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>>VINT CERF: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
We are within 2 minutes of beginning the session.
My apologies for the late start.
Okay.
We have electronic operation.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to open the meeting with a reminder.
We do have translation available from Francophonie from French to English and English to French.
And if you are not prepared to deal with both languages without assistance, you may want to go and pick up a headset upstairs.
Sorry.
>>ALEJANDRO PISANTY: There is a risk that someone will begin speaking in French.
So even English speakers would do well to avail themselves of a translating thing.
>>VINT CERF: Second, you will recall that we did not complete all of the business scheduled for yesterday and that we left over continuation of the WSIS discussion to this morning.
So Theresa Swinehart is going to open the meeting with an update on the WSIS.
And then this will be followed by the working group on the WSIS matters making some initial comments, and then we will open the microphone for public discussion until we have to finish that.
I must tell you that if we were to go for a full hour on this, that we will be quite compressed on the remainder of the schedule.
So we need to be somewhat moderate.
But I will do my best to make sure we do get everything done before we finish today.
I will estimate that we will finish today probably not at 12:30, but, rather, 1:00.
And that will have to be a fairly hard deadline.
So, Theresa, thank you for allowing us to run this over to this morning, and please give us your update on WSIS.
>>THERESA SWINEHART: Okay.
I will do my part to keep my part short.
Apologies for having the date wrong, but carried over from yesterday.
I think most people are familiar it has been put together.
There are many participants who are following it or have been -- the working group on internet governance has met once, on the 23rd through the 25th, in private, with one day of public consultations.
Intergovernmental organizations such as the IT, UNESCO, and WPO do have observer status during the closed sessions as well.
The next phases of the working group meetings are 17th through 18th of February for a preliminary report.
Mid April, June, and then the aim is in July 2005 to have the submission of a report to the U.N. secretary general in order to have the further discussions and adoption at the summit in the late part of 2005.
I will, however, let Markus and others speak more directly to the time line.
The outline of the structure itself will focus on working definitions, evolution of the Internet, current situation, inventory of public policy matters, future developments and scenarios, and proposals for action as appropriate.
I would underline that the term "as appropriate" is very important here and sends a signal that perhaps in some areas there's not necessary changes.
Moving forward, and these are going to be the folks who are going to speak after me, many of the ICANN constituencies are following this debate.
There's the WSIS working group, which consists of constituency representatives.
And these are the people who have put together the workshops to date that have occurred at our meetings.
And we would anticipate to have another one in Argentina.
There's been increased awareness by the ICANN constituencies to be involved, to engage in their local Internet communities, to engage with their governments.
And I will let them speak more to what their next actions are.
From an ICANN staff side, we are continuing to monitor it, support constituency initiatives and involvement and provide contributions and input where appropriate.
With that, I will actually allow -- Peter, who do I refer to? -- I will allow members of the working group itself to address you.
>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Theresa.
Peter Dengate Thrush from Internet New Zealand.
You will be relieved to know that I don't have the 65 slides that I had prepared this morning.
As Theresa said, we had a workshop on Tuesday organized by the workshop planning group.
And members of that are going to give brief updates.
It's important that we just not have a repeat of the panel discussion.
So we're going to give you, if we can, updates on what's occurred since then and perhaps some clarifications.
The intention is really to resume the open session with the microphone, because there were a number of people who wanted to say things and because of the time constraints, we had to cut you off.
So please regard this as an open session immediately.
From my perspective from the cCNSO, what has happened since the working group is some progress.
First of all, the ccNSO's open working group on the WSIS has agreed to draft a response to Mr. ZHAO's paper.
This was splitting the IANA database in response to the ccTLD entries.
We are going to respond to that.
We also agreed to respond to Mr. Desai, the chairman of the WSIS working group, on our positions.
Our working group will be drafting those on behalf of the ccNSO.
And we agreed to keep participating on the work of this group which includes helping draft the white paper that is being prepared.
Marilyn Cade will finish by giving you details on that.
And the resolution that is coming out on that.
That's the update from the ccNSO.
Hopefully if there's any questions, I would be happy to answer them a little bit later on.
Now I'd like to call on Tony Holmes, who is from the ISP constituency and a councillor of the GNSO.
Tony.

>>TONY HOLMES: Thank you, Peter.
I believe that you have actually covered everything that needs to be said about the ongoing work that's happening here.
And in view of the chairman's remark about the time, I think it's probably appropriate we move quite quickly towards the open forum and get comments.
There's nothing I wish to add to that.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you for that brevity, Tony.

