Present: Beau Brendler, Darlene Thompson, Olivier Crepin-Leblond, Eric Brunner-Williams, Garth Bruen, Gareth Shearman, Avri Dori, Alan Greenberg, Glenn McKnight, Evan Leibovitch, Allan Skuce, Gordon Chillcott, Seth Reiss, Joly MacFie
Staff: Seth Greene, Gisella Gruber, Matt Ashtiani
Apologies: Danny Younger
A G E N D A
NARALO AGENDA: 18 July 2011
Standing Issues
1. Roll Call – Staff (5 min)
Agenda Items
2. Review of summary minutes from 13 June 2011 – Beau (5 min)
- No action items are recorded for the 13 June meeting
Non-performing ALSs – this has been put to the Secretariats; Darlene will keep the group posted
Future Challenges – Rosemary Sinclaire is trying to start a new constituency within the GNSO. They will look at the creation of a “rights” document to try to embed it into ICANN’s way of doing things. Consumer Metrics WG is being established (independent of the Consumer Constituency).
3. Statement on pre-registration – Beau (10 min)
- Brought up at the end of the Singapore meeting but no meaningful feedback
- Do we now believe this point is moot?
In Singapore we decided to hold on this statement since the new gTLDs were announced. Is this still a moot point?
Eric - Registrars may still be trying to give access to directories that do not yet exist.
Alan – There seems to be a general consensus on the list that if its done with appropriate disclaimers, its not totally inappropriate. There was a division as to whether this was a “horrible” thing or “not so bad”.
Beau made a motion that we re-evaluate the statement and make a motion on it on-list sometime this week. Seconded by Eric.
4. Draft Applicant Guidebook stipulates "robust" development by ALAC of a new gTLD objection process – Beau (10 min)
- Is ALAC up to this task?
- Should NARALO offer leadership?
See quote from Danny Y (edited).
The New gTLD WG will be constituted with creating procedures for this. If At-Large believes that an applied-for string is objectionable, there must be a method for dealing with this. They will be looking at this process.
Eric - Is the scope larger than strings? Does context matter? Evan believes that this is about objecting to the string itself. Were they able to examine the context that the applicant was applying for? Not likely – their scope is likely limited to the string itself.
Alan – He thought that the context of the application was part of the relevant documentation that would be considered. He also thinks that their short-term work was to slowly get the input from the RALOs and ALSs, not just a few vocal spokes people.
5. Budget for 2012: Call for volunteers to oversee funded projects – Beau (10 min)
Overall project process (Gareth, Joly, Glenn)
$5,000 - survey of users on NARALO policy (need volunteers)
$1,000 - outreach video (Glenn, Joly)
How is this money to be administered? Gareth is not sure yet. Nothing has come out in this regard. Staff on the call didn’t know either so we need to check this out. (Gareth will do this.)
Alan – in previous conversations with ICANN, all signing authorities rest with ICANN. We need to go to ICANN Staff and say “here is exactly what we want”, ICANN Staff will then make purchase orders and such to make it happen. It is only under the direction of the volunteer people.
How do we make the choice as to who exactly will do the survey? Does this have to go through ICANN and have proposals given or can NARALO do this ourselves. Seth Greene will check into this.
6. Review of outstanding issues from Singapore – Evan (10 mn)
Evan: They approved the new gTLD process and much of the meeting was about that. The objection procedure must be looked at. The JAS (joint applicant support) group worked at making sure that the cost isn’t going to be a huge block to participation to those from developing economies. We still need to finish off the ALAC improvements issues. All of the next two year’s meetings have been finalized. All of the requests for fully funded meetings by the RALOs were quashed and only 6 allocations (total - $25,000) were approved per RALO. The three regions that had allocations during that year decided to pool their resources to make a general assembly for the AFRALO during that year in Senegal. When we have our meeting in Toronto, we will be able to ask for $25,000 for a NARALO GA.
Eric believes that there was enhanced cooperation with the GAC in Singapore. There was a meeting with Eric, Cintra, Evan with some members of the GAC in regards to JAS.
Beau does not believe that we are engaging well enough with the registrar community. It is very difficult to generate any traction on the RAA group. Does Eric have any strategic advice for NARALO to give to ALAC?
Eric – There are good registrars and bad registrars. They aren’t a uniform, homogenous group of “bad actors”. We can approach those actors that are exemplary or are trying to improve. We need to distinguish between the shells and the non-shells. Then distinguish between those that make rules to make it difficult for those engaged in bad behavior and those that engage in activities that are problematic.
Alan – It is important to recognize that the registrars are not a monolithic group and sometimes they are in the mode where they feel they need to defend “the registrars”, including those they may rather not. The ALAC did submit a statement on the RAA to the Board. Instead of making public statements at this point, we need to start to talk to people and to strategize. Much of this is political and must be thought about carefully.
Olivier – There is a dialogue that is taking place between At-Large and the Registrars. The ExCom had lunch with a small team of Registrars in Singapore to follow up with the meeting they had with them in San Francisco. They are ready to work with us if we have specific questions that will be vendor neutral and could go on a separate ICANN website that could be co-run between ICANN and At-Large specifically for the community. We all need to figure out what kind of questions we would like to put forward for this web site.
Alan – The Post Expiration Domain Name PDP is recommending that ICANN, At Large and Registrars put up a site that would talk about the care and feeding of a domain name.
Olivier – It is a “warming up exercise”. All of us in At-Large are guilty of putting all registrars into one bag and labeling them all as “bad”. We need to make the Registrars realize that everyone in At-Large isn’t all “bad” (against them).
Beau – We need to do things that will be seen as beneficial to the Registrar community.
Avri – When you sit down and start talking to the leadership group, be careful as to what words you use. Its easy to alienate them by speaking intemperately about the bad actors in their midst. They are very sensitive to anything that sounds like criticism.
Alan – The Registrars have their own politics within their own group. This is a potentially very difficult situation that must be treated carefully. The “bad actors” exist even within the leadership so we must be sensitive to this.
Eric – For an example of where it makes a difference: the Business Constituency has advocated that all Registrars have a staff on call 24 hours a day that is qualified technically and legally to take-down a web site immediately. This type of broad speculation is very bad spirited and rather useless. We also need to keep in mind that each of the Registry and Registrar constituencies have their own politics.
7. Any other business – Beau (5 min)
Eduardo – the NomCom is in the process of collecting SOIs for the 2012 NomCom and needs these by August 15, 2011.
Puerto Rico ccTLD – this should be discussed at our next call. We need to stay on top of this one.
