Executive Director's ICANN Melbourne Meeting report 23/03/01
Introduction
I would first like to thank Council for its decision to send two extra delegates and subsidise two Councilors who paid their own way to Melbourne. These four people, plus the four from Domainz, made a huge difference to the workload that the Chair and myself normally have to carry. I realise that it was only because this meeting was close to NZ making travel relatively cheap that so many delegates could attend, nevertheless I would like to endorse Councilor-delegate and Board-delegate calls for more people to attend regularly. I note that two other New Zealanders attended at their own cost - Joop Ternstra and Grant Forsyth.
Other delegates have made substantial reports - see http://www.isocnz.org.nz/international/icann-index.html and therefore I will only attempt to fill some gaps.
ccTLD Progress
First time attendees have clearly expressed their frustration with the ICANN process and progress with relation to ccTLD issues, and I have expressed similar feelings in past reports. At the same time I believe it is fair to say that this ICANN meeting showed real progress in relation to ccTLD issues. This is summed up in the following resolution passed by the Board:
"Agreements with ccTLD Managers
Whereas:
Since the last ICANN meeting in November 2000, ICANN Directors and management have significantly increased the amount of time and effort dedicated to contractual discussions with ccTLD managers.
Successful ccTLD/ICANN meetings have been held in Honolulu, Geneva, and Melbourne, bringing the ccTLD community notably closer to consensus on the nature and elements of appropriate agreements with ICANN.
It is resolved that:
[Resolution 01.37] ICANN management is directed to press forward with continued vigor toward the completion of draft legacy agreements, and to pursue, as needed, acceptable ccTLD agreements in triangular situations."
The significance may not be immediately obvious, but three key outcomes are reflected:
- ICANN is taking ccTLD's seriously and have put significant staff time into the consultations
- There is now serious conversation about ccTLD participation within the ICANN structure
- In reference to the final paragraph - this is a significant change in the acceptance of a move towards the completion of draft "Legacy Agreements". The contractual relationships which the GAC was proposing were based on a triangular relationship where governments' participation was very up front and formal manner. The vast majority of the ccTLD's were not comfortable with that. In part because of the leadership which has been shown and the fact that we "stuck to our guns" it means that what we are already doing has been validated and that is a big change. The Staff take some risk that the GAC will not be pleased with this and the key condition is that future triangular arrangements will not be shut out by any legacy agreements.
Finally - I had made two undertakings and as the Thursday ended up being a free day I was able to complete these.
I finished off the Best Practices document which was largely agreed
at LA in November - the final solution to the Intellectual Property
clause was to remove the paragraph entirely.
(http://www.wwtld.org/ongoing/bestpractices/20010310.BestPractice.html)
The other undertaking was to take the bulk of the material removed from
the IATLD draft of the Best Practices document and create a new
document which developing ccTLD's can use as a guideline when drafting
their own Best Practice documents.
