[council] GNSO Council draft minutes 13 October 2005

[GNSO.SECRETARIAT@GNSO.ICANN.ORG]

[To: council[at]gnso.icann.org]

Dear Council Members,

Please find attached the draft minutes of the GNSO Council
teleconference held on 13 October 2005.
Something happened to this document on the website:
http://www.gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg01493.html 
that is why I am resending it in plain text.

Please let me know what changes you would like made.

Thank you.
Kind regards,

Glen

13 October 2005

Proposed agenda and related documents

List of attendees:
Philip Sheppard - Commercial & Business Users C.
Marilyn Cade - Commercial & Business Users C.
Grant Forsyth - Commercial & Business Users C
Greg Ruth - ISCPC
Antonio Harris - ISCPC
Tony Holmes - ISCPC
Thomas Keller- Registrars
Ross Rader - Registrars
Bruce Tonkin - Registrars
Ken Stubbs - gTLD registries
Philip Colebrook - gTLD registries
Cary Karp - gTLD registries - absent - apologies
Lucy Nichols - Intellectual Property Interests C
Niklas Lagergren - Intellectual Property Interests C - absent - 
apologies - proxy to Lucy Nichols/Kiyoshi Tsuru
Kiyoshi Tsuru - Intellectual Property Interests C.
Robin Gross - Non Commercial Users C. - absent
Norbert Klein - Non Commercial Users C.
Alick Wilson - Nominating Committee appointee - absent
Maureen Cubberley - Nominating Committee appointee
Avri Doria - Nominating Committee appointee

16 Council Members

ICANN Staff
Olof Nordling - Manager, Policy Development Coordination - absent - 
apologies
Maria Farrell - ICANN GNSO Policy Support Officer
Liz Williams - Senior Policy Counselor
Glen de Saint Géry - GNSO Secretariat


GNSO Council Liaisons
Suzanne Sene - GAC Liaison
Bret Fausett - acting ALAC Liaison - absent - apologies

Michael Palage - ICANN Board member

MP3 Recording

Quorum present at 14: 08 CET.

Bruce Tonkin chaired this teleconference.

Approval of the Agenda

Item 1:- identify any common points of view for presentation to ICANN 
staff and other supporting organisations on 18/19 October 2005

Bruce Tonkin reviewed the ICANN Strategic Planning Issues paper posted 
on 4 October 2005, with Patrick Sharry and summarised as follows:
7 strategic issues are identified:
- The continued rise of the Internet as a truly global means of 
communication and the need for ICANN to met the needs of a truly global 
stakeholder base
- Ensuring stability and security in an environment of increased threats
- Maintaining stability given expected increases in scale driven by the 
number of devices using the Internet and the number of users
- Multiple complicated changes to the Internet operations or protocols 
that need to be managed in parallel, including possible paradigm changes 
not yet anticipated.
- Possible fracturing of the current system perhaps brought about by 
some users becoming dissatisfied with perceived restrictions imposed by 
technical protocols or by actions of a government or governments.
- ICANN taking an appropriate role in the further evolution of the broad 
group of international entities involved in Internet co-ordination
- Designing appropriate structures and processes for a post-MOU ICANN.

The ICANN Strategic Planning Issues paper , pages 1 - 3, deal with the 
external environment that affect ICANN's role while pages 4 – 8 
summarise public comments received during the planned sessions in 
Luxembourg and comments on the previous documents ICANN produced.
The next step is to envisage the Internet environment in 3 – 4 years 
time and then Patrick Sharry will create a new document the " ICANN 
strategic plan".

Marilyn Cade asked for clarification on how incomplete areas, identified 
initially in the Amsterdam 2005 consultation process, such as restricted 
funds, subject areas for restricted funds, how they would be managed, 
and regional offices, would be addressed as they were not included in 
the current document?

Bruce Tonkin responded that restricted funds and regional offices were a 
means to meet an objective, and not objectives in their own right. The 
plan would first identify measurable strategic objectives for 2009, then 
identify the initiatives needed to meet those objectives, and then 
consider how to fund those initiatives.

