AT-LARGE GATEWAY
At-Large Regional Policy Engagement Program (ARPEP)
At-Large Review Implementation Plan Development
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Yrjö was previously a GAC member representing Finland, and a member of the ICANN President's Strategy Committee and has been active in At-Large since 2009. He is currently a delegate to the Nominating Committee
GAC Liaison's Report on ALAC-GAC Meeting at Virtual ICANN69
A joint session of the GAC and ALAC/At-Large took place at the Virtual ICANN69 on October 21, 2020, with EPDP, SubPro and DNS Abuse on the agenda for comparing notes and planning further cooperation.
EPDP
Alan Greenberg noted that EPDP is now at an interesting point, as GNSO has adopted all recommendations from EPDP Phase 2, including some not supported by a consensus. It is now up to the Board to decide what to do, but it is the responsibility of the GAC and the ALAC, as the two main advisory committees, to think carefully what kind of advice they give to the board. When the EPDP WG reconvenes for Phase 2 A, the two groups have to put forward proposals on different treatment of legal and natural persons and on anonymized e-mail addresses.
Hadia El-Miniawi added the issue of accuracy, the ability of the SSAD to evolve, and financial aspects to the joint concerns of ALAC and GAC.
Chris Lewis-Evans assured that GAC representatives look forward to working together with ALAC on proposing a way forward for the whole EPDP.
Manal Ismail concluded the discussion suggesting a call between topic leads after ICANN69 to agree on concrete steps forward or even to start jointly working on material to feed into the Phase 2A tracks.
Taking note of the suggestion, Yrjö Länsipuro took organizing the call as an AI.
SubPro
As promised at the ALAC-GAC intersessional meeting (21 October 2020 ), Justine Chew presented a comparative analysis of comments on following topics from different stakeholders in the SubPro PC process:
- 1)Registry commitments and enforceability
- 2)DNS abuse mitigation
- 3)Application support and communications (outreach)
- 4)Community applications + CPE
- 5)Auctions & private resolution of contention sets
- 6)Closed generics aka “exclusive generics”[1]
On 1), Justine noted the GAC had comment that we should be looking at Category 2 safeguards for TLDs in highly regulated sectors. She also drew attention to the Board’s concern about the enforceability of both PICs and RVCs in light of ICANN Bylaws which exclude judgment on contents from ICANN’s mission. On 2), Justine noted that GAC expects swift action from GNSO Council in triggering holistic efforts on abuse mitigation. On 3), ALAC still had concerns over some of the draft final recommendations, including source of funds, details of auction bid credit, prevention of gaming (eg., in connection with an application denied support and then transferred into a standard one), and metrics. On 4), Justine noted that the GAC and the ALAC are saying similar things in their comments. ALAC has pushed for major reforms in the CEP process, eg., for including more grassroots participation in the evaluation panels or their access to expertise in community matters, and for avoiding the bias toward economic communities. On 5), ALAC is proposing a ban on private auctions so that auctions proceeds would benefit the global internet community. And finally, on 6), allowing closed generics, if at all, only if they served some sort of public interest.
From the GAC side, a recognition of Justine’s tremendous effort and expertise was expressed, as well as of the inter-sessional collaboration with the ALAC, which the GAC looks forward to continuing. Luisa Paez, GAC Vice-Chair, noted that at the GAC session with the Board the day before, the GAC had raised two items of importance to the ALAC, namely implementing CCT Review recommendations, with a particular focus on DNS Abuse, and the question of enforceability of public interest commitments.[2] She concluded that there is a lot of commonality in terms of the ALAC and GAC views, and that the GAC is looking forward to engaging further with the ALAC.
Jorge Cancio, GAC Vice-Chair, endorsed Luisa’s thanks to Justine and ALAC, and her view on the commonalities of ALAC and GAC positions. He drew attention to the evolution of the GAC thinking on SubPro from a compilation of the views of about 20 individual GAC members in April-May[3] to the consensus input to the draft SubPro report in September.[4] During ICANN69, the GAC discussed both internally and raised with SubPro WG co-chairs the question of what role the GAC would play in the new predictability framework. Jorge noted that the PDP WG should be aware of the synergy and alignment between the comments from the GAC and ALAC, which both, at the end of the process, have the possibility of issuing advice to the Board. He expressed the hope that their comments are well considered in the WG, so that interventions at the end can be minimized.
