Notes/ Action Items
Action Items: - Staff to identify what data collection efforts will require surveys being conducted using professional assistance, and prepare a proposal to seek this assistance for conducting surveys, and share with the co-chairs prior to sharing with the WG and GNSO Council for their consideration
- Staff to begin conducting a LexisNexis search for articles resulting from investigative reporting on domains registered during Sunrise that have been noted to have an impact on free expression, fair use, and the ability of registrants to register domains, and share results with the WG
- Staff to identify which contracted parties are publicly traded, so that WG is aware that their annual reports should be publicly available in compliance with SEC regulations
- Staff to identify what data is already currently available, and report this to the co-chairs on Friday – staff should begin collection of this data immediately
Notes: 1. Roll call (via Adobe Connect and phone bridge only); updates to Statements of Interest - No updates to SOIs declared
2. Review and provide feedback on draft collated proposal for Sunrise data collection - Much of the data required for collection is anecdotal, while some is hard data, and both involve a number of different stakeholders - potential limitations regarding the ability to collect some of the data has been pointed out in the proposal, and should be considered by the WG
- When surveys are conducted with the same group of stakeholders across different questions, WG should consider whether surveys should be consolidated to include all questions that require answering rather than breaking them up across multiple surveys
- Staff will work with co-chairs to prepare a proposal to be sent to the GNSO Council, which need to identify purpose and possible costs - decision to contract professional assistance should be made quickly
- Question 2:
- Source 1 – INTA Survey:
- Results of the survey are an available source of data that ICANN staff can begin extracting relevant data from immediately
- CCT-RT expected to conclude its work within the next quarter
- Analysis conducted by the WG can be shared with and compared to the analysis being conducted by the CCT-RT to coordinate findings
- Report includes anecdotal evidence on TMCH, Claims and Sunrise - hard data is limited, as study is focused primarily on costs
- Should the WG have additional or follow-up questions, possible follow-up questions may be directed to the members of the INTA Internet Committee - unlikely that a survey of the broader membership will be conducted within the next 18 months
- Source 2 – Anecdotal Evidence from trademark owners:
- Should the WG secure the services of professional survey expertise to identify/phrase the questions being sent out to eliminate potential bias, unintentional errors and yield the best possible responses? (question also applicable to Source 3, as well as any survey of stakeholders beyond the membership of the WG)
- Use of potential survey experts will help maximize the effectiveness of this effort
- Use of survey experts will also be useful when attempting to collect feedback from trademark owners and other stakeholders who do not participate in ICANN policy development
- Factors affecting timeline need to be considered, including development of a survey, collection of responses as well as analysis of the data collected
- ACTION ITEM: Staff to prepare a proposal to seek professional assistance for conducting surveys, and share with the co-chairs prior to sharing with the WG and GNSO Council for their consideration
- Source 3 – Anecdotal evidence from registry operators
- Same considerations as Source 2
- Source 4 – Sunrise pricing information to be collected from registry operators
- Suggestion to seek this data was made during community discussion at ICANN 59
- Should survey of registry operators on pricing of Sunrise Registrations be conducted with a broad sample of registry operators, or a select sample? (Note that similar efforts to collect this data in the past has not yielded useful information)
- Suggestion to breakdown registry operators into "buckets" such as open gTLDs, and select samples of 3-5 registry operators for each bucket from whom to seek information
- Sunrise Registration pricing is publicly posted on registrar websites - not a problem from a confidentiality perspective
- Could also collect data on prices paid by TM owners (registrants) for Sunrise Registrations
- Wholesale price not required for collection - retail price will be more useful (actual prices paid by trademark owners/registrants)
- Wholesale prices meant to represent the prices set by registries to registrars - registrar prices may vary at the retail level
- Tentative WG Agreement: Retail pricing information to be collected from registrars
- There may be value in identifying both wholesale prices by registries, as well as identifying markup by registrars - would provide useful information on what is driving costs for TM owners – are some of the more exorbitant pricing models due to registry pricing, or registrar markups?
- If data on wholesale prices is sought from registry operators, need to be creative on how to go about doing that – indications from registry operators are that this is considered confidential information that they are not willing to share
- If information is sought from registrars, need to determine how they will be categorized (by geographic location, by size, etc...)
