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Bucharest ICANN Meeting Report 23/06/02

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1. APTLD Meeting - 23 June 2002

Presentation from PDT on the Blueprint of ICANN produced by the Evolution and Reform Committee (ERC). The ERC Blueprint was accelerated by Stuart Lynn's paper.

  • Reduced Names Council of 16
  • The DNSO is largely untouched GTLD will not have own Support Org
  • Dramatic change in the General Assembley forum to be for discussion only,not decision-making. Number of board seats has changed.
  • ASO is largely unchanged - 2 seats on the board
  • The committee recognises case for CCSO. Voting members must commit to ICANN policy development - report talks about how this commitment will be evidenced. CCSO gets 2 seats.
  • Council of CCSO to have unspecified number of regionally voting Councillors
  • The PSO has disappeared - instead there would be a Nominating Committee

Conclusions:

This provides cc's with an opportunity to influence/contribute to how the structure should be. Must take this opportunity to set policy and structure or someone else will.

The Blueprint Report gives greater structure to standing committees, in particular to the Technical Advisory Committee. In total they are entitled to 5 seats, non-voting, observer status only.

Nominating Committee - difficulty with some of the contributing groups - especially Small Business Users and Academics. How are these selected?

ERC proposes 16 seats instead of the current 21.

  • 6 seats to Providers, 2 ISP, 2 Registry, and 2 Registrar seats.
  • 6 seats to Users, 2 each from Business, Non Commercial, Intellectual Property
  • 3 seats for Nominating Committee to fill
  • Plus the Chair

The GAC will appoint a non-voting person. This could meet with considerable resistance, especially the GAC appointee.

Proposal that ICANN's role in policy should be limited to those areas reasonably related to ICANN's technical mission, eg setting up tld's.

Acknowledge diversity of ccTLD's, can't have a one size fits all.

Kilnam commented - ICANN treats us as gTLD. Somehow must position between RIR, GNSO. ICANN could impose policy if we are considered equivalent to GNSO.

Should position ourselves clearly, much closer to the RIRs. In the RIR contracts, if the board makes unwelcome policy the RIR's are permitted to withdraw from ICANN.

Relationships with government.

  • The cctlds and the GAC must be the strongest political grouping in ICANN. Bucharest is the first instance of ccTLDs to meet with GAC and work through issues. Think about whether there is a better working liaison between cctlds and GAC than the non voting liaison. Some cctlds will see this as a threat, but we need to come up with a solution to this, otherwise it might be imposed on us.
  • GAC is now elevated into a very high role.

Root servers

There are no Service Level Agreements with root servers, but at present these services appear to be working well. ICANN is not in the position to provide an SLA since they are not running them. Of the 13 root servers, only 3 are outside of the US - 2 in Europe and 1 in Asia. Is this arrangement robust enough ? US Govt has a very serious concern especially after 11 Sept. Should the master copy which is currently in the US be split. USG doesn't want to give the master copy away. Cctld master copy is also in the US.

Currently all root name servers are operated by volunteers of various organizations - as set up in the 1980's. Question whether this is this appropriate for the future?

Technical issues :

  • the system is not scalable.
  • whether the number of root name servers is appropriate for the future.

Policy and Management Issues of the Root Servers

  • whether the current funding scheme based on the volunteers is appropriate;
  • possible to have an appropriate contract based on the current volunteer-based operation?
  • current scheme appropriate politically and managerially
  • geographic diversity of the root name servers, and location of the Master copy;
  • Root Name Servers for internationalized TLD's - should internationalised tld's be in the same server as the ASCII tld's? Chinese names for example may be best located in that region where expertise is easier to find, etc.

Suggest workshops to develop consensus on technical and policy issues.

AP Outreach Young Kang .kr

  • increase participation
  • Internet governance issues (domain name, multilingual)
  • CcTLD operations training
  • participation in and support AP Outreach activities
  • AP organisation
  • Action item

No information on membership - which is an objective of outreach.
Was useful to sponsor members to Melbourne meeting.

2.Comments/discussion on ICANN Reform - 24th June - Notes

Names Council

Dramatic restructuring. Constituents are branded, half Providers, 2 seats each for ISPs, Registries, Registrars; and Users - Business, Non Com, IP. Then 3 totally different seats awarded to appointees of the NomCom, plus a non-voting delegate appointed by the GAC.

Changes to the GA

Will be chaired by a Councillor - so fully under the wing of Council. However loses its power to vote. Its lists will be moderated. The entire structure will be reviewed in 12 months.

Country Names Council (International Council)

One third of Council proposed to be appointed by the Nom Com plus the 1 GAC. Resisted by cc's - Council should be made up of own appointees.

