The call for the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Working Group is scheduled to take place on Monday, 17 October 2016 at 3:00 UTC for 90 minutes.
20:00 PDT (Sunday), 23:00 EDT (Sunday), 04:00 London, 05:00 CEST
for other places see: http://tinyurl.com/jgh36ex
PROPOSED AGENDA:
1. Welcome/Review Agenda
2. SOIs
3. Update from WT Leaders
4. WG Update/ICANN57 planning
5. Continued discussion on Overarching Issues/CC1
6. AOB
Dial outs: Amr Elsadr, Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Kavouss Arasteh, Phil Buckingham León Sánchez
Apologies: Alan Greenberg, Jorge.Cancio, Amr Elsadr, Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Kavouss Arasteh, Phil Buckingham, Leon Sanchez
On audio only:
Notes/Actions:
Action Item: Need a volunteer for a Work Track 3 Sub Team co-chair.
Discussion Notes:
1. Update from WT Leaders
Work Track 1 Sub Team:
- Sara Bockey: The next Work Track 1 meeting is on 18 October. Additions have been made to the pros and cons on the accreditation program. The Work Track Sub Team is looking at pros and cons of the applicant support program. Christa and I are looking to meet with someone from that program. Then we will at look at the applicant guidebook.
- Avri Doria: I reached out to Rafik, have you?
- Sara Bockey: No we have not reached out yet.
- Avri Doria: I think Dennis Change was on the staff side and I think Rafik was one of the working group chairs.
Work Track 2 Sub Team: Michael Flemming: Reserved names and LOCs. We've looked at the single category base registry agreement. I also contacted the BRG and the Registries, but have not had a discussion yet. We will see the other groups we need to look to, also. In addition, we ooked at the terms and conditions in applying to new gTLDs.
Work Track 3 Sub Team:
- Karen Day: We are looking for a new co-chair. Our first co-chair has had to step down due to other conflicts. We had a meeting last Tuesday and we dove into limited public interest objections. It was a very lightly utilized objection in the last round. Our next item would be legal rights objections. We are reaching out to anyone involved in the public interest objections. We meet again Tuesday week.
- Avri Doria: We would very much like someone to join in this effort as a co-chair. It really is a lot of work, but much better if we have more than one co-chair.
- Jeff Neuman: We don't have anyone here from Work Track 4. We will be meeting next week.
2. WG Update/ICANN57 planning
- Jeff Neuman: There is a 4-hour session at ICANN57. We will try to make it extremely interactive. The leaders of the Work Tracks have been charged with finding questions that would be interesting to the larger community. There is the concept of rounds. Trying to get feedback from some of the proposals we've received. Each Work Track leader has been asked to come up with teaser proposals. This will be open to the meeting at large. We hope this meeting will be well attended. We are having a meeting on 24 October to talk about Hyderabad planning. It is not mandatory to show up. We are not going to have a call on Monday, the 31st. Many people will be traveling to Hyderabad at the time.
- Sara Bockey: One topic is what went wrong with the last round on the applicant support program and second is accreditation.
- Michael Flemming: Category for ... also for reserved names at the second level and top level. And continuing operations such as EBERO and whether that is necessary.
- Karen Day: The two subjects that I would like to get feedback on: The issue of are we do this again in rounds or in an ongoing first-come, first-served process. This impacts a lot of Work Track 3. The second thing is that we would like to get input on is do we need an independent objector?
- Avri Doria: I do want to remind people that the meeting in Hyderabad on Thursday will be open to participants, observers, and anyone else who is there. We will be suspending the rules. Can we have a quick show of hands of those who plan to be in Hyderabad?
- Michael Flemming:
- For Reserved Names, what is a reserved name and what are the reserved names per the RA? Do any changes need to be made to the reserved names to reflect the changes in recent processes that allow for the release of such reserved names?
- In the 2012 round, a Continuing Operations Instrument was required to be submitted in the form of a Letter of Credit to fund an Emergency Back End Registry Operator. That requirement proved to be difficult for a number of registries to meet. What other options are there to fund the EBERO functions? Also, some registries, such as Brand TLDs, consider that a Continuing Operations Instrument is not required due to the nature of their TLD. This spans into the background of EBERO requirements, as well, but would the Continuing Operations Instrument be required for TLDs that would qualify for an exemption to the Code of Conduct for the RA?
- Michael Flemming: The above are the 3 topics Work Track 2 is looking at exploring for ICANN57.
