Beau Brendler: Okay, it’s 3:01; can we have a brief roll call, please? Beau Brendler’s here.
Gareth Shearman: Gareth Shearman.
Allan Skuce: Allan Skuce.
Joly MacFie: Joly MacFie.
Gordon Chillcott: And Gordon Chillcott.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Olivier Crepin-Leblond.
Beau Brendler: Hello, Olivier.
Seth Greene: And from staff, we have Marilyn Vernon, and myself, Seth Greene.
Beau Brendler: Okay, alright, so we’re just going to go right down the agenda as normal. I would say at the top of the hour, at 3:45 my time, I’ve got to go down the street and get my daughter from her school bus, so I will need to either hand it over to a co-chair or a deputy chair, or make a deputy chair, or something at that time, just to let you know, so that’s right around 3:45.
Okay, review of summary minutes and action items from the 14th of March is the first item on the agenda. I don’t necessarily recall us setting too many action items or summary minutes. As we’ve noted there, we basically spent the whole time getting ready for the showcase. Does anybody have any recollection of any action items that were not – that we need to take up?
Okay, open public consultations; I’m not necessarily going to go through each one of those, unless we have someone who is taking a lead or taking a role in one of the open public consultations, who wants to discuss them here. There’s the whois review team, there’s the security, stability, and resiliency review team; there’s been a lot of email traffic on that one. There’s been also some traffic on the global outreach program; do we have any representatives here on the whois review team who want to give us a brief update?
Okay, do we have anybody on the SSR, the security, stability, and resiliency review team who wants to give us a quick update? Okay. Anybody from the global outreach program? Olivier has raised his hand. Olivier, would you like to jump in?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes, thanks. I was just going to mention with regards to the SSR review team, as you might have noticed there was quite a lot of discussion that took place on the NARALO lists, and that was after the comment period was closed for the SSR review team, so what did was to discuss this with the ExCom, and we finally made the choice of having an addendum that was added to the statement, so as to modify the statement.
Now, this has not been done before, but thankfully the ICANN staff who was in charge of doing the summaries had not started work on that; so we were therefore able to file a new statement, after the closing period for the comments, and we did that today. So our new statement will be taken into accounts with the addendum.
The addendum reflecting the discussion that took place on the NARALO lists; and that’s all I wanted to add to this. If we do get some statements sometimes that don’t reflect the overall consensus, I’ve think we’ve gone pretty far to try and reflect it there, and we’re even ready to backtrack on very particular occasions. Thank you, Beau.
Beau Brendler: Okay, thank you Olivier. Alright, so going through recently submitted ALAC statements, I’m going to call on our members of – oh, actually I see Gareth has raised his hand. Gareth, did you want to ask a question before we go on?
Gareth Shearman: Yes, I do. I just wanted to ask Olivier, just to confirm, there is going to be a reopened vote on that issue, is there not, Olivier?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes, Gareth, thank you for the question. I actually forgot to mention; the vote which took place until now has been cancelled, and will reopen today. We will reopen a full five day vote, starting from this evening onwards, I gather. I know that it’s in the works. It takes a little while to set it up, but it will be in the works. So you’ll all have to vote; all the ALAC members will have to vote again on that.
Gareth Shearman: Thank you, Olivier.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: You’re welcome.
Beau Brendler: Gareth, I’m going to keep the mic in your hand for a second, because next on the list here is any sort of update you want to give us on the At-Large statement on the proposed framework for the operating plan budget; or has there even been any movement on that since February?
Gareth Shearman: Not that I’m aware of; the voting and all that has been done, so that was -- the results were passed on to the list, so I don’t have anything more to add to that.
Beau Brendler: Okay. Alright, let’s go to B; the ALAC statement on draft proposal for study of issues related to delegation of IDN variant TLDs; I’m guessing we probably don’t have somebody who is participating in that here on the call. Am I correct? I believe I am correct.
Okay, the ALAC statement on inter-registrar transfer policy, Part B working group; proposed final report. Do we have anyone here working on that? Okay, the proposed PDP policy? No takers there; draft response to the GAC gTLD scorecard. Now, obviously that’s huge; but we have a return to that later in the meeting in which Evan, if he is joining us today, probably would be able to give a more in depth reading of that than I could now. ALAC response to NCIA notice of inquiry; we do – there was a team that worked on that, Jean-Jacque Subrenat, Eric Williams, and in a very small way, myself.
We did get that in on time, and I think everyone has seen that published on the list, you can read through that. It’s a fairly short document. I see Alan Greenberg has a hand up; Alan?
Alan Greenberg: My hand was up for after we finish this.
Beau Brendler: Okay, that’s okay. We can consider that finished at this point.
Alan Greenberg: In which case, I’d like to go back to the previous group, the public consultation on which ALAC’s preparing statements, and I don’t know whether your [air] is accurate or not, but we are supposed to be preparing a statement of PEDNR post expiration domain name recovery. Whether we are or not, I’m not sure, but the public comment period closes on the 22nd, it’s a PDP that was initiated by ALAC; it would really be nice if ALAC has a comment to make.
Beau Brendler: Okay.
Alan Greenberg: At this point, there have been very few comments; a couple of specific ones. The registrars have not yet made a comment. If they choose to, and there are no comments for the recommendations, or for stronger recommendations, the group will likely have no choice but to honor whatever the registrars say.
