*** Disclosure: The following is the output resulting from transcribing an audio file into a word/text document. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages and grammatical corrections. It is posted as an aid to the original audio file, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.*** GNSO Council Wednesday, 22 June 2011 ICANN - Singapore >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Okay. Welcome, everyone, to the Singapore GNSO open council meeting. We will start just after we have started the recording, and got things underway. Thank you. Operator, could you please start the recording and let us know when that has been done? >> The recording is on, gentlemen and ladies. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you very much. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Singapore. Welcome to the GNSO Council meeting. We'll get things started straight away with a roll call, Glen, if -- sorry. Just give Glen time to get settled in and we'll start things off with a roll call. >> There's so much echo we can't hear you properly. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: So just before we do that, apparently there's too much echo. I don't know if -- >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Okay. I'm ready, Stéphane. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: -- something can -- people are finding it difficult to hear. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Carlos Aguirre. Tim Ruiz, Stéphane Van Gelder. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Here. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Here. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Here. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Jonathan Robinson. >>JONATHAN ROBINSON: Yeah. >>CHING CHIAO: Present. >>ANDREI KOLESNIKOV: Here. >>JAIME WAGNER: Here. >>ZAHID JAMIL: Here. >>WOLF-ULRICH KNOBEN: Here. >>JOHN BERARD: Here. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Here. >>DAVID TAYLOR: Here. >>DEBRA HUGHES: Here. >>WENDY SELTZER: Here. >>RAFIK DAMMAK: Here. >>WILLIAM DRAKE: Here. >>ROSEMARY SINCLAIR: Here. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: And Olga Cavalli? Thank you. And Alan Greenberg. And we have apologies from Han Chuan Lee, who will join us later on during the meeting. Mary -- sorry, Mary. Mary Wong? >>MARY WONG: Here for sure. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Have I missed anybody? And please note that we have full council attendance today. Thank you, Stéphane. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you very much, Glen. So do we have any updates to statements of interest? Not hearing any, do we have any -- >>JONATHAN ROBINSON: Sorry, Stéphane. Just -- I mean, I've reviewed mine online and it's not entirely current, but it's a matter of dates and it's a tidy-up. So I'll produce something. It's more administrative. The key point, I think, is I'm no longer on the Nominet board, but I'll update it online in short order. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you, Jonathan. We're still -- apparently we're still getting some more geo problems. I don't know if that can be fixed. Are there any requests to review or amend the agenda. Okay. Hearing none, you will note that the minutes from our previous meeting were approved today, and we'll move into Item 2, which is our usual pending projects item. This time, we are going to have a look at the UDRP work that is currently going on, and we have an update from Margie on this. Margie, if you can give us that update, please. >>MARGIE MILAM: Sure. Let's see if I can figure this out. Okay. All right. Here we go. I'll provide you a brief update of the preliminary issue report on the current state of the UDRP. I did go into some detail in the session on Saturday, and I won't go into as much detail, but just for those of you that were unable to attend or for the audience, I'll provide an overview of the main points. So essentially the council requested an issue report on February 3rd, basically looking at the current state of the UDRP. This was in response to the request that came from the registration abuse policy working group's final report that suggested that there be an issue report on the issue of the current state of the UDRP and to really look at the inequalities and insufficiencies with the process, and just to see how the problem of cybersquatting has been addressed under the UDRP. So we did a bit of research to come up with the preliminary issue report that has been published for public comment, starting with a Webinar on May 10th where we heard from a series of experts on their views on whether or not the UDRP should be evaluated or modified and whether the council should initiate a policy development process or a PDP on the UDRP. And that is open until -- the public comment is open until July 15th, and we had a session this morning which was fairly well- attended exploring some of the recommendations that staff made in the preliminary issue report. Following the closing of the public comment period, there will be a final issue report that will be released, so I anticipate it will be sometime in August, and then at that point the council can decide whether it should proceed on a policy development process to review the UDRP. And briefly, listening to the experts and even today in the session this morning, it seems as though the view of the UDRP is that it is a success. It's been in place for over 10 years and has really been tested in the sense that there's been 30,000 complaints filed over the last decade and the UDRP has served as a model for ccTLDs. It's looked upon as a viable alternative to litigation that takes place with respect to trademark infringement. It gives both parties an ability to resolve these issues in a fairly inexpensive manner. And over the last decade, the UDRP providers have devoted significant resources in educating and publishing decisions, so the policy itself and its implementation is really transparent and provides those interested in the process a really clear picture of what's required and whether you have an ability to prevail. So the preliminary issue report that we published summarizes some of these opinions that we heard in the Webinar and also were also explained in today's session. We're going to take these public comments and the comments that were made in the session earlier today to develop the final issue report that will elaborate on some of these issues, but the opinion that's described in the preliminary issue report is that the UDRP is viewed as cost-effective. It's also viewed as flexible and fair to respondents, and is predictable and transparent, and that's a good thing. I mean, the community feels that the way the implementation of the UDRP has been to date is really publicly available and it provides a lot of predictability to those in the marketplace. There is the notion that the UDRP is unfair to brand holders, primarily because of the volume of cybersquatting, and so that's something that is -- you know, is an issue where brand holders have to spend a lot of money in protecting their brands, but it's not necessarily a criticism of the policy itself. And so the sentiment that we heard on the Webinar and we also heard again this morning is that although the UDRP is not perfect, some believe that there's more harm than good that could result from a PDP. And there are some that expressed the viewpoint that if the UDRP is to be reviewed at all, it might make sense to focus on process improvements as opposed to updating the policy. And so I use the word "consensus" loosely here. It's not a GNSO Council consensus or even a working group consensus. It reflects what was mentioned in the Webinar, and I'll have to evaluate the opinions from this morning's presentations, but there is a sentiment that if a policy development process is initiated on the UDRP, it might undermine the effectiveness of the UDRP. And part of the issue report also includes the staff recommendation. That's part of what we do in an issue report is to provide counsel to the GNSO Council on what the staff view is of whether a policy development process should be initiated. We know in the preliminary issue report that it is certainly within scope of the GNSO Council to take a look at the policy and to review it, but we did feel that given the community view that we heard in the Webinar and we also heard it again this morning that we recommend against initiating a policy development process at this time. We do, though, feel that if it turns out that the council feels that there should be some sort of review of the UDRP, that we've suggested an alternative approach, primarily that -- that rather than going through the policy development process we might consider convening a team of experts that really focus on process recommendations only, and really see if we can improve the implementation of the policy through effecting changes to the process rather than the policy. And then after, this expert team should come up with recommendations and vet those with the community, and ultimately be implemented. You could always then consider doing a PDP if there's still a desire to review the policy. And so I have additional information for those that are interested, and again encourage everyone to participate in the public comment forum, which is open until July 15th. That's it. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks very much, Margie. Any questions or comments? And let me remind everyone in the room at this stage if you do have a question, please, this is an open meeting so please feel free to come up to the microphone, identify yourself, and ask questions. Jeff. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yeah. I'm going to just -- we had a really good session this morning on the UDRP, and I'll just bring up a comment I raised at that time, and that's kind of with the staff conclusion that -- I'm just going to try to find it here again -- that basically a -- let's see if I can read it here. The consensus is that a PDP could undermine the effectiveness of the UDRP. And I just take issue with the statement like that, because I don't know how a PDP itself undermines the UDRP. I can understand how an outcome may undermine a UDRP, but to say that a policy development process itself could undermine the UDRP I think is a bizarre kind of statement. >>MARGIE MILAM: And you're referring to the slide itself? I think what we're really talking about is the potential uncertainty associated with changes that might arise from a PDP itself. So I think we're looking at more the outcome versus the policy itself. >>JEFF NEUMAN: But I guess that's -- so I guess that's true of every single PDP that we do, where we're reviewing any existing policy that we have. I think that's always true. Anytime you start any PDP, it's going to be uncertain as to what the outcome is. So, I mean, I -- I understand, and I totally understand and get the point that a lot of people are worried about changes that may happen and the outcomes. We certainly heard a lot of that this morning. I just, again, think to make a statement saying a policy development process itself could undermine something that's a process -- sorry, the UDRP, is kind of -- it's an interesting statement. I don't see how that's possible. >>MARGIE MILAM: I think the perspective is that, you know, we're not talking about just a PDP that's from scratch on something that's new. It's a policy that's in effect. It's relied upon by many people in the industry. And so it's -- you know, we look at it from a different perspective because if you do make a change and it may be -- there may be unintended consequences that result from that change that even the working group may not adequately consider. I mean, what we're talking about here is a very complicated process. It's a quasi-legal process. And when you open it up to a policy development process, you may get folks that participate that may not have the expertise necessary to really deal with some of these issues and some of these changes, and as a result you might end up with consequences that might be unintended and might actually affect the effectiveness of the policy. So perhaps in the issue report, we may, you know, clarify that more, so that we address that concern, because I can see the -- that the report itself wasn't clear in that regard. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: So Jeff, I know we're going to come back. Can I go to Jonathan, first, then Robin, and then back to you? >>JONATHAN ROBINSON: It's a really -- I guess it's a pretty brief comment, but one of the things that seems to have -- that I've heard a few times recently is in relation to this particular issue is whether or not it makes sense to review a long-standing policy, almost as a matter of good practice, like one reviews many things in corporate governance or otherwise. So it's -- that sort of takes a step back from the particular issue here and whether within the structure we work, whether we should have that as a matter of common and good practice that we review policies by a certain amount of elapsed time, regardless. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you. Robin? >>ROBIN GROSS: Thank you. Is this on? Hello? Thank you. My name is Robin Gross. I'm with the noncommercial users constituency, and I want to do something I rarely do: Go out on a limb and agree entirely with what Jeff Neuman just said on the PDP issue. And I also wanted to -- I was a little bit confused, hearing Margie's description of the session this morning and some of the other comments that have come in, because I was in the session this morning and what I didn't hear was the UDRP is a wild success. What I heard was lots of people talking about different ways that it could be improved and places where there were problems with it, and the question is really how do we get there from here. So I think if we can maybe refocus this debate on what are the -- what are improvements that could be made to the UDRP and where are there places where we've seen some problems. We heard, for example, from Facebook this morning had a whole bunch of descriptions about the problems that they've had. We heard from registrars about some of the conflict of interest problems. We've heard proposals for ways to fix some of these issues. Things like creating a statute of limitations, creating an appeals process, removing the incentive for forum shopping. These kinds of things were discussed this morning, and so I think maybe if we refocus this debate on what are the issues, where are the problems, where can we make improvements, I think it would be a lot more constructive than simply do we want a PDP or don't we want a PDP. Thank you. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you very much. I have Wendy next. >>WENDY SELTZER: Thanks. And what I heard in the session this morning was similarly an interest in investigating lots of issues with the UDRP, many of them procedural issues and places where the policy seemed to leave gaps that didn't square with the concerns I also heard about don't start a PDP, as though that were the mantra, and so I propose the NQPDP -- the not quite a PDP -- or a fact- gathering exercise that looks awfully like a PDP but doesn't have the name that makes us run away screaming, because I think that we can do productive work in investigating these problems/challenges/room for improvement in the UDRP without any intention of destabilizing the system as it functions quite well in many ways. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks, Wendy. Jon, did you have a question? I saw your hand go up. John? No. John Berard. Zahid? >>ZAHID JAMIL: Hi. I just wanted to say that, you know, we're talking about revamping or looking at a process UDRP around which a lot of the work in the DAG is based. The work of the IRT and the STI did was basically based upon the foundation of the UDRP, sort of saying, "Okay, this is where things stand and we're going to build upon this." Now, the compromises, everybody has to live with. If we're going to change that status quo with regard to the UDRP, we are changing the foundation around which most of the RPMs have actually been formed. Now, it's like -- I'll just sort of use an example. It's like a sort of, you know, house of cards, and right at the bottom is one of the cards is the UDRP, when we're talking about RPMs. Now if you're going to tinker with that and sort of pick up that card and say, "Well, you know, let me just see what's underneath this. Maybe I'll pull it, maybe I won't, but let me tinker with that," I think we're risking quite a bit. And if we are going to be, in any case, discussing the review of the UDRP and give or take what's been done with the URS and with the rest of the RPMs, then I guess what we need to do is look at all the rights protection mechanisms, including the UDRP, together as one package, to see that they all balance out. And if that's going to take place, I think that that does sort of stall the new gTLD process and a final DAG from coming out. So maybe this is not the right time. Nobody's saying that there's not work that may not need to be done there, but maybe this is just not the right time. I. Thanks, Zahid. I had John next, then Jeff, Mary, and could I ask everyone -- all the councillors that aren't already logged into the Adobe to do so and raise your hand there. It does make it easier to manage. Thank you. John. >>JOHN BERARD: Thanks, Stéphane. I -- following on with the comments from Zahid, I will admit to not knowing every nuance, but just because staff might suggest that there's no basis for a PDP doesn't bar the council from moving -- from considering a motion on a PDP, is there? Right? And at the same time, the research that has gone on at this point has not avoided the issues that confront the UDRP, but, in fact, I think has been quite aggressive in identifying almost every change that any participant might seek to have in the UDRP. So I think we've got a fairly well-thought-out list of things to attack. We have an approach to do it, and so I think perhaps that suggesting that a staff recommendation is somehow a bar to our action misunderstands the issue that's before us. I think more directly, rights protection mechanisms embedded in the new gTLDs have no performance track record and perhaps we'd like to see what those -- what that performance is before we open up to inspection the only rights protection management system that we have right now. I realize that it's not a perfect solution, but it's one, I think, that works and can work in the near term for us. Thank you, Stéphane. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you, John. Jeff? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yeah. I just want to remind the group here, the council, that, you know, all this came out of the RAP recommendations and I believe it was a full consensus or unanimous consensus that decided that they wanted a UDRP -- sorry, a PDP on the UDRP, and, you know, so we -- we do like to adhere to precedent here. They adequately considered the issue as far as whether to do a PDP, and granted, we didn't have an issue report at the time. Now we have an issue report. So I still think that, you know, we need to kind of stick to our precedent and there were a lot of people that spent a lot of time on that report, and I don't think we should ignore the results of that report. It's not like we're coming into this without history. That said, if it's going to be in the final issue report that -- if the staff recommendation is going to stay the same, I'd like to see a concrete plan on how they believe that we can review the issues. We do have issues. Whether you call them procedural or otherwise, as a registry I believe we have issues because I, as a registry, keep getting complaints about registrars not doing what they're supposed to do and not all of it is a compliance issue. Some of it has to do with uncertainty as to what the language means. And frankly, I'd like to stop getting those. I'd rather have them dealt where they're supposed to be dealt. And either I'm getting them from complaints about registrars or I'm getting court orders to do something, so I do believe that this is an issue. And if we're not going to do it through a PDP, which I believe is really the only way to actually get -- or to force registrars or to force an entity to do something, then I'd like to see a plan, a concrete plan of how we're going to do that, and to say something like a panel of experts in this environment is pretty scary because that's almost a synonym for saying, "Let's exclude certain people from the conversation," and that's almost the feeling I get. Because even the way, Margie, you explained it, you're like well, if we do this, then you're going to get certain people in there that, you know, may not be experienced in it. And so I hear that, but even the Board Governance Committee, back when they were doing the structural improvements, you know, way back when, said, "Look, we should have working groups as our policy model. We should encourage participation from everyone. And we understand that you're going to get lots of viewpoints, some of which may be relevant, some of which may not, but that's why you have a strong chair and a strong vice chair, to kind of weed out that kind of stuff." So I think we need to not be afraid of the outcome, and we need to review a long-standing existing policy. And the last point, Margie, about you said well, this is something that's already in place. If we followed that philosophy, then we would have never done a PDP on transfers, which was a long-standing policy that we had to review because we saw that there were some issues. You know, and so it's very common for us to go back and review existing policies. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks, Jeff. So I have Mary, Kristina, Thomas, Carlos, and Avri. Mary. >>MARY WONG: Thanks, Stéphane. Let me pick up on what John and Jeff have just said and make two points. At least I think it's two. So first, we are talking about an ongoing process that we don't yet have a final issue report on. As I said this morning, this is a new process for the GNSO that there is -- there's a preliminary report followed by public comments, and for this particular one we've had the Webinar and we had the panel session this morning and the public comments period is still open. I could be getting all the chronology and everything wrong, but the important point here is that there is still stuff to be done -- technical term -- and then the vote has to come, and let's not prejudge what we think is going to happen or not happen. It is true that we've heard a lot of voices saying that a PDP is not necessary and a number of reasons why that is the case, and some of us might find some more convincing or less convincing than others, but then this goes to my second point. If we're talking about a process that hasn't quite come to vote before the council that's ongoing, with public comment and participation, we have heard a lot of great suggestions, mechanisms, and ideas throughout the process, including from today's seminar, and so I would ask -- and here I'm speaking personally as a councillor -- that in terms of the feedback, that anyone can provide through public comments or through participation, I think it will help the council reach the right decision when the time comes. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks. Kristina. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Sure. Just, you know, I really strongly agree with Mary. I think it's going to be very important that in the public comment process, we see very specific directed comments as to, you know, not only, for example, are there issues that aren't identified in that appendix as issues that might be taken up in a review. What -- to the extent that the commenter has concerns about a PDP, what they are, and why. And I should note that I think part of what has made this discussion more difficult than perhaps it needs to be is that we've been using "PDP" and "review" synonymously. And I think we need to stop doing that. I do -- just to frankly take issue with Jeff's characterization of the RAP working group. You know, the problem with relying wholeheartedly on those recommendations here is that you only had six members who attended more than half the meetings. You didn't have, for example, any of the expertise from respondent council like you've had on the panel -- on the panel discussion and on the Webinar and I personally found that to be extraordinarily valuable. You didn't have the academic viewpoint, which I also think is very important. Or frankly also the providers. Because they're on the front line. And to the extent that they are best able to compile the individual experiences that complainants and respondents have, I mean, they're an extraordinarily important source of information. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you, Kristina. Now, I know we're way over time on this already, but it's obviously an important subject to the GNSO and the community, so I'll let this run over. I'll continue to let this run over a little bit. I think we can make up time elsewhere in the agenda today. Thomas? >>THOMAS RICKERT: Hello. My name is Thomas Rickert. I'm representing Eco, the association of the German Internet industry. First of all, I think that all policies ICANN has need to be reviewed from time to time, and one should never be afraid for procedural or other reasons to touch them if there are issues with them. Now, the issues with UDRP are known for many, many years now. But I would like to second very much what we heard from Zahid, that we now have other RPMs in place, and not only are these interlinked but they have been specifically designed to address some of the weaknesses that have been identified with the UDRP. So I think it would be worthwhile looking at those and to see how much of the criticism is actually redundant. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you, Thomas. Carlos? >>CARLOS AGUIRRE: Thank you, Stéphane. I think all this is perfectable and could be improved. What is time? Time is now. It's appropriate. PDP or expert panel? I think at the end, the importance is the revision, and if we cannot achieve the better UDRP or not, we can know only after the review. Thank you. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you, Carlos. Avri? >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. Avri Doria speaking as a member of the NCUC. Like Robin, first of all, I did not want to pass up a chance to say that I was completely in agreement with Jeff. Going further, I very much agree -- and I'm sorry if that embarrasses you. I want to very much agree, also, with what Jonathan, I think it was, was saying, that reviewing our processes is indeed part of good governance and something we should be doing. I wanted to specifically, though, voice a concern about the issue that Zahid brought up, where there was sort of intimations that reviewing the UDRP at this point would threaten the new gTLD program and possibly cause delay in it. I think certainly the new protection mechanisms were built upon the knowledge and experience of UDRP. I know in time, in places they actually use some of the wording. I think that that's a fine thing. I think the UDRP exists independently both for existing TLDs and registrants and for the future. And I think to put any sort of fear, uncertainty and doubt on the notion of new gTLDs because someone dares talk about threatening the UDRP with review is really an unfortunate thing. Thank you. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks, Avri. And I wouldn't worry about embarrassing Jeff. From what I have heard of last night, he can take care of himself. Tim? >>TIM RUIZ: Thanks, Stephane. I will pass. I was just going to make a couple of points that Kristina did about the RAP working group report. I didn't want to give the mischaracterization that somehow there was full consensus within that working group. Thanks. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Zahid? >>ZAHID JAMIL: Thank you. First of all, I would just like to say, responding to what Avri said, I didn't threaten the new gTLD process. I simply stated what there was a consensus on in the STI report, which said that all the RPMs are a tapestry. That was in the IRT report as well. If they are a tapestry, then, basically, all of them are interlinked. And I think the comment that was made before Avri right now from the floor says exactly the same thing, that they are interlinked. If they are interlinked and if you are going to review one part of it, we need to review everything. Nobody is threatening the new gTLDs. But what we are saying is if you are going to open one part of it, you cannot do that without opening everything else up. I find it odd after so many years, this is the opportune moment that everybody feels is the time when we want to open this up, especially when we are about to embark upon a process which has a 18- month period where we are going to see how the RPMs which are other than UDRP work themselves out. So I think timing is the real issue. No one is threatening the new gTLD process, and I wholeheartedly agree with the comment made earlier. We should do it. If we were to do it, we need to do it in balance with every other RPM that exists. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks, Zahid. I have Jonathan next. I would like to close off the queue here. If anybody wants to speak, please identify yourself and we will try to move on. Please be nice to the waiter that's coming to the table. Jonathan? >>JONATHAN ROBINSON: Thank you, Stephane. It is a very brief point, and it is a follow-on from what Zahid said. I think whenever we are thinking about this or proposing to comment, we should be thinking about the point of principle about whether or not this should be reviewed and the timing as to two different issues as far as I can see. I would like to separate out those two points and to commingle them is perhaps confusing. So taking Zahid's point on timing, that's a separate issue as far as I can see. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thank you. So if there are any further -- no further -- David? >>DAVID TAYLOR: Thanks, Stephane. Just wanted to follow up on that because I do agree with Zahid and Jonathan and timing is a key issue here because if we are talking about a tapestry, which we said a lot about with the RPMs for new gTLDs, I think the rug under the tapestry is the UDRP. I'm not sure whether it is the time to pull out the rug or even to really look at how many holes are in it at the specific point we're in because it is the only mechanism RPM which is there for new gTLDs. So I think it is the wrong time. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks. Jeff? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Margie, just a question. What did you say as far as the timing? When can the council expect the final report? >>MARGIE MILAM: Public comment closes on the 15th. I assume we will get a lot of public comment, I mean, just given the interest in the topic. So I'm thinking early August, summarize it. Early August. Does that seem okay? >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Okay. >> CLAUDIO DiGANGI: Claudio DiGangi, member of the IPC. I wanted to clarify something Jeff said earlier. Unless I was misreading the registration of abuse policies working group final report, I believe they just recommended that the council initiate an issues report, not an actual PDP. So just a minor point. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks for that. Okay. Let's move on then to Item 2.4, which is just an item that we've introduced recently to highlight the changes that we have. The GNSO Council runs a pending project list to track our projects and the work we currently have going on and we've introduced this item to help track those changes and show most recent changes to that list. I notice it's not up on the screen, so I will just run through them very quickly. We have three main categories of pending projects, GNSO activities, we have nine of those on the current list. We had eight last time, but the policy process steering committee, which is one of the two steering committees that was originally set up to handle the GNSO improvements, that was removed. And we have a group working on the WHOIS requirements and also one on the community working group, drafting team handling that issue. Those were added to our list. So we now have nine items in that class of GNSO items. In the "other activities" category, we have seven items. We had nine in the previous list. The WHOIS has been moved from that part of the list to the previous one that I just mentioned. And we have also removed the item on the constituency reconfirmations. That has now moved elsewhere. On the working groups, the joint SO/AC working groups that we have, we had seven in the previous list and that has not changed so we still have seven there. And we also have one item in the outstanding recommendations part of our list. So that's a quick overview there, just to highlight the progress we are constantly trying to make on handling our workload and prioritizing it. Any questions on that? Seeing no hands up, I will move to Item 3, and we have a motion that we will be considering on the inter- registrar transfer policy, the part B, the second part of the work that's going on on the IRTP done by the IRTP working group. And before we move to consider a motion that is rather long and that we will consider today, I will ask Margie -- sorry, Marika, to give us an update on the work that's been going on here. So, Marika, please. >>MARIKA KONINGS: I think this is maybe an item we can catch on the update because we did cover this extensively over -- during our weekend discussions. So just very quickly for those in the room, this policy development process deals with the inter-registrar transfer policy which is a consensus policy that was adopted in 2004. And as part of that adoption, it was decided to continue as well with reviewing the policy to make sure that it was working as intended and to determine whether there was any need for clarification to the policy. So as part of the review, a long list of items was identified which was then divided into five separate PDPs labeled A to E. And we're currently in the B part of that series. So this PDP looked at a number of questions related to whether there should be a process or special provisions for the urgent return of a hijacked registration or inappropriate transfers or change of registrant. And also had two questions that dealt with register lock status. So the working group produced a number of reports, an initial report and proposed final report. And through review of public comments received on both those reports, it has now come to a final report that has been submitted to the GNSO council for its consideration which contains nine recommendations. And to just give you a snapshot of those recommendations, there are four recommendations that propose concrete changes or additions to the existing transfer policy. One is an addition of a requirement for registrars who provide a transfer emergency action contact, changes to Section 3 of the IRTP, changes to denial reason Number 6, and a proposal to delight a denial reason in Number 7. There are two recommendations in there that recommend requesting an issues report, one related to thick WHOIS and a second one that relates to the change of control function and denial reasons Number 8 and 9 of the IRTP. One recommendation relates to promotion of a SSAC report that proposes measures to registrants to avoid hijacking. There was one recommendation to defer an issue actually to -- if it is initiated a PDP on the UDRP. And there is one recommendation for staff to actually provide a proposal on standardization and clarification of WHOIS status messages in relation to registrar lock status. I think we already went into quite some detail over the weekend in the recommendation. I would just mention, because I think one of the major ones, maybe the biggest changes, first one on the screen and maybe to clarify what this actually means because this recommendation requires registrars to provide a transfer emergency contact that is to be used for urgent communications only, specifically relates to transfers. So urgencies such as hijacking. The main objective of this recommendation is to establish contact between registrar. The requirement for registrars would be to respond within four hours. It is very important to know that the four hours means picking up the phone. It doesn't mean that the issue is resolved in four hours. It means that contact is established so the two parties, registrars, can work out the issue between themselves. Also, important to note that the content can only be initiated by contracted parties. So it is to be used by registrars, registries and ICANN. So it is not a mechanism that is accessible to registrants. As I said, I'll just flick through these as we already discussed them over the weekend. If there are any questions on that, I think as we go through the motion, you'll get more details on that as well. And there's some more links here to the final report and public comment review tool. So if there are any questions still on the report and the recommendations? >>STEPHANE van GELDER: I suggest we move to reading and looking at the motion, and we'll take questions and comments once that has been done. Just to explain, we're going to do this in a slightly different way to the way we consider motions normally because this motion has several Resolved clauses. And because some of them have different voting thresholds, we have opted to consider each Resolved clause separately. I did ask Tim Ruiz, who made the motion earlier on, if he was okay to read these Resolved clauses. And Tim said he probably was. The first one is pretty long. Tim, if you can tackle that and then we will move to discussion and vote on the first Resolved clause. >>TIM RUIZ: I would like to make a brief statement before we begin. Marika explained some of the discussion that we had over the weekend and the original motion that was -- the draft motion that was posted has changed in a few places and I want to explain those changes because there has been some questions about those. One you have explained, and that is that we decided to vote on each recommendation separately because of the varying thresholds -- voting thresholds. Two other changes were made that, basically, defer two of the recommendations, one is to initiate an issues report for the requirement of thick WHOIS for all incumbent registries. And the second is to consider the issue of requiring the locking upon notice of a UDRP if there is a review for UDRP. And I want to make clear that neither of these recommendations have been changed in any way, not one word of what the working group put into their report in regards to these recommendations has been changed. They have simply been deferred as we have the practice of doing from time to time from today to another time. The one on thick WHOIS is being deferred to July 21st, I believe that's the date, to our meeting in July. The other one is being deferred so we will consider it at the same time that we consider the issues report that staff currently has out for public comment and waiting to finalize. So no changes to those recommendations whatsoever, just a deferment that seems to fit better with the discussions that we've had over the weekend. Okay, so the first -- I don't need to read the Whereases. So the first recommendation is actually, I believe, in four parts, correct? So it is Resolved 1. Missing the first line here somewhere. Resolved, A, the GNSO Council recommends to the ICANN board of directors, one, requiring registrars to provide a transfer emergency action contact, TEAC. To this end, the language of the Section 4, registrar coordination, and Section 6, registry requirements of the inter-registrar transfer policy, should be updated as follows. And then the explanation of how those sections should be changed follows, and I don't think I will read those. The second part of the recommendation is, Number 2, modifying Section 3 of the IRTP to require that the registrar of record, losing registrar, be required to notify the registered name holder, registrant, of the transfer out. The registrar of record has access to the contact information for the registrant and could modify their systems to automatically send out the standardized form of losing registrar's confirmation, FOA, to the registrant. This is IRTP part B recommendation Number 5. Part 3, modifying reason for Denial Number 6 as follows: Express objection to the -- express objection to the transfer by the authorized transfer contact. Objection could take the form of specific requests either by paper or electronic means by the authorized transfer contact to deny a particular transfer request or a general objection to all transfer requests received by the registrar either temporarily or indefinitely. In all cases, the objection must be provided with the express and informed consent of the authorized transfer contact on an opt-in basis and upon request by the authorized transfer contact. The registrar must remove the lock or provide a reasonably accessible method for the authorized transfer contact to remove the lock within five calendar days. This is in regards to IRTP part B, Recommendation Number 6. And then part 4, deleting Denial Reason Number 7 is a valid reason for denial under Section 3 of the IRTP as it is technically not possible to initiate a transfer for a domain name that is locked and, hence, cannot be denied making this denial reason obsolete. This is Recommendation Number 9. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks, Tim. That was quite a mouthful. Well done. So are there any questions or comments on this part of the motion? Wolf? >>WOLF-ULRICH KNOBEN: Thank you, Stephane. Just a question, to one part which Tim was not reading but what he was explaining is something I would like to ask about that. This is about -- the whole stuff I understand is about the transfer of information and the communication between parties. It is essential that it is implemented, how to contact each other and to communicate. So you are going to establish a so-called TEAC, transfer emergency action contact. And then it is written here, "The goal of the TEAC is to quickly establish a realtime conversation between registrars" and then in brackets, "in a language that both parties can understand." Now, okay, that's, I think, the basics. That is a must, that people should understand each other or should at least in the language understand whether they understand the content they are referencing. But in the following, you refer that this TEACs are also going to be used by registries and by staff. So I wonder whether this language which is going to be inserted is not to be understood by staff and registries as well. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thank you. Any further comments? It was a question. Are you expecting an answer -- you were asking a question of Tim? >>WOLF-ULRICH KNOBEN: To somebody who could answer. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Maybe just ask your question again. We'll try and find someone who can answer it. >>WOLF-ULRICH KNOBEN: It is very specific. It is relating to the language between registrars. They should understand each other. But the TEAC is to be used by staff and registries. So my only question is whether this is covered -- this part of the communication is covered as well by this language which should be inserted here. That is my question. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Let me put your question to Marika who is the staff support person for the group working on this. >>MARIKA KONINGS: This is Marika. I think the working group didn't go in that much detail to consider specifically the language used between registries and ICANN staff because I think the objective is to establish contact between the registrars. I think where registries and ICANN staff might come into the picture is trying to resolve the issue which is not actually part of the policy recommendation. So I think the idea is to use Radar which is a current system that is used for registrars where they have contact information and think they could get access to information that ICANN provides, to use that as a system where they can log the information of that transfer emergency contact and establish contact between each other. I think where you seem dimension of ICANN staff and registries, I think that comes more into the picture when there is discussions around resolution of the issue. But, as I said, that's not part of this requirement as such. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Is that okay, Wolf? Thanks. Wendy? >>WENDY SELTZER: Thanks. I just want to express our thanks to the working group for -- it sounds as though this took a lot of work from the community and is part of a long process and long part of a process that will continue. So thank you for this work, and thank you for continuing to go through these sort of bits that may seem like procedural or technical detail but really are the core of what we're supposed to be doing here. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks, Wendy. Chris, I believe you have a question. >> CHRIS CHAPLOW: Chris Chaplow. I was a member of the working group. I would just endorse what Marika said, and it is about the registrars talking to each other quickly and we looked at different wordings and, should we say, English no-no and we went around. So I think it is as close as we can get it. Thanks. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks, Chris. Any further questions or comments on this Resolved clause? Okay, seeing no one, is there any opposition to us doing a voice vote on this? Glen, please do a voice vote. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: I will, Stephane. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. [ Chorus of Ayes. ] Is there anyone against the motion? Please say nay. [ No verbal response. ] Is there anyone who would like to abstain from the motion? [ No verbal response. ] Stephane, the motion passes unanimously and it is a supermajority. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thank you. So that Resolved clause passes. We'll move on to the next one, and I will turn back to Tim. Thank you. >>TIM RUIZ: So this is Resolved B. The GNSO Council recommends the promotion by ALAC and other ICANN structures of the measures outlined in the recent report of the Security and Stability Advisory Committee on a registrant's guide to protecting domain name registration accounts, SACO44. In particular, the GNSO Council recommends that registrant consider the measures to protect domain registrars accounts from compromise and misuse described in SACO44, Section 5. These include practical measures that registrants can implement in house such as ways to protect account credentials and how to incorporate domain name registrations into employee or resource management programs typically found in medium and large businesses. It suggests ways that registrants can use renewal and change notifications from registrars as a part of an early warning or alerting system for possible account compromise. The GNSO Council chair will reach out to the ALAC and other ICANN structures to inform them of this recommendation and discuss how the GNSO may contribute to this promotion. This is Recommendation Number 2. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks, Tim. Any questions or comments? Seeing none, is there any opposition to us doing a voice vote on this Resolved clause? Glen, please proceed. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Thank you, Stephane. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. [ Chorus of Ayes. ] Is there anyone against the motion? [ No verbal response. ] The motion passes, Stephane, unanimously. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks, Glen. Tim, Resolved C, please. >>TIM RUIZ: Resolved C, the GNSO Council acknowledges receipt of IRTP Part B Recommendation Number 7 and will consider this recommendation when this recommendation when it considers the final issues report on the current state of the UDRP. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks, Tim. Any questions or comments? Any opposition to a voice vote? Glen? >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: All those in favor of the motion please say aye. [ Chorus of Ayes. ] Is there anybody against the motion? [ No verbal response. ] And on this motion, there are abstentions allowed. Is there anybody abstaining? [ No verbal response. ] The motion passes unanimously, Stephane. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks, Glen. And back to Tim. >>TIM RUIZ: Resolved D, prior to the consideration of approval of the recommendation which states "Denial Reason Number 7 should be replaced by adding a new provision in a different section of the IRTP on when and how domains may be locked or unlocked, the GNSO Council requests ICANN staff to provide a proposal for such a new provision, taking into account the IRTP Part B working group deliberations in relation to this issue. See Part B -- see the report Recommendation 9, part 2. Upon review of the proposal the GNSO Council will consider whether to approve the recommendation. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thank you, Tim. Once again, any comments or questions? Any opposition to a voice vote? Glen? >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: All those in favor of the motion please say aye. [ Chorus of Ayes. ] Is there anybody against the motion? [ No verbal response. ] And I think abstentions are allowed on this motion. Would anyone like to abstain? [ No verbal response. ] The motion passes unanimously, Stephane. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks, Glen. Tim? >>TIM RUIZ: Okay. Resolved E, prior to the consideration of approval of the recommendation regarding the standardizing and clarifying WHOIS status messages regarding registrar lock status, the GNSO Council requests ICANN staff to provide a proposal designed to ensure a technically feasible approach can be developed to meet this recommendation. Staff should take into account the IRTP Part B working group deliberations in relation to this issue. See the final report Recommendation Number 8. The goal of these changes is to clarify why the lock has been applied and how it can be changed. Upon review of the proposed plan, the GNSO Council will consider whether to approve the recommendation. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks, Tim. Any discussion? Any opposition to a voice vote? Glen, back to you. >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: All those in favor of the motion please say aye. All those against the motion, please say nay. Are there any abstentions? The motion passes unanimously, Stéphane. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you, Glen. Resolved F, please, Tim. >>TIM RUIZ: The GNSO Council will consider IRTP Part B, Recommendation Number 3, concerning the request of an issue report on the requirement of thick WHOIS for all incumbent gTLDs at its next meeting on 21st of July. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks, Tim. Jeff? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yeah. I just wanted to provide a comment on this one as to why we're deferring it. I know, Tim, you had said earlier, when you were reading the first part, that we've elected to defer a couple. I think this is one that at least our stakeholder group discussed in length about whether to do a PDP on -- or actually an issue report which starts the PDP process -- for thick WHOIS, and, you know, we're discussing whether it's appropriate to do a PDP that's aimed at just one or two registry operators and really is not aimed at the general broader community. So that's something that we're considering at least in the registry stakeholder group, so we're going to be debating that for the next few weeks, you know, and I don't know how we're going to come out on the 21st of July, but it's something that we're really taking seriously. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks, Jeff. Any further comments? Adrian. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Yeah. Given that I suggested this amendment, I thought that we, the registrars wanted to make sure that there was a date in there so it wasn't seen as us just punting it into the future, you know, without seeking some result. I do share Jeff's sentiment that it may take us some time, but, you know, at the moment, you know, that -- I don't want to say it's a placeholder but there is a date in there and, you know, we'll see how we go. But I think it is a contentious issue for registrars as well, and there's much discussion around the impact, what an end result may be, so there's still some discussion to be had for registrars. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you. Jonathan. >>JONATHAN ROBINSON: This is a very small point that one of the points around impact is in the current context. That's to say with all the other work that's going on. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Important point. Thank you, Jonathan. Any further comments? Any opposition to a voice vote? Oh, sorry. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I just have a question, and for Jeff, and that is that to the extent the final position of the registry stakeholder group is that it's not appropriate to conduct a PDP that really is ultimately targeted at the policies of one or two gTLD registry operators, I think it would be extraordinarily helpful if, simultaneously with that delivery of that position, the registry stakeholder group would set out kind of a plan for going forward on this particular recommendation, in the sense of, you know, if they think it's not appropriate for a PDP, is there another alternative, and if so, what is it. >>JEFF NEUMAN: So to that point, Kristina, I'm not sure if we're going to have a stakeholder group concrete plan on how to go forward. It's kind of an unusual discussion within a stakeholder group because we're really talking about one or two individual members, and for the stakeholder group as a whole to propose action that would affect one or two members of that stakeholder group may put us in a little bit of a difficult position. I completely understand your question. I'm just not sure we're going to be able to come up with that plan. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: No, I understand that, and it's -- I guess it could be possible that this is a case where you have an entire stakeholder group abstaining on a vote. I don't know. But what I want to avoid is a situation where the registry stakeholder group is, on the one hand -- you can't and shouldn't do a PDP that really is directed at one or two contracted parties and then simultaneously the relevant one or two contracted parties are taking a position that, you know, this is consensus policy and we're not going to change it unless we go that route. So I don't want to end up with that possible perception coming out in the ICANN community, so that's really what I'm kind of driving at. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks. Anything further? John? >>JOHN BERARD: I just have a question of Jeff. Is the phrase "one or two" a political nicety or a real sense of ambiguity? >>JEFF NEUMAN: No, I think it's literal. There are really only I think two registries and three TLDs that have not implemented thick WHOIS. Everybody else has. And of course it's a requirement going forward for all new gTLDs. So it's not a nicety. It's a fact. >>JOHN BERARD: Okay. Thank you, Jeff. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you. Anything further? Any opposition to a voice vote? Glen? >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Is anybody opposed to the motion? Please say no. Nay. Are there any abstentions? The motion passes unanimously. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks, Glen. And I'll ask Tim to move on to the last resolved clause, and this is one of those that has a different threshold. >>TIM RUIZ: This is Resolved G. The GNSO Council requests an issue report on IRTP, Part C, which should include change of control function, including an investigation of how this function is currently achieved, if there are any applicable models in the country code namespace that can be used as a best practice for the gTLD space, and any associated security concerns. It should also include a review of locking procedures as described in Reasons for Denial Number 8 and Number 9 with an aim to balance legitimate transfer activity and security. This is the Report Recommendation Number 4. Whether provisions on time-limiting FOAs should be limited to avoid fraudulent transfers out -- or should be implemented, excuse me, to avoid fraudulent out. For example, if a gaining registrar sends and receives an FOA back from a transfer contact but the name is locked, the registrar may hold the FOA pending adjustment to the domain name status, during which time the registrant or other registration information may have changed. And whether the process should be streamlined by a requirement that registries use IANA IDs for registrars rather than proprietary IDs. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks, Tim. Any discussion? Kristina? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I'm just -- this is really just an administrative -- well, I think it would be helpful for me, and I apologize for not catching this earlier, but since I don't have the foggiest idea what a FOA is, given the multiple meanings that could have, I'm just wondering whether it would be possible to make just a teeny amendment to that motion so that in the first reference, it would be spelled out. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Perhaps we can just add that to the text. I don't know that that needs an amendment. It means "form of authorization." Can we just -- can I ask staff to just add that to the text? Thank you. Yeah, afterwards, yeah. Any further comments? Any opposition to a voice vote? Glen? >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Is there anyone against the motion? The motion passes unanimously, Stéphane. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks very much, Glen. So thank you all for bearing with us through this long motion. Jeff, I know you have a comment. I just want to say that not only have we given ourselves a lot of work through these various resolutions, but I did want to thank Michele Neylon, who is the chair of this group, the IRTP Part B group. I mean, the group and Michele have done an extraordinary, huge amount of work on this, and I just wanted to go on record as thanking them and thanking Michele for that work. [ Applause ] >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: So I have Jeff and then Zahid. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yes. So I -- I echo your congratulations. I think it's not too often that we actually propose a consensus policy to the board, which is the next step, which brings up my comment. The PDP final report -- sorry, the PDP work team final report is now out for comment, so it's not binding or in progress, but I would like to make the request of ICANN staff to follow some of those recommendations so when they're drafting their final report that goes to the board, if that would be something that the council or, more importantly, the actual working group could see so they can bless that before your report -- your staff report goes to the board. In the interest of openness and transparency, if you could actually run it by that group. Again, that is a recommendation of that group, and I'd like to see, to the extent we can do it, that followed now so that would be a good thing if that could happen. I. Thanks, Jeff. Zahid. >>ZAHID JAMIL: Thank you. First of all, I would just like to say that it is fantastic that, you know, we have got a consensus policy here and everybody is supporting it, including us in the business constituency. However, I have been encouraged and urged by certain members of my constituency who were actually actively part of the working group here to make some sort of statement with regard to the challenges that are now faced with the new structure of the GNSO. The events or certain discussions online sort of underscore the importance of ensuring that in this new model, constituencies and stakeholder groups keep a very careful hawkeye, if necessary, on the work and developments in the drafting teams and the working groups, so that we can avoid situations where policy managers may have to, at times, tinker or change certain decisions or take decisions contrary, sometimes, to what the working groups come up with, especially in this bottom-up policy development process such as we've seen in the RAA and now possibly -- even though I'm glad to see that we've just deferred it -- in this resolution. And if we don't, we run the risk of disincentivizing volunteers who spend hundreds of hours of their precious time working on these efforts. So I'm glad that in this resolution, at least, what we've done is at least just deferred some of the -- couple of the motions there, and I just wanted to again say that it is fantastic to see that, you know, the hard work of the working group has come to fruition, but I'd just like to sort of again underscore the importance of us keeping a careful eye on the work team's work. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks, Zahid. I don't want to say too much, but I just -- I do -- I mean, the message is very clear. In this instance, I actually fail to see why the message is necessary. I think as Tim explained earlier, there has been no attempt by the council to change anything that has come up from the working group. It's just we're giving ourselves time to consider different things in different ways. But I know Jeff wants to speak to this, and then I'll pass it back to you. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yeah. I mean, I -- you've pretty much said a lot of what I was going to say. In this instance I don't think we've rewritten anything, and I think you're right. If there is something that the GNSO Council disagrees with, probably it should go back to the working group and we should not be substituting our own opinion for that of the working group that's put in a lot of extra time on these issues. And so I guess I agree with that sentiment and I think in this case, I think we've done the right thing. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks, jeff. Zahid? >>ZAHID JAMIL: Thank you. As I said in closing, and also in the beginning, I'm glad to see that there was a deferral here, because there was discussion of doing something otherwise. It's important that I point out that the working group, some of the members were feeling a little concerned about certain things that might have happened, so that is some of the concern. I wanted to allay some of those fears, and I think the council has done the right thing by deferring and not changing anything there, but it's important to just keep an eye on the fact that sometimes when things are being done at the working group level, by the time they get to the council, constituencies may have, you know, sometimes not realized what's happening there, and it's important to keep an eye on it and just that was the statement I wanted to make. But I agree that the council has taken the right decision by not changing the bottom-up process and instead just saying, "Okay, we're deferring this." Thanks. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks. Tim? >>TIM RUIZ: Yeah. I just wanted to point out that what we've done today was to unanimously accept every consensus policy recommendation made by this working group, so I don't want to -- don't want us to -- that to be overshadowed and the working group should be, again, applauded and thanked for their hard work and the way that they've proceeded, so that we have no question about the consensus that existed in these policies. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks, Tim. Jonathan? >>JONATHAN ROBINSON: Yeah. And I hope this is -- this is at the risk of over-egging the situation but to me what this underlines and emphasizes is the importance of the working groups and sends a very clear message out that if you want to influence the policy, get involved in the working groups and do that and we will take that very seriously. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you. Any further comments? Thank you all. Let's move on to agenda Item 4, and this is a small change to the proxy vote part of our operating procedures, and this has come from the operations steering committee. And we have a motion that was made by me, so -- no, I seconded it. So Wolf, you made it. Do you want to read the motion. >>WOLF-ULRICH KNOBEN: Should we then discuss the motion and put questions afterwards to Philip, as chair of the -- >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Yeah. We start by reading the motion, and then we discuss, yeah. >>WOLF-ULRICH KNOBEN: Okay. Thank you. The motion is: Whereas, the GNSO Council recently identified areas for improvement in the GNSO Council operation -- operating procedures that would simplify and clarify the procedures relating to proxy voting. Whereas, the GNSO Council tasks the operation steering committee with completing a revision to improve the procedures relating to proxy voting. Whereas, the OSC submitted to the GNSO Council, on 14 June of 2011, recommended revisions -- and there is inserted a link -- to the GNSO operating procedures to simplify and clarify the procedures relating to proxy voting. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the GNSO Council acknowledge receipt of the recommended revisions submitted by the OSC and direct staff produce a red-lined revision of the GNSO Council operating procedures incorporating the recommended revisions and to post this document for 21 days in the ICANN public comment forum. Resolved, further, that the GNSO Council shall take formal action on these recommendations, including potential modification, as soon as possible after the conclusion of the public comment period. Thank you. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you very much. I see Philip is ready to give us an update on this, and that's a good introduction to our discussions and perhaps just a quick explanation for people in the audience who may not have been following this as closely as we have on why those changes were necessary. Philip. >>PHILIP SHEPPARD: Stéphane, thank you. It's Philip Sheppard, chair of the OSC. Council has existing rules that came from the OSC, adopted by council, on proxy voting under two specific circumstances. One very specific circumstance is for absences and, two, more primarily on abstentions. Council fed back to us that there were two problems with that. One, in general the rules were a little bit complicated. And secondly, that in certain constituencies, the wording of the rules actually went against their internal procedures. So they asked us to look at that, and we have produced a hopefully much simplified and easier-to-understand version of the rules which we hope addresses those concerns. In brief, on absences, as you'll be aware, we already have a procedure for absentee voting under four specific criteria. That's for a PDP, approving a PDP, amendments to rules of procedure of the council itself, and for elections. And when none of those apply and somebody may be absent, proxy voting can also come in. But more specifically, it was designed for abstentions. Because of the nature of the ICANN system of votes, abstentions count as votes against. So in general, in order to allow votes to be as effective as possible, we want to facilitate, as much as possible, the ability to vote in a positive way. In particular, when an abstention may be made simply for conflict of interest, when there was no intent to actually wish to vote effectively no for that. So that's the reason for the procedures to exist, and we have much simplified it in terms of how the proxy giver gives a vote. It simply goes from proxy giver to proxy holder. It can go to anybody else on council. Now, if you want to give it to your own worst enemy, that's entirely up to you, but we don't think the rules are necessary to say who you should give it to. If you're a proxy holder, you can only hold proxy for one other member of council, so who gets in first if there are two matters. And then in terms of what the vote is, there are three very simple rules in terms of how that vote should be. It may either be directed, if applicable, by the proxy giver's appointing organization. So the organization themselves has taken the decision. Particularly helpful if there's a conflict of interest. In the absence of that, the proxy giver themselves can instruct the proxy holder how they want that vote to be cast on their behalf. And in the absence of any instruction, the proxy holder may vote freely on conscience. And we felt that any other complication to the rule to try to second-guess various scenarios was probably not helpful to a set of rules. Most of them would result -- most of them were effects of potential bad faith on behalf of councillors, and we felt the bad faith should be dealt with by the appointing organizations, not by a set of rules that we have set up for a specific objective here. Back to you. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks, Philip, for that very clear explanation. Are there any comments or questions? Is there any opposition to a voice vote? Glen? >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Is anybody against the motion? Would anybody like to abstain from the motion? The motion passes unanimously. Thank you, Stéphane. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks very much, Glen. And thanks to you all. We have a planned break now on the agenda. In the interest of time, we'd planned for 10 minutes. Can I cut this short, down to 5 minutes, please? And ask you all to be back in 5 minutes' time and maybe enjoy some of AusRegistry's ice cream? Please make sure you all look at your screens. [ Break ] >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Okay, if I can ask everyone to come back to their seats and we will start the meeting again, please. GNSO Councillors and GNSO support staff, please come back to your seats. Okay. I am trying to restart the meeting but waiting for Jonathan Robinson who is about to give the next update. Thank you. Good. Okay. So we'll restart the meeting now, and we will move on to Item 5. This is an item that covers the drafting team that the GNSO has set up on community working groups and to explain what the drafting team's doing and the work that they've undertaken. I'm going to ask Jonathan Robinson, the team leader, to give us an update. >>JONATHAN ROBINSON: Thanks, Stephane. I will qualify it by saying it is relatively early days in the life of this group. In addition, we have made some progress which is yet to be properly brought together during the course of the last few days. Had some productive informal discussions, and I would very much like to try to thread that into the work of the drafting group, the group that I'm the effective leader and scribe for. I think it is worth making a couple of remarks about what we are trying to achieve and really, as I see it currently, we're trying to set out and ensure that we at least in the GNSO, if not more broadly, develop a common understanding of the role, function and method of what people variously refer to as cross-community working groups, community working groups or joint working groups and that these are effective within the ICANN structure and framework. But, really, the key outcome from all of this will be in the future effective chartering and functioning and organization of these groups so that again we work effectively and properly within the existing ICANN structures. So we've got as far as an initial draft of a document within the drafting team. And I believe that members of the GNSO have seen it through the posting of the draft. But there's -- we did -- when we set out on this, recognize it was a busy time in the runup to this meeting and getting people's attention on this while recognizing that it is a very important area is a little challenging right now with the background of the whole new gTLD program and so on. So what we have managed to do during the course of the last few days -- I should say that -- I should probably just make a comment on the sentiment before going any further. And the sentiment within the GNSO as I understand it and interpret it is very positive towards these kind of groups and the work that they might do. The only -- the primary area of concern or issue to address is, as I said at the outset, making sure they are effectively chartered, effectively utilized and function properly within the existing ICANN structures. So we also had some very constructive input in terms of a way forward a couple of GNSO meetings back from ICANN staff led by Liz Gasster. And we've subsequently at this meeting discussed our approach with the ccNSO and understand that they are also looking at this. And I think one of the immediate challenges is to make sure that we work effectively with others who have an interest in this. And couple of times, the irony has not been lost on members of the drafting team, members of the ccNSO -- sorry, GNSO and others who we've spoken to, that, in effect, we're doing some potentially cross- community work on setting this out which, I guess, is logical. We also mentioned the work that we're doing in discussion with the board, so they're aware of what we're doing. Primarily, as I say, the work is concentrated within the GNSO. But what I have come to recognize and I think colleagues have as well over the last of the last few days is that there may well be an opportunity to weave in the work of others in this area. So the next steps really are to continue with our GNSO group work on this but to reach out and synchronize as much as possible with others within the community who may have an interest in a similar outcome to work with staff. And really, I guess, for me, there is a minimum target, and that would be to have a GNSO position agreed to share with the community by the next meeting in Senegal. My only caution with that is, as has come out in our interaction with other groups is, there is a little bit of a risk of us going too far within the GNSO and finding that we've gone down a path that in some way deviates from other parallel work and, hence, my emphasis in this update on the need and the importance of working with others in the community. So I think what I would close with by saying in these remarks is that it would be great to hear from anyone who has an interest in what I described as the effective chartering functioning in use of these groups within the ICANN structure, recognizing existing SOs, ACs and so on and the structures around that. That's probably enough said. Very open to any comments and discussion now. And I think really I've outlined the next steps in my overview. Thanks, Stephane. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thank you very much for that, Jonathan. I see Avri. >>AVRI DORIA: Yes, Avri Doria speaking as Avri Doria. I guess I've been very concerned while following the discussions in the council. I think for a couple reasons. One, I have felt that there is sort of a misunderstanding of what a cross-community working group is. And, of course, that's rather presumptuous of me to say that all of you misunderstand something it and I understand it correctly. But one of the things within the GNSO and in the reorganization, in essence all groups in terms of their membership, all working groups in terms of their membership are also cross-community by mandate. So, in other words, there's supposed to be someone from just about every one of the -- every part of the community within ICANN that's relevant to a discussion in a working group. So then when you get to the chartering, what you're saying is this is what this particular SO or AC would like to see from that group. And, basically, I've always viewed that that group, therefore, basically, takes on sort of a union of the concerns of the multiple organizations that say, "this is what we care about. This is the aspect of the problem that is important to us." And so for that reason, I find the drive to have a common charter sort of a curtailing of what a cross-community working group can achieve. The various parts of the community don't really know what they all think about an issue until such time as the working group has happened. A charter, basically, says, we'd like you to look at this issue. We'd like you to look at that issue. Great, look at that issue. Remember, they are not doing policy per se. They are just making recommendations to the community. That's one thing that's concerned me in the discussion. Another thing that's concerned me in the discussion is the presumption that they can only talk to the bodies that charter them. Again, this is something to sort of gather information, to sort of bring together the community input on some topic and to make sure that that's understood by one and all. They are again not taking policy. So the fact that they would talk to some other organization, whether it was to the GAC or even to the board about where they stood and what they were up to was -- seemed like something they should be able to do, not that every communication from that needed to be filtered. The board has said several times that they understand when they get a communication from a cross-community working group that it is just from a cross-community working group and that if it didn't have the GNSO's imprimatur it is not, therefore, GNSO Council permission. If it doesn't have ALAC's imprimatur, it does not have the ALAC's blessing. It is just the cross-community working group. The third thing that has concerned me, even if you have to go through the chartering organization in order to talk to someone, that they have to be in lock step and that if one of the chartering organizations is not ready to pass it on but another one is, that that is somehow a problem and that, therefore, one chartering organization either through an intention to stop the conversation or just because it takes them longer to do something is somehow thwarting the other organization's ability to communicate something that's important. So I probably have other concerns and other interests, and this to me is a favorite topic because I think cross-community working groups are really important to the future of the organization. But those three issues are really sort of the topic ones I've got at this point, that I hope you'll look at while you're sort of coming up with your recommendations. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thank you, Avri. So I have Wolf, Jeff, I will put myself in the queue, Jonathan, Jamie, Ching, Bill. Wolf? >>WOLF-ULRICH KNOBEN: Thank you, Stephane. I would like a little bit to come to some basics. As Jonathan was pointing out, I think it's not about the question if some kind of (inaudible) which is cross community wise to be organized should be established, it is about just a question how. That means -- so we have got in the council some different experience with that, so we have one with the JIG which seem to be a good one. We had one which is not so good in terms of the processing with the JAS. So, really, to understand, it is not -- and the community should understand, it is not about that the GNSO is opposing with the question that JAS has had to be established and had to work on this. It is just about how. And that brings me to that question what Peter raised in the discussion we had with the board about that. From the board perspective, it seems to be just a question. They would like to have solved the problem. Many of them don't care how it is going to be solved, whether it ought to be solved by any kind of group or different groups or whatever else. They would like to have it resolved and Peter was just asking, okay, I'm looking for one who is going to lead this group and give yourself to that group. So that's easy to say from a board perspective, to say that. If the board is going this way and asking us this way, then they, from the board perspective, they should take care as well that this kind of work is going to be institutionalized and processed in a proper way, that we could really achieve and come to that point what the board is expecting. So my consideration in this respect, we should during the work which Jonathan and his group has to do and which is really a challenging task, we should not leave out the board during that discussion and really have a shortcut to the board in between during that discussion. Thank you. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thank you, Wolf. I have Jeff next. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yeah, thank you. I just want to address a couple things that Avri had said and just also emphasize what Wolf said, is that we're in the talking about whether cross-community working groups have value or whether to set them up but more how to do that and how -- within our very unique structure. This goes back to something I have said for many months now which is true almost for any working group, not just community working groups, it is that for some of us, when we participate in a working group, we're participating as an individual. We may or may not be developing our company or organization. We may or may not be developing the stakeholder group or constituency and we may or may not be representing the larger supporting organization, right? So all of those things -- because we all can't serve on every committee, right? None of us can. So we rely on a couple delegates or other people to serve on those tasks, those working groups -- call it community working groups now, to come back, let us know what's going on, fill us in so that we can get proper support from our -- from all of those different steps from our company, from our entity, from our constituency or stakeholder group, from our organization. And that does take time. And unfortunately that gets interpreted in so many different ways from those outside the process to understand and oftentimes we get criticized for intentionally trying to delay. But the point of that whole thing was that, Avri, you said the working groups are producing recommendations from the community. I would change that a little bit. It is actually recommendations from individuals within the community, which I think is an important distinction especially from some of us here that are parts of organizations or parts of stakeholder groups or constituencies. So there's plenty of times when I serve on a working group and my company may or may not agree but there is a lot of times when the stakeholder group completely disagrees. Look at, I served on the IRT and I can tell you right now that my stakeholder group was not too thrilled with everything I did on that, right? But the problem is that when we reports are presented -- and, yes, I know we are referring to a Saturday session or Sunday session we had with the board when someone on the council asked directly to Peter, said, "Peter, do you understand when you get these things that they're not coming from -- that they're just coming from the working group and they're not coming from the organization, the supporting organization?" What is he going to say to that, "No, I don't understand"? The problem I brought up is there were a bunch of resolutions that were passed by the board and appeared to be as if they didn't understand. And I think they did a great job at the last meeting that they had on Monday where they approved a resolution on the future work of the JAS working group which, by the way, we all support. So I think they worded that resolution exactly right. And I look forward to continuing on that work and continuing with community working groups and I think an example of a great community working group that we set up right was -- or is the DSSA working group which I think we are going to get an update on later. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks, Jeff. I have got a long queue so in the interest of neutrality, I will surrender my spot and turn to Jonathan. >>JONATHAN ROBINSON: Thanks, Stephane. I hope it doesn't imply that I'm not neutral in some senses myself. But I think just thinking about a couple of the months that Avri made, the first one was about a drive to a common charter. I mean, this is one of the issues that our drafting groups have got to grapple with. I have been reluctant to go into specific exams. But certainly there has been -- one of the potential concerns has been warrant these community working groups can operate with more than one charter or if, indeed, as an alternative there should be a single chartering organization most appropriate to the work being done in that group. So that's -- rather than that being a presumed outcome, it certainly is something which I think we need to discuss and examine and come up with a view on. I certainly don't think there is a presumption that having done that, that there is only then a discussion even at that stage with the chartering organization. I think by definition, they should be fair and open to input and discussion on an ongoing basis. I guess the third point if I understood it correctly was, if, indeed, there is a chartering organization, then ultimately the working group does need to report back to that chartering organization as it's closing point. And then, finally, as to your point on how important these are, I mean, the fact that it's gathering this much attention is almost -- is underlining that. I don't think -- I haven't heard anyone suggest to the contrary that these aren't very important and highly valuable in sort of future development of policy and/or advice within the ICANN structures. Thanks very much. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks. Next I have Jamie, then Ching, Bill. John, were you -- have you removed yourself? So John, Kristina and then Wendy. So Jamie next, please. >>JAIME WAGNER: Thanks, Stephane. I would also like to build upon what Avri said and Jonathan just said. I think there is rough consensus that individuals -- that these groups have the individual participation. There is no -- not yet any consensus if there is a charter, one charter alone, or if it will be allowed. This is something that's in discussion. And myself, I have the opinion that one way a cross-community working group can be created is for one chartering organization to invite other -- the participation of others. So it would be one charter. And I wonder if the participation of others of the other organizations allow these new -- would require new chartering. I don't have a definite answer to that. But if there are different charters, I think the different timing of the chartering organizations is not a problem like Avri pointed. I think this is no problem. But something that was not raised by Avri or Jonathan, and I think we should tackle, is that if there are scope limitations for these cross-community working groups. And I would advance one thinking that consensus policy is out of scope. So those are the issues that I think this group should deal with, and I think also that we should invite other organizations to open discussion before we come up with a definite set of consensus in GNSO. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thank you, Jamie. Ching, please. >>CHING CHIAO: Thank you, Stephane. I think most of my points are covered by my colleague so I have one point I would like to raise from a different angle of what we are dealing with, which is we are actually facing a lot of moving parts. To be specific, we are having this drafting team while we still have multiple working groups, CWGs, ongoing. And we are creating new CWGs. So I think it is good for the council to offer at least a word of comfort. We are not slowing those working groups down. But while we sort of issue -- sort of to pitch or draw a sort of timeline for the community is how this drafting team will deliver sort of a report or a final report that those community working groups can look upon and later to just adopt those rules. Thank you. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Bill? >>WILLIAM DRAKE: Excuse me. I'm happy to see the evolution we've had in council discussions of this topic. There was an extended period during which, in part, because the general matter of cross- community working groups is being kind of conflated with the particulars of the JAS experience. The discussions were often less positive in tone, and one often came away from these feeling like that maybe people really viewed this as more of a threat somehow than a useful addition to the tool box when, of course, it is not PDP. It is simply getting some ideas out there that are useful. So my view is that on that we should be overly restrictive about this. I mean, we clearly want clear rules, but do the rules have to greatly constrain participants from different chartering organizations and the dialogue that happens in the community around issues. I wonder about that. I mean, Avri raised the point about a harmonized charter, for example. And I know that there is a desire amongst some people to make sure that, indeed, there is complete harmonization across chartering organizations. But if you look at the recent experience, I guess maybe -- I look at the recent experience differently. I look at what happened with the JAS and think, you know, if we hadn't had different approaches being followed, the JAS process would have been much slower. We would not have had much of anything by now which would have made the international politics of the new gTLD launch more complicated with the GAC and would have changed a lot of optics, et cetera. So to me, while it was perhaps not the way some people would like things to work -- and I can understand that, nevertheless, I think there was -- the fact that we had a lit bit of institutional diversity -- and I wouldn't say institutional competition -- but different sources of energy that are optimized to the interests and perspectives of different groupings within the larger community serving to push this forward, to me, I thought that was useful. And so when we think about the future, the question is does -- do we have to have complete harmonization against chartering groups, or is it possible to have sort of areas where there is complete shared harmonization but, yet, there are some areas outside that circle which are going to be taken up in different ways by different parties within a framework that is more or less understood and agreed. It would seem to me it was not necessarily the case that this become a major source of tension as long as there is proper communication and so on. So I'm open minded on the question of exactly how we do that aspect. I also worry -- the point that Avri made about the communications stuff. Jeff didn't like it when I asked the board whether they were confused. Nevertheless, you know, I have been unable to detect the signs of confusion that have been referred to repeatedly, and I don't really know, given the nature of these groups and their reasonable -- you know, reasonably informal kind of character, it doesn't seem to me entirely appropriate that we should be trying to restrict the ability of anybody in a group to communicate directly with a board member, answer a question, things like that, require that everything go back through the chartering organizations. I mean, again, if we start to get into rigorously bureaucratizing this, and making sure that all channels of communication flow through this very kite structure, when the nature of what being done to me doesn't really merit that, I think we could be constraining this and reducing the benefit of having this kind of institutional diversity. So I'd just encourage that we not lock in too quickly on a very tightly formalized approach on this, and some of the draft text that we've got so far in the group that Jonathan's leading to me tends a little bit in that direction, but we'll continue to pursue that within the group. Thanks. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you, Bill. I have John next. >>JAIME WAGNER: I would like to say something about what Bill has just said. Is that -- the communication through the chartering organizations and something that Jeff also said. Every community is a community of individuals, but to be formally taken as a position of a part of the community, the communication -- the opinion should pass through a formal voting body. That's my feeling. That we shouldn't alienate the formal voting bodies. And then if an opinion is taken as an opinion of the community, when it is of individuals that represent -- or that are representative but don't formally represent -- that don't have the voting behind them to represent. So that's a problem to me, and I think the communication problem is something that should pass through the formal bodies, the chartering organizations. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Kristina. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I have to questions that I really still am struggling with the threshold issue here. Namely, you know, do we really need to create new processes for these. Not so much from a, you know, "We are the GNSO, we do policy, only we do policy," et cetera, et cetera, but it just seems as if, you know, we have enough processes and things on our plate right now that perhaps there's a way to adapt what we currently have. So I am still struggling with this. With regard to some of the points that Avri raises, I certainly think it is potentially easier if the participating organizations have a harmonized charter, but I can certainly understand where there might be various aspects that that wouldn't necessarily make sense. I do think that in terms of communicating upwards the outcome or reports resulting from the CWGs, I do believe that if they are working from the same charter, that the reporting should be deferred, pending the ability of the relevant organizations to actually go through their formal processes. Not so much because the people who are receiving the report at the time are confused, but we get a lot of documents in this environment and I think that distinction has the potential to be overlooked. I do also think that to the extent, for example, you do have a CWG where you have different charters, or at least a charter that is partially harmonized, that it would be perfectly appropriate for one organization to report up on the part -- its unique part of the charter, but defer pending -- defer reporting on the part of the charter that they have in common with the other organization, simply for purposes of uniformity and -- well, not so much for uniformity but just for ease of reference and ease of use by the community. And finally, in terms of the idea of individual participation, I really -- I guess it just comes back to I'm still really struggling with how are these different than, for example, our regular working group structure where anybody who wants to can join? I mean, I think the GAC has made very clear that they're not going to be participating in these, so you're really talking about, you know, either CWGs that are either between the two SOs and if you're talking about policy recommendations, then you are going to have to have different processes or you're talking about, you know, the ccNSO and the ALAC and -- or the GNSO and the ALAC, and I just am very concerned that trying to come up with a one-size-fits-all model for each variant of that is going to be extraordinarily difficult to do, and that perhaps what we maybe need to do is look at it from that compositional perspective, simply to make it frankly just more user- friendly as the model goes forward. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: I have Alan next, then Wendy and Zahid. >>ALAN GREENBERG: A couple of things. We sort of have morphed when we're using some words to drift into others, and in regard to who you can communicate with or I think Avri even used the word who you can "talk" with, we have a long-standing process or -- I'm not sure the word is "process." We have a long-standing practice that working groups can communicate with who they need to communicate with in order to get their work done. And we've never restricted a working group from who it talks to in its deliberations. Working groups issue reports for public comment without going back to the chartering organizations. You know, that's the way they work, and that's about as public as one can get. So it may well be important that we stipulate that the charter -- the organization -- the working group cannot report its final results without going through its chartering organization, but I would hate to see any restriction on who it could talk to and that could include board or GAC people or whatever, if that's what it needs to do its work. So I think we need to be very careful on our wording on these kind of things. In terms of harmonized charters, I think it's crucial that the charters be harmonized in terms of the process of how the -- of what the group will do, and in the case of JAS, the terms in the charter that relate to what it could do and how it does it were verbatim identical. The list of items that it was looking at were different, and I don't think that causes any problem as long as the work group itself feels that that's something it can handle and manage. And lastly, in terms of building new processes, I would hate to see us get into some huge two-year effort in cross-constituency working group processes. The ALAC is in the process of looking at the GNSO work group rules, and some of the other GNSO procedures, with the attitude that the GNSO has put a lot of work into it, maybe with some minor tweaks they can simply be adopted without any further work, and I would like to see a similar effort in this case and not start some huge effort. Thank you. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks, Alan. Wendy? >>WENDY SELTZER: Thank you. I want to suggest that the council is in danger of becoming what we've criticized in the GAC. That we have criticized them for coming in late, after the community discussed issues, and raising concerns at the end of processes rather than getting involved with those trying to discuss policy matters while the arguments were going on, and the board said they heard that from every constituency group they met with. And yet the council, if it sort of sets up rigid rules about who may work with whom and who may talk to whom is in danger of insulating ourselves from those discussions while they're taking place, discussions with other members of the community who are also part of the overall policy development, if not the specific -- capital P -- policy development in the gTLD space. And so I think we need to be more flexible about allowing those communications to take place, engaging with the others who also care about these issues, and I think that that flexibility can be enhanced by then relying on sort of signposts and clear definition of what the results are. At the end of the day, what we as GNSO Council exist to do is to make consensus -- or to declare consensus policy on issues within our scope, and the signpost of when there is community consensus with an capital "C" is when the GNSO has passed a motion concluding its discussion of a particular matter, and at that point we should trust that others in the community can understand the distinction between consensus with a capital "C" and consensus with a lowercase "C" or agreement of a working group or discussion that's taking place in the community. So rather than trying to stifle those conversations, we should set up clearer signposts for the consensus that we've reached when those conversations conclude. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Zahid. >>ZAHID JAMIL: Yeah. Thank you. I wanted to start off by saying, look, I supported the JAS work and I support cross-constituency working groups and coming from developing countries, I -- you know, some of those processes have been very beneficial. But I also wanted to say that no one is talking about stopping the community from -- you know, or the cross- constituency working groups from speaking to anybody, but it's a question of communicating a position, and that's where the confusion may start. It's great having these cross-constituency groups, because they do break the stalemate that exists sometimes -- that sometimes exists in the GNSO structure. And this -- these sort of groups will create a flexibility and get you results. But the question is not whether -- how. It's not a question of -- but a question of what. And so it's not a question of substance but of procedure, and at least of minimum safeguards that outcomes do represent and are seen to represent the informed consent of the groups that are form -- which form part of these -- members of these cross-constituency groups. So I think it's more about the procedure and safeguards. Because perception does matter, and if outcomes don't have the support of, say, for instance, the GNSO or others, what ends up happening is that others who may look at it may perceive it as having that, because somebody was a member of the GNSO when the working group was bringing its outcome. So I think that's the issue, and we do support the cross- constituency working groups. It's just a question of procedure. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you, Zahid. Jeff. >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yeah. I just want to read something from the bylaws because I heard something different. The GNSO -- this is in the section of generic name supporting organization. There should be a policy development body known as the generic name supporting organization which shall be responsible for developing and recommending to the ICANN board substantive policies related to generic top-level domains. The reason I read that is because I thought I just heard someone say that we are here to -- the GNSO Council is here to make consensus policies, and that's not why we're here. We're here to recommend to the ICANN board substantive policies relating to generic top-level domains. So that's very important. But the other thing I keep hearing is the criticism of trying to stifle communications. Nobody's saying that individuals or community members or the ALAC, for that matter, can't talk to the board. If you want to form a cross-community working group, which the ALAC wanted to do and the GNSO wanted to do, then you have to take the credentials or the credibility associated with that with the obligations. In other words, if the ALAC wanted to, on its own, form a working group to look at applicant support, it could have done that and it could have just recommended things to the board. But for obvious reasons, or for reasons -- they wanted to involve others in the community and have the credentials of the GNSO in that work. And that's great. But if you want those credentials, then you've got to take the obligations that go along with it. And if that seems to outsiders that that's stifling speech or -- because we're following our process, then, you know, I'm sorry. Then the next time we won't do the cross-working group. It sounds harsh, but it's just a reality. And so to hear that we're stifling speech in some sort of way, like I said, if the ALAC representing the ALAC wanted to go to the board and provide advice to the board, which is what its mandate is, it could always do that on behalf of the ALAC, just not on behalf of the cross-community working group. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you. Rafik. Yes, Wendy. >>WENDY SELTZER: Since I heard that statement while no name was made, certainly sounded as though it was directed at my comment. You're free to refer to me by name when speaking to me, Jeff, and especially when mischaracterizing what I'm saying, because I don't think I was saying anything different from what you or the bylaws say. We exist to develop and recommend to the ICANN board substantive policies. Those policies are consensus policies, as described elsewhere in the bylaws, and we must stick a stake in consensus for the board's information on those community views. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Let me just cut across the clue because Alan wants to respond to that specific point. >>ALAN GREENBERG: Well, in response to what Wendy just said, they are policies with which we have consensus, but not necessarily consensus policies, which have a very specific meaning in terms of some contracts. So we need to not differentiate between those. Or rather, we need to differentiate. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks, Alan. John, were you in the queue? >>JOHN BERARD: Yeah. The -- I'm having a little trouble working up an appropriate level of umbrage here, but I feel as if I've been criticized without being named, much like Wendy has just said. The fact of the matter is that collaboration is the cornerstone of our ability to progress. However, it isn't so much the input that caused this particular issue to go awry. I believe that substantive policies such as the ones that we've seen with the previous joint -- cross-constituency working groups benefitted from being more technical in nature, and therefore the charter was less -- there was less of an ability for it to become a subjective discussion point. Well, this one not only was subjective, but it was time-sensitive, and so it becomes the anecdote by which we will now legislate. I heard earlier in the week that, you know, ICANN is in danger of becoming a Parliamentary political body, and parliamentary and bicameral political bodies are driven these days by anecdote and this may be an anecdote that drives us mad for the next six months. The fact of the matter is that the outputs are what the outputs are. The ALAC offers advice. GNSO Council offers policy. If the ALAC wants to talk to the board on the basis of a -- of a consideration, mazeltov. If the GNSO can't because it can't come to grips with the policy, then fine. The outcomes have different implications and the board is smart enough to be able to decide what to do with each. So my feeling is that anybody who wants to talk to me is free to. Anybody I'd like to talk to, I will ask permission. But I think that we probably could wrap this up and send it back to Jonathan for another -- another time. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks. Let's hear from Rafik before we do wrap this up. >>RAFIK DAMMAK: Thank you. So hearing all the comments and following the issue, I think, since the beginning and today in this GNSO Council, my point of view is simple. The problem is not at the cross-community level. They are working well. They are providing reports, et cetera. I think -- I do think it's more a problem of coordination between the SO and the AC, so let's stop blaming the working group, especially the JAS, for -- because -- for -- I can speak for the JAS case. We follow the process. We send the report to the ALAC and GNSO at the same time. So what happened after is not an issue for the working group. So let's work to find a process how we can coordinate between -- in the case we can have many SO and AC for the cross-community working group. Let's work how to make it smooth and work quickly so we cannot -- like, for example, maybe in the case of JIG to wait more longer for a SO to react or to approve the report. And in the other side about the communications, I think for any working group, the communication is the main part for fostering the works, and to have feedback from the community. For the JAS working group, we have a limitation. For example, we cannot communicate with the board. It means that the board is not part of the community. I understand that it's only for the report, but also it can be extended that we cannot communicate at all with the board in any matter related to the JAS work. So let's work between -- to coordinate between SO and AC and let those cross-community working groups to work in peace. Thank you. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks. Alan and then we'll bring this to a close. >>ALAN GREENBERG: Yeah. I just want to reiterate we have a long- standing practice that working groups can publish their draft deliberation -- their draft recommendations without any approval of their chartering bodies. That's how we handle every single working group, and I find it somewhat disturbing that we're talking about a different set of rules for cross-working groups than we have practiced for years and years with regular working groups. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Zahid. >>ZAHID JAMIL: Just trying to get my head around the issue. I think what the two maybe opinions which are being discussed is -- I'm going to try to sort of address the two views. One is the issue of communication during deliberations, and so the -- taking JIG -- or JAS as an example, communicating with the board during the deliberations. Then there's a completely different issue, which is the reporting out or the output of that joint working group, and whether that goes to the board or not. Now, I think that it's fine if during deliberations the group is talking to several people. I think that's what I hear from both sides. When it comes to the output, I think this is also something I hear from both sides, which is that of course it must go through the actual chartering organizations. Now, there's a caveat to that, because if it goes through the process and there's a draft out and it still has to be approved by, say, a chartering organization, that doesn't stop the board from picking up the draft or anything else. And so I think to that extent, you can't stop the board from looking at these things. So I think what I hear from the two groups is very simple. During deliberations, communications are fine, but when you report out, you've got to bring it back to the chartering organization. And the last point, as I said, you can't stop the board from looking at anything, even if it's in draft form. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you very much. I think we will need to close this now and move on to the next topic, which is a topic on the board resolution that came out of the Cartagena meeting on consumer choice, competition, and innovation, and we have Rosemary Sinclair leading this effort on behalf of the council. So Rosemary, could I ask you to just give us a brief update on the group's work, please? >>ROSEMARY SINCLAIR: Yes. Thanks, Stéphane. We had a workshop just earlier today between 12:30 and 2:00, and what I'd like to do is just take the council through some introductory slides which I think will position this work. It's -- this one's been with us for some time, but just the pressure of our work as a council has meant that we've not been able to address it. So click? Good. So I used these slides just to introduce the workshop today. The first point that I made to the group is that this work actually relates to one of the key commitments in our Affirmation of Commitments document, and that's point number 3, that one of the commitments is to promote competition, consumer trust, and consumer choice in the DNS marketplace. Then we go to a more specific point, which is 9.3, and if we could just look quickly at the second dot point, it's quite specific. If and when new gTLDs have been in operation for one year -- so it's when they've been in operation for a year -- ICANN will organize a review that will examine the extent to which the introduction or expansion of gTLDs has promoted competition, consumer trust, and consumer choice, as well as effectiveness of (a) the application and evaluation process and (b) safeguards put in place to mitigate issues involved in the introduction or expansion. And then this slide describes the review process in more detail. The second kind of anchor point that I drew out for our workshop today is that the ICANN strategic plan, 2011 to 2014, has as one of its focus areas competition, consumer trust, and consumer choice, and that looking at the four strategic focus areas, this particular area of focus is developed through strategic objectives, strategic projects, community work, and staff work. So these terms "competition,""consumer trust," and "consumer choice" also appear in the strategic plan. The history of this discussion is that we've had a couple of earlier workshops. One was in Brussels, where the topic was developing a consumer agenda for ICANN, a rather large and ambitious topic, but we had a very good discussion there. And then in Cartagena, in December, we looked more specifically at the work that ICANN was doing. So it was a more internal discussion about ICANN's approach to these particular commitments. Also in Cartagena, and following on from our workshop discussion, there emerged a resolution. The whereas clauses take us to the strategy plan, the Affirmation of Commitments, and then the specific new gTLD-related review. And the resolution is this: Resolved, that the ICANN board requests advice from the ALAC, GAC, GNSO, and ccNSO on establishing the definition, measures, and three-year targets for those measures for competition, consumer trust, and consumer choice, in the context of the domain name system. And at that time I think we were being a bit optimistic about when we would be able to complete that work, and the request was for such advice to be provided at the March meeting. And as we all remember, I'm sure, that just proved impossible, given the workload that we were facing at the time. So we've been working towards this work -- the workshop at this meeting, and so today we had a workshop and its purpose was to begin preparation for that AoC mandated review by working to establish the definitions, to work on measures, and to work towards targets for those measures for the three elements: Competition, consumer trust, and consumer choice. Remembering always that the context is the domain name system. So our workshop comprised a number of people from different parts of the community, and I think I'm going to characterize it using Bill Drake's term of a cross-community dialogue, rather than anything else that might cause us to go off track. But we had a number of really significant contributions from a range of different perspectives, from all the stakeholder groups in the GNSO, from ALAC, and from dot au. The policy person, Jo Lim, came to give us the perspective of a ccNSO organization. Just prior to the workshop, I managed to get a couple of minutes with Heather Dryden at the GAC, and explained to her that we were undertaking this workshop and that we would be in touch to see what the appropriate form of interaction might be. And I wanted to particularly thank the business constituency in the commercial stakeholder group because they stuck their neck out, well and truly, by offering up some definitions that they had been working on as straw man definitions for our discussion, and Steve DelBianco led us through these definitions and I must say they provided a backdrop to very energetic and focused discussions around topics that can seem pretty difficult to get your arms and mind around when you start. So for each of these topics, we talked about definitions. It was really a worthwhile discussion. We touched on the types of metrics that might be applied to those particular areas. I don't think we really got too near to the targets, answer perhaps our agenda was a little ambitious. But it was a very good discussion. And where we left the session was to agree that we would now do some intersessional work on this task. And I had a number of people from various parts of GNSO and ALAC offer to participate in those discussions. I'll go back to the GAC and just see what would be the appropriate interaction there to the ccNSO, providing this council agrees to that. So I think that's my summary of the workshop. There are a number of people here who participated in the workshop, Stephane, who might want to add their own flavor. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thank you very much, Rosemary. And if anyone does want to add an extra layer of flavor, please do so. Just looking if there are any hands up. Steve in. >>STEVE DelBIANCO: Thanks, Stephane. Steve DelBianco with NetChoice. And thank you, Rosemary. Putting a straw man proposal out there is a great risk. The straw sometimes gets blown away or burned up like Wizard of Oz, and that's pretty much what happened. But I think at the end, we picked up momentum. As Jonathan and a few folks talked about, getting started, maintaining intersessional momentum by creating a cross-community working group. And there is plenty of willingness to do that. Our first task would be to try to come up with standard definitions that all four of these groups -- again, it is GAC, ALAC, GNSO and ccNSO -- standard definitions, not these but ones we can agree on. And then the second step would be to try to define measures, measures/metrics, things you could test, whether it is a survey or statistics. And the third and difficult part is for whatever metrics you have, can you set targets for them? The idea of doing this now, years before we do the Affirmation review, is to allow us to manage the evaluation of applications and the implementation to achieve the metrics and targets so that when the Affirmation review is one, you will be able to look back to say, The new gTLD expansion was done and done well and we hit our targets. But it dovetails -- the best intentions I just described would be for naught if one had listened to the council debate of the last 45 minutes because the cross-constituency working group brings with it the hazards of multiple chartering organizations. Rosemary, we talked a little bit about it at the end of the panel the idea that perhaps we forego the notion of asking the ccNSO and GNSO to charter a working group and instead use the board's resolution which refers to the Affirmation. These are the first three slides that Rosemary put up. If you use the board's resolution and the referred Affirmation of Commitments, that becomes the charter because the board's resolution asked for advice. I mean, that was the verb in there. The board requests advice from GAC, GNSO, ccNSO and ALAC. So if that's what they've said, can that be our charter? Can we begin to self-organize as a cross-constituency working group. And each of us would report our definitions, metrics and targets respectively to the organizations that we're part of, hoping that we would endorse and send that along to the board. Alternatively, since the board asked for advice, we might even consider sharing it with them. So that's a discussion about process. I don't suppose it has to get resolved immediately unless there is a strong desire from GNSO to impose a GNSO style charter in addition to a board resolution. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thank you very much. Jeff? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Just on that, Steve, thanks for those comments. But you pretty much just recited a charter. Everything you said about -- everything you said about reporting back through the GNSO, I mean, that's what we are documenting in a charter. That's what we should document in a charter. So I think we just take the transcript of what you said, we write that down, we all look at it, approve it and there's your charter. >>STEVE DelBIANCO: It might be your charter. My concern is would the ccNSO and the ALAC and the GAC agree to it as a charter. I mean, a simple step like getting agreement on a charter turn into a problem we didn't need to create? Is it suitable that we just use the board resolution and the affirmation as the charter? Because I want to avoid trying to get four people to agree. >>JEFF NEUMAN: So I understand what you're saying. I think the problem is if you don't have any charter -- or even when you do have a charter, if things aren't documented, Rafik is absolutely right with the JAS group. They followed the charter. There were things we didn't contemplate and then some of us got a little upset because, you know, even though it was following the charter, it was something different. I think there are a little fear of charters now. But I take your point, it is hard to do a charter for four groups and have them all match. But we did it with ccNSO for the DSSA group. And I think using that model, that may be a model that at least the ccNSO, probably the ALAC, could accept. I don't know what the GAC can and can't accept as far as charters. That's a whole other ball game. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks. I have Kristina and Tim. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I was actually putting up my hand for Tim. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: I have Tim then. >>TIM RUIZ: I'm queue challenged today. I can't get anything to work right on my iPad. I think Steve makes a good suggestion, that the board resolution goes a long way to creating a charter. And the only caveat that strikes me is just time. And if we can get there with a community working group in a short period of time, then perhaps it is something to consider. But I just worry that the board is going to be looking for this advice sooner. And in that case, we are talking about each of the four groups giving their advice to the board as quickly as they can and letting the board sorts things out from there. I don't know which the best approach is. But I think we've already overshot one deadline they gave us. I'm concerned about overshooting another one. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thank you, Tim. Steve? >>STEVE DelBIANCO: Following up on what Tim said, it might be possible that if we were to draft a charter, I would suggest letting Rosemary as our working chairman, letting the work group draft a single charter that it gives to all four organizations as an invitation to, hey, are you guys good with this? As opposed to say GNSO drafting a charter in parallel with ccNSO? Is that similar, Jeff, to what was done on DSSA? Thanks. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks. Rosemary? >>ROSEMARY SINCLAIR: I just wanted to come back to Tim. I have actually been in discussion with Bruce Tonkin about the delays. And it wasn't a comment on behalf of the board, but he was certainly comfortable with us having a workshop at this meeting and then working from there. And I think Steve's suggestion is a good one, that in the kind of workshop moved that we've got, why don't we have a go at coming up with a charter and then just see where that takes us in the four different groups. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thank you. Alan? >>ALAN GREENBERG: Yeah. I was going to comment on the DSSA charter, which if I remember correctly was drafted by, let's say, a group that we could call a drafting team that was composed of the chairs of the various supporting organizations. That drafting team didn't have a charter, by the way. They just sort of worked. And everyone then agreed to that charter without trying to wordsmith it and change the details of it. And that's a process that can work, but you have to trust the people that you assign to do it and not want to, you know, modify everything and then have to go with eight iterations to go back. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks. Any further discussion? Okay. Thanks to you all. Let's move on to Item 7 which is the PEDNR, post-expiry domain names working group. The group has produced a final report which was sent to the GNSO Council. And we have an update from Alan Greenberg, the chair of the group, on the group's work and possibly we'll also be looking at a potential motion that might be made in the future on this item. So, Alan, if you are ready? >>ALAN GREENBERG: Thank you. The PEDNR group came result as a request for an issues report by the GNSO -- by the ALAC and ended up in a PDP being initiated by the GNSO in mid2009, just about two years ago. The group examined five questions related to the expiration of renewal policies and practices and was expected to -- or was asked to come back with best practices and/or consensus policies. The charter questions -- I won't try to read the questions. But essentially they considered the opportunity that a registrant had to recover a domain name after expiration. The clarity of the terms under which they could do that, clarity in the registration agreements, whether adequate notice was provided, whether any additional measures should be put in place to allow such recovery after expiration, and to look at whether transfers should be allowed during the redemption grace period which is the period after the name is deleted, if it is deleted. We published an initial report in May 2010, a little over a year ago. That basically outlined our deliberations but did not include any recommendations as such. It did include a survey that the working group had done internally and as part of the public comment process created a survey to be done by the public, which was a somewhat unusual tool, somewhat unusual for a working group to do but turned out to be quite useful. The working group reviewed the results. We published a draft final report earlier this year with 14 recommendations. And following the rather detailed analysis of the public comments, we have now published a final report with a slightly enlarged set of recommendations and 18 recommendations in all, which in general mapped to the original ones with some other bookkeeping added on. The working group believes that we are now providing additional, or in some cases, brand-new guarantees to registrants regarding the ability to renew or recover a domain after expiration. We are taking some actions which we hope will improve education and comprehension of the issues. We took some pains to try to make sure that we were not reinventing the wheels completely or imposing undue restrictions or undue rules on registrars. Most of what we are recommending is, in fact, very similar to the current practices that are in place with the majority of registrars. And we don't expect any huge amount of effort will be required by the various stakeholders to implement these things on the average. And all recommendations have the full consensus of the working group and we consider them interdependent. That is we are requesting the council not pick and choose among them because this was a very difficult process. And we -- when I say "we," all parties on the working group made a large number of compromises to come up with a full consensus. And we feel it is important that that compromise not be broken by picking and choosing among the recommendations. Quick summary of the recommendations. The first one simply defines a term that tries to identify who is can renew an expiration. After looking at the RAA, it turned out that that concept really hadn't been contemplated. And we felt it was important to do that. The perhaps most substantive report in the recommendations is that we are providing a minimum of eight days after expiration during which renewal is guaranteed to the registrant and the domain must not function normally during that period of time. So there's no way a registrant or one of the users of their domain name can miss the fact that this is a renewal issue. If a Web site is substituted by registrars, which is a typical action these days, then that Web page must be explicit in saying it is an expired domain and what a registrant must do to renew it. And changes in WHOIS, which are again common practice, post- expiration must not alter the rights of the registrant to be able to renew. We have a number of recommendations regarding either disclosure by registrars of certain information or processes by which a registrant can be alerted to the fact that expiration is upcoming or has already happened. Currently, there