June 2007
The Board met by teleconference on June 18. The two issues affecting theAt Large discussed on the call were:
1.1) The Ombudsman report 06-317, on the Ynternet.org case. As reported to the ALAC members on June 19, the Board discussed the Ombudsman's recommendations, and found itself mostly in agreement with the ALAC's points of view. Especially, the Board does not seem to have any desire to enter into the substance of our deliberations in terms of ALS approval or rejection. The Board agreed to draft a formal reply to the Ombudsman in the following weeks (I still haven't seen it).
1.2) The GNSO Review Working Group (of which I am a member). The Board took notice of the release of a draft document being posted for subsequent discussion in San Juan. I already posted a detailed report and solicitation for comments on June 19, see here:
http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2007q2/001076.html
I am still awaiting any collective opinion by the Committee.
Other issues discussed were:
1.3) ICANN changing bank;
1.4) information on a preliminary delegation request for .kp (North Korea);
1.5) ICANN's role in the IPv4->IPv6 transition (see below);
1.6) a request for information on the RAA amendment process, which was deferred to San Juan (see below).
Full minutes for the call can be found here:
http://www.icann.org/minutes/minutes-18jun07.htm
The Board then met again during the San Juan meeting. The main issues affecting the At Large on the agenda were:
2.1) Establishment of the North American RALO.
As the MoU had been successfully negotiated between North American ALSes and ICANN, the resolution was straightforward: to approve such MoU. It was actually passed by acclamation, this being also the moment when all RALOs are established and the ALAC becomes final and not interim any more.
There were celebrating comments by Roberto Gaetano and by Vanda Scartezini. After a quick consultation by Skype chat with some North American people - some of which wanted to celebrate, while one wanted us to make a critical comment about the lack of actual power for users - I worked out a spoken statement on the fly, which was transcribed as follows:
<<I think that the real comment is that apart from the fact that finally we are removing the "interim" qualification from the ALAC, so we are assuming our role, that this was really the result of a work that went on for several years. For many people. And even – actually, it was not just a practical work. It was really a work of people getting to know each other and learning how to live together. In some cases, maybe having real disagreements, having strong fights, but also starting to build what in the end could be one of the most precious values for ICANN, which is an avenue for collecting real input from consumers, from general public, from users of the Internet of all kinds. And I think that now the challenge is for ICANN to understand how to make good use of that, not just to receive this kind of input, but to actually listen to it. Thank you.>>
There is general satisfaction in the Board and in the staff for these achievements, and even some preliminary "pour parler" in terms of recognizing a somewhat more prominent role for the At Large in the ICANN map, once the ALAC review process is concluded and if the review is positive (2009?).
2.2) Protection of registrants
This was my main working item in San Juan and in the preceding weeks. In Lisbon, we managed to get a resolution by the Board, committing the CEO to proposing a process for revising the RAA - the contract that establishes reciprocal responsibilities between ICANN and registrars, thus defining the way the domain registration market works for consumers - by San Juan, to strengthen protections to registrants. This was accompanied by several staff actions, for example the establishment of a system for escrowing the information about who registered which domain, in case of failure of a registrar; this was already required by contracts, but had never been implemented. Also, there were some discussions on which instruments could be used to enforce compliance with contracts by registrars; in the past, the only option was the "nuclear" option, ie deaccreditation, but some intermediate steps might help a lot. Finally, there have been discussions on what should ICANN's role be in case of a registry going bankrupt; should ICANN ensure continuity of failed TLDs, either temporarily or permanently? Should it have emergency systems to cope with technical failures by registries? Etc. (comments / statements on these points would be welcome).
The main issue, however, was the revision of the RAA; registrars are extremely sensitive to any change in this contract, which basically defines their business, so that no change has been made since 2001; in any case, their relationship with ICANN implies that any change in the contract must be approved by them; in other words, they can veto any change. I have been asking several times, in the period between Lisbon and San Juan, about the status of this resolution; staff was having discussions with the registrars and the Board was told that all of this would have been up for debate in San Juan.
The proposal was first presented by staff to the Board on Sunday; it envisaged a negotiation process between staff and registrars, with a subsequent public comment period. I was immediately vocal against the proposal, as it would practically have excluded us and the general public from having any serious input into the negotiation. My initial proposal, which had been already exposed in Lisbon, was to set up a small working group consisting of staff, registrars, us and other interested parties, to work out a consensus on which changes were necessary, and other possible actions (for example, changes in the accreditation process, education programs, staff activities etc.) The initial reaction to my objection wasn't very warm, as people were concerned about not alienating the opening that registrars had been making in accepting to revise the RAA in certain sections.
In the workshop on Monday, the same proposal was presented, and I was again quite hard against it, clearly saying that it was unacceptable. This provoked irked reactions by some registrars from the floor.
Transcript here:
http://sanjuan2007.icann.org/files/sanjuan/SanJuan-ProtectionOfRegistrants-25June07.txt
In any case, when the first draft of the resolution came up for discussion for the Board (always on the same lines), I tried to gather consensus among Directors for changing it into something better for us. Thus, the next draft of the process required that staff would hold a consultation with us and with the general public, which would gather input on what should be improved, not just about the RAA but also about related policies and processes. This would be used as input for the negotiation between staff and registrars; the resulting draft RAA would then be subject to comment by us and by the public before consideration by the Board.
The new text was introduced to the Board right on Friday morning, before the beginning of the Board meeting. I still was dissatisfied with the part of draft that required the negotiation to address "many of the concerns" raised by the public, as that could have been used to escape some key issues. So, right in the middle of the meeting, I drafted an amendment, got its form checked by ICANN legal staff by IM, then took the floor to ask for it, also thanks to a Board member (Peter Dengate Thrush) who shared the concern and formally moved my amendment. We got the amendment accepted and the amended resolution was unanimously passed, with much satisfaction.