- Question 4:
- Source 1 – Anecdotal data from different stakeholders, including registries
- Collecting data from registries or other stakeholders may be done via survey, or other means, such as directly requesting input similar to outreach efforts to SOs/ACs during early stages of any PDP – need to agree on a methodology
- Need to identify what other stakeholders (other than registry operators) should be sought for data
- Approach should be to identify stakeholders who believe there is a problem in terms of unfair practices (registries will not respond with acknowledgments that their practices are unfair), and seek reactions by registries to that feedback - anecdotal data from trademark owners seems like an obvious source to determine whether problems exist
- Possible to conduct interviews with select members of the BC and/or IPC (interviewees may be selected by the groups they belong to)
- Source 2 – Registries in jurisdictions that prohibit the publication of specific words/strings (example: profane language) should especially be sought for input
- Need to identify jurisdictions in which registry operators on which prohibitions to the publication of specific words/strings exist may be based, and decide whether surveys should be conducted, or direct outreach to seek information
- Russian Federation is one example of such jurisdictions – publicly insulting individuals is prohibited, so strings that are on reserved lists for this reason cannot be published, but may possibly be shared with ICANN, assuming a non-disclosure agreement can be signed
- Question 5:
- Source 1 – SO/AC outreach
- Question regarding Sunrise Period and its duration
- Source one, consisting of direct outreach to the ICANN community (SOs/ACs) - may be done immediately
- Should request for information be in the form of a letter with questions, or a survey to be attached to a letter - WG should consider whether this will be part of an omnibus outreach effort, to include data collection relevant to other Charter questions
- Targeted groups/individuals for outreach should be as broad and representative as possible, and not limited to consistently active participants in policy development work – may be useful to use a press release that the media may be able to pick up on
- Any outreach beyond the ICANN community could be coordinated with the ICANN Communications Team
- Source 2 – Outreach to public interest groups and trade associations
- Similar to source 4, in terms of reaching out to groups outside of the traditional ICANN community
- Need to determine which groups to approach, and what format to be used to seek information (survey or other)
- Source 3 – Registries and registrars for anecdotal evidence
- Can be conducted by direct outreach to the two stakeholder groups
- Source 4 – Articles resulting from investigative reporting on domains registered during Sunrise that have been noted to have an impact on free expression, fair use, and the ability of registrants to register domains
- Similar to Source 2, need to identify sources and format of data collection
- Can be done immediately following agreement on the sources
- LexisNexis search may be useful in identifying potential sources of information - staff can begin conducting this search to identify articles, divide them into buckets and provide results to the WG for consideration (ACTION ITEM)
- Articles are only interesting if they are reporting on the unusual/edge-cases – should not be considered as a source of what represents business-as-usual
- Question 8:
- Source 1 – ICANN New gTLD Startup Page
- Question addresses LRPs, ALPs and QLPs
- ICANN TLD Startup Page lists the registries that ran these programs - data currently being extracted by staff
- Source 2 – Anecdotal data from registry operators
- Same considerations for data collection of anecdotal evidence from registry operators - survey vs direct outreach or omnibus survey?
- Suggestion to send an omnibus survey with questions on different Charter questions being divided into different sections
- Another source of publicly available information on the ICANN website is the monthly registry reports, which contains information on registrations for each registry operator (noting that a 3-month lag exists between generation of the data and publication of the monthly reports) – https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/registry-reports
- Identify registry operators, which are publicly traded, as their transactions/financial records are a matter of public record - may be another public source of information
- ACTION ITEM: Staff to identify which contracted parties are publicly traded, so that WG is aware that their annual reports should be publicly available in compliance with FCC regulations
- Question 11
- Source 1 – Ask IDN gTLD registries for the number of Sunrise Registrations they had
- Not clear if confidentiality is an issue
- In the case of Russia, prior to the availability of IDN ccTLDs, and registration of IDN strings, trademark owners developed the habit of marketing badly transliterated versions of their trademarks, but this led to their inability to register these now popular transliterated strings in the TMCH, so they cannot take advantage of RPMs such as Sunrise
- Question 12
- Sources of information similar to others – substantive issues different, but same considerations on information sources
- Possible next step would be for staff to extract and put together those parts that require outreach or survey of a certain group – objective is to determine scale of the project of data collection, and whether professional assistance is required
- Question 21
- This question is from the original Charter, and is a general overarching question, being asked within the Sunrise context
- Source 1 – Anecdotal evidence (e.g. from the INTA Survey)
- Following preliminary collection of data, WG members should determine whether this question should be added to surveys being sent to stakeholders, depending on other data collected and analyzed by the WG – question should not be asked of trademark owners alone, but also other stakeholders (such as those who believe that extensive gaming of Sunrise Registrations is taking place)
- Staff have submitted a request for a 3-hour meeting slot during the earlier part of ICANN 60 in Abu Dhabi – staff will keep WG posted on progress
3. Next steps/next meeting - ACTION ITEM: Staff to identify what data is already currently available, and report this to the co-chairs on Friday – staff should begin collection of this data immediately
- ACTION ITEM: Staff to identify what data collection efforts will require surveys being conducted using professional assistance, and report to the co-chairs
- Co-Chairs to consider staff findings, and prioritize efforts then report their recommendations to the full WG during next week’s call
- Format of this proposal is also being used to develop a proposal on data collection regarding TM Claims - if WG members prefer a different format to present this proposal, this should be pointed out
Next call will be on Wednesday, 16 August at 17:00 UTC |