Beau Brendler: Okay, well I think that’s probably not an ideal situation. So can we --
Alan Greenberg: The fact that it isn’t even on our list maybe speaks volumes.
Beau Brendler: Well, it is ultimately my fault, so I’m glad that you brought it up, and if we can make a bit of a pact with ourselves here, that we can try to go into that, take a look at it, and weigh in. Olivier has raised his hand, and also Glen McKnight on Skype chat is asking where Evan is. I don’t know.
Evan Liebovitch: I do.
Beau Brendler: Oh, are you there? Hi. Then let’s go to Olivier for his question, and then we’ll go back to Evan to give us a little fill in on item E; the current section of the agenda that we’re on. Olivier?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you, Beau. I was just going to comment on Alan’s pointing out of the PEDNR issue; I wanted to say that I have received an email; I did inquire with Mark Rotenberg, who had volunteered to lead the charge on writing the statement when we all met in San Francisco, and Mark has had problems with his emails and he has told me that he is now working on it. He just had so many emails coming in; he hadn’t received our previous emails on it.
So I brought him up to date, and he is now, hopefully, I’m saying hopefully, because hopefully he has received my emails now; he is working on that. I know that a confluence page is going to be created in the next 24 hours, a confluence Wiki, and from that point on, there should be a statement on there, and people bringing in input and I would like comments as soon as possible, obviously. It’s a very important issue, as Alan has mentioned, and ALAC is at the core of working on this. So that’s all, thank you.
Beau Brendler: Okay, thank you Olivier. Evan, can we get a bit of an update from you?
Evan Liebovitch: Actually, there’s two items I’d like to give an update on. One is item E, which is the response to the GAC scorecard; as you know, during the week in San Francisco, there was a lot of activity going on with the GAC response on the TLD process. We had an extremely productive meeting with the GAC on the first day of the conference; and as a result, both the GAC and the Board throughout the week, had asked us for a specific response, and they got it.
Thanks to the community’s input, we submitted and had ALAC approve a fairly extensive and detailed analysis of the scorecard, in some cases agreeing with the GAC and in some cases agreeing with the Board response. The NARALO chat was actually central to some of the discussions that went on, and in fact, a good amount of input that went in. So the region has very good reason to feel proud of its activity there.
While I have everybody’s attention, and I’m sorry I came in late; I also wanted to go back to item B on the public consultations, which is the statement on the security, stability, and resiliency of the DNS. This was something also that the NARALO mailing list can take some credit for some very specific input. There was actually a statement that was crafted, and being readied for ALAC approval, as a result of some discussions on the NARALO list, it became clear that some of the conclusions in the statement did not correctly reflect community input on this.
And thanks to especially Olivier as well as some hurried work by a lot of volunteers and staff, in fact the statement was rewritten to indicate the fact that there was a lot of the community that in fact wanted DNSSEC to be mandatory in new TLDs. After some interesting discussion on that, that comment was brought forward, and in fact, there was a last minute change made to the statement and I believe that’s actually being revoted on now.
Either Seth or Olivier, I don’t know if there’s any update on that, but I wanted to make a point of mentioning that, because of the specific contribution of the NARALO list in making sure that the document really reflected the community, is about as bottom up as we are getting.
Beau Brendler: Okay, thank you Evan. Let’s move down the agenda; if anybody else has anything to add there. Next, we have a report on the San Francisco meeting, including a NARALO showcase. I think we all – unless anybody has any disagreements, I think that we did a terrific job, and the organizers, including Eduardo who’s unfortunately not on today’s call, did very, very well in terms of having a very tight program. I think also it was great that Vint Cerf gave a very topical speech.
He could have just mouthed a bunch of platitudes; but instead he had, I think, some very on target and significant things to say, things that were reiterated in certain places during the rest of the meeting. We had 220 attendees, I don’t believe we had any new signups of participants or ALSs as a result of that; individual participants or ALSs as a result of the showcase, but you know, certainly we did do a good job in demonstrating to the ICANN community that we’re a vibrant and very interesting group of folks.
Does anybody have any reflections or anything to raise on the showcase? I see Olivier has his hand up. Go ahead, Olivier.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you, Beau. I was just going to add that during the rest of the week, whilst meeting with various people around ICANN, I was frequently told about the amazement about the diversity on all the ALSs and what they do. At-Large, funnily enough, At-Large and ALAC is not really well understood in ICANN circles; or at least until recently was not well understood, and it looks as though there is much interest in understanding what we’re all about.
Certainly the showcases I have found is something that brings a human dimension to the whole acronyms, ALS, ALAC, etc. etc. So I was – quite a few people came to me and told me “Wow, it’s really great to see so many people, so many volunteers taking part and doing so many great things in their part of the world”. Thank you.
Alan Greenberg: It’s about time they decided to understand us.
Beau Brendler: I would have to agree with that, and learning about the diverse range of special projects people are participating in, here in NARALO I think was a compelling moment, when everyone got up to tell their own story. I see Evan and Joly; Evan, go first.
Evan Liebovitch: Actually, I wanted to just sort of shout out to Joly; that video that you did, both Darlene’s presentation and Joly’s added quite a bit to it. The ability of somebody able to contribute from a distance is exactly a good kind of demonstration; while I would have liked to see you there in person, that was almost the next best thing. So Joly, thank you for taking the effort to doing that video clip.
