President's Report to Council 31/05/03

It's been 8 weeks since the last Council meeting, and this is the last scheduled meeting before our Society's AGM.

Notice has gone out for nominations for the positions of President, Vice President and 5 Councillors. I'm hopeful that we will see a high calibre of nominations for all positions, and keen contesting to fill the vacancies.

It is with regret that we have been advised by Rick Shera that he will not seek re-election as Vice President or for Council. I would like to record my personal thanks, and I'm sure the thanks of Council, for the considerable efforts put in by Rick over the past years, in so many areas of the Council's activities. Also not seeking re-election is Dr Howard Frederick, who has been on Council for several years now, and formerly chaired the Social Impact Committee and once again it is appropriate to record our thanks to Howard for his efforts. The tasks set for Council over the past 3 years have been particularly onerous, and have required considerable input from many Councillors, who have voluntarily gone above and beyond the call of duty to ensure the success of the SRS project, and continuing to ensure we did not lose sight of our other objectives. My thanks to all of Council for its support and efforts over the past year of significant turmoil and change, and most particularly to the Councillors who's terms conclude at the AGM.

I remain hopeful that the ensuing year will be a year of consolidation and less turmoil, and that Council will be in the position to meet less frequently, freeing up the various Committees, Task Forces and Working Groups to progress their individual objectives.

Since the last meeting of Council 8 weeks ago, on behalf of Council I have attended 2 meetings of the Domainz Future Task Force, 1 Admin Committee meeting, 1 NZOC meeting and 2 meetings with NZRS. I've written 126 emails, read 799 emails, and attended to 76 phone calls, so a comparatively quiet couple of months have passed. Of late, the media have not been in contact with me so regularly, it appears they are (more appropriately) contacting our Executive Director for comment.

As we approach the AGM, I hope Councillors are lobbying far and wide for attendees of the summit that will accompany the AGM, in an effort to ensure good representation from throughout the Internet industry. As the programme shapes well for the summit, it becomes obvious that a strong attendance from industry representatives is imperative if we truly are to work towards useful codes of best practice and self governance.

There is once again a considerable agenda for this week's Council meeting, which will require considerable "homework" from us all in preparation.

Unfortunately a laptop crash while in Brazil had lead to losing my draft reports of both my APTLD and ICANN reports, but I have spent some time resurrecting the more salient issues and the appended reports are somewhat abbreviated as a result.

Keith Davidson
President

REPORT ON APTLD / APRICOT / APNIC ATTENDANCE ? TAIPEI FEBRUARY 2003

Sue Leader has prepared already an excellent detail paper of the events in Taipei, in addition to the daily reports I filed while there. To add to her report, plus the reports already filed by me via email, the following points are worthwhile reiterating:

• APTLD Board increased from 7 to 8
  
• Two InternetNZ folk are represented on the APTLD, Peter Dengate-Thrush who remains as senior vice chair, and Richard St Clair. Congratulations to both on their election.
  
• With Australian neighbour Chris Disspain (auDA) also elected to the board, there is for the forthcoming year significantly greater "Pacific" representation on the APTLD Board.
  
• There was an election for Vice-Chair, which indicates we may need to more carefully manage our APTLD relationships in the future.
  
• The APTLD group reached consensus on their blueprint ccNSO to take forward to ICANN
  
• APRICOT sessions were well attended, and comments back from various attendees indicated that the sessions were well run, with good presenters and relevant subject material. Certainly that was the case for the sessions I attended.
  
• The APNIC AGM was, as always, a quiet and efficient affair. APNIC have undertaken reasonably significant work in regaining wasted IPv4 space, and will continue to do so.
  
• Bob Gray and myself discussed with Paul Wilson (APNIC) the best process for the potential splitting of the InternetNZ /20 into 2 /19's, with one /19 for the Registry and the other for Domainz. The issues have been discussed within Council, NZOC, NZRS and Domainz subsequently, and I am in the process of attending to the split of these IP blocks.
  
• It was quite widely discussed in the APTLD and APNIC meetings and attendees that holding the APTLD and APNIC AGM's at the start and end of APRICOT might be reviewed, with either both at the start or both at the end of APRICOT. While from a personal perspective, APRICOT sessions are interesting from a technical viewpoint, it does make for a longer and more expensive trip.
  
• The attendance from Pacific Island ccTLD's at these forums is almost non-existent -  I was only aware of one attendee from the Islands, that being the representative from .nu. It may be appropriate for some consideration to be given to assist some other ccTLD's in our region to attend.
  
• It also occurs to me that there would be considerable benefit gained if more technical staff from ISP's were to attend APRICOT. Certainly many of the Asian countries have considerable ISP representation. Perhaps, for longer term consideration, InternetNZ could consider sponsoring something like a "NZ young technical achiever of the year" to attend APRICOT each year?

