EURid – The European Registry of Internet Domain Names - opened its systems to receive applications for .eu domain names from anyone within the EU claiming prior rights to a certain domain name. Since early December it has, in principle, only been possible for trademark holders and public bodies to apply. Some 900 registrars are now sending in the applications they received from numerous candidate domain name holders all across the EU.
During the first 15 minutes after 11:00 today EURid received 27,949 applications. After an hour, at 12:00, the number was 71,235.

At the .eu status page you can follow the development, updated every 15 minutes.

Please keep in mind that EURid is, at this time, only accepting applications from holders of prior rights and public bodies. From April 7, it will be possible for anyone within the European Union to apply for any available domain name. During this initial phase, often referred to as the Sunrise period, EURid only allows holders of prior rights to apply.

A Common Sense Approach to WHOIS Data

2006-02-08T08:12:00.000-05:00

Posted on the "Purpose of WHOIS" forum:

For some of us, the question isn't a trademark worry, but a life and death question of avoiding stalkers. For some, it's a question of harrassment lawsuits designed to destroy free speech.

It's one thing for a business to have contact information on the Internet publicly available. The executives and their beloved families don't live at the corporate address. If they did, they'd be howling about their privacy. If ICANN made a rule that all executives of all corporations must provide contact information for their home addresses and provide their home phone numbers to apply for a domain name, you'd have the equivalent of what bloggers are being asked to submit themselves to.

Bloggers live where they work, at home. Providing that kind of contact information publicly is a way of setting them up for identify theft, stalking, stupid lawsuits, and the fear of never knowing when some net kook is going to show up on one's doorstep. Most bloggers have families, children they wish to protect from kidnapping or other horrible things. In other words, anonymity doesn't reflect a desire to be mysterious. It really is a question of safety.

New PDP: Draft Terms of Reference

2006-02-08T07:58:00.000-05:00

From the GNSO Council list:

The GNSO initiated a policy development process in December 2005 [PDP-Dec05] to develop policy around whether to introduce new gTLDs, and if so, determine the selection criteria, allocation methods, and contractual conditions.

During 2005, ICANN commenced a process of revising the .net and .com agreements. There has been substantial discussion amongst members of the GNSO community around both the recently signed .net agreement (dated
29 June 2005), and the proposed .com agreements (dated 24 October 2005 and 29 January 2006). As a result, the GNSO Council recognised that issues such as renewal could be considered as part of the broader issue of contractual conditions for existing gTLDs, and that it may be more appropriate to have policies that apply to gTLDs generally on some of the matters raised by GNSO members, rather than be treated as matters to negotiate on a contract by contract basis.

Subsequently on the 17 January 2006, GNSO Council requested that the ICANN staff produce an issues report "related to the dot COM proposed agreement in relation to the various views that have been expressed by the constituencies." This issues report is available at:
http://www.gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg01951.html

Section D of this issues report provides a discussion of many of the issues that had been raised by the GNSO community in response to the proposed revisions to the .com agreement. In the issues report the ICANN General Counsel advised that it would not be appropriate to consider a policy development process that specifically targets the .com registry agreement.

At its meeting on 6 February 2006, members of the GNSO Council clarified that the intention of the request for the issues report was to seek an issues report on the topic of the broader policy issues that relate to the contractual conditions of gTLD agreements, which have been identified from the various views expressed by the GNSO constituencies on the proposed .com agreement.

At its meeting on 6 February 2006 the GNSO Council recognised that while the PDP initiated in December 2005 [PDP-Dec05] included within its terms of reference the topic of contractual conditions, a possible outcome of
that PDP would be that there should be no additional gTLDs, and thus the Council could not depend on this PDP to address the issues raised by the GNSO community.

Thus at its meeting on 6 February 2006, the GNSO Council decided to initiate a separate PDP [PDP-Feb06] to look at specific areas of contractual conditions of existing gTLDs.

The work of PDP-Feb06 will naturally be conducted within the context of the work on PDP-Dec05, and if it is decided that new gTLDS should be introduced, the policy work of PDP-Feb06 will be incorporated into a single gTLD policy.

Goal

The overall goal of this PDP therefore is to determine what contractual conditions are appropriate for the long term future of gTLDs within the context of ICANN's mission that relate to the issues identified in the specific terms of reference below.

Terms of Reference

1. Registry agreement renewal

1a. Examine whether presumptive rights of renewal in registry agreements serve to promote ICANN's core mission and values, including promotion of competition, DNS stability and security and

1b. Examine whether presumptive rights of renewal encourage a long-term view of registry operations in terms of investment and infrastructure production.

