Overview

This APAC Space session was a readout of the ICANN71 Virtual Policy Forum featuring debriefs and takeaways from seven community leaders/members, with Amrita Choudhury (Nominating Committee) as the community discussion facilitator.

For AOB, the APAC community discussed the impact that a possibly hybrid ICANN72 in Seattle could have on APAC participation. Donna Austin (RySG Chair Emeritus) sought the community’s feedback for an APAC Space community letter to be sent to the ICANN Board for its consideration on the matter.


Details of Session

ICANN71 Overview: Jia-Rong Low, ICANN APAC

The ICANN71 Virtual Policy Forum saw over 1,330 unique participants, with 23% from the APAC region. Considering The Hague meeting time zone, the APAC attendance rate was significant which stood third behind Europe’s 25% and North America’s 32%. The top three participating APAC economies were India (48 participants), Chinese Taipei (37), and Australia (25) (more participation data in the ICANN71 By the Numbers Report). The forum featured new and enhanced virtual meeting support, such as Zoom-integrated interpretation services, breakout rooms for working sessions, and virtual bilateral meeting facilities.

The 2021 Community Excellence Award was presented at ICANN71 to APAC’s Rafik Dammak (GNSO), as well as posthumously to Marilyn Cade. For its meeting agenda, the forum focused on targeted policy development work or cross-community discussions. One session specially focused on the future of virtual/hybrid participation at ICANN Public Meetings (e.g. for ICANN72), which was also related to this Readout’s AOB item. Three plenary sessions were held at ICANN71:

Other notable policy topics included:

  • EPDP on the Temporary Specification (Temp Spec) for gTLD Registration Data Phase 2A — Jia-Rong Low encouraged public comments to be submitted on the Initial Report, which looked at the differentiation between legal and natural persons in registration data, and the feasibility of unique contacts to have a uniform anonymized email address.
  • New gTLD Subsequent Procedures (SubPro) PDP — An Operational Design Phase (ODP) was being scoped and the ICANN Board is to decide whether to initiate the ODP.
    • ICANN CEO Göran Marby shared that there are currently just 1,500 TLDs for about 5 billion Internet users globally. Hence, the next gTLD round will contribute to the “interoperability” of people because of the availability of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). Jia-Rong highlighted that this development is especially important for APAC given the region’s diversity of languages and scripts.
  • EPDP on IDNs — A community outreach session was held to call for participation, which would be through a representative model of community members from various constituencies. Apart from this, one could also join as a general observer.

Transfer Policy Review PDP: Antonia Chu, Transfer Policy Review PDP Working Group

Formerly known as the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy (IRTP), the Transfer Policy is an ICANN consensus policy which took effect in 2004 to govern procedures for domain name transfers from one registrar to another. The policy was reviewed once by the GNSO shortly after implementation.

After the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was implemented, there was a major change in inter-registrar transfer procedures. Due to a lack of registration data in the Registration Data Directory Services (RDDS), Gaining Registrars were no longer able to deliver the Gaining Form of Authorization (FOA) to confirm registrants’ intent to transfer. This change was included as part of the PDP WG’s scope for further discussion. Antonia Chu also gave an overview of the key milestones leading to the PDP’s initiation.

The PDP WG will review the current Transfer Policy, and provide policy recommendations on proposed changes to improve the ease, security and efficacy of inter-registrar and inter-registrant transfers. The WG’s discussions will be held in two phases covering eight major topics. The first phase will cover areas such as the gaining/losing registrar FOA, and change of registrant. The second phase will look at areas like the Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy (TDRP), denying transfers, and ICANN-approved transfers. Adopting a representative participation model, the WG is currently in Phase 1(a) focusing on FOA (more about the PDP and its progress in the PDP Workspace). 

Board Perspectives: Akinori Maemura, ICANN Board Member

The ICANN Board was in ICANN71 related sessions stretching across four weeks for Prep Week, Board workshops, ICANN71 itself, and three joint meetings thereafter with GNSO Constituencies, i.e. the CPH, CSG, and the GNSO Council. The Board would also have a joint meeting with ALAC on 8 July 2021 (more information about such Board-Community meetings can be found through the ICANN Engagement Calendar).

