As you know, a Summit of all At-Large structures (ALS) who are members of ICANN At-Large and who represent individual Internet users all around the World is being held in Mexico City from February 28th to March 5th 2009 as a part of the 34th ICANN International Meeting. You have been asked to participate in this survey because you are the Authorised Representative of an At-Large Structure, or a candidate for At-Large Structure status and because you have identified yourself as being the attendee for your organisation who will be participating in the Summit with travel support for ICANN.

If you are no longer the Authorised Representative, or you are no longer going to attend the Summit, please send an email as soon as possible to staff@atlarge.icann.org and let us know about the change of representative or attendance. For existing At-Large Structures, only those who returned the previous questionnaire are eligible to receive travel support from ICANN, though all ALSes and interested users are welcome to attend.

As part of the efforts to organise the Summit, in summer and autumn this year we circulated a Questionnaire asking for your major concerns, interests and ideas regarding its conduct and agenda setting. We are pleased to inform you that a large majority of ALSes in the various regions responded to this survey and expressed their concerns. For further information on the outcomes of the survey please see the updated summit questionnaire results – arranged by region – at: Summit Questionnaire Results

ALAC and its Summit Working Group recently analysed and discussed the outcomes during the ICANN meeting in Cairo. For the draft of a Summit programme scheme a mix of ICANN introductions, briefings, RALO General Assemblies and Workshops was decided -- according to the preferences expressed in the Survey.

In addition to these meetings, there will be five policy-related working groups convened during the summit. These working groups will debate five issues of concern to the global At-Large community and will be outcomes-oriented – meaning that each will produce a statement on a policy area ready to be voted on by the general session of the Summit near the end of the ICANN Meeting. Each attendee of the Summit will be asked to participate in one working group to be held prior to the meeting by mails and audio-conferences and by face-to-face meeting during the Summit.

We need your help to choose the subjects for these five working groups, and in general tell us what subjects within the mission and scope of ICANN are of most interest to you.

In order to most easily allow you to provide this information in a very accessible format and to make it as easy as possible for you to provide it, we have prepared an additional survey which will be completed online. All Authorised Representatives of ALSes who responded to the previous Summit survey, and candidate ALSes who have submitted an application to join the community since that survey was completed, as of 10th December 2008 are receiving a link to this survey. The deadline for completing the survey will be 12th January 2009.

The Summit is a unique opportunity to showcase the wide diversity of the worldwide At-Large community, its views and its activities. Your active participation at the summit is only a part of what is required to make it a success – we also need your help and participation in advance of the meeting, and this additional survey is an essential part of your participation.

We look forward to announcing the results in early January!

Selection of Working Group Topics

There will be five working groups as a part of the Summit programme. The purpose of the working groups will be to develop a written statement for ratification during the General Session at the close of the Summit. The statements will then be sent on to the Board of ICANN as a position of the entire At-Large community.

Each Summit attendee will be expected to participate in one working group during the Summit, and, to participate in the work of preparing a draft statement on the subject of their working group in advance of the Summit.

You will be automatically assigned to the working group that you have rated most highly below which is also in the top five across all respondents. The Summit organisers may assign you to one of your next-highest-preference choices in order to balance the number of participants in each working group.

You and the others who complete the survey will choose the subjects of the five working groups. We have prepared a list below of subjects that are currently being debated in ICANN for you to choose from. If you choose “Other Issue” you will be able to input an additional subject, which will be visible to others who complete this survey. They, like you, will be able to enter new issues, but they will also be able to ‘vote’ for the issue that you have provided, just as you are able to ‘vote’ for issues entered by those who have completed this survey before you. These subjects will be considered for other elements of the Summit programme, but in any case for them to be included they would need to be related to the mandate and mission of ICANN.

Please tick items from the list below in order of preference, from most important to least important. You may click the hyperlinked text on each item to read more about it.

At-Large engagement in ICANN (Including goals, organization (ALS, RALO, ALAC), reviews, strategic planning, Individual Internet users participation, etc.)