1c. Examine under what conditions a presumptive right of renewal should be deemed unjustified.

1d. While recognizing that several current registry agreements include a presumptive right of renewal, use the findings from a) - c) above to determine if presumptive renewal should be included in all registry agreements.

2. Relationship between registry agreements and consensus policies

2a. Examine whether certain registry agreement contract provisions should be immune from application of consensus policy and how this should be determined.

2b. Examine whether sponsored TLDs should retain the policy-making authority now delegated in their registry agreements.

2c. Recognizing that current registry agreements include varying limitations on scope and applicability of consensus policy, examine the extent to which registry agreements could state that consensus policies may not affect certain terms of the agreement and determine whether future registry agreements should be restricted to a uniform scope and applicability of consensus policies.

3. Price controls for registry services

3a. Examine in what ways price controls contribute to ICANN's core mission and values, especially the promotion of competition and the net effects on end users.

3b. Examine what conditions might justify price controls for particular registries.

3c. Examine objective measures (cost calculation method, cost elements, reasonable profit margin) for approving an application for a price increase when price control is applied.

3d. In view of the findings, determine if registry agreements should prescribe or limit the prices for registry services.

4. ICANN fees

4a. Examine whether ICANN fees defined in registry agreements should be subject to policy determination.

4b. Examine whether ICANN fees should be tailored to registry business models.

4c. Determine how ICANN's public budgeting process should relate to the negotiation of ICANN fees.

5. Uses of traffic data

5a. Examine the differences in traffic data available to "thin" and "thick" registries and which privacy rights exist in such traffic data.

5b. Examine how the use of traffic data can enhance services to registry clients.

5c. Determine whether any allowances should be made for non-discriminatory access to traffic data.

5d. Determine whether the uses of traffic data, available to registries as a consequence of registry operation, should be restricted.

6. Investments in development and infrastructure

6a. Examine how requirements for specific investment levels in registry agreements promote ICANN's core mission and values, especially as to promoting competition and ensuring DNS stability and security.

6b. Determine whether registry agreements should require specific investment levels in the areas of development and infrastructure.

6c. Determine whether security and stability goals should be reflected in registry agreements as specific commitments, either as customer service levels or as investment targets.

Internet Caucus State of the Net Conference

2006-02-07T14:41:00.000-05:00

As reported at cdt.org:

Internet Caucus
State of the Net Conference
Hyatt Regency, Washington, DC
2nd Annual State of the Net Conference 2006
February 8, 2006
8:00 am - 4:30 pm
Hyatt Regency, Washington, DC
Full Agenda
Register Now

This event will be immediately followed by the 9th annual Internet Caucus Kickoff Reception and Technology Fair.

Contact
Danielle Yates at dyates@netcaucus.org or 202-638-4370 for more information.

This event is hosted in conjunction with the Internet Caucus and its co-chairs--Senators Conrad Burns (R-MT) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and Congressmen Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Rick Boucher (D-VA).

Panelists (which include ICANN's Vint Cerf) are listed here.

Bloggers react to Baucus .xxx Proposal

2006-02-07T14:17:00.000-05:00

The first feedback from the blogging community on the Baucus .xxx proposal arrives in the form of the following post entitled "URGENT: threat to domain name owners":

The domain industry might crumble if the Unites States Congress gets more involved in domain name policy.

I’ve seen a lot of scary things that could knock the domain name industry off its upward trajectory. But this takes the cake. According to an article from the Associated Press:

“Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., is crafting [a] legislative package that would require the Department of Commerce to create the new [.xxx] domain name. Pornographic Web sites would be required to abandon their “.com” addresses, ideally consolidating them all in one Internet neighborhood.”

This is not a decision in which the US government should have a hand. That’s why ICANN was set up–to handle policy. The notion of taking away a .com domain name from its rightful owner is shameful and anti-American — contrary to the values of the United States. It’s called property rights. Furthermore, the US Congress has no control over what happens outside the US, so it would just mean companies moving their servers offshore. I think the Commerce Department would have to change the charter of ICANN to make this a worldwide policy. I wonder if Sen. Baucus realizes that his policy would cause offshoring of internet servers.

This is a slippery slope. Can you imagine where this could lead? Look, I don’t operate adult sites. But this issue is about so much more than that. Please contact Sen. Max Baucus and tell him how asinine this idea is.