Beau Brendler: Thanks Evan. Joly, you had a comment?
Joly MacFie: Well, I mean I’d have to say that it was Mattias who kind of put it together at the other end, and he did a very good job, I think, of little touches; he and Heidi putting the thing together. Then the last day I was able to make a big card that they put up in the lobby, and so on. My only interest is – also for putting together the webcast so I was able to participate remotely, I was just wondering if we can have that video to put up as an on demand thing, so that we’ll have the legacy to look at.
Beau Brendler: Okay, alright. Let’s move on then to item five. I’m not really going to take ten minutes to talk about priorities in the coming months, but I will kind of group some of these items together here. The events over the last few weeks have made me wonder if perhaps we should review some things about the way we go about doing business; I think perhaps that we might want to review the documentation on ALS participation requirements.
This kind of came to me as I was putting together the presentation for the showcase, in that there were a few ALSs in there that we just haven’t heard from, and you know, we have wrestled with the question before, as to what to do about that. I think perhaps that needs revisiting. So I’m going to get the language out of the ROP and circulate it and see if we have some group suggestions on what to do, if anything, on what to do with that.
Included also in that set of ideas is the item six there, requirements for any RALO individual membership, and related motion. Also during the showcase, it kind of came up that an obvious question, since we were trying to recruit more people to join us, was what do you have to do to be an individual member? And we just sort of anecdotally said “well, you know, you have to pay attention to the same types of requirements that we have for ALSs”, but we didn’t really go beyond that, and there wasn’t anything written down that resembled that.
Basically the requirements for individual membership participation are quite minimal; they basically just require that you join the NARALO mailing list. So I wanted to open the floor up to see if we had some thoughts on that, specifically in light of the debate that was taking place on the GAC scorecard, when we had some folks from the registry community come in and, in my opinion, kind of engage in the fallacy of the lone voice of reason principle.
I felt the need at one point to caution someone, which I never really like to do, but it seemed to be the right thing to do at the time. So I see Evan has his hand up. Maybe a discussion on this will ensue. Evan, go ahead.
Evan Liebovitch: First off, Beau, thank you for handling that whole situation in possibly the best possible way in what really could have been ugly. I think we were getting baited, and I think the fact that everybody kept level heads was actually testament to the fact that the baiting didn’t work. So to you and to everybody else on the list, I think it’s kind of proof that the system works.
On the specific thing, and I’m hoping Alan will jump in to correct me, because I’m probably going to be wrong. When we were doing things for the election of the ICANN Board director last year, we had to formalize things in terms of how somebody could register to be counted as an individual member, and if I recall, the requirements were simply be a resident of North America, subscribe to the mailing list, and submit a statement of interest.
It’s my understanding that those three things were necessary, and in fact, one of the people who was doing the baiting, had been asked to submit a statement back in August and refused, which has sort of made it a little difficult to engage with him about this. But we have specific procedures in place; the procedures had been reviewed last year, so I’m not quite sure how much you want to reopen that, considering that we just went through a fairly extensive review of that. So as far as I understand – oh, Alan, thank you. I’ll gladly cede to Alan who remembers the details, I’m sure, in better clarity than I do.
Alan Greenberg: No, you just omitted what I think is one of the other criteria, although it is a minor one; not being a member of another NARALO ALS.
Beau Brendler: Okay, maybe we don’t need to open the whole thing up to review; but I think it’s interesting that the position for representative and affiliated members, there is a proviso in there that that person not be in the employ of a registry or registrar, if I’m quoting the language correctly; and I’m just wondering if we should extend that language to an individual membership. I see Evan and Alan both have their hands up.
Evan Liebovitch: No, I just forgot to take mine down.
Beau Brendler: Okay, Alan?
Alan Greenberg: I would object strenuously if we tried doing that; I think someone should be able to participate and participate in good faith without it being reflected on them who their employer happens to be. Now, if someone wants to do it in bad faith, that is purely espouse the opinions of their employer or something akin to that, they’re going to be shot down. I think we can handle that.
There is some curiosity though; I don’t believe our current rules apply the same rule that they do to the glorious leader of the individuals, to the glorious leader of the RALO itself. I don’t believe there is a restriction on the Chair or the Secretariat to not be in the employ of a registrar. That we may want to address; a registrar or registry, but I would say there are too many people who wear multiple hats, and I don’t think it’s fair to disenfranchise them completely because of who happens to provide their paycheck this week. That’s my opinion, anyway.
Beau Brendler: Does anybody have any response to that opinion? Or want to weigh in?
Evan Liebovitch: Alan, I’ve got a quick question, and that is are you satisfied with the way things are working right now? That we’ve got sufficient prevention from capture?
Alan Greenberg: I think so. Let’s face it; at this point, I think we have four individual members. Even is the individual members were captured, as such, it’s still a small fraction of the overall group, and we have no prevention of capture for the ALSs that are properly – you, as the head of an ALS and all of its members, could well be working for a registrar or registry; there’s no requirement that that not be the case.
So I think we’re going to get far too – if we try to get far too rigorous on the individual side, I think we’re protecting ourselves from one thing, and not from the same case in more general cases, and I don’t really see a problem. I understand how it could backfire on us, just as our regular rule could backfire, but I don’t think it’s a major issue.