>>MARILYN CADE: My job here today is to remind everyone that we are working on a white paper and a draft -- we have a draft resolution.
And we did provide copies of that through the constituencies and asked -- and the other SOs and asked them to take a look at it while they're here.
Very much draft, which means that we need your input and your comments.
We'll be posting it on the Web site, and we will be asking you -- you know who the members of the working group are.
You know you've got to button hole us while we're here if you have immediate comments.
But we'll also be asking to you give us E-mail comments.
We're looking forward to the feedback you're going to provide, because that is also going to help us in our further evolution of the white paper.
The white paper will be a background and information piece, and will be intended to be available to anyone who is interested in learning more about the positions that we think the ICANN community should be putting forward.
But when I say "we," we mean you.
So we look forward to your comments in the public forum.
>>VINT CERF: Marilyn, before you step down, one small question about the scope of the white paper.
Are you focusing this on the work of the working group on Internet governance or is this a broader paper going more to all the issues that WSIS is facing?
>>MARILYN CADE: I think that our focus will probably be internet governance.
But you can't really -- and we're still really working this out.
But the working group on internet governance, of course, is taking place in a much broader environment.
And so I believe it's necessary for us to -- at least in our background section and in our exploration of the implications, it's really necessary for us to take into account what the driving themes are and the broader set of issues of the WSIS.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you.
Are there any further formal or, well, even informal comments, from the working group members?
If not, I'm pleased to open the Mike phone now for comments on the WSIS in general and the working group on internet governance.
I'll call upon -- whoops.
Hold on.
I'll call been Izumi first.
>>IZUMI AIZU: Good morning.
My name is Izumi Aizu, and --
>>VINT CERF: We're not hearing you yet.
>>IZUMI AIZU: The mike is open.
My name is Izumi Aizu, and although I am the member of the planning group from the at-large advisory committee, but I'd rather make this as my personal comment than the member of the planning committee.
I have participated in most of the WSIS process, and mainly from the NGO or civil society sector standpoint.
But I think the most -- single most important lesson we can learn from being in South Africa, is everyone is created equal, regardless of the color.
It doesn't matter if you're white or black or red or yellow.
And you should have the right to participate equally, to make the decisions concerning the society you live in.
Three years ago, or almost four years ago, I came with my colleague, Adam Peake, to Cape Town, the same place, as a member of the G-8 dot force, or digital opportunity task force, which is a tripartite exercise to deal with the digital divide issues initiated by the group of eight nations.
I was given as an NPO, nonprofit organization, to be equal with my government colleagues in the private sector, and discussed what to do with this digital divide four years ago.
Adam and I worked pretty hard to propose a one point universal participation to the newly emerging ICT, say, policy or standard-making fora.
We saw very little effective participation from the developing parts of the world.
So we proposed to our colleagues in the government of the G-8 and also South Africa as a host country government which was participating in the same forum, and they accepted that, yes, this is a good idea to help promote their participation to international new bodies such as ICANN or W3C or some others.
And four years happened.
How much visible output or outcome we saw?
Perhaps not as much as we wanted to.
So, again, at the WSIS two years ago, some governments started to question, are we participating equally?
And I think the -- I think the -- the question is two things, to allow the developing parts of the world have, but, first of all, we should set up the principle, but also, as our G-8 action plan pointed, that we should -- or this international body should make special effort to promote their participation.
I really welcome that Paul and ICANN is now taking very special effort to set aside certain proportion of our resources to help that.
Do you know the FIFA, the football federation.
They spend 24% of their budget to help the developing countries, especially outreach.
They didn't say Internet is -- I mean, football is for everyone.
We used to say internet is for everyone.
If so, I think we should really make some visible effort.
Similarly, the lesson we took from the WSIS process is that civil society is part of the multistakeholder approach.
It's slightly different from the stakeholder-based that the civil society be given not necessarily fully equal, but well-recognized position in the WSIS process as well as the WGIG process.
So the current setup of the civil society component in ICANN as the at-large advisory committee, we have done our best, and I don't have much time to continue, but, still, it's not sufficient.
And the basic question is, the current modality or the framework we are given, is it sufficient enough to play advisory role?
Or should we need a little bit more to be -- to have equal opportunity, right, and responsibility to participate into the decision-making of the ICANN?
Thank you.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Izumi.
Ivan.
>>IVAN MOURA CAMPOS: This is just a clarification, Izumi.
From the standpoint of FIFA, is Brazil a developing country?
(Laughter.)
>>IZUMI AIZU: Go to FIFA.com and you will see.
It doesn't matter if it is classified as developing countries or not.
If the need is there, they have the regulation, very impressive program.
And each national association gets a million U.S. for certain very specific programs.
And they're really helping the training center, outreach, or the stadium and stuff like that.
I think we can learn a lot.
And let's go to Argentina and see how it works.