You can submit a comment to Baucus via his web site here. Or call, write, or fax to his office in Washington D.C.:

Sen. Max Baucus
511 Hart Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-2651
(202) 224-0515 (Fax)

Special Berkman event February 21

2006-02-07T14:01:00.000-05:00

From isenblog:

If you are in the Boston area and you're mystified by Internet governance, put Tuesday, February 21 on your calendar. At about 6 until about 7:30PM, I'll be hosting a Berkman Center for Internet & Society event called, "Internet Governance 101," a discussion with visiting, globetrotting Internet Governance Guru Desiree Miloshevic and Harvard's own Internet Gov Guru Scott Bradner. Desiree and Scott will begin the beguine, explaining how Internet governance began, how and why organizations like ICANN, IANA, IETF, ISOC, and others began, what they do, how they're doing, what's behind some recent attempts to change Internet governance structures and what the prognosis is.

If you don't know your ISOC from your ISHOE, if you wonder why ICANN CANNT (or WONNT), if you WSIS it would all go away, if you can't remember why they took IANA toothpaste off the shelves, if you wonder what the FCC is going on, this evening is for you.

Pizza and soda served, but we'd like an RSVP if only to know how much pizza to order.
The Berkman Center is located at 1587 Mass Ave, Cambridge MA 02138 USA. More how to find it here.

New North American At-Large Structure Applications

2006-02-07T13:26:00.000-05:00

Two organizations have recently applied for North American At-Large Structure status: ISOC Quebec (whose organizational contact Luc Faubert participates on the cpsr governance list), and CAUCE Canada (whose U.S. liaison is listed as John Levine, ALAC member).

Question: Why are these organizations being duped into joining the ALAC when their proper home is ICANN's Non-Commercial Constituency?

.aero renewal: two different registrar perspectives

2006-02-07T13:10:00.000-05:00

Two slightly different perspectives on the .aero renewal request are to be found in the comments of two registrars:

Tucows:
This renewal proposal requests modification of the registry agreement to allow the registry to develop alternative distribution channels outside of the regular registrar accreditation policy and to allow SITA to deal directly with the registrants.

This is a puzzling request in that the registry operator is free to undertake the development of any distribution channels it wishes to within the bounds of the current registrar accreditation policy. Specialized distribution is necessary to deliver different services to different market segments - but this does not mean that registrar accreditation policies should be waived. The original registrar accreditation policy was implemented to ensure not only a competitive environment as the registry operator points out, but also to ensure a stable, predictable and secure environment that met the requirements set out by the Internet community, the White Paper and ICANN's policy development process. SITA has incorrectly assessed accredited registrars as a homogeneous distribution channel leading to an assumption that the current service failures are related to the distribution channel being used. Given that any organization that qualifies may become accredited to act as a registrar, it also stands to reason that organizations with the skills SITA views as necessary for distribution of .aero registrations could become accredited.

SITA should be encouraged to develop a specialized distribution channel - one that will presumably see new specialized registrars become accredited in order that they meet the technical, financial and operational requirements set forth by ICANN. but ICANN's implementation of the Registrar Accreditation policy in this sponsored TLD agreement should not be changed.

Regarding SITA's request to deal with the public directly, this request should be granted, provided that SITA create and implement plans to ensure that the obvious internal conflicts of interest are avoided and that the registry can provide equal access to all registrars, including its own, without favoring any specific one (especially its own).

The Go Daddy Group:
The renewal proposals of SITA and Musedoma include requests to waive the requirement to use ICANN accredited registrars. We believe it would be inappropriate to grant these requests.

The use of non-accredited organizations could endanger the stability and security of the domain name system that the ICANN was formed to protect. The ICANN must maintain the ability to formulate and enforce policy and standards regarding the registration system.

The registrar accreditation process is not daunting or complicated. The fact that the accredited registrar community has grown by over 300% in just over a year is evidence of that fact. If either Registry Operator feels the need for additional distribution channels, it can well be
accomplished within the established accreditation standards.

SITA also requests the ability to offer registrations directly. This is something that we would agree should be considered on a case by case basis for Sponsored Registry Operators and only if it can be accomplished within the established registrar accreditation framework and established principles of non-discriminatory conduct by Registry Operators.

Comments on the Purpose of the ICANN WHOIS

2006-02-07T13:06:00.000-05:00

Comments are starting to arrive on the "Purpose of WHOIS"; the following is from the ALA:

The American Library Association strongly supports the first formulation of
the purpose for Whois.

A basic tenent of privacy law is that data collectors must collect only the
minimum personal information necessary to achieve the specific purposes of that
organization. By no means should personal information be collected simply
because third parties might find it useful for their own purposes. The purpose of
the Whois database is to assist with the technical administration of the
Internet, and nothing else. Even if those ancillary uses were deemed worthwhile
from some perspectives (and that, itself, is open to debate), collection and
retention of such personally identifiable information creates a serious potential
for misuse, fraud, and intimidation of speech..