Now we still have to see how the resolution will be implemented; for the moment, there are no clear plans yet. The public attention devoted to the Registerfly case has been fundamental in making ICANN receptive to our positions on the matter, so we have to keep up the attention. In the ALAC meeting, I agreed to lead an At Large working group to draft our response to this consultation, and I again invite people to join.
2.3) IDNs
In the weeks leading to San Juan, I had expressed concerns about the possible disconnect between the different parts of such a complex project, and the apparent lack of a comprehensive program plan. Several Board members agreed, and staff was asked to present a "state of the art" in San Juan. I will not enter into details (our IDN liaison already posted reports), but the Board decided to take the following actions:
- It authorized the procedures to add experimental IDN TLDs in the root zone. These will be domains of the form ".test" in various scripts and languages, which will be used for tests only (no user registrations possible). Elaborate procedures have been created to allow for immediate interruption of the test, and removal of the entries, if anything bad happened; I can't imagine what could go wrong, but still, in theory, ICANN is legally not allowed to alter the root zone on the fly as it likes, so there was the need for policies to allow this for the test domains in case of an emergency.
- It received the list of questions on the possible introduction of ccTLD-like IDNs, that was elaborated jointly by the ccNSO and the GAC. This is seen as a possible shortcut to meet the enormous pressure for some IDN TLDs to be added asap, while letting the full policy making process for new TLDs to proceed at normal speed. The Board asked for answers to these questions (in the first draft of the resolution it only asked to the ccNSO and the GAC, but I made sure that the ALAC was explicitly added as one of the respondents). I recommend that the ALAC initiates as soon as possible the work to prepare and approve such answers.
- It encouraged further discussions on the few remaining technical issues, though it seems clear that it's not the technicalities that are slowing down the process.
2.4) Transition to IPv6
One Board member raised the issue - which is going to become quite hot - of the transition from IPv4 to IPv6, and specifically:
a) how to encourage the transition, which still is not really happening;
b) how to allocate the scarce remaining batches of IPv4 addresses.
Current estimates are that IPv4 addresses will be exhausted around 2010 - very soon. Some parts of the world which traditionally obtained less IPv4 addresses are suggesting that they should be reserved some IPv4 blocks, so that the transition (and its costs) are first approached by the developed countries. It is in any case likely that a black market of IPv4 addresses will develop, with those companies and entities who got a lot in faraway times making plenty of money by reselling them.
ICANN does not have a huge role in this, since policies for allocation are regional in nature; in any case, the Board wants staff to keep an eye over the situation and do what is possible to speed up the transition.
2.5) Reform of the GNSO
The draft document was discussed in a workshop in San Juan. There seems to be agreement towards moving to consensus-based working groups, but much less agreement in reducing the political role of the Council, or in revising the number of constituencies. The NCUC has released some comments (which I forwarded to the WG after our meeting) and is asking for our position on this matter.
For the moment, the Board does not have an opinion and is still waiting for the Working Group to examine the feedback provided in San Juan and finalize the report.
The other issues discussed were:
2.6) Approval of the ICANN Budget. The new budget foresees a decrease in the ICANN fee paid by registrants from $0.22 per domain to $0.20, still without any plan to charge domain tasting registrations. The budget was approved by the Board, but it needs approval by 2/3 of the accredited registrars to become final. There's no doubt that it will be approved.
2.7) Consultation on transparency. We should keep an eye over this. We released statements on this matter in the past, and it would be worth at least to resubmit them.
2.8) Appointment of Kevin Wilson as new ICANN CFO (approved).
2.9) Renewal of the .coop registry agreement (approved).
2.10) Change in fees for the .tel registry (approved).
The full transcript of the Board meeting can be found here:
http://sanjuan2007.icann.org/files/sanjuan/SanJuan-ICANNBoardMtg-29June07.txt
The text of the approved resolutions can be found here:
http://www.icann.org/minutes/resolutions-29jun07.htm
Some other issues were discussed, outside of the agenda, during the private Board workshops or on the Board mailing list:
2.11) The fellowship program. It was implemented in San Juan for the first time, and I was asked to welcome the fellows; almost 40 people from various groups (ccTLDs, NGOs, governments) and several developing countries attended the meeting thanks to the program. I expressed our full support for this idea, which some Board members really championed; even if At Large members are excluded from the program (as we already have our travel programs), it is a good way to increase inclusiveness.
2.12) .TEL contract amendment. .TEL is asking for permission to limit the information displayed in their Whois service, to comply with applicable (UK) privacy laws. The IP and business constituencies, as in the broader Whois discussions, push for ICANN to force registrars and registries to ignore their laws, through a procedure called "reconciling Whois policies and national laws" (as if they were at the same level). I stressed that it's not in ICANN's power to change national laws, so any effort spent on anything but "do whatever your national law says" is basically a waste of registrants' money. Anyway, this is not on the Board agenda yet, pending advice/updates on the above policy.
2.13) The new gTLD process. Again, for the moment it is not on the Board agenda yet, but of course it's "the" issue for ICANN since it was created. There is an expectation to receive a final proposal from the GNSO as soon as possible. The ALAC should be prepared to have an opinion asap, drawing on the current drafts published by the GNSO.
The next Board call, planned for July 17, will possibly be cancelled.
The Board will meet again for a retreat in Los Angeles, on August 10-11. The agenda is still unknown, but it is likely to contain the issue of how to select the next ICANN Chair, how can ICANN work in the after Vint, and long term strategies and vision; other issues that might or might not come up are the new gTLD process, the IGF in Rio, the signing of the root zone, the status of the Joint Project Agreement with the US Government. I will post further information when I will have it.
As usual, feel free to make questions or comments.