Evan Liebovitch: So you’re comfortable having it so that just the leadership has the restrictions that they can’t work for a contracted party, but the membership itself is fine to be wide open?
Alan Greenberg: I think that’s reasonable. I mean, I’m not even sure why we have the restriction on the leadership, given that we also have rules saying that the leader must follow the vote of their members. It’s no longer a free vote, but I believe we specify that there must be the equivalent of a sub-vote in dictating, so I’m not even sure the restriction is warranted in the case of the leader of the individual members.
It’s not a leader as such; it’s more of a person who has the ability to cast the vote, should it actually need to be cast. So I think that may be overkill in its own right, but fine, we have it, and I’m not sure that we need to change it.
Beau Brendler: I notice that Eric Brunner-Williams has joined. I don’t know if Eric is on – are you just in the Adobe Chat room, or are you also on the call, Eric?
[crosstalk]
Beau Brendler: I just wondered if you had an opinion or reflection on this, you know since you are the representative for unaffiliated members.
Eric Brunner-Williams: I am content with the restrictions that we have, the mechanisms to prevent capture.
Beau Brendler: Okay, alright. Okay, well I think we’ve given this subject a good going over. While I have Eric on the phone --
Alan Greenberg: Beau, I have one more question to ask on this subject though.
Beau Brendler: Okay, go ahead.
Alan Greenberg: I do have, on my plate, assigned many meetings ago, the requirement to provide some updates to our rules of procedure and principles, and one of them will be, unless someone tells me otherwise, that the Chair and Secretariat should have the same restrictions as the independent leader has. If anyone feels strongly that that shouldn’t be the case, then we should start a conversation sometime.
Beau Brendler: No, I think it should be the case.
Alan Greenberg: I think it was an omission that it wasn’t there, but if anyone feels that it would be inappropriate, then we should have that conversation.
Beau Brendler: I think we would have a tough time with people taking NARALO seriously as a group that represents the individual internet user if the leadership happens to be in the employ of one of the contracted parties. Joly has a hand up. Joly, go ahead.
Joly MacFie: I’m just saying that I’d like to see further discussion of this on the list.
Alan Greenberg: At worst, I’ll be drafting some words, and then there will be discussion.
Beau Brendler: We can certainly do that. I wanted to jump back to Eric; Eric, you joined after I think we had gone past the recently submitted ALAC statement. Did you just want – did you have any comment that you might want to make on item F in the agenda, which is the ALAC response to the NCIA notice of inquiry?
Eric Brunner-Williams: I submitted a separate response along with Jean-Jacque; I read the ALAC response, and of course, the ringing endorsement of things as they are was insufficiently critical, or not critical in a harmful sense, but (inaudible) that the various IANA functions can be separated, and therefore there is no compelling case for remaining under one contract.
Beau Brendler: Okay, alright. There’s some complexities to this, so if anybody has any questions or wants to talk it through, you can post to the list and Eric or Jean-Jacque or possibly I can help with understanding that. I have Joly and I have Evan raising their hands. Joly, I think you’re first in the queue. Joly, you still there?
Joly MacFie: I haven’t put my hand down. It’s down.
Beau Brendler: Okay, Evan?
Evan Liebovitch: Since two separate signatories of that separate letter are in on this call, I want to ask if you think the process failed you in not having your views reflected in the actual ALAC statement that went in? Could there have been a better way to do this, so that rather than having an ALAC statement and three members of At-Large putting in another statement, is there a better way this could have been done? Or were the two views just so totally divergent that it wasn’t practical to try and reflect both in one document?
Beau Brendler: For my part, I don’t really have any feelings that the system failed me. There were just so many other things going on, it was a very, very busy time for me and for any RALO that was in the showcase and all that. So this wasn’t ideal, but I don’t necessarily think it’s – it’s anomalous, but not problematic, I don’t think. Eric may feel differently.
Eric Brunner-Williams: Well, let’s see; I think that I can say that the first statement, the predecessor to the NARALO statement probably arrived at a conclusory posture too early. That is, it endorsed the retention of the existing model, without asking if this was necessary or sufficient. That really is the root of the difference between the two comments; one endorsing the retention of the single contract with several functions underneath it as being something that should not be changed for a merit reason; and the other comment, the one that was submitted by the three ALAC members pointed out that the functions could be separated, and therefore it was reasonable to ask if there were potential issues with not separating them going forward, and arriving at some conclusion that there were some possible adverse consequence to their remaining as a single contract under the existing parties carrying out the contract.
I don’t know that this is a necessarily failure of the system to have the initial draft arrive at an opinion, or a somewhat conclusory finding so early in the process. It is under the applicable time to make separate drafting much more effective than attempting to work out the issues on short notice. Had we tried to do this with a month’s lead time to discuss the general question of separability of the IANA function, I think we might have achieved a single document. Thank you.
Beau Brendler: You’re welcome. Okay, this is a reminder, in about nine minutes I’m going to have to go get my daughter. So I’m going to ask Alan Greenberg if he would be willing to jump in and Chair the meeting.
Alan Greenberg: I would prefer that someone else do it, because I’ve got a cough, and I tend to go through coughing fits when I talk more than a bit.
Beau Brendler: Normally I would turn to Darlene, but she’s not here. Evan, would you mind?
Evan Liebovitch: Okay.
Beau Brendler: It should be fairly straight forward.
Evan Liebovitch: I think I’ve done it before, once.