The American Library Association has long stood for the privacy rights of
information seekers and providers, including the right of anonymous speech,
regardless of media. Thus, as key providers of Internet services to the public, we
are specifically committed to privacy rights with regard to speech on the
Internet. We believe that, while managing the technology of the Internet , ICANN
has an obligation to minimize the impacts of its technical decisions on broader
social policy issues.

The Office for Information Technology Policy of the American Library
Association is a member of the NCUC.

Signed,

Fred W. Weingarten
Director
Office for Information Technology Policy
American Library Association

Flying the .coop?

2006-02-07T12:31:00.000-05:00

John Berryhill writes:

"DotCoop has used a combination of manual and random checks to ensure that
the .coop domain truly represents the members of its community."

Domain Name: chicken.coop
Domain Status: inactive
Created: 25 Jul 2002 21:14:02 UTC
Name: Karla Harvill
Organisation: Gold Kist Inc.
Email: karla.harvill@xxxxxxxxxxxx

http://www.goldkist.com/company/history.asp

"In October 2004 with the approval of its membership, Gold Kist converted
from a farm cooperative to a for-profit company. Its stock is traded on the
NASDAQ stock exchange under the "GKIS" symbol."

APRALO Minutes

2006-02-07T07:52:00.000-05:00

ICANN has a habit of being as non-transparent as possible. You would think that the minutes of a meeting discussing the possible formation of an Asia-Pacific Regional At-Large Organization could readily be found on the ALAC portion of the ICANN website... but you would be wrong. Here are the minutes that you would otherwise not have seen (even though the ALAC's Executive Secretary, Denise Michel, has stated that minutes would be circulated):

APRALO Formation Meeting
2 December 2005
09:00
Vancouver
(recorded by Jacob Malthouse)
*DRAFT NOTES* *NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION*

EDMUND: Concerns seems to be formation of a council that would be regionally representative. Idea: council may be formed later. RALO can help to do outreach first.

KUO-WEI: Two comments: If RALO doesn’t work? What is the legitimacy of doing interim for ever

HOWARD: Is it necessary to form a formal ALAC structure? ICANN is an open structure.

DENISE: RALO structure is intended to facilitate user group decisions about who will participate on the ALAC. One useful area is as a secretariat to assist with nomination and translation. Don’t think of RALO as requirement. Loosely defined structure. It will do what we will find useful for the region.

HONG: Suggestion: five minutes for IZUMI to explain his RALO idea. Issue: are we working hard to establish a concept that will be a failure? Principles of RALO: openness, transparency and inclusive.

SHESHAN: Suggest all discussion about RALO be delegated to some other meeting. Lets work on agenda as it is.

STAFFORD: First meeting about this at Luxemburg. RALO was established. I support RALO. Enough people here to make a positive input.

SEBASTIAN: RALO will be as successful as you make it.

EDMUND: This is not a bad discussion. But agree we should focus on the current framework. Can we have a less formal structure. Facilitating role.

JOINS: DAVID FARRER – chair of internet new Zealand.

EDMUND: Look at GAC model?

KUO-WEI: Organise people working on outreach/finance. Council is not hierarchical or bureaucratic. Wants to ensure coordination. A lot of this has already been discussed.

HONG: How can we make people outside of the meeting aware of this process?

DENISE: Minutes will be circulated.

HONG: If there is going to be an APRALO. It will be the first one. There is no model to follow. We will be pioneers. ICANN approved draft of RALO. This is going to be a challenge. We have five regions in the World. Standard or differing models. Key constituencies in ICANN are going to reform as result of WSIS. We need to keep an open mind.
CHAIR (Chair for this meeting was Izumi Aizu) Current observation. Myself, Esther and Denise (DENISE and others…Vittorio) DISCUSSION. Developed RALO. How to effectively channel the global voice of users in the advisory? We need a channel. ICANN is global. Because meetings expensive, have local groups to collate input from regions. ALS could be issue or region based. We decided to have a structure to help manage and ensure the quality of interaction from users. Second point. Measure of legitimacy? Countries/companies/people etc? yes have some doubt about RALO. But let’s see how things develop in practice.

SEBASTIAN: Some NA ALAC members have their own agendas. Board and voting discussion is Byzantine, not sure we will solve it now or tomorrow. Good thing is that new organisations are becoming interested. The AP RALO will serve as an example for other regions to encourage them to grow and start their own RALOs.

HOWARD**: Have better understanding thanks. Why do we need a bylaw? Prefer something informal.

KUO-WEI: What is the legitimacy of ALAC? Interim for ever? Don’t want uniform structures. Every region has its own process.