In terms of decisions, the Board held a Special Meeting on 21 June 2021 and passed three resolutions to (i) adopt the GNSO Council’s policy recommendations 19-22 from EPDP Phase 2 Priority 2 topics; (ii) defer the Third GNSO Review (GNSO3); and (iii) accept the Compensation Committee’s recommendations on the ICANN President and CEO’s at-risk compensation for the second half of FY21.

The Board also held various discussions such as on:

  • The state of ICANN Meetings, which drew the greatest interest across the Board.
  • DNS Abuse – Akinori Maemura noted this was actively discussed across many constituencies, with messaging from Japan’s GAC representative in the GAC Discussion on DNS Abuse Mitigation.
  • SubPro PDP – Review of the PDP recommendations would need the Board’s consideration on the ODP, and on SSAC’s technical comments (i.e. SAC114).
  • ICANN’s planning and prioritization – Usually an area for management decision-making, Akinori said this is interesting because planning and prioritization at ICANN takes place with the community.
  • EPDP on IDNs – IDNs and Universal Acceptance (UA) are of high interest to the Board.

GAC Perspectives: T. Santhosh, GAC Member 

Of the GAC’s 179 members and 38 observers, 71 members and 5 observers attended ICANN71. The GAC sessions included joint meetings with the ICANN Board and the ALAC. Amongst the topics discussed by the GAC were:

  • SubPro PDP — The GAC called for volunteers to participate in the community consultation process in the upcoming ODP.
  • International Governmental Organization (IGO) Protection — The GAC advised the ICANN Board to maintain the current moratorium on IGO acronym registrations until work on the curative rights protection mechanism is completed.
  • DNS Abuse — Abuse concerns should be addressed prior to the next new gTLD round. The GAC supports development of contractual provisions applicable to all gTLDs on improving responses to DNS Abuse, and emphasized the need for compliance by contracted parties and privacy/proxy service providers. Supporting the recently launched DNS Abuse Institute, the GAC encouraged the community to tackle DNS Abuse issues holistically.
  • Other Topics —The GAC also discussed areas relating to WHOIS, EPDP on the Temp Spec, and data protection. It highlighted the importance of data accuracy as part of preventing/mitigating DNS Abuse. The GAC considered the handling of non-public registration data requests via the System for Standardized Access (SSAD), in which a Request for Information (RFI) on identity verification methods will soon be conducted.

ccNSO Perspectives: Ai-Chin Lu, ccNSO Council Member

At the third ccNSO Members Meeting Governance session held during ICANN71, the ccNSO continued to discuss how the ccNSO’s governance model should be updated, such as members’ ability to change membership rules, and whether the ccNSO Council’s decisions should be allowed to be subjected to a veto. A follow-up survey would be sent and an additional consultation session with members will be held in the lead-up to ICANN72. Thereafter, new governance rules will be drafted.

A ccNSO policy session was held to provide updates on two PDPs:

1. ccPDP3

Part I: Retirement of ccTLDs — When a retirement event is triggered for a ccTLD, such as a 2-letter country code is removed from the ISO3166-1 list, the ccTLD must be removed from the DNS root zone database within five years. An extension may be requested, failing which ccTLD managers may appeal through the IANA Function Operator (or IFO; currently PTI).

  • The ccNSO Council approved the proposed policy for ccNSO voting, and Ai-Chin Lu encouraged ccNSO members to take the vote.
  • For IDN ccTLDs, trigger events will be identified in ccPDP4.

Part II: Review Mechanism — The WG identified situations where IFO’s decisions on ccTLD delegation, transfer, revocation, and retirement could be subjected to a review. The WG will continue to work with ICANN Legal to proceed with a topic-driven working method.

2. ccPDP4 — ccPDP4 will replace the earlier ccPDP2 and the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process. The WG is making steady progress in reviewing and updating the criteria, procedures, and documentation for the selection of IDN ccTLD strings. It also formed a sub-group to look into variant management, while two more sub-groups will be formed to look into confusing similarities and deselection of strings respectively.

  • During the WG’s session at ICANN71, Zoom polls were conducted on seven drafted recommendations (including the set of principles underpinning the policy), which received majority agreement from session participants.