Beau Brendler: I think you have ample experience. Okay, let’s see; the next agenda topic up is probably a good one to transition anyway. It’s background regarding the ALAC vote on the GAC scorecard. We have you down for five minutes on that, and that will probably cover the time that I’m about to jump out.
Evan Liebovitch: Thanks, I think I’ve covered the basics of it already. Essentially, there was a lengthy document that was prepared. At-Large has been spending an awful lot of time speaking very precisely, and very loudly; the big difference is now apparently people are listening.
When we have both the Board and the GAC explicitly asking for our unfiltered views of the process, it’s good to have these other parties interested to hear what we have to say. This is what’s news. What we were saying I don’t think has varied significantly, in fact, from the statement that came out of the summit. So we were consistent, as most of you know from the mailing list, we survived a couple of baiting attempts, and I’m – as one of the authors of this, I’m fairly happy with what went out.
I’m more than happy to take questions on it, but this was a big issue. What is now left to be seen, is now that the document is in the hands of the Board and the GAC, see if anything is going to happen. The Board was being kind of adamant that there was going to be some kind of a gTLD party taking place in Singapore, so there’s at least some faction of the Board that’s hell-bent on approving some of it.
Whether they approve some of it or all of it, or heed some of our advice to go slow on at least some parts of this, is yet to be seen.
Beau Brendler: I have a question. Do you think that we need to, or do you think a statement needs to be made that --- I have a feeling that any RALO probably came off as being – or maybe this is an issue for the whole At-Large, as perhaps being against implementation of new gTLDs altogether. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case, but I’m wondering if there are a lot of people out there who think that now; that we believe or we sort of have this idea that we don’t need new gTLDs at all.
Evan Liebovitch: I can only speak in my own capacity. There were one or two people speaking up on the NARALO list that said that this is much ado about nothing. I think that generally the ALAC policy has been – and Olivier, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but generally that At-Large wants new gTLDs; it’s just that we are not so hell-bent on having things done so hastily that things are done really disregarding the public interest.
You know, on one hand we’re saying that things are moving too hasty, on the other hand, this has been in the works for years. What it means though, is that we’ve been ignored for years and years, and all of a sudden, we’re being heard for the first time. So all of a sudden, when we say “please listen to us and do some things right”, all of a sudden, we’re being seen as the impediments.
I don’t think, generally speaking, that we’re thought of as wanting to now have TLDs, but I think there are some people, and I think that was reflected in the baiting discussion that happened in the list, that there’s some people saying “how dare you try and even slow things down right now? We’re heading toward approval in Singapore, and don’t you dare get in the way.” That kind of thing I have a problem with. There’s some things that are still being very, very poorly done.
All that’s changed now is that people are saying they want to hear from us. Whether or not it means we have any effect on the process, or whether or not we’re just standing in the way of the locomotive, is still yet to be seen. They’ve asked for our advice, we’ve given it. We’ve said that they need too – there’s certain parts of the TLD program that we’ve said need to be totally rewritten, in fact; but we’ve agreed with the GAC on that. And so there’s the contracted parties, they’re saying “how dare you delay something that’s been so carefully crafted?” And our response is “well, we weren’t part of that consensus.”
So that’s basically where things are at. And Beau, I don’t think we’re seen widely as not wanting TLDs, but I think there are some, especially in the contracted parties, that think that we’re trying to wreck their party by slowing down something that they think needs to happen as soon as possible.
Beau Brendler: Okay. I’m going to jump off now; I hopefully can be back in about ten minutes.
Evan Liebovitch: Okay, alright, so on my own comments; I guess we’ll get to the queue. I may not have Adobe Connect privileges to raise and lower hands, so I’ll leave that to you folks to do it yourselves. I’ve got Alan first in the queue, and then Eric.
Alan Greenberg: Okay, thank you. I think there have been two parallel issues that people intermix. One is that ALAC has been exceedingly consistent from day one, of saying we have specific problems, and we believe they should be fixed, in the various versions of the applicant guidebook, as we went along. We may have refined the details, but we’ve been very consistent in that.
The second is, do we believe that we desperately need thousands of new gTLDs, and the ALAC has been consistent in part of it; that is “do we need IDN TLDs?” and “do we needs one that favor people with non-ASCII and non-English speaking requirements?” I think we’ve been very consistent in that. Where we haven’t been consistent, and I think this indicates growth of maturity, not a problem; is that five years ago the ALAC was very much in the belief of let a thousand flowers bloom; and the more the merrier, and the world needs thousands of gTLDs.
Now I think there’s a much more somber position; that we’re not objecting to them, we’re not saying we shouldn’t have them, but it’s not clear we see the desperate need for it. With the exception, of course, of language and script issues. So I think we have evolved in that; we still have some people who believe the more the merrier, and other people who perhaps have always believed that a more modest move forward would probably be the wisest thing; but we’re not going to stop something more glorious from happening. Thank you.
Evan Liebovitch: I agree, thank you. I have something to say, but Eric, go ahead.
Eric Brunner-Williams: Thank you very much, I’m putting most of it into the chat so that’s it’s available, but I’m getting interrupted by my wife telling me that it’s 76° in Ithaca. I’m currently in California. I’d like to see how either RALOs or ALAC express a preference, or some TLDs and not all TLDs; that is things for which we think there is a clear public interest use requirement, and then things for which we can’t find a clear public interest needs requirement.