is no requirement that the fee that a registrar will charge after expiration be posted ahead of time and be able available to registrants. We are adding that. The registrar in their agreements and/or Web sites might be clear to a registrant how they will give notice. That is, it is not reasonable to tell a registrant you must pay attention to the notice but we are not going to tell you how it is going to be delivered. So we're adjusting that. The current policy implies that two notices prior to expiration are required but does it in a very obscure way so we are making it crystal clear. And we are also adding a time constraint as to when those notices should be sent. We are requiring one notice after expiration and that notifications must be sent in what would be normally called a push technology. You can't require logging on to a system to see it. The registrant must -- it must be such that the registrant can normally get the notice without any positive action on their part. We looked at a number of issues which the working group decided were good things, but we felt for a number reasons that it was not reasonable to make them requirements because there are both a number of different business models and some technical difficulties in some of them. But we are asking them to be best practices. The first one is post-expiration notifications should not be sent to an expired domain that is no longer functioning. As I mentioned, it is typical practice for a domain to stop functioning after expiration. If the registrant has given an e-mail address that includes that domain name, it won't be delivered. And registrants -- registrars should try to take action to use some alternate means of delivering such notifications. If possible, registrars should tell the registrants ahead of time what e-mail address messages will come from if e-mail is going to be used, to give a registrant an opportunity to set up their spam filters to make sure that messages aren't caught and evaporated. And, lastly, we consider it a good practice if a registrant provide alternate e-mail addresses in case one is not functioning or it is no longer in use, whatever. In terms of the redemption grace period, we're recommending that all gTLDs with the exception of sponsored gTLDs implement the redemption grace period. Currently, all current gTLDs that are unsponsored do implement it with exemption, I think, of dot name. But there is no guarantee that service would continue to be offered forever. We are making it a requirement, and this requirement would also fall upon any of the new gTLDs under the program that was just announced. And we're requiring that all registrars allow a registrant to redeem a gTLD -- sorry, a -- let me start over. Registrars are required to allow a registrant to redeem a domain name for any (inaudible) that has been deleted, assuming it is on a TLD which supports the RGP. We are explicitly suggesting that no transfer be allowed during the RGP. The concept of a transfer was somewhat problematic, although had been suggested by earlier groups looking at the RGP. It is somewhat problematic, prone to hijacking and other problems like that and once all registrars are required to offer it, there's no strong reason why a transfer is required at that point. We are suggesting that ICANN with the help of a number of other parties create educational material on how to properly take care of your domain name and that registrars be required to point to this information once the material is available on the ICANN Web site. And, lastly, we are requiring -- we are suggesting that ICANN compliance provide updates and reports on a regular basis to allow the GNSO Council to monitor the situation and feel comfortable that the processes and new rules we put in place are, indeed, effective. That will probably require some changes in how compliance monitors problems that are reported. And that should make it a lot clearer that we don't have a significant problem in the future. And, lastly, not a recommendation but we have members of the working group who have volunteered to work with ICANN staff to ensure that the implementation meets the intent. Some of the recommendations are perhaps a bit obscure and we want to make sure that through failure of wording on our part, we don't end up with a policy that's different from what we intended. And we are willing to work with ICANN staff to make sure that's done properly. And with that, I open it up to any questions. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks, Alan. Are there any questions? Was there any discussion on the proposed motion? Tim? >>TIM RUIZ: Yeah, I just wanted to, again, reiterate that I haven't put the motion on the table specifically. But posted a proposed motion again with the intent that we can have a little bit of time to take that back to our registrar stakeholder groups -- or my registrar stakeholder groups, your other who knows stakeholder groups, and discuss it. And there may be questions or concerns or whatever that we could discuss on the list and then closer to the next meeting actually put that on the table. Thanks. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: I have Adrian and then Kristina and Jeff. Adrian Kinderis? >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Thanks, Stephane. This is more of a procedural question, and I am not sure how and when to fit it in. But now is probably as good a time as any. Is this the exact same report we went through during our working group sessions on the weekend? >>ALAN GREENBERG: I hope so. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: I just wonder why we needed to go through the content again and take up time. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Let me just say something here, and I think it is a very valid question. It is one we have been asking ourselves, but it also has to do with the organizational difficulties of a meeting like this, which is a key meeting for us. Obviously we have three open council meetings per year. This one unfortunately is happening only two weeks after our previous meeting. So sometimes I think we end up repeating ourselves and that's unfortunate when we put the agenda together. On this specific agenda item, as we knew we would probably be discussing a proposed motion, we knew that the motion wouldn't be made for this meeting but that we would probably be discussing it. The council leaders felt that it was worth keeping this Agenda Item on the agenda. And in the future, looking to the future, I have also proposed, as you know, that we extend the interval between the meetings. Currently we have a three-week interval between each of the council meetings. And I propose that we extend that to four and hopefully have a more productive meeting as a result. So that's an attempt to answer your question. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: I'm not sure it does because I still don't understand why when we went through this at length on the weekend as we do all the others, I honestly -- I think it is great to have the discussion so we should have been open for discussion. I just don't think it was worthwhile going through the report again. So that's just my opinion. And I'd open it up for discussion. I think when we have these open meetings we struggle to keep the attention of our people in the audience. They are recorded meetings on the weekend. If somebody wanted to have the background, they could have done that work and listened to that. That's why we record them. So I don't think it is for the audience's benefit that we go through these reports. So I think we should have discussion about them, by all means. But in order to keep our audience and ourselves sane -- and that's not a slight on the topic or anything in this occasion, but I think we should look at abbreviating, where possible. And this is probably one way that we could do that. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Once again, I do think your point is a very fair one. I do, however, think it is also for the benefit of the audience. Some people don't arrive until the Monday when the ICANN meeting officially starts and maybe don't have time to catch up on what happened on the weekend. But, once again, repetition is probably conclusive to boredom. So your point is valid and well taken. And I think I had Kristina next. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Thanks. Alan, this question didn't occur to me over the weekend or else I would have posed it then. But I guess what I'm really struggling with is to get a sense of the extent to which, if at all, the working group discussed the applicability of these recommendations and some of the new gTLD models that we may say, in particular the single registrant/single user model. My initial thought is that most of these recommendations probably wouldn't apply but some could. And it just seems that in that particular instance, the issues or the concerns that motivated the initiation of the PDP in the first instance wouldn't necessarily apply. So I guess -- that so that would be my first question. And the second one would maybe be an observation for staff that I think it would be helpful to have a sense of the extent to which where just on their face some of these consensus policies, applying them to some of these models that we might see are really not going to make any sense. You have got the whole issue of is somebody actually an SRSU registry, going to report themselves, and how is that going to work. But I think the fact that folks are being required to abide by consensus policies and in many cases -- at least with this one, it would appear you would know at the outset that you're not. I find that troubling. I guess my first question is back to Alan and whether they talked about this. >>ALAN GREENBERG: The working group talked about it a lot. It came down to the fact that, although we have been talking in the VI group and number of other places about categories and special classes of gTLDs, they don't exist in any formal document. So we had a hard time trying to set up a different set of rules for categories which we don't know if they will ever exist in terms of any legal substance in contracts. On top of that, there are already a whole host of terms in the RAA which don't make a lot of sense in the SRSU model to begin with. However, all that taken into account, none of these conditions -- none of these requirement, either in our recommendations or the existing RAA are particularly onerous if you are your own registrant. I mean, you know, you have to send notices to yourself and you'll complaint if you don't do it to yourself. It is a bit moot. But should there ever be a substantive number of such registries, then maybe we need to go back and look at the RAA in general and say, are there clauses that just don't make any sense and we should strip them out in a specialized form of it or something. But it didn't seem like anything we could do with what was only a hypothetical group of registries at the time we were working. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you. Jeff? >>JEFF NEUMAN: Yeah. Thanks. I'm looking at the motion and I've read it a number of times, and I don't want to be considered -- or accused of rewriting anything that a working group has done, but that said -- and this is not on the recommendations themselves but I just don't really understand what the motion's asking us to do. It's kind of confusing and has a couple different action items that just -- maybe it's just -- I don't want to say poorly worded. That's not nice. It's just not worded in a way -- you know, part of it says resolved the council recommends to the board you do all these things. Then there's a note in the middle of all the recommendations and I don't understand how that note fits into what we're doing. Is it that you're asking us to adopt these policies, asking the board to adopt those policies, then the staff to implement that, and then the working group is available to assist with the implementation? And then there's a note saying how does this fit in with the UDRP URS. I just think that the motion needs to kind of figure out what exactly are we asking to do. >>ALAN GREENBERG: I'm going to go back and answer Adrian's question again because, in fact, the answer wasn't true. There is one minor change in this recommendation -- in the motion that is different from the recommendations and we are in the process of verifying with the working group that no one has a problem with it. Someone identified a real problem in one of the recommendations that we have attempted to fix. With that exception, I -- you know, I'm a liaison. I can't make motions. But I would suspect -- suggest that since the motion is being made available to council several weeks before it will actually get made, this is a good opportunity to try to refine the words if they don't make sense. In terms of the reference to the UDRP and the URS, in the public comments and discussions in the working group, we identified a number of places where there -- there were if's, but's, and and's, assuming that a domain was in the process of looked at by a UDRP or something like that. And the RAA already has a number of special cases associated with domains in that kind of status, and we did not consider ourselves expert enough to try to board those caveats properly, but said as ICANN staff and ICANN legal staff, looking to word the final RAA terms, they should take that into account. So we understand that our recommendations are missing some details that we don't feel we can add, but they should -- they must be paid attention to. If a note is not the right way of doing it, perhaps you can suggest something else. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Okay. Thanks. Jeff? >>JEFF NEUMAN: It's something we've done, you know, years back with transfers. I mean, you know, do you want to recommend, or whoever is making the motion want to recommend setting up an implementation team to work with staff to do it, if that's what you're asking. This is a suggestion, I'm not saying that's the way to go with it, but -- >>ALAN GREENBERG: We did that in the report and I made a reference to it in -- you know, on one of the slides, but we felt we had to capture in the recommendations that we know the recommendations are incomplete in some specific details related to the UDRP and potentially the URS, so we need -- we felt we needed to capture that. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you. Any further comments on this? Seeing none, we'll move on to -- so we had a break planned next. Does everybody need a break? I was going to propose that we cancel the break and try and finish early. Can I have a show of hands or yea and nay, because I can't see everybody. I don't know if that's a popular suggestion or not. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: I believe your suggestion to be popular. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you very much. In that case, is it popular on this side of the room? Okay. Yeah. We'll take that as popular. On this side of the room, they didn't understand the suggestion, so we'll just go on without them. So we now come to Item 8, which is an update on the joint DNS security and stability analysis community working group, and we have - - we did plan to have Mikey O'Connor, one of the co-chairs of the group, give us an update, but I don't think Mikey's able to give that update at this stage, so someone else is going to give it. Scott McCormick. Is Scott in the room? >>GLEN de SAINT GERY: Stéphane, I believe Jörg Schweiger is going to give it. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Scott? Yeah, he's -- well, Scott or Jörg, whoever wants to give it, or you can do it... thank you very much. Do you need to have a presentation? >> (Speaker is off microphone). >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Can you just talk over it? Thanks very much. >>JÖRG SCHWEIGER: Okay. Folks, sorry for the confusion. I really didn't mean to give that presentation. I was meant just to stand by, but nevertheless, okay, let me give it a try. The confusion all stems from that Mikey informed me that he kind of revised the presentation, so I've got to work with his slides but looking at mine, so let's see whether this fits or not. Who is talking to you? Well, my name is Jörg Schweiger. I'm the CTO with DENIC, the German registry, and I am the designated -- no, I am the co-chair of the ccNSO and am now trying to give you a presentation what the DSSA working group has achieved. By the way, once again, DSSA stands for DNS Security and Stability Analysis working group. Could you just move onwards to any of the slides? Could you just... There we go. Okay. This even looks familiar. Well, so what is the DSSA all about. You should recall that there had been some remarks by Rod Beckstrom, way back to I think it was Nairobi, that the DNS was in severe danger. So as there were, let's say at least different perceptions about that whether this is true or not, the different organizations -- namely, ALAC, ccNSO, GNSO, GAC, and the NRO, decided that we could and would, and actually did, form a working group. This working group is concentrating on understanding the security and stability of the global name system as stated on the charter over there. So next slide, please. What we have -- have we been doing so far since San Francisco? Basically, we launched the working group. That is, we named participants. We named co-chairs. And we tried to build trust and understanding between the different co-chairs as we didn't know each other before. Some of them, I still haven't seen, so (saying name) where are you? We stated a mission statement to get a little bit more focused on what we're really up to. We started to discuss a little bit about how we're going to deal with confidential information and the gathering of such, and finally we made up how we're going to work, so we figure out a work plan. Mission statement. So what we want to do a little bit more in detail than what the charter currently is saying is that we do want to determine the security, stability, and resiliency level of the global domain name system from, well, a TLD perspective. And by doing so, we've been using the definition of stability, security, and resiliency that's currently been given by the financial year's SSR plan of 2012, which to my understanding still would need some, let's say, further refinement because, for example, if you take a look at the definition of "security," and that is to protect and prevent misuse, this might very well encompass things like spam handling and content like pornography and stuff like that, which I really wouldn't want to discuss in that working group. Next slide. But that was just my personal opinion. We didn't agree on that between the co-chairs. So how is the working group going to be run? Well, we do have different roles. We do have four co-chairs and those co-chairs feel that they are going to act somewhat like program management Steering Committee, so the work is supposed to be done by the members of the group, so probably you. And some experts we're going to solicit to take part in working group sessions. We are quite well organized concerning that we do have a variety of staff support from ICANN, and if something can be resolved within the working group or between the co-chairs, then it's going to be raised to the different council and it's going to be solved over there. The next slide is presenting what we came up with as a working plan, which still could be broken down in more smaller packages, so I already introduced what we meant by "launch." The second next step, we already addressed, readiness issues like do we have the right amount of resources, project management resources and so forth. We're then going to go into real working business and working stuff where we are going to identify threats, so that is we solicit a list of potential threats and we would figure out whether or not they are in scope and then we would prioritize them and then go to the fourth row. That is, to analyze those threats, just to make sure that what - - what kind of level, frequency, and severity does those -- do those threats really have. And finally, as usual, we're going to prepare reports which you can comment on and finally hopefully reaching a result and celebrating. Next slide. I wouldn't want to stop by saying "celebrate." But it would have been a good idea. So carting for Singapore, what are we about to do here? We are going to complete the launch activities. I've almost done so. We should build up a liaison or get in contact with the SSR-RT. We are going to have face-to-face meeting, which is actually taking place tomorrow. That is, I think, between 10:30 and 12:00, so everybody's invited to take a look at what we are really doing. And in this meeting, we will break out in four different sessions, one to be coming up with some ideas how we're going to handle confidential information. We would try to determine criteria to, well, figure out what the level of stability and security really is at any given point in time. We want to come up with a first list of threats and want to make sure that we really know how to proceed after Singapore. And I think that might be it. No, not true. Questions and answers. Well, basically, I've never seen that slide before, so... [ Laughter ] >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Well, thanks for that update and thanks for -- >>JÖRG SCHWEIGER: But I can make up something to it, just one question, because this is really on my mind and I'm going to step down afterwards. So what would really be interesting to figure out is how we are going to solicit information, specifically information about threats and experienced threats by the community, because we do know that this information is kind of difficult to share. So if you, the audience, would have any idea on how we could solicit critical information about threats, DDOS attacks, whatever, very much appreciated. Thanks. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Jörg, thanks very much for doing that, and I know it was impromptu, so thank you for making that effort and explaining it to us. That was very much appreciated. Are there any comments or questions? Okay. Thank you very much, Jörg. And -- [ Applause ] >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Right. So we'll move on to the next topic. Because we're actually starting to run up against the clock, Olga has generously and kindly offered not to do her presentation, but she does have a point that she wants to make, so Olga, please. >>OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Stéphane. Just a brief update about the working team that I chaired with the commercial stakeholder -- no, sorry, the OSC CSG working team. We did produce three documents. One is the toolkit of services, which is under development now. Operating principles also that was finished in May last year. And the document I would like to talk about and to call your attention is the document about global outreach recommendations. This document was finished by early this year, in January, and now we have opened a call for volunteers. We have to draft the charter of the working team. The idea is to develop a working task -- a task force for outreach, the OTF, so if you -- any of the GNSO community's able to join us, we would like to start relatively soon, so documents are available on links that I can send you or provide. The document is really quite self-explanatory, and it makes some interesting proposals for outreach about GNSO which was one of the two main tasks that our working team had to develop. So if any of you need the link, you can request it to me, to Julie, or to Glen, and hope that you can join us and start the work as soon as possible. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thank you very much, Olga. Any comments? Okay. In which case, we have one any other business item, which is a JIG update from Edmon. The JIG being the joint ccNSO/GNSO IDN working group. Edmon. >>EDMON CHUNG: Hello. Is it on? It's good, right? Okay. There you go. It will be easier if I click it because I would keep it really short. Well, thank you, Stéphane, and I wanted to be able to click it because I will be saying "next slide" very, very often if I'm not, because I'll be clicking through the slides. But anyway, so just an update on the JIG, the joint ccNSO/GNSO IDN working group. Engine I think most people know by now it was created by mutual charter between the GNSO and the ccNSO to discuss matters of common interest about IDN TLDs between the ccNSO and the GNSO. There were members -- five members from the GNSO and five members from the ccNSO, as well as some observers and some -- and we had ample ICANN support staff from both GNSO and ccNSO helping us through. We identified -- we started in last March, 2010. We had identified three areas of common interest. One being single-character IDN TLDs. Second being IDN TLD variants. And the third one being universal acceptance of IDN TLDs. We had face-to-face -- well, we had meetings, conference calls, biweekly conference calls, since March of last year. We had basically face-to-face meetings on -- in -- during the ICANN meetings and of course here in Singapore as well. For the first item, single-character IDN TLDs, we went through an initial report, public comment period, draft final report, public comments for that. Eventually finalized the final report and it was submitted to the two chartering councils and the GNSO Council and the ccNSO council both accepted -- approved it respectively, and the report was eventually sent on to the board for implementation. So in terms of next steps there, we did get a -- I guess some feedback from staff about implementation, so the group is following up with staff on implementation for single-character IDN TLDs for -- both on the -- I guess both on the gTLD side and on the ccTLD side, and also the report is being used as input into the IDN ccPDP. The second item was the IDN variant TLDs. We started work and -- but the work actually -- we started work on identifying the policy aspects. Work stopped when actually the board had a resolution on the -- on the topic and staff started working on it. The group restarted the discussion after Cartagena, and currently we're working closely with the IDN -- what's called the IDN VIP, IDN variants issues project. We sort of have a division of work between them and us, and also we've identified some work that we would feed some input into the IETF DNSEXT discussion on this subject, and we have identified some policy aspects. I wouldn't go through that. But in terms of next steps, we're looking into working -- we have -- currently have put liaisons and observers between the JIG into the IDN VIP. Every of those study working group -- study groups, we are looking at synchronizing in terms of time line an effort with the IDN VIP. They are expecting to have an issues report by the end of the year. We are hoping that we could have something in place around that time frame as well, from us. And the third item, we've started working on it, the universal acceptance of IDN TLDs. The, I guess, first question was, you know, whether there are any policy aspects to be discussed, so we're going through the stock taking of issues, so that's currently the status of the third item. And one, I guess, important item for this council is that we're looking at a -- we're asking, I guess, for a potential extension or renewal of the JIG charter. The current charter has a natural end for the group upon the board's approval of the new gTLD applicant guidebook which happened this Monday, and as I mentioned, we publish - - we completed work on Item 1 out of the three items. We have two more items, one on the IDN TLD variants and one on universal acceptance of IDN TLDs, both of which we think has, you know, a lot of value in terms of -- and also is definitely a -- both of which are common issues between ccTLDs and gTLDs, so we'd like to -- like for the council to consider extending it. We did have a brief conversation with the ccNSO council during the GNSO/ccNSO luncheon Monday. In terms of the -- following up, I did get a note just now from the ccNSO council that they have sort of extended the group for another month, so that we could come up with a time line and some scope of work going forward. I think that's what we are looking to do in the next month as well, is to identify the -- better scope out the work for the two remaining items, and also provide a sort of projected time line on which, and I guess the -- the real update -- well, the suggestion here is we'd like to be able to present the time line, the revised time line for completing the two remaining items for the council's consideration in its next meeting. And this is my last slide. I just want to, you know, I guess as some feedback from the group, we -- as we work through the process, I think, from the ccNSO side this is -- because their policy development process is quite different from the GNSO and the status of their IDN PDP is a little bit different, a lot of the input from -- a lot of the work from the JIG is -- are actually input into the PDP that's ongoing for the ccTLD side. As for GNSO side, one of the things that myself and -- have been working on is to make sure that the JIG discussions, at least the recommendations to check back on whether it deviates from the GNSO recommendations, policy recommendations from the GNSO IDN working group and of course the GNSO new gTLD recommendations. So, you know, this is sort of the work and the boundaries of which, and it's a little bit different between the ccNSO and GNSO. So with that, thank you. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Thanks, Edmon. It almost sounds like we'd have to do an emergency motion or something and I don't know that there's a way of doing that, so it's something that we'll have to consider very quickly, obviously, but that we didn't have -- we hadn't identified it in the runup to this meeting so we didn't have it on our agenda. But it's certainly something that we noted during the weekend sessions that we'd have to look at extending the JIG charter. Your point about the ccNSO council having done so is taken on board, and we will look at that very quickly. >>EDMON CHUNG: Thank you. My feeling on this -- you know, I guess other councillors can weigh in -- is probably not necessarily a sort of a resolution at this point, but if we get a general feeling or consensus around the table that we will present the case before the next council meeting, so that in the next council meeting there would be a formal -- you know, a proper resolution to extend the charter, that that's probably appropriate. >>CHING CHIAO: Just a quick comment, and thanks, Edmon and as long as we -- as a council we are not stopping the JIG from working, I mean, I'm pretty sure that it is acceptable that in the next council meeting for them to present the update case and see if we can follow the procedure to make that particular motion for the next one. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Yeah. We -- I mean, it's just a procedural thing, really, but, you know, we all came here perhaps hoping or perhaps not, but not knowing whether the new gTLD program would be approved. The JIG charter has something in it that says if it is approved and when it is approved, the JIG stops working, so at the moment now, going according to the current charter, the JIG has a problem, as you say, I think it's something that, you know, we will look at possibly in the next meeting. I hope so. I think that's the way to do it. I don't really know what you're asking for, Edmon. I mean a show of support, I don't know how -- what format that would take at this stage now. Tim? >>TIM RUIZ: Sorry if I -- if I missed it, Edmon, but when do you think you'll have the time line that the ccNSO asked for? Do you think it will take a month or will you be able to have it sooner than that? >>EDMON CHUNG: We certainly started the discussion. I think it will be within -- within a month we hope to try to complete that by our next conference call, and so, you know, I -- at this point, though, I guess the -- it is a matter of process and I guess the question is whether, you know, we can -- we can do this work and then present it in the next council meeting. I think that should be sufficient time. We would probably need -- it's probably not possible for me to come up with a time line like within the next two minutes, so that you can have a resolution, so -- but I think it -- this particular time lag between is probably acceptable. And the other thing is that we probably don't need a completely new charter because the current charter does have a provision that as long as the two councils agree, it could continue. That was just a natural stop there, pending council -- agreement from the two councils to continue work and to wrap up what has been identified as issues of common interest. >>STÉPHANE VAN GELDER: Yeah, that's understood. There's no intent, I don't think, to ask for a new charter, but simply to extend the one that we currently have. Ching? >>CHING CHIAO: Very quick. In our last motion in the JIG, we do indicate and state that we do look forward to receiving the variant report and also the TLD universal acceptance report. so just wanted to add that. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Let me just say if someone wants to look at this at the next meeting, we'll expect a motion to do so and possibly extend the charter. Any further comments? Thanks very much, Edmon. [ Applause ] So I think we are now at the end of our regular agenda. We come to the open microphone. If there are any questions or comments from the floor, please stand up and make your way to the microphone. Don't forget to identify yourself. I think Marilyn will be making the first comment. >>MARILYN CADE: Or asking the first question. My name is Marilyn Cade, and I'm the chair of the business constituency. And I have a general question for the councillors to consider. I was on the council -- a previous iteration of the council a number of years ago. And at the time, we did not have weekend meetings. We finally evolved due to the load of work to having an informal meeting on Sunday afternoon. We've moved to an environment where now we have GNSO working sessions which are inclusive of the community on Saturday and Sunday. And I think that has certainly, I know, extended your workload but also extended the opportunity for more awareness, involvement and information distribution to the full GNSO. So I've been a big fan of those meetings. And within the business constituency, we have a very good turnout, even though it is pretty stressful, of course, for everyone to add that to their workload. But at this last meeting, it was -- it really felt to me like we didn't have a full two-day agenda and, yet, we had a full two days. And I raise the question to you because I'm considering the idea that constituencies -- the workload within the week and the need for meetings that are cross-community discussions and are substantive suggestions has also grown. And I'm really interested in whether it is going to be feasible to, perhaps, recapture a few hours of one of the weekend days that might be taken up for constituency meetings if not all the time is needed for the broader work. So I'm not asking so much for an answer now as to ask you to consider this as you're looking at planning your workload for Dakar and looking forward because it looks like for all of us that the cross-community substantive topics during the week, they're also creating a situation where your members, your colleagues and your constituencies have competing meetings that they need to be in. And the schedule doesn't allow the separation of the meetings because we lose Tuesday to constituency day, which we need. So if you could add that to your list of topics to deal with at some point just in terms of thinking about workload planning and scheduling and how it affects the community, I would appreciate it. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks, Marilyn, for that question/comment. Let me just say that on agenda for the weekend -- And Mary can speak to this as well if she wants to. But our agenda for this meeting's weekend sessions was disrupted by the work going on for the new gTLDs and in particular the GAC/board consultation. So I wouldn't take that weekend as a guideline of what generally happens. I agree that the agenda was somewhat compromised in a way. I know from Mary and Glen that it was extremely difficult to put it together and there were several requests for cancellations or alterations that came in very last minute. So that was a concern and challenge. I want to thank Mary and Glen again for working on that agenda and for helping the GNSO Council to get organized for this week. They did some great work. >> Thank you, Chairman. My name is Mohamed. I'm from the registrar constituency. I just want to raise a point that it seems like everybody was talking about the new gTLD stuff. We're all focused on the core value of ICANN and the GNSO Council regarding competition, something that we define in one of the documents of the GNSO, the availability of multiple (inaudible) TLD and multiple registrar where registrant may seek their desired domain name at reasonable price and term. And I just want to raise a comment regarding the situation specifically in Africa where everybody seems to talk about new gTLDs, but we all forget one of the weakest links that exists in our continent. And that can put in all the policy we are trying to define in that area. For one reason, the lack of registrar in the region will not help at all for all the different issues we're raising regarding law enforcement, protection of registrant. All the different topics we put on the table in order to protect the registrant and really have the ICANN community as a whole performing our duties throughout the community. We have one constraint, is nothing has been done in order to facilitate the emerging of new registrars in the area. I just recall one of the new working groups that has been set up for the new gTLD between the ALAC and the GNSO where one of the main reasons for that is just to help facilitate and define how in developing countries new gTLD applications can be facilitated. And my question is: Can we add in one of the objectives of that working group that is between the ALAC and the GNSO to put the objective to increase the number of registrars in the region by putting all the specific conditions we put in it as one of the main criteria to help facilitate the emergence of new registrars in the region? Thank you. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: I think you make an important point. I don't know how quite that can be done. But I know, Jonathan, you want to address this. >>JONATHAN ROBINSON: Mohamed, I hope I'm not missing the point here. As I understand it in the new vertically integrated world, there is the proposition at least, if not the likelihood, of integrated registry and registrar operations. So from the point of view of the new gTLDs, there is a realistic chance that an appropriate registry/registrar combination might appear so. To the extent -- I take your point. There has been a lot of focus on registries. But, nevertheless, the potential for new combined entities may well help in that respect. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thank you. Any further comments? Okay. Well, in that case, we are seriously in danger of finishing early after all. I just want to say a couple of things. I just want to, first of all, thank the meeting planning staff and our hosts for giving us some extremely comfortable facilities to work in over the week and over the weekend. So thank you for that. I think we can give them a round of applause. [ Applause ] Also, I just wanted to thank our support staff and ICANN staff in general because as we move on into the new era now of actually working on new gTLD implementation, we know that they've been under extreme stress and that they've really worked extremely hard to both cater to the GNSO Council's need as far as the support staff is concerned and the needs that come out of the new gTLD program. So to them, I'd also like to say a big thank you. [ Applause ] Adrian? >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Just sort of occurred to me that potentially we should also be giving ourselves a pat on the back this week. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: I had three items. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: You can give yourself a pat on the back. In particular, I would like to give myself a pat on the back. Not exactly sure why. So I will shut up then and let you do it as chair. I didn't know it was on your agenda. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thank you very much. I would also like to thank the volunteers that work on our working groups and drafting teams. They are under a lot of stress as well, and they have a huge workload to cope with on top of coping with their regular jobs. So to them, to the volunteers and to the volunteers on council also, I wanted to say a big thank you. [ Applause ] And with that, I believe we are -- of course. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: So you didn't do it. That's all right. Particularly this week -- I will be very brief. Particularly this week with new gTLDs reaching a bit of a nexus, that there's been a hell of a lot of hard work going on from not just these councillors but from the GNSO and for a long, long time. When I first got on the council four years ago, this work was well underway. And it has been a massive push. And a lot of those councillors are clearly not on the council anymore. I thought we should take a moment to share our thanks to all our work to our predecessors also on the council and, indeed, this council for the hard work that has gone on to getting what was a key goal across the line, maybe not to everybody's satisfaction but at least we saw the process at work. So I thought that that's probably worth pointing out. [ Applause ] >>STEPHANE van GELDER: Thanks, Adrian. This is a milestone event and milestone meeting for the GNSO. We've managed to conclude a GNSO PDP that was presented to the board in 2007, I believe. So fully support the words that you've just said, and thank you for reminding us of that. >>ADRIAN KINDERIS: Thank you, Stephane. >>STEPHANE van GELDER: With that I will adjourn the meeting and just ask you to have a look at your screens. You might see something that might be of interest to you. But the meeting is now officially ended. Thank you very much for your participation. Thank you.