Keith Davidson
President

REPORT ON ICANN ATTENDANCE - RIO DE JANEIRO MARCH 2003

This was the 3rd ICANN meeting I have attended, my previous one being in Ghana in March 2002 and prior to that in Melbourne in March 2001. As an infrequent attendee, my observation is that there is some progress in the overall ICANN processes, but it is still inherently dysfunctional. It occurs to me that there is less irrelevant diatribe from the many who have come to enjoy the sound of their own voices, there is more preparation of useful substance for debate, and there is a wider appreciation of the cultural diversity of ICANN participants. This appears to be the case from all component structural groups within ICANN. But the pleasant surprise was that the ccTLD community, which is currently the most diverse group in every regard, has pulled together the most cohesive levels of understanding and support. One can understand the immense concern it must be to ICANN, to have a relatively cohesive and well organised group representing the ccTLD's, especially with the fear that this group will make considerable progress either within or totally outside the ICANN camp.

I appreciated the ccTLD's setting up scribe groups to record the "minutes" of the ccTLD meetings. As a reference point, these are recorded at www.wwtld.org/meetings/Rio/highlight.html. It was very useful that the APTLD meeting 3 weeks before had seen a reaching of position on the ccNSO for our region, so we were presented as a unified regional voice solidly throughout the ICANN meeting.

The outcomes of the ccNSO discussions were very much in line with InternetNZ's own thinking to date - that a meaningful and representative ccNSO within ICANN represents the best way forward for the future, but if ICANN is not prepared to accept the underlying requirements of the ccTLD's, the ccTLD's will be happy to create their own ccNSO outside of ICANN, and will negotiate directly with IANA for Internet root services, and will structure their own organisation for the evolution of policy and best practice, based on open and transparent, bottom up processes.

The 2nd day discussion with ccTLD representatives who had attended the recent Geneva ITU meeting was interesting, and certainly some ccTLD's would not be averse to the concept of the ITU being a better representative model for international governance than ICANN could. It's hard to see how the ITU could grow its own charter to include global Internet policies as they might apply to ccTLD's, but certainly it is an organisation that has a high regard for local community interests and customs, and its policies appear to be restricted to those of a technical nature to ensure interoperability.

The ccTLD session with new ICANN CEO Paul Twomey was also interesting and Paul certainly appeared to appreciate the viewpoints of the ccTLD's in their stated objectives for the establishment of the ccNSO.

The ccTLD / GAC session was fairly predictable, but nevertheless should become a permanent scheduled event at ICANN meetings as there seems to be improving understanding of viewpoints as a result of these meetings.

Internationalised domain names had a fairly solid workout on day 3 of the ccTLD's and while work goes on in various individual and grouped ccTLD's, there is an appreciation that greater global testing needs to occur if resolution of domain names is to continue when using alternate character sets. The APTLD position paper from Taipei was well received. The issues seem to be that those non-English using ccTLD's are increasingly frustrated by not being able to offer their own language character sets, given that many of those ccTLD's affected have very low ratio's of English speakers in their countries. But on the other hand, they are increasingly aware of the potential to seriously harm DNS resolvers if they do not act on a global basis.

ENUM was also fairly interesting and we'll need to keep ourselves in the information loop as more progresses on the ENUM topic. For any wanting a crash course in ENUM and its applicability to ccTLD's, I recommend the presentation from ICANN which can be seen at www.wwtld.org/meetings/Rio/Presentations/enum.pdf

The final recommendations from the ccTLD's taken to the ICANN board are located at www.wwtld.org/meetings/Rio/ccNSO_resolution.html . The report and recommendations appeared to be well received by the ICANN Board and events subsequent to Rio indicate that ICANN is attempting to accommodate these recommendations. The real crunch for the ccNSO may possibly occur at Montreal ICANN in June, and we can remain optimistic that ICANN will accept a model that is broadly acceptable to our own basic philosophies.

It was interesting to see a different ICANN in operation in Rio. My guess is that as the Board was due for re-election, coupled with the fact that the staff were about to get a new boss, lead to a compliant and attentive ICANN staff, and a compliant and listening ICANN board. Only a cynic would take bets on how long this "new" ICANN will exist for.

During ICANN, I was asked by 2 or 3 people when InternetNZ would be releasing the source code for the SRS. It was at least an implied promise that we would do so, and as the question has been raised, we need to consider and discuss with NZRS and NZOC if, how, when and on what conditions the source code will be released. I have asked the Technical Committee to commence discussions on this issue.

I appreciated the opportunity to once again attend an ICANN meeting. It reinforces my belief that the President of InternetNZ should attend at least one ICANN meeting a year (at least while the ccTLD's are still attempting to work within the ICANN model). This attendance serves the purpose of supporting our main representative at these meetings, and also gives the President a greater understanding of other ccTLD models and processes. I have no doubt that Canada and New Zealand stand head and shoulders above other ccTLD's as good models of open democracy and local community representation.

Some discussion occurred on the possibility of NZ hosting an ICANN meeting in 2005, and I am following up with Australia and Canada (post Montreal) to obtain copies of their budgets for their respective hostings of ICANN meetings, to assess if it might be an affordable option for NZ.

In final summary, the ccNSO model is currently looking possible. If not successful in a formation within ICANN, I see the strong possibility of a significant parting of the ways between the ccTLD's, potentially the ccTLD's who have ICANN contracts staying within ICANN, others like .nz creating a ccNSO outside ICANN, and small ccTLD's falling between the cracks altogether.

Keith Davidson
President

© 2001 InternetNZ
Last updated 26 May 2003