HONG: Believe that ICANN would like to maintain a bottom line of uniformity. One region could use GAC model, another could use ALAC, every region should have a RALO, that is bottom line. But understand that this is an experiment and we need to be courageous.

SEBASTIAN: Most interim members are not planning to be here the rest of our lives.

CHAIR: Summing up. LEGITIMACY is key. Is RALO the right structure? Especially if it has a heavyweight structure? No one insisting on heavyweight structure. Some uncertainty about the future of global RALO. Majority of people agree we need to be courageous.

STAFFORD: Personal feeling is we need some “rules” to say this is how we are going to conduct our business. If we have some informal rules it might help us to focus our business. Refer to TAIWAN meeting document as a basis for discussion.

FRANCK MARTIN: You need a chairman to help coordinate and liaise. ICANN may provide support once RALO is up and running.

GARTH: I would like to talk about the bylaws: 3.1.2 Change expression at beginning “to promote and represent” to “understand and advocate for” Council and council meetings: specify that council meetings are OPEN.

HONG: Suggest that each presentation/intervention should be maximum five minutes.

FRANCK: These things should be up to the chair to conduct meetings as they want.

CHAIR: Agree to create RALO?

HOWARD: Do we need to discuss bylaw today? Do we have enough people in the region? AL is representative of the end users. I formally represent ISOC China and would like to see more representatives of the same qualifications.

DAVID: People don’t join organisations like this to debate bylaws. Need a workable-flexible structure, then move on to talking about the issues. Lets move quickly.

HOWARD: can you define numbers? One person from two-thirds of country or regional economy.

KUO-WEI: So now is not right time because not enough people?

HOWARD: That is what I am suggesting.

HONG: Nature of our discussion? See concern from Howard and Guo Weh. We need consensus in this room are we ready to take these decisions about they bylaws?

CHAIR: Anyone want to decide bylaws immediately? [Silence] Anyone not want to discuss bylaws? [Silence]
Suggest we discuss for 30 min. circulate. Decide how to decide next step.

EDMUND: Should we call it bylaw? Something else?

SEBASTIAN: Voting mechanism and council at this point? Maybe have a light structure and first and develop this over time?

CHAIR: Think everyone agrees

ROBERTO: Timing and interest of people: next ICANN meeting will take place in Wellington. Put yourself in the best position for that meeting. Wellington will be a stage for you to be operational.

SHASHANI: ICANN bylaws define what a RALO is. Clause: ALAC / RALO relationship has to be defined. READS FROM ICANN BYLAWS. Lets focus on the concept of membership?

FRANCK: Suggest we review bylaw and submit them to a vote.

EDMUND: That is a quick and dirty way to go about it. Some of the concerns raised today warns us to go a little bit further in our discussions. We should thank Stafford but could also revise this as he suggested.

HONG: No objection to current text. Rather than going through provisions one by one. We should establish some principles or guidelines for the bylaws. Strongly suggest that there should be video or sound recording in future.
I just got this version of the bylaws last night. Makes it difficult to comment.

CHAIR: Minutes of Taipei were circulated following Taipei. Bylaws were finished a week following Taipei and circulated

HONG: I cannot receive all and every message.

CHAIR: Did you raise that before?

HONG: Suggest we reform our communication system.

DENISE: Given challenges in working internationally. It would be appropriate for us to use the AP RALO website / email list / and other infrastructure. Have asked ICANN webmaster to create and maintain that list and ensure website operational. ICANN will ensure audio and video webcast of all future meetings.

CHAIR: In the interim good solution. We should also have our own structure.

FRANCK: This is just some rules of proceeding together. Only one thing is missing. How do we change these bylaws? Could we put a rule about how to change the bylaws and that will make it easier for us to move forward.
Council should meet annually? Perhaps better to meet every time ICANN is in the region?

HOWARD: Hesitate to call it bylaw.

CHAIR: Suggestion?

HOWARD: Principles of action.

CHAIR: Have to finish meeting in 30 mins

EDMUND: Suggest operating principles. Suggest one further redraft. ALAC allows voice of user to be heard on the board.

ROBERTO: Keep Wellington in mind for furthering the discussion. ALAC gives an additional opportunity to interact directly with the board. RALO allows for coordination and channelling of ideas into formalised opinions.

SEBASTIAN: Thanks for saying ICANN open!

VITTORIO: This work should be region driven. Understand you have a difficult job. Your region is large and diverse. If you succeed this will really be a true success. Want to thank everyone for their hard work.

SHASHANI: Channel created to allow Could we continue to discuss this online so that before the next meeting we have something.