Separately, on ccTLD managers’ participation in ICANN’s Strategic and Operational Planning (SOP) process, the ccNSO’s SOP Committee (SOPC) agreed to continue with its ranking exercise of ICANN org’s operating initiatives and functional activities, and will further improve this process. Also at ICANN71, the ccNSO Council made several decisions such as on the ccNSO’s 2-year workplan, and agreeing to discuss in its next meeting ccNSO’s potential role in the wider DNS Abuse topic. 

ALAC Perspectives: Maureen Hilyard, ALAC Chair

In addition to ALAC's significant presence in ICANN71’s three plenaries, three At-Large policy sessions were held focusing on end-user perspectives:

The session on ccTLD governance models was something new for At-Large, which received good interaction from end users and could be an area for follow-up at ICANN72. On its regular ALAC-GAC bilateral meetings, Maureen Hilyard said the ALAC will continue work on this area to build up more mutual interaction with the GAC. She also noted that a social event organized by the European At-Large Organization (EURALO) with a virtual tour of the Hague was well received by community members.

GNSO Perspectives: Pam Little, GNSO Council Vice Chair

Pam Little highlight five areas that the GNSO Council was occupied with:

  • EPDP Phase 2A — With the Initial Report’s community consultation format, the Council was concerned if there could be good prospects for consensus with this approach, and how the Council could help if the approach did not.
  • EPDP on IDNs — The WG’s representative participation model is a hybrid model where one could join either as a formal member of their constituency, but also as an observer. The only difference between the two categories is that only formal members could take part in consensus designation calls.
  • Data Accuracy Scoping Team — Unresolved during EPDP Phase 1 and 2, the Council is currently drafting terms of reference for a cross-community Scoping Team to work on scoping data accuracy issues.
  • Implementation of Privacy and Proxy Services Accreditation (PPSAI) & Translation and Transliteration (TTI) — ICANN org had asked to relaunch the previously paused implementation efforts for these two PDPs. The Council is agreeable should ICANN org take into consideration community bandwidth and competing priorities.
  • Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) Review — The Council is considering the launch of Phase 2 on Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPM) in July 2021.

In addition, a new framework for continuous structural, procedural, and process improvement has been developed, which will be used as a pilot for two upcoming Council work items – the Council Committee: Working Group Self-Assessment, and Task Force: Statement of Interest (SOI). The Council was also reviewing the interaction mechanisms it had with the GAC for further improvements to their mutual interactions. On the deferral of the GNSO3 Review, this would be until such time there was better clarity on the impact and implementation of ATRT3 recommendations.

Youth Perspectives: Manju Chen, Youth4IG

As with other ICANN Meeting attendees, youth participants attended sessions which they find relevant and interesting. As a representative of the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG), Manju Chen shared that the pandemic has imposed additional challenges (e.g. Zoom fatigue, volunteer burnout) for those serving purely as volunteers in ICANN work like herself in NCSG, and those in the ALAC who can only contribute outside of work hours.

On ICANN’s multistakeholder model (MSM), Manju Chen felt that the representative participation model used in the EPDP on IDNs provides a good balance between representation and inclusiveness. However, more community discussion could be held on balancing participation by SO/AC members in the PDP policy deliberations/drafting with the positions or advice that SO/ACs may issue on the PDP.

AOB

Initially slated as an AOB item, the topic of APAC participation at a possibly hybrid ICANN72 in Seattle became the main focus of the overall community discussion, given also that there were no major questions from the community on the Readout topics. Donna shared concerns from several APAC community leaders, particularly from Australia, that a hybrid ICANN72 could have negative impact on APAC participation.

Donna said that past face-to-face meetings had served well in overcoming time zone challenges, providing an equal footing for participants globally. However, due to current ongoing COVID-19 travel restrictions, a hybrid ICANN72 with a face-to-face participation element would significantly exclude APAC participants. A decline in APAC representation could also result. Donna proposed that a written communication signed by the APAC Space community be sent to the ICANN Board outlining these challenges. Should the Board then decide that ICANN72 proceed in hybrid form, the community would request an explanation on the rationale.

Several meeting members agreed with Donna’s proposal for a communication. Pam suggested that the communication draft be circulated on the APAC Space mailing list after the session, and delivered to the Board if no objections are received.

Postscript: The communication draft was subsequently sent as an APAC Space community letter to the Board on 6 July 2021. On 15 July 2021, the Board decided that ICANN72 would be a virtual meeting, having considered several factors including the letter.

  • No labels