So I don’t think that the world needs another pay per click name space for pay per click access , although the domain owners may be fairly keen on obtaining one, and certainly the registry operator would be very keen on being the lucky winner of the .com replacement sweepstakes. But I’d like to see us basically express a preference for things that matter; like linguistics and cultural and IDNs, and by IDNs I exclude the idea of com in multiple scripts.
We’re not doing IDNs just so VeriSign can expand its franchise; and make the distinction between these things for which there is a public necessity or interest; necessity or utility claim, and the pay per clicks and the typo squads and the grams and generics, for which we can’t actually come up with one consensus, let alone by even a majority or even a strong minority opinion.
I don’t like this space to be necessarily a critique of the thousand flowers; the things which we do which inherently cause or create cost and complexity, so if there was 1000 applicants accepted in the current round, or 4 or 500, it really doesn’t matter; this means that the – I have this vision of Joseph McCarthy standing up before the armed services committee waving a sheet of paper on which he claims he has the name of some 40 communists.
Well, the number of people who are actually competent to do DNSSEC is about that large. If there are 500 TLDs all being approved in one round, then those 40 people are looking at full employment, because of the DNSSEC requirements. It’s not clear that there really is an immediate benefit to that. I understand (inaudible). But the mere fact of creating a synchronous event of large size creates very large (inaudible) or creates a real scarcity of some critical resources, and some of those resources are people who can’t be replicated.
So it’s not a problem we can solve by throwing more money at it; even for those who have money. So if we’re aware of things that we do, that we’re asked first to do, or in a position that has an inadvertent effect of creating an advantage for VeriSign and other platform operators, for whom they’ve already got the skills, they’ve already got the platform, they’ve already got the capacity; so a large synchronous demand event favors them over new startups. I’d like to have us be aware when we inadvertently create (inaudible) complexity. Thank you.
Evan Liebovitch: Eric, I just want to get a clarification. It sounds like you’re speaking a little bit of two different issues we’ve been talking about; one of which was the security and stability group speaking about whether or not DNSSEC should be mandatory, and also speaking to the gTLD program. Are you dealing with both, or concentrating your thoughts on one or the other?
Eric Brunner-Williams: The DNSSEC is an instance of a problem. If we have a thousand demands for anything, that thing becomes a scarce resource. If it’s valuable enough to actually pursue in its scarcity, then there’s reason for enclosing that as a requirement. But whether there is or isn’t, we should be aware that by creating a synchronous demand for a resource, we’re creating cost that we did not anticipate.
So as a for instance, those 40 people, guys and gals, they may have a day rate of $50.00 an hour, but when you tell them that they’re all sold for the month of March 2012, then they decide that the fair rate, given the amount of demand for their time, is $500 an hour.
Evan Liebovitch: Got it. Okay, Alan, you’re next in the queue.
Alan Greenberg: Yeah, I just wanted to point out, as Eric says, it’s not just the DNSSEC. The ability to run a robust, reliable, unhackable registry itself is something that not everyone who has a PC on his desk can do. To be honest, I’m not convinced that there are enough people around to do this, but I think the ship has sailed. We should have considered that a lot earlier, and we didn’t, and I’m not sure we have the ability to stop that part now. It’s unfortunate, but I’m not at all convinced we can.
Evan Liebovitch: Was it that we didn’t, or we did and nobody listened?
Alan Greenberg: No, I don’t think we did; I think there are requirements in the applicant guidebook for how do you recognize someone who can run a reliable registry; I’m not convinced they’re strong enough, and I’m not convinced it’s realistic to be able to predict that ahead of time, given what we can ask people. You know, it’s really a matter of putting them down in front of a scenario, and giving them a test, rather than credentials you see on paper. So I think we may well have problems, but I’m not sure we can do anything about it, given the state we are.
Evan Liebovitch: Okay. Anyone else want to comment? Eric, go ahead.
Eric Brunner-Williams: Thank you, speaking to Alan’s point, going back to the last two years, when I was working for [Core], which is not a contracted party as a registry operator even though it operates the back end for two registries, it is a contracted party as a registrar. So when I went attend the registry constituency meetings, now the registry stake-holder meetings, I would be asked to leave in each meeting when they discussed contract terms. Now, those contract terms actually were discussions of performance levels, leading to the current SLA requirements in the proposed contract.
So what was occurring was VeriSign, Affilius, and NewStart and of course their clients, who don’t actually have back ends, were all preventing a registry backend operator from participating in the discussion of what registry operators will need to be qualified to operate registries in the future. And the future is now here. This has lead to a – whether or not this is a direct consequence, or simply a coincidence, either way, the requirements for the 2011 applicants are enormously higher than the 2004 applicants, which were higher than the requirements for the 2000 applicants.
It’s very difficult for me to entertain the idea that all 500 of the registries, when they operate, necessarily have to be more robust, reliable, larger, etc., than the original .museum registry. Some things will start small and will grow slowly. Other things may start large; but when NewStart gambled on that, in 2000, it spent $20 million on its registry buildup, and wasn’t even able to cover the interest cost from its revenues for several years after that.