Avri Doria commented on 3 issues that should be included as separate 
items in the strategic plan:
a. Internationalisation
b. Stakeholder representation
c. Corporate/organizational governance
a. Internationalisation
Internationalisation was proposed as a separate item in the strategic 
plan beyond the mention of regional offices, linguistic requirements and 
the USG relationship with ICANN and IANA in the MoU, in an attempt to 
obviate the need for international oversight.
The current corporate existence as an US chartered corporation should be 
examined as the latter is subject to all US laws regarding business 
transactions with foreign governments and foreign companies. ICANN needs 
to insure that nothing in its US based incorporation could interfere 
with its global obligations and for this reason may need to consider 
changing from a US corporation to an International organization. There 
are several models that could be explored on how this could be achieved. 
Discussions would need to take into account and seek solutions in light 
of ICANN's current obligations under US law to its employees, to the 
constituencies, and current contractual obligations.
b. Stakeholder representation:
This topic should merit a separate item as it was important not only in 
the post MoU era but in the run up to the termination of the MOU. ICANN 
should consider increasing its stakeholder participation and the role 
they play in decision making, registrants, users of the DNS system and 
governments from "advisory" to full participation. The role of the 
non-registrant user, who does not own a domain name, should be explored.
c. Corporate/organizational governance
ICANN needs to review, and perhaps strengthen its notions of 
corporate/organizational governance,
that is, a formal, external audit process that regularly reviews, not 
only the financial aspects of ICANN, but reviews ICANN's adherence to 
its own principles. In addition appeal mechanisms available to those who 
believe their rights or concerns vis a vis ICANN, and its process, have 
been damaged should be reviewed. Is the internal ombudsman process 
adequate or should there be a mechanism or a process created for 
external binding appeal ?

Norbert Klein supported Avri's comments and said that at the WSIS 
conference in Geneva other governments expressed concern about the legal 
implications that ICANN was a US corporation.

In general it was agreed that a review, summarising the main outcomes 
and strategic issues of the Tunis WSIS meeting, 16-18 November 2005, 
should be included in the GNSO Vancouver meeting schedule as well as the 
role of government in ICANN.

ACTION ITEM:
Council members who volunteered to provide input to the document of 
outcomes from the Tunis WSIS meeting were, Marilyn Cade, Tony Holmes, 
Tony Harris, Avri Doria and Norbert Klein.

Philip Sheppard commented that the Issues paper should be more explicit 
on" fostering competition", part of ICANN's mission, and the way ICANN 
is perceived in fostering competition.

Grant Forsyth commented that it was important for the strategic planning 
process to look at the world of ICANN in a wider context as not 
necessarily the only player in broad Internet governance, and identify 
issues that were not dealt with through ICANN but recognize that there 
are other bodies or entities to deal with these issues. For example, the 
Internet in developing countries was a factor to be acknowledged and 
recognized, even if it was not appropriate for ICANN to address the issue.

Tony Harris referring to " ICANN should be doing more to assist the 
development of internet communities in developing countries" mentioned 
that it was the role of the WSIS in the declaration of principles, and 
the suggestion would be to concentrate on focusing ICANN on creating 
awareness of the ICANN function and resources and not developing broader 
Internet communities as a general purpose.
Regional outreach should be anchored in the objectives of ICANN such as 
IP addresses and domain names rather than confusing people about the 
role of ICANN.

Tony Holmes referred to the "need to prepare for a post-MOU ICANN" and 
commented that the reason why it had not come to the fore was because of 
the uncertainty in this area and it was not clear what it meant for 
ICANN. Dialogue at the Council level would be advantageous to clarify 
the issue.

Ken Stubbs, supported by Philip Colebrook added that future financing 
and enhancing relationships between the supporting organisations should 
be elaborated.

Maureen Cubberley suggested linking of some of the ideas, as separate 
discussions tended to diffuse and complicate the issues, and analysing 
to see where there was overlap and significant impact of the overlap.

Item 2: GNSO Strategic plan document for presentation to the Board in 
Vancouver
- begin to identify GNSO strategic view for input into ICANN strategic plan.

Bruce Tonkin pointed out that the strategic objectives in terms of 3 
years, should be identified as a base for the operational plan which 
would take into account 4 month and one year goals. There should be a 
balance in strategic objectives and operational planning.
The planning process is a yearly cycle, which is updated.

The GNSO objectives could be formulated under the 7 headings:

2.1 Representation:
The GNSO should examine " representation", how broad was the current 
representation, what was expected in 3 years , and what was needed to 
transition to the future.

Marilyn Cade proposed short, medium and long term goals.
An example of an operational plan based on the objective of broader 
representation:

To ensure participation in the constituencies from all regions (e.g. 
Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America) and major sub regions (e.g. Middle 
East, Pacific Islands, Caribbean Islands) of the world.

To ensure representation on the council from all regions.