HOWARD: I am one with reservation about bylaws. I would like to see more outreach before we have formal discussion.

EDMUND: Would like to meet again to plan outreach etc.

FRANCK: As long as we leave it open for change to occur we should be ok. Lets agree this structure and then we can amend over time.

CHAIR: Appropriate diversity may be hard to gauge in this discussion. Suggest we discuss this further informally.

SHASHANI: Suggest you create an AP RALO to discuss this

CHAIR: We have a list already.

SHASHANI: Suggesting a specific list for the BYLAWs.

DAVID: Two major upcoming meetings APRICOT - Perth February. Next ICANN meeting is in Wellington.

CHAIR: Another meeting at 1800 today.

GAC Requests Meeting with GNSO Council

2006-02-07T07:43:00.000-05:00

Suzanne Sene, the GAC Liaison to the GNSO Council, has asked if the Council would be available to meet with the GAC Working group on gTLDs for a two hour timeslot on Sunday morning, 26 March 2006 in New Zealand. Note from the GAC communiqué http://gac.icann.org/web/communiques/gac23com.pdf in Vancouver: "In view of the range and significance of the public policy issues associated with the introduction of new generic top level domains (gTLDs), the GAC agreed to initiate work on public policy applicable to new gTLDs. This initiative is intended to identify the public policy issues and contribute to the policy development process currently underway in ICANN."

GNSO Council Snubs ICANN General Counsel

2006-02-06T19:43:00.000-05:00

Bruce Tonkin, Chair of ICANN's GNSO Council writes:

At the GNSO Council meeting today, the Council decided to initiate the Policy Development Process (PDP) to examine the policy issues that have been raised by the GNSO constituencies as a result of their review of the proposed .com agreement. During the Council discussion on this motion, it was clear that Council members were considering the broader policy issues that apply to all gTLDs, and were not considering issues that only applied to .com. A terms of reference will now be developed, and submitted for vote during a Council meeting on 16 February 2006.

The following motion was passed by a supermajority vote:

"Council resolves to initiate a Policy Development Process in line with it's 17 January 2006 request for an issues report the intent of which was to address the broader policy issues raised."

Vote: 19 votes in favour, Marilyn Cade, Philip Sheppard, Grant Forsyth, (CBUC) Ute Decker, Kiyoshi Tsuru, (IPC) Tony Holmes, Tony Harris, Greg Ruth, (ISPCPC) Robin Gross (NCUC), Bruce Tonkin (2), Ross Rader (2), Tom Keller (2) (Registrars constituency), Maureen Cubberley, Sophia Bekele, Avri Doria (Nominating committee appointees), (18 votes)

Kiyoshi Tsuru voted a proxy in favour for Lucy Nichols (IPC) who was absent. 6 votes against, Cary Karp (2), Ken Stubbs (2), June Seo (2) (gTLD registries constituency) 1 abstention Mawaki Chango (NCUC) 1 person was not on the call and did not provide a proxy, Norbert Klein (NCUC)

Hasbrouck Requests ALAC Action

2006-02-06T15:09:00.000-05:00

Edward Hasbrouck, a victim of the ICANN process, has now written to the ALAC in an attempt to secure justice:

"It appears, from ICANN's replies to my most recent attempts to obtain independent review of an ICANN decision, that ICANN is willing to alow some sort of arbitration (not satisfying the requirements of ICANN's Bylaws), but *only* if I agree to allow ICANN staff to make up the rules for the arbitration as they go along, in secret, and to impose both rules of their choice and an arbitration provider of their choice, unilaterally and retroactively, rather than following the procedures required by ICANN's Bylaws for the process of developing independent review policies.

Clearly, the choice of an independent review provider -- the highest level of oversight within ICANN's structure -- and the development of procedures for independent review are policy questions of the highest significance, and are subject to ICANN's decision-making rules including those in Article III, Section 6 of ICANN's Bylaws.

My most recent message to ICANN, in which I enumerate the requirements of ICANN's Bylaws for policy decisions:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001007.html

ICANN's replies:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001008.html

In light of these messages from ICANN's Chairman and Secretary, I request the assistance of the ALAC in getting ICANN to comply with the requirements of ICANN's Bylaws that ICANN "have in place procedures" for independent review, and designate an independent review provider, in accordance with the rules in ICANN's Bylaws for policy decisions.

Specifically, I ask that ALAC make a public, formal, request to ICANN's Board of Directors that the Board:

(1) Consider and act on my pending request for a stay of the questioned decision of the Board pending independent review;

(2) Begin the process of developing procedures for independent review, and designating an independent review provider, in accordance with the rules for policy development and decison-making in ICANN's Bylaws, including the requirement for the maximum extent feasible of openness and transparency in this process; and

(3) Schedule and give notice of consideration of items (1) and (2) above at a maximally transparent public meeting of the Board of Directors open to public attendance (if it is held in person), telephone auditing, and/or Webcasting.