So (inaudible), for one reason or another, or for several reasons, the regime of higher requirements on a large number of applicants simultaneously, and anything we can do to walk back those requirements, at least for the registries which have a social purpose, is a good thing. I’m not advocating that we walk back the requirements for the pay per clicks and the generics, but certainly thinking about what are the requirements we’re imposing on non Latin, operated by non-profits, or people that don’t currently have access to the DNS, I think it’s prudent to examine that. Thank you.
Beau Brendler: I’m back now.
Evan Liebovitch: Okay.
Beau Brendler: So --
Evan Liebovitch: Okay, the last thing I’m going to do before handing it over – Olivier, you have the floor, and before we move on to the next thing, I'd just like to find out if anybody whose name is not Alan, Evan, or Eric has something to say about this. Olivier, go ahead.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you, Evan. I was just going to say I really like what I hear from Eric here. It’s also something I feel I’ve heard from several people. What I do find interesting from the discussions that took place on the NARALO list is that there obviously is some kind of opposition to this inherent categorization.
As Eric describes focusing on trying to have specific categories, or specific types of new gTLDs pushed forward, such as community ones; those others, the other people say “well, if you get to prioritize some, then you’re obviously going to delay others.” I guess it’s the question of the half full or the half empty glass.
So it’s interesting, and obviously there doesn’t seem to be a complete answer for all that, because depending on which side of the line you look at, or you look from, you are going to look at it and see something else. So I don’t see an answer to this question. Thank you.
Evan Liebovitch: Okay, Beau you’re welcome to the Chair back. I think we’ve basically exhausted this one.
Beau Brendler: Still on new gTLDs, I’m guessing. Or GAC scorecard?
Evan Liebovitch: Yes. Well, done with it now.
Beau Brendler: Done with it now, yes. I’m not actually prepared at the moment to talk about the new At-Large working group on future challenges, as it’s listed here in the agenda. So I’m going to – I can give more information about that over the list or on the next call, if that’s alright with everybody.
Evan Liebovitch: Can I give 30 seconds?
Beau Brendler: Yeah, sure.
Evan Liebovitch: Okay, essentially Jean-Jacque Subrenat, who is a former Board member who has now joined ALAC proposed a special task force that would finally get ALAC out of the rut of always responding to things that other groups were doing. Responding to the scorecard, responding to the Board, responding to public comment periods, and to have a group that could actually spend some time thinking about initiatives that At-Large wants to do.
Part of the reason why this needs to be mentioned in the RALO, and to every other region, is because this is not going to work if it’s just the same old ALAC people. So there’s definitely a deliberate attempt to try and get anybody who is interested in pro-active activity that ALAC and At-Large can do, rather than just reacting to other things.
That’s my interpretation of what the intention of the group is, and this is also a sort of form of a call, that if anybody in this group is interested in participating in that, it has some very, very interesting promise to it. I would really encourage you to either let Beau know, or Olivier, of your interest in being in that group.
Beau Brendler: Thank you, Evan. That’s terrific. If we can go to Gareth quickly, and we will let Seth finish up pretty much the rest of the meeting with his other business here. So go ahead, Gareth.
Gareth Shearman: I just wanted to clarify with Evan. I thought that group had been closed off now, that they were not still looking for people to join it.
Evan Liebovitch: Oh, just the opposite. What happened is Jean-Jacque tossed out a feeler in the ALAC list saying that I’m interested in doing this, he essentially was looking for what should be the mission, what should be the name of it, he was just trying to close off some interest in that; and then the feedback he got was “No, this shouldn’t be kept to just the ALAC. This should be extended to ALS and RALO membership all over.
That if it’s just the usual suspects from ALAC who are participating in it, it’s going to really severely restrict what it can do.” So what has happened is, during the time that he put that call out, there’s been an explicit attempt to try and bring that out so that anyone from any ALS or in our case, individual members, are welcome to get involved in it, without having to be ALAC members.
Gareth Shearman: Thank you for the clarification, Evan.
Evan Liebovitch: Olivier, does that match your understanding?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: The green tick says yes.
Evan Liebovitch: Okay.
Beau Brendler: Okay, alright, then over to Seth for new ALS applications for all RALOs, followed by confluence update.
Seth Greene: Thanks very much, Beau. Very briefly, there have been recently three new applications since the San Francisco meeting. They are listed there for anyone who is interested; and regarding the confluence, transition is actually still going on, believe it or not, from social text to confluence. There are a few things that staff would like to point out to NARALO and the other RALOs.
There has been an attempt to improve the confluence pages, it’s basically focused on a few different aspects, one has been – and you, yourself may have noticed this. There are a lot of broken urls or links on the pages that IT has been attempting to fix. There’s been some reformatting, particularly the ALAC work group pages, you might have seen, have undergone some improvements and we’re making those a little more intuitive to use, one would hope.
There have been – there’s been an attempt to take the remaining social text pages of At-Large’s Wiki and finally transfer them over to confluence. And I think for the most part, that’s basically the improvements that have been going on. I do want to point out that there is actually a very good confluence Wiki guide, for those who are interested, on the actual Wiki, and there’s a link to that in the new links pod.
The new links pod on the Adobe Connect page, that you see in the lower left quadrant of the room, if you just highlight, it looks to me like it is the seventh link from the top; confluence Wiki guide, if you highlight it and click on browse to, the browse to button underneath, you can get to that. That’s been created actually on the request of the improvements project to IT specifically for everyone’s use, but specifically I think for the use of the ALSs, now that we’ll be rolling out their own, their individual confluence pages to them.