The discussion about At-Large and its relationship to the other parts of ICANN, and other ICANN communities, has always been current but is perhaps more current now than in some years. This is due in part to the external review process, as the At-Large Advisory Committee is under review at present and the many questions about how the ALAC and the wider At-Large community relate to each other, and other parts of ICANN, are a part of the follow-up to the independent review. At the same time, At-Large has often said that the resourcing needs for participation of civil society in ICANN is fundamentally different (and greater) than required for participation of other groups. As many ICANN community members have made statements about participation and the need for ICANN to concentrate on various aspects of participation, the Board of Directors of ICANN is convening a special subcommittee on participation at the initiative of the Chair of the Board.

At the Mexico City meeting, the subject of participation in various ways for various communities is likely to be the subject of much discussion. Part of that discussion will relate to travel support provided by ICANN to other communities. As regards At-Large, specific offers of engagement on aspects of At-Large participation were made by ICANN staff, which can be found here: http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2008q3/004599.html

Country Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs)

Country Code Top Level Domains (“ccTLDs”) are those domains which are managed by countries or territories around the world – these are domains like .uk, .cn, and .au). The Country Code Names Supporting Organisation (“ccNSO”) is the ICANN body where managers of ccTLDs meet and discuss issues of concern to ccTLDs.

DNS Security Issues within ICANN’s Remit

It has been said by voices in At-Large (as well as others) that the issues which most concern the broadest community of Internet end users are those related to the security and trustability of the Internet.

For its part, ICANN’s mission includes as a core component ensuring the stability and security of the DNS and autonomous number system which is it’s remit. There has been a debate for as long as ICANN has been around about where ICANN’s mission begins and ends with respect to issues such as phishing, pharming, and spam.

More recently, ICANN’s communities have begun to ask how ICANN could work within its remit and have a positive impact to reducing activities which use the DNS in criminal or fraudulent ways, but where these activities go far beyond the DNS and autonomous number system, or where law enforcement agencies feel that action should be reserved to them.

Two recent discussions on security issues relate to Fast Flux Hosting (a practice whereby changes to the DNS entries for internet sites are made very rapidly in order to “hide” them from attempts to take down sites engaged in fraudulent activity), and to the implementation of DNSSEC, a technical change to certain DNS operations designed to make the DNS more secure from abuse.

The At-Large community has yet to make authoritative statements on these subjects specifically, or to state its views on the dividing line between ICANN’s mission and issues outside that mission.

ICANN Geographic Regions

One of the key mechanisms through which ICANN’s structures ensure diversity is via a concept of Geographic Regions – the world is split into five regions, and many positions in ICANN are selected by requiring that there be a balance of nationals from each of those regions. This has a fundamental impact on At-Large, where the ALS community is grouped into five Regional At-Large Organisations (“RALOs”) based upon Geographic Regions.

ICANN is required to periodically review the structure of the Geographic Regions, and is about to convene a working group composed of two members of the major bodies within ICANN – Supporting Organisations and Advisory Committees. At-Large will be represented by two persons on that working group, but they will in turn rely upon the wider At-Large community in order to represent At-Large.

At-Large has not submitted a formal position to date on the structure and composition of ICANN’s Geographic Regions.

ICANN Transparency and Accountability

Transparency and Accountability of ICANN is a subject that is a regular feature of discussion in the community. This is especially the case at present, as community members reflect on the level of transparency and accountability that ICANN should have as a part of the Improving Institutional Confidence process.

At-Large has made many comments about ICANN transparency and accountability over the years, not specifically but as a part of comments on other topical subjects. You may find these athttp://www.atlarge.icann.org/en/correspondence Note that some statements on WHOIS issues, or containing references to it, are available in English only at the present time.

Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) and ccTLDs

The ccNSO, and the ICANN community, are currently working through the process by which Internationalised Domain Name (“IDN”) TLDs will be added to the Internet. These are TLDs not in the Latin script, but for example potentially in scripts like Arabic, or Hindi, or many other non-Latin scripts which language communities throughout the world use.

Internet end-users in many parts of the world, especially those who routinely speak, write and read in non-Latin script based languages, would be affected by the insertion of IDN TLDs. At the same time, just as the operations of gTLDs affect end users, so too do the operations of ccTLDs.

IPv4 to IPv6 Migration (issues related to end-users)

New Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) including IDN gTLDs

ICANN’s communities have been working for years on the process by which new Generic Top-Level Domains will be introduced. There are currently only a few gTLDs (like .com, .net, .org) and the new process would allow the introduction of many, many more over the course of time.