Sincerely,

Edward Hasbrouck

Marilyn Cade requests meeting with ICANN Board

2006-02-06T14:49:00.000-05:00

The Business Constituency's Marilyn Cade has proposed a special Council Meeting with the ICANN Board; her request:

Dear Vint (with copy to Paul, Kurt, John, and all Board members)

The gNSO Council reminds the ICANN CEO and Board of the resolution sent to the Board during the Vancouver ICANN meeting, and requests a conference call between the Board and the Council to discuss continuing concerns. We ask that the call take place before the conclusion of the public comment period on the proposed .com Registry Agreements and in sufficient time for the Board to take into consideration the discussion with the Council.

The Vancouver Council resolution reads:

"That the ICANN Board should postpone adoption of the proposed settlement while the Council fully investigates the policy issues raised by the proposed changes"

The gNSO Council is advancing that investigation. At its January 17, 2006 meeting, the Council further discussed the areas of policy concern, and voted to request an Issues Report related to the policy concerns raised in the constituency statements.

Subsequently, on January 29, 2006, a revised set of documents were posted by ICANN, including a newly revised Proposed .COM Registry Agreement. At present, the Council is discussing with Policy Staff, and the General Counsel, various ways to address the policy areas that have been raised by the constituencies and the community that are of concern to gTLD registry agreements, including those in present discussion within ICANN or posted for public comment. The discussions with Policy staff and General Counsel are ongoing at this time.

In parallel, and not subject to the outcome of that discussion, the GNSO Council requests a conference call or meeting with the Board and CEO/President to discuss the gNSO Council's continuing concerns and views.

Sincerely

Transmitted on behalf of the GNSO Council

VeriSign Settlement Agreement Update

2006-02-06T14:04:00.000-05:00

On the ICANN registrar's list Jonathon L. Nevett writes:

Mark your calendars. John Jeffrey and Kurt Pritz have graciously agreed to participate in a conference call with registrars to discuss the recently-announced proposed VeriSign settlement agreement (http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-29jan06.htm). The call will be held on Monday, 13 February 2006 at 4:00 PM Eastern Time/1:00 PM Pacific Time/21:00 GMT. I will circulate a call-in number later in the week.

GNSO Council Squatters

2006-02-06T12:53:00.000-05:00

If one takes a look at the representatives on the ICANN GNSO Council, one can't help but notice the same set of names over and over and over again. Let's consider the case of Antonio Harris from the ISPCP Constituency. Tony has served in consecutive terms since May 1999. Unfortunately, the articles of the constituency prohibit such matters, but hey, what's a few broken rules among friends (especially when the constituency is down to less than a handful of members):

"NC Representatives may not be elected for more than two successive periods. Following two such periods, re-election is only possible after an intermediary period of one year even if a different organization appoints her/him as Delegate."

As it pertains to these "Articles", the observant might also note that the ISPCP has never submitted a new Charter or Statement of Operating Procedures as required by the Transition Article of the ICANN bylaws:

"Notwithstanding the adoption or effectiveness of the New Bylaws, each GNSO constituency described in paragraph 2 of this Section 5 shall continue operating as before and no constituency official, task force, or other activity shall be changed until further action of the constituency, provided that each GNSO constituency shall submit to the ICANN Secretary a new charter and statement of operating procedures, adopted according to the constituency's processes and consistent with the New Bylaws, no later than 15 July 2003."

When the Business Constituency gets mad...

2006-02-06T11:47:00.000-05:00

Today's GNSO Council teleconference appears to be shaping up as a slugfest as further rancor over the ICANN General Counsel's opinion on the .com contract begins to fester. Note this letter from the Business Constituency's Philip Sheppard:

Council,

There has been concern expressed on the .com issues report with respect to the misinterpretation of Council's intent. As the BC understands It, Council interest in the proposed .com agreement is "the broader policy implications". In this respect, the ICANN by-laws foresee that Council proceed with a PDP having heard a negative staff recommendation.

"c. Vote of the Council. A vote of more than 33% of the Council members present in favor of initiating the PDP will suffice to initiate the PDP; unless the Staff Recommendation stated that the issue is not properly within the scope of the ICANN policy process or the GNSO, in which case a Supermajority Vote of the Council members present in favor of initiating the PDP will be required to initiate the PDP". This supermajority vote (I believe its 18 votes) is an option open to us at our meeting later today.