3. Continued Discussion on Overarching Issues/CC1. See: https://community.icann.org/x/3B6OAw.
- Jeff Neuman: I will be reading the comments that were submitted, or at least summarizing them. Then doing to number 3, which is on rounds or how to introduce the next application window. [Reading from CC1 Review Tool document.]
- Avri Doria: Any questions?
- Jeff Neuman: If I interpret GAC content only, if the community did not qualify, then it went to the next contention mechanism, such as to an auction. They are still discussing whether it was appropriate to go to an auction if the applicant didn't have the financial resources.
- Tom Dale (GAC Secretariat): I think that is basically correct. Regards to community application experience, there is some research that will be submitted at Hyderabad and I hope the GAC will be able to make that available either during or after Hyderabad.
- Martin Sutton: The questions were posed to SO/ACs but many registries are not members of the RySG or other groups, particularly dot Brands, should these questions be sent directly to registry operators?
- Jeff Neuman: This group would love to see that paper once it is completed.
2e.R2
- Jeff Neuman: [Reading from CC1 Review Tool document.] Martin -- this was only for community comments. This is not the only time we'll be talking about these topics. If you could assist us in getting comments from more brands, the more feedback the better. There was a round in 2005 that dealt with only sponsored gTLDs. So each of the applicants tried to apply as a sponsored community-based TLDs. Some of them were not what people thought a community-based TLD should be. If we have a brand-only round there is a fear that some applicants would try to fit themselves in.
- Avri Doria: If I could add a personal point. It is that there is gaming and a counter claim that the accusations of gaming go beyond a workaround of the rule and that the accusations becomes another form of gaming. We need to define how we think of something as a work around to the rule. This is a really important discussion to have.
- Jeff Neuman: Martin -- a question of why some brands are asking for a separate agreement and how you would define that category. That would help the discussion.
- Martin Sutton: Agree it could be possible to define restrictions to avoid gaming, particularly for dot Brands and could provide opportunities for ICANN to move ahead with smaller, distinct application rounds to maintain momentum before continuous cycles.
- Cecilia Smith: agreed
3a.R1, 3a.R2 and 3a. R3: [Reading responses from the CC1 document.]
- Jeff Neuman: If you have a predictable window the problem wouldn't go away. An alternate proposal would be an application window, then evaluations could start in Q3 and have a separate application window. You could have a continuous acceptance of applications, but it would not eliminate the problem of contention sets. I would also note that the CCT-RT is considering this issue of rounds and one action item is to figure out what progress they have made on this issue.
- Avri Doria: A personal comment on this: If we started with this sort of procedure would we likely be a unwinding of the pent-up demand? Basically, my question is if we were to start at the beginning would we still see a rush of 10,000 for that first one if people knew they could apply for the next one? My question. if we start from day 1 with this alternate procedure, will that even out the pent up demand or will we still have a first rush of 10k applications? Is there any way to determine this?
- Jeff Neuman: It will be great to hear from others on this call. What would be some of the benefits or challenges if we did first come, first served?
- Karen Day: I will throw out my perspective. I think that people are worrying a bit too much for worrying about getting access to the same thing. My preference is first come, first served, and that would eliminate a lot of problems from the first round.
- Klaus Stoll: In general I think continuous rounds sound most attractive. Maybe the 3 months on, 3 months off would give us some peace and quiet to evaluate applications.
- Jeff Neuman: That would help for resources. The GAC said should there be a mechanism that if there is an application for a string should others be notified and for the use of the string. What does everyone think of alerting the world and giving others the opportunity to apply for that same string?
- Michael Flemming: I am not sure if applicants if people applied for a TLD that they would want to invite contention via a notification. I am assuming this is a gazette for trademarks. If you are thinking about those terms it would be difficult to devise grounds to oppose.
- Jeff Neuman: I think your comments were about a gazette for trademarks -- once the mark has gone through its evaluation the mark is published and others can oppose it on certain grounds. This would be akin to both publishing but not just to object but also apply for it. I think it is interesting and something to consider. We should write it up and go through the pros and cons. I think I might want to stop here because of connectivity issues.
- Avri Doria: I think it is a good place. We will stop there and continue at our next meeting. We will probably go through this after Hyderabad. For our Monday, 24 October meeting we should probably plan for how to continue. Once we have finished going through these then the leadership and staff can go through a first cut of a draft report to start to approach a consensus.