The constituencies require participation from each of those regions and 
sub regions to carry out their work. Where are the gaps in participation 
and what are the steps that the council should take itself, or what 
would the council need from an external group to close that gap. In the 
area of representation for example there is an outside resource to the 
Council, the Nominating Committee, to whom a list of criteria could be 
presented as a mechanism to solicit representation from unrepresented 
regions of the world

A measurable should be defined against the objective:
Part of the GNSO Review is to measure the current representation in the 
GNSO constituencies and council on a region and sub region basis and the 
objective is where to go in the future and the next stage would be what 
should be done to achieve that.

Ross Rader suggested that the diversity within the constituencies be 
recognized and there should be continued encouragement for not only 
geographic diversity but liberty of interest. Some thought should be 
given to groups that may need to be broken out of existing 
constituencies and examining their place in new constituencies. In the 
registrars constituency, registrars service different subgroups of 
registrants such as large corporates protecting brands and registering 
many names, small businesses, 'pay for click' registrants that have a 
million names each. Some registrars focused on direct sales to retail 
customers, e.g. Godaddy, other registrars focused on providing 
registration software services to other organizations e.g. Tucows or 
Melbourne IT, and some registrars focused on the secondary market.

Philip Sheppard suggested that a subset could concretely be judged by 
defining the cost benefit to users of the users being more deeply 
involved in ICANN. The costs of users to be involved and what they would 
get out of that involvement should be considered. It concerned the 
functions of ICANN and the ability to make a difference by involvement.

2.2 Security.
What would a GNSO objective be on security?

Philip Sheppard, using the ICANN example, stated that defining what 
ICANN did not do was as important as defining what ICANN did, thus 
defining what the GNSO did not do on security would be key.
Bruce Tonkin noted that two main approaches to security could be one, to 
inform registrants about what security they should be seeking and then 
rely on competition to ensure that registrants could choose the 
appropriate level of security for their needs, or two, ICANN decide that 
the market has failed to protect registrants and non-registrant users, 
and require all registrars or registries to implement a minimum level of 
security. The recent work done by the ICANN Security and Stability 
committee on domain name hijacking is an example where there is an 
attempt to inform the public, and then it is left to the GNSO to decide 
whether to impose some security requirements through a policy.

Tony Holmes commented that a missing element was the need to cooperate 
on security with other groups across other areas.

An proposed objective would be not to develop security solutions but 
collaborate with those who did develop security solutions and provide 
information to the GNSO community, except perhaps in the area of 
ensuring the adoption of security standards in areas where ICANN had 
direct oversight or technical coordination.
Another approach was suggested, mandating at the top level, and create 
an awareness in the user population of the importance of advancing the 
adoption of DNSSEC

Security is singled out by the MoU as a subset of stability and should 
continue to be seen in that perspective rather than a separate item.

Ross Rader suggested leaving a placeholder on security. The scope of the 
GNSO as opposed to the ICANN world should be considered. There were a 
number of clear security issues in both the registration and the 
resolution processes, such as transfers, which are well documented.
At the GNSO level security should be more specific, stating the current 
status, what is or would be desirable and how would those objectives be 
reached, e.g. increasing awareness, and if after a year awareness has 
not been increased, then mandate.

In summary the strategic objectives could be stated as:

The GNSO will aim to cooperate with security experts (such as SSAC) and 
technical standards bodies (such as IETF) to raise awareness of security 
issues and possible solutions to those issues.

The GNSO will identify known security issues within the domain name 
registration and the maintenance of domain name records, and identify 
possible solutions.

2.3 Scale Issues
Stability in relation to scale is important from an IP address point of 
view.
 From a TLD point of view one of the issues relating to scale are domain 
names. For example, if the number of users increased from 40 million to 
a 100 million what would that do to the DNS system, would it be putting 
more load at the root server level, should there be new TLDs?

New gTLD allocation policy needs to be discussed, for example does each 
device type get their own TLD (e.g. .mobile, .ipod etc)?
International Domain Names (IDN's) could become a scaling issue, for 
example if there were an increase in English speaking Internet what 
affect would that have as a scale and if there were more languages being 
used scaling would be an issue in the sense of languages as well.
The fundamental question is whether there would be a large increase in 
domain names, how it would work and then what policy decisions should 
follow.

In summary a strategic objective could be stated as follows:

The GNSO seeks to ensure that the gtld domain name system can handle at 
least three times the number of top level and second level domain names, 
and at least 100 languages by 2009.