Currently, the ICANN community is reviewing and commenting upon a set of documents detailing how the process of adding new gTLDs would work. The next round of consultations on the process is expected to get underway near the start of the At-Large Summit, and will be a major area of work for ICANN over the course of 2009 and beyond.

It is widely believe that the addition of potentially hundreds, or thousands, of new gTLDs will have important impacts on how Internet end-users interact with the Internet. The At-Large community has made many statements in the past about new gTLDs and is preparing to make further comments, especially during 2009. You may find multilingual versions of previous At-Large statements at:http://www.atlarge.icann.org/en/correspondence]

You can find more information on the new GTLD programme at:http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-23oct08-en.htm

Registrant/Registrar Relations (including the renegotiation of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement)

Registrars are the organisations accredited by ICANN to sell domain names to end users and companies. The Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) is the contract that governs the relationship between ICANN and its accredited registrars. The current agreement has been in place since May 2001. The same contract is in place between ICANN and each of the approximately 900 accredited registrars.

As the market has developed and the number of ICANN accredited registrars and domain name registrations have grown significantly, it has become clear that certain amendments should be made to this important agreement. The amendments are intended to provide clarity and certainty regarding the duties of registrars and the rights of registrants. This page has been created to describe the process, plans and actions for developing and implementing these amendments. Also included are links to relevant documents that have been developed and public comment fora that have been established.

In March 2007, Dr. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN called for a comprehensive review of the RAA and the Accreditation process. The results of that review included a workshop at ICANN’s meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico and to Board resolutions describing an approach for arriving at and implementing amendments. In accordance with that resolution, ICANN has solicited public input for possible changes to the RAA and the accreditation process. ICANN has drafted proposed amendments in accordance with that input, information received at workshops and public fora to date, and consultations with the gTLD Registrar Constituency. A set of proposed amendments has now been published for additional comment.

At the same time, Registries (which are organisations that manage the technical and other operations of TLDs themselves, like .com, .net. or .org) are also affected by the contracts that they have with ICANN (for gTLDs; ccTLDs are not contracted with ICANN).

These relationships have important impacts upon the millions of individuals and businesses who register domain names – but also affect Internet end users. Since ICANN is a party to these contracts, ICANN undertakes efforts to ensure contractual compliance – see http://www.icann.org/en/compliance/ for more information.

Registrar & Registry Contractual Compliance

The relationships between ICANN and gTLD registries, and ICANN and accredited registrars, have important impacts upon the millions of individuals and businesses who register domain names – but also affect Internet end users. Since ICANN is a party to these contracts, ICANN undertakes efforts to ensure contractual compliance – see http://www.icann.org/en/compliance/ for more information.

ICANN’s At-Large community has been active in reporting issues that it believes should result in more sanctions being applied, and At-Large voices have suggested that more differentiated sanctions and obligations upon the contracted parties are necessary. For statements from At-Large related to these matters, see http://www.atlarge.icann.org/en/correspondence]

Registry/Registrar Failure Prevention/Recovery Issues

The Future Structure and Governance of ICANN (the Improving Institutional Confidence process)

See http://www.icann.org/en/jpa/iic/

WHOIS Services

WHOIS [link “WHOIS” based on language to the following link: en: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whois ES:http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whois FR: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whois ]has been a contentious issue in ICANN for many years. In At-Large there are very different views on the subject. On the one hand, there are those who believe that individual data privacy is more important than any other consideration. On the other hand, there are those who believe that this isn’t nearly as important as ensuring that those who use domain names for unscrupulous purposes must be caught and data privacy is a secondary consideration.

At the present time, activity in ICANN related to WHOIS per se is limited – however, the possibility of hundreds or thousands of new gTLDs, each running their own WHOIS services, means that the WHOIS system will become much larger and potentially much more fragmented over the next few years.

At-Large has made statements about WHOIS in the past, both on their own and also as a part of statements on other subjects – you may find them at see [insert the correct url here - english url: http://www.atlarge.icann.org/en/correspondence

Note that some statements on WHOIS issues, or containing references to it, are available in English only at the present time.

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