Manal held out the possibility of an intersessional call between SubPro topic leads, if they think it would be needed, to agree on how to align our next steps together might be.
Combating DNS Abuse
Lastly, an AOB item at the suggestion of the ALAC side was raised on the possible cooperation on grassroots capacity building on combating DNS Abuse. As Jonathan Zuck, ALAC Vice-Chair explained, ALAC is committed to a two-pronged approach to combating DNS Abuse, by pursuing improvements to relevant policies of ICANN, and by launching a campaign to educate individual internet users about how to protect themselves from harms like phishing scams and others based on DNS Abuse. Looking for cooperation with GAC on the matter, At-Large brings to the table a fairly deep network of its regional/local structures that enables us to reach out in a significant way. What At-Large looks for from governments are educational resources of the type of videos produced by FTC/US that Laureen Kapin of the PSWG had pointed out. ALAC is now in a resource identification phase, finding out what kind of resources in what languages are available.
Manal thought the initiative was a relevant and timely one, noting that the need of capacity building on combating DNA Abuse has been mentioned in previous GAC communiqués, and echoing Jonathan’s call to GAC members for sharing any relevant materials.
Maureen Hilyard, the ALAC Chair, noted the important place of capacity building in the At-Large plans next year and thanked the GAC in advance for its help for this effort.
Conclusion
At the conclusion of the meeting, Manal reminded her GAC colleagues that since Ana Neves, the representative of Portugal, left the GAC, there has not been a GAC Liaison to the ALAC, as a counterpart to the ALAC Liaison to the GAC, and she was now seeking volunteers for that task.
Lastly, Alan took the floor commenting the evolution of the GAC over the last 14 years he had been involved with ICANN: “I am just amazed and pleased at how involved the GAC now is in the actual work of ICANN and helping (it) to go forward in the right ways, as opposed to almost, in the past, sitting back and critiquing things but not actively being involved, and just how dynamic the GAC is right now compared to a dozen years ago. So my hat’s off to you, if I was wearing a hat”.
[1] Slide deck at:
[2] Transcript of GAC meeting with the Board 20 October: https://69.schedule.icann.org/meetings/dAhtqomcMqjTox2iS#/?limit=10&sortByFields[0]=isPinned&sortByFields[1]=lastActivityAt&sortByOrders[0]=-1&sortByOrders[1]=-1&uid=a6ijir8iemBHYWRru
[3] https://gac.icann.org/working-group/GAC%20Compilation%20of%20Individual%20Input%20on%20Draft%20Recommendations%20of%20GNSO%20SubPro%20PDP%20WG%20on%20New%20gTLDs.pdf
[4] https://gac.icann.org/statement/public/GAC%20Subpro%20Final%20Report%20Collective%20Comment%20-%20FINAL.pdf
GAC Liaison’s Report 28 July, 2020
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There is interest in the GAC to learn about the capacity building, practices and working methods of At-Large. Joanna replied to the question by GAC Vice-Chair Luisa Paez by pointing to ICANN Learn, to online resources developed by At-Large and to the At Large Policy Platform that is under development. She also welcomed the Information Transparency Initiative that will make information about ICANN better organized and more accessible.
EPDP
Hadia El-Miniawi, one of the two ALAC representatives in the EPDP, presented an overview of points of common interest between the ALAC and the GAC with regard to the expedited process for gTLD registration data: first and foremost, complying with GDPR and other relevant data protection laws; having a standardized system for access/disclosure automation; accuracy of registration data; and distinction between natural and legal persons. On the last point, a study is going to be launched, something that arose from EPDP meeting in Montreal.
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(Reference is also made to the joint GAC – ALAC statement on Phase I of the EPDP at ICANN64, Kobe, 13 March 2019, and subsequent discussions on a follow-up to it concerning Phase II)
SubPro
Justine Chew, the ALAC Liaison for SubPro, listed SubPro issues that are important to At-Large and that ALAC has commented on in the process, such as global public interest, safeguards including verified TLD’s and registration restrictions for highly regulated sectors, CCT review recommendations, closed generics, new appeals mechanism, applicant support, community priority evaluation and possible enabling of change requests. She confirmed that ALAC is open to working with the GAC in a way that GAC is comfortable with to see if there is common ground on some of these topics or topics that the GAC wants to put forward.
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