2. 4 Multiple complicated changes to Internet operations
Looking at environmental changes, domain names existed before the world 
wide web and before search engines but will there be a continued need 
for them and what will be the interaction of the growth of research on 
domain names and technology.
The GNSO would not change the technology, but in considering 
environmental changes may be in a position to request new requirements 
in technical standards by being informed at a standardisation and 
application level.

Proposed objective:
- to increase liaisons with technical groups such as the Internet 
Engineering Task Force (IET and WC3
- to arrange workshops or conferences with these groups to facilitate 
two way discussions to understand the impact of technological change on 
the DNS, and changes in the use of domain names by Internet users.

2 5 Possible fracturing of the address space
At a domain name level alternative roots over the DNS become an issue.
ORSN, an alternative registry, of alternate  root servers operating with 
a 'stale' root zone file.
http://european.de.orsn.net/faq.php#opmode was mentioned.
Proposed objective:
To preserve the integrity of the single root for both ASCI and IDN 
related domain names.
Objectives need to be framed around what is good for the DNS and the 
single root argument leans toward what is good for ICANN and the GNSO 
and not necessarily what is good for the DNS.
ICANN is founded on the support of a single authoritative root and it 
would take a significant amount of rethinking, redebating for the 
community that supports ICANN to move away from that base.
However current technology is limited to a single root system and 
without a technological solution it is difficult to move beyond that.
The reality is that with a fragmented root there will be no sure way of 
knowing the outcome when there is a DNS query or parts of the DNS will 
be unreachable.
There is not necessarily a commitment to a single root but committed to 
the restraints that exists.
A proposed objective should encompass predictability and reliability.

[Related references from the IETF include, RFC2956 (Overview of 1999 IAB 
Network Layer Workshop, dated October 2000), RFC2775 (Internet 
Transparency, dated February 2000), RFC 2826 (IAB Technical Comment on 
the Unique DNS Root, dated May 2000)]

In summary an objective could be stated as:

The GNSO will continue to support a domain name system that consists of 
globally unique identifiers that ensures two users in different parts of 
the Internet using the same application would experience the same 
application behaviour when using the same identifier (predictability), 
and that this behaviour is repeatable at different times of the day 
(reliability).

2. 6 ICANN taking an appropriate role in the further evolution of the 
broad group of international entities involved in Internet co-ordination.
This item has been broadly encompassed by issues such as security, 
changes in protocols, fracturing of the root.
The need for ICANN to develop an appropriate role, which could be 
co-operation, collaboration, co-existence and/or participation within a 
broader group of entities, such as the IETF, W3C, ITU, ISO, the Unicode 
consortium and regional bodies such as CENTR and APTLDs.
Separating strategy from operations, the strategy could be:

to establish outreach with international entities involved in Internet 
coordination.

2. 7 Designing appropriate structures and processes for a post-MOU ICANN.
Strategic objectives for 3 years ahead could be defined in the above 
mentioned objectives and any post MoU structure would need to support 
those areas.
Ensuring the ability to maintain the bottom up consensus policy 
development process maintaining the broader private sector leadership, 
which would include civil society, broad set of Internet users, the 
technical community and business users, .

Next Steps:

- Formulate objectives.
- State the initiatives to achieve the objectives
- Input for the operational planning of the GNSO
- Next 12 months Continued work focus on current issues such as 
Transfers and Whois as well as work on strategic goals.

Planning for Vancouver meeting:

2 Documents:
1. Operational document stating goals for the next 4 months and 12 
months, such as transfers, WHOIS, GNSO Council review output
2. Strategic objectives document based on 7 items above
- establishing the initiatives in each category

OAB 3.
Marilyn Cade asked whether there would be any budget items related to 
the strategic or operational plan that should be noted for the Vancouver 
meeting as there were certain outstanding issues that had to be 
addressed by the community and resolved.
Michael Palage commented that there has been a proposal submitted by the 
staff to the finance committee regarding moving forward with some of the 
set aside budget items. Procedurally the recommendations of the Board 
Finance committee will have to be submitted to the full Board before 
deciding how to move forward.

Bruce Tonkin declared the GNSO meeting closed and thanked everybody for 
participating.
The meeting ended: 16: 15 CET.

Next GNSO Council Teleconference Thursday 20 October 2005 at 12:00 UTC.
Topic:
see: Calendar




-- 
Glen de Saint Géry
GNSO Secretariat - ICANN
gnso.secretariat[at]gnso.icann.org
http://gnso.icann.org