CCSO

Purpose is to develop policy recommendations to the ICANN board. CCSO is forum where distinctions will be further developed and from which global aspects will emerge. ie some regional and some global aspects. Regional ccTLDs recognise some services might be made at the global level. Redelegation is one such service though CENTR sees this as a local issue. It is too early yet to determine full package of global services. The regional TLDs need time to come to a consensus as to what these services might be and to quantify these.

LACTLD need backing when it comes to redelegation. Do not consider this is a local issue. ICANN is needed in some countries more than in some others

Funding mechanisms remains unclear.
CcTLD agreements not addressed by ERC.
Participation by ccTLDs - only those supporting ICANN global policy development role can participate. Unsure how this is to be expressed.

Advisory committees

GAC has seats on all SOs, all policy goes to GAC for comment, risk of considerable bottleneck.

Nominating committee:

APTLD disapproves of Nom Com appointing board members Sole prupose is to nominate people to the board, should have no role to play in policy development at SO's
Marilyn Cade - do not see NomCom as taking a broad role.

GAC

Anticipate high increase in workload here and bottlenecks.

Names Council - Phillip Sheppard (chair)

  • supports formation of ccso,
  • in favour of greater self-determination than seen in earlier documents
  • issue with nonpayment of fees from cctld to Names Ccl, may prohibit voting
  • Phillip - Names Council costs are admin costs only, secretarial support, teleconference costs, none of the amount would go to ICANN

Funding

  • Paul Kane -Cctlds should pay for services required for services they get, plus a supplement for global policies/issues.
  • General donation for ICANN well-being.
  • Majority ccTLDs vote for paying for IANA services.
  • Helpful to send a clear message to IANA that ccTLDs want to fund iana services but should have more accountability.
  • Need to know what we pay for and how much, also pay something for root servers as this service may require funding in the future.

3. Closed meeting of the cctld and GAC 9am - 10.30am - 25th June

  • Joint workshop between these two organisations.
  • cctld and GAC relationship
  • GAC is interested in discussions on practical issues,
  • recognises diversity;
  • Redelegations have involved considerable domestic discussion. Lengthy process of consultation. Some areas exhibit arbitrary government behaviour. Nigel Roberts - in regions of potential combativeness, decisions tend to be simple ones.
  • If a cctld falls over, does ICANN have responsibility to users?
  • (.ca) Would be helpful to look at questions and concerns re proposed implementation by ICANN with the principles. Also implementation of GAC policy.
  • (LAC) - some cc's don't have a good understanding as to how govts think.
  • Core question for all cc's to consider - what is the difference between the internet community and a civil society?
  • (Brazil) suggestion for govts and cctlds. Cultural approach in each region could lead to models that work better in some regions than in others. Define what is needed on regional basis to discuss models, eg south American, some good models and others less good.
  • Patricio (Chile)- Good to be able to talk in a workshop compared to prior meetings where there was distrust. Will help to work better with own govts. Means different things in different countries. For example in some cc's need to apply for a license to operate while in others cc's are free to operate within the rule of law. In some, urgent need to legislate is seen. Need to look into subtleties.
  • Sabine (.de) - local internet community- those whom the registry/registrar needs to consult with.
  • (.it) - ICANN reform gives more weight to the cc's and SO's and more weight to the government. Increasing incidence in countries of laws concerning the internet. Face the problem within ICANN of abuse of power in settling issues with cctld managers. Need to help ICANN work through this and merge GAC principles in agreed implementation of the GAC principles. Arbitration offered by ICANN may be refused. But joint approach by cctlds and GAC may receive more support.
  • (Kenya) - This meeting is biggest breakthrough since first meeting in California. Govts have social responsibility to their community. Developing countries want to share issues with other colleagues. This kind of forum is helpful to developing countries.
  • Michelle (Au-GAC) - 50% of the world population don't have telephone access. In some countries govts represent 100% of the population not yet part of the internet community.
  • Paolo (Mexico) - in some countries internet society and digital divide may be the same. Both cctlds and govts have the same goal to bring these together.

Close interaction sought - interface is the important factor.

PDT - Blueprint recommends that the ccso not be a trade association. One reason for this meeting is to discuss an appropriate way. This type of meeting is not the best way to function effectively. There are other types of interface with government

In cctlds the cctld managers are already representing individuals in their countries. Cctld manager is a public policy body not simply a registry owner.

Tony Stalley (AuDA) - comfortable having GAC liaison person but recognises this only goes a small part of the way for proper communication. Karen (US) - think governments and cctlds need to discuss these complicated discussions, and relationships between ICANN and cctlds. Uncertainty is the biggest concern.

Jennifer Northover

© 2001 InternetNZ
Last updated 18 September 2002

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