That’s actually the final thing that I wanted to mention, and that is the project that Navid had briefed us on, and actually it was Navid and some other people briefed us on in San Francisco. That has been done, there’s a link also in that link spot, a NARALO/ALS Wiki pages, if anyone’s interested, you could go there and see the templates that are being given to each of the NARALO ALSs, and Marilyn is going to be working with them to complete their pages in whatever way, with whatever information, within reason, that the ALSs would like.
Finally, in an affiliated, in a related project, there’s also the Adobe Connect room that’s now available for the NARALO ALSs, the NARALO ALS Adobe Connect room, and the link to that is on the top of the page of the ALS Wiki pages. Sorry for speeding through that, but I think most of you are probably familiar with a lot of it already, I hope. Any questions or anything? That’s all I wanted to mention, Beau. Thanks very much.
Joly MacFie: I have a couple of things. It’s important to knock out those legacy debt pages, because they have out of date information, and if you Google, that’s the stuff that comes out, or at least have it redirected.
Seth Greene: yeah, understood.
Joly MacFie: Too, something that I mentioned in the showcase. If you go to the actual page of how can I join At-Large, it kind of says it’s for individuals and groups, and then it only describes how you can join as an ALS. It doesn’t have any guides for what you can do as an individual, and I think it should say, you know, if you’re an individual – well, if you’re in North America you can join, if you’re somewhere else you can join one of the other ALSs. It’s not clear, at all, how you as an individual can take a role in At-Large, and then three, my question about the Adobe Connect, how pre-Wiki user, can we use it for any purpose whatsoever, or only for ICANN related matters?
Alan Greenberg: If I may, Beau? That is, as far as the Adobe Connect room goes, so far the discussions have actually talked about limiting the use; certainly just for ICANN related matters. That is, matters related to the ALSs and individuals who can use them, in relation to their role as members of NARALO. So yes, that’s for ICANN purposes, other than, for example, personal purposes. And there might – NARALO will have to probably, s will the other RALOs, start taking a role in – if there becomes a high demand, obviously in scheduling the room. But that’s all; we’re leaving that up to the individual RALOs.
Beau Brendler: Hi there, it’s Beau. I got disconnected twice in a row. I apologize for that, although it wasn’t my fault. I see Olivier has his hand up, so go ahead.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Beau, I was just going to add to what Seth had said. The Adobe Connect rooms are really to promote the inter-ALS discussions, and get them to work on projects together. Giving them or giving access to these rooms for private use or use that is not ICANN related raises a problem, because there are a lot of ALSs per region, and it just wouldn’t be very fair to make use of those resources without it actually being a resource that will benefit the RALO and the region. Thank you.
Beau Brendler: Okay, well I’ve lost all train of where we are now, but I’m assuming that we’re at the end of Seth’s presentation. Correct?
Seth Greene: Yes, Beau.
Beau Brendler: Okay, does anybody else have any other business to bring up? Any issues to talk about? It’s 4:05 so we’re five minutes over.
Joly MacFie: If I can just talk briefly about the town hall, and say the sort of webcast from the video chasing were, I’m afraid, a bit of a failure. But I have sort of culled together what I got, and I’ve put it up on Youtube, and also a link in the chat.
Beau Brendler: Well, thank you Joly. It should be said that the town hall, was from my perspective, a big success in its live format, in San Francisco. I think it was quite an effort for us to put on both a showcase and an offsite event, that I think got 90 people. So those who participated in setting that up and promoting it I think are to be congratulated. It was a good event. Eric has his hand up. Eric?
Eric Brunner-Williams: Thank you Beau. I originally advocated for us having the second event in Palo Alto, but when I realized that the technical component was going to be pitched at the people who – the notion of the ALAC membership potential membership, the outreach actually would be to people who didn’t know what an IPv4 address was, I thought that that was an unfortunate choice, that we were actually in an audience that had much higher prior knowledge than was being presumed by the presenters.
So in the future, I’d like to see a decision, really, whether or not the technical component of any ALAC communication will be pitched below the IP for dummies level, or if it will be pitched at a level that is comparable to the policy level that’s also contained in the message. Thank you.
Beau Brendler: Thanks for that comment. I think in this particular case, Mark Rotenberg, who provided the energy and the emphasis, or a lot of it, for the town hall, sort of envisioned it as a way to bring people in to the fold, or at least expose them to some issues. Maybe not realize we’re part of ICANN, but I think actually it turned out to be kind of a – it turned out to feel more like an event from the NCUC, I think, or the old NCUC. Actually, the new NCUC, if they’re still in existence, than an ALAC event.
Eric Brunner-Williams: it was with Mark that I could not come to an agreement on if the technical component should be at the same level of complexity as the policy component. If we discuss policy from the point of view of people who don’t know how policy is made, that would be – well, very different. So doing technology that way seems to be mismatched from the quality area. But thank you very much.
Beau Brendler: Sure. Thank you. Does anybody have any other comments on the town hall? Joly has his hand up.
Joly MacFie: Let me see if my microphone is on, yes. I was going to mention that this Global IPv6 Day, June 8; Internet Society is doing that, I just want to put that out there.
Beau Brendler: Okay, alright. Okay, anything else? We’ve gone eight minutes over, so this will be a good time to say farewell until next month, and see you all on the lists. Take care.