Another Silly Idea for .xxx

2006-02-06T11:05:00.000-05:00

Mary Clare Jalonick writing for the Associated Press states in this article in the helenair.com Independent Record:

[Excerpt] "Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., is crafting the legislative package that would require the Department of Commerce to create the new [.xxx] domain name. Pornographic Web sites would be required to abandon their ‘‘.com’’ addresses, ideally consolidating them all in one Internet neighborhood."

As a fair number of pornographic domains are hosted in country-code TLD namespace, I can't see how this proposal will accomplish anything other than making a few congresscritters look good to their constituents. The Senator would be advised to gather the views of the ICANN Board (and of the Internet community generally) prior to launching this iniative.

IDN: Who formulates the policy?

2006-02-05T13:46:00.000-05:00

Recent ICANN GNSO Council discussions have focused on IDNs, with Sophia Bekele stating: "Giving IDNs priority should be the reason to understand them. There is a saying, "An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.""

This current focus on IDNs by the Council is commendable, but it seems to be occuring in a vacuum as the Council has failed to secure any guidance whatsoever from ICANN's President's Committee on IDNs. This President's Committee is tasked with identifying and proposing solutions to the following main areas:

IDN TLD Challenges:
The committee is tasked with analyzing the challenges relating to the implementation of internationalized top level domains and suggestions towards their resolution.

IDN Technical Development Challenges:
The committee is tasked with providing the ICANN President (and staff) with a list of technical barriers and opportunities to the continued development of IDNs and which the community is expecting ICANN to handle or take part in handling.

IDN Policy Challenges:
The Committee is tasked with developing and providing the ICANN President (and staff) with recommendations on how IDN policy issues should be handled, the use of existing policy development processes, and the definition of specific IDN policy processes.

If a group of experts has been charged with developing appropriate IDN policy, one would think that the Council would first gather the benefit of the policy guidance being developed before rushing in to an area wherein only a few of the Councillors have expertise. Ultimately it prompts the question: which group, the ICANN GNSO Council or the ICANN President's Committee on IDN, will be responsible for policy development in this area?

The Public Starts Thinking About New TLDs

2006-02-05T13:08:00.000-05:00

I spotted this commentary at ConnorNet thinking about a .pod TLD for podcasts, company-specific TLDs (such as .yahoo) and industry-wide TLDs such as .news. It seems like policy discussions are underway everywhere except the one place where you would expect such matters to be under thorough discussion and debate -- ICANN's GNSO Council. So far all we've seen is a few submitted statements that mostly did nothing more than re-hash earlier position papers... no actual policy discussions have yet started. Methinks the Committee of the Whole needs a swift kick in the butt.

Gaetano on the .com price hike

2006-02-04T17:45:00.000-05:00

In a post to the ALAC discussion list, former DNSO General Assembly Chair and current ALAC liaison to the ICANN Board Roberto Gaetano comments on the proposed VeriSign .com price hike:

"There's one point that I find specifically problematic, and I raised also this issue to the Board. To say that 2 times out of 6 they have to motivate the raise of price simply means to me that the other 4 times out of 6 the raise is unmotivated (and therefore should not be allowed in first place). Or is the raise motivated economically by the fact that Verisign cannot pass down the line the ICANN fees, and recovers them through a raise? I think we (ALAC) should think and elaborate on this aspect, because it impacts the individual users' interests."

Complaint Filed with ICANN Ombudsman

2006-02-04T10:26:00.000-05:00

As reported on the General Assembly Discussion List:

This complaint pertains to inaction on the part of ICANN Staff and the lack of oversight on the part of the Board to ensure compliance with the organizational bylaws.

On 15 December 2002, the ICANN Board ratified the "New Bylaws" which resulted from the 2002 Evolution and Reform Process. Article III Section 3 of those bylaws [Manager of Public Participation] stated: "There shall be a staff position designated as Manager of Public Participation, or such other title as shall be determined by the President, that shall be responsible, under the direction of the President, for coordinating the various aspects of public participation in ICANN, including the Website and various other means of communicating with and receiving input from the general community of Internet users."

Although the bylaws have been revisited and modified on seven separate subsequent occasions, this above-cited language remains intact within our current set of bylaws.

ICANN still has no Manager of Public Participation even though ICANN Staff has made a series of new hires over the course of the last three years. The most recent set of Staff appointments (none of which was required by the bylaws) are posted at this URL: http://icann.org/announcements/announcement1-23nov05.htm

At this time, the Manager of Public Participation position is no longer cited on the ICANN Career Opportunities page: http://icann.org/general/jobs.htm