>>VINT CERF: Okay.
Mouhamet and then we'll take the next speaker from the floor.

>>MOUHAMET DIOP: Thank you, Theresa and all this staff for the great job they're trying to do in order to coordinate the actions of ICANN through that process.
I have just one question for Theresa.
I have seen through the report that we get some input from ccNSO and from the GNSO.
I just wonder if that supporting organization was associated through this -- with that working group on the WSIS, and if the at-large also had this equal participation?
I just wonder how broad was the coordination for that working group on the WSIS that I can tried to set up.

>>THERESA SWINEHART: I'm sorry, Mouhamet, an understanding of how broad the coordination is?
How broad the coordination is among the working group itself?
Or is it the representation?
Within the -- the working group, within the ICANN structure?
>>MOUHAMET DIOP: My understanding is the -- the activities you are trying to coordinate inside ICANN is related to all the constituencies in order to get, I mean, a whole -- just like an ICANN point of view and an ICANN participation to the process.
Do you have all the constituencies inside the -- this working group or is it just -- because I have seen that there was many staff members who were involved since the beginning of that.
And I have seen also that, for example, some members, just some -- some members are really interested as individuals in the process.
And we have seen also the constituency through the NRO, the other process are really involved and get really -- are trying to give their input, sometimes individually, sometimes -- I just wonder if this has really been done systematically through some working group to get a stronger voice and a more harmonized position.
>>THERESA SWINEHART: Let me start.
Actually, to answer your question, it's getting there.
And then I'll let Marilyn add to it.
I don't know if people recall how sort of the working group sessions and the workshop sessions got started within the ICANN meetings.
It was actually at the Montreal meeting that Izumi had made a comment at the public forum reminding the community and the board that the WSIS process was occurring and that it was very important to follow it.
And it was at the meeting in Tunis that the at-large actually began organizing in order to have a discussion within the ICANN stakeholders with the business community, and then the ISP community, and ccTLDs.
So it's been a bit of a growing thing.
And it's becoming more and more coordinated.
It now needs to be systematically coordinated, which I will let Marilyn speak to, but has started to occur prior to this meeting and will occur further.
So I'll let Marilyn speak to that.
>>MARILYN CADE: I really want to echo what Theresa said, that really kind of the catalyst of the at-large leadership in raising this issue, we've kind of been in a very participatory way kind of reaching out who has helped to plan these workshops and we've had a growing addition of when we say constituencies in this particular setting, we need to be a little careful about what that means, because we're actually -- the ASO has been participating.
And in the panels that have been participating in the past, we've had representation from each of the constituencies in the GNSO as well as representation from the ccNSO and the ASO.
And the planning group is also growing, with representation from each of those groups.
So the IPC at this meeting has indicated -- in the past, they've been invited and said, "you know, we're kind of not quite ready yet."
But they've indicated they want to join the workshop planning group.
And the official name of this group, we have to remember, is the workshop planning group.
The effort is to organize education and awareness.
And we kind of through developing the white paper, which we've gotten to, and the resolution, that's kind of the first sort of formal step that we're trying to take beyond initially being into awareness and informing ourselves and hearing from the community.
Does that help, Mouhamet?
>>VINT CERF: Okay.
Thank you very much, Marilyn and Theresa.
I think the next -- oh. Sorry.
I will take the next comment from the floor, then.

>>IZUMI AIZU: I wonder if you can read the online comment from my colleague, Adam Peake just sent.
>>VINT CERF: Yes, I can.
Thank you.
Adam sends a note, it reads as follows: I would very much like to hear ICANN directors and staff reaction to the RIR/NRO comment made earlier in the week.
And I quote, we've also called on ICANN to work with the U.S. government to publish a genuine, unambiguous plan for its independence after the current MOU and to commit to this plan before the conclusion of the second phase of the WSIS.
That would be the end of November of 2005.
This is critical to provide the WSIS community with certainty as to the future form and status of ICANN after WSIS, a question which is certainly still unclear to many.
Adam goes on to say, that's end of quote.
He goes on to say: I fully agree with this and would like to hear comments from the board.
Specifically, I think we need to look at the U.S. Department of Commerce/IANA/ICANN contract, for example, where it states modifications, additions or deletions from the root zone file where it -- without permission of the U.S. government, I think implications for sovereignty are quite clear and must be addressed.
He signs it Adam Peake, glowCOM, Tokyo.
That's the comment that Adam has made.
My understanding is that the MOU is fairly clear now as to what is supposed to happen at its close.
But perhaps, Paul, you'd like to speak to that.
>>PAUL TWOMEY: Thank you, Vint.
Well, clearly, there's limitations upon what ICANN staff or ICANN board can say on behalf of another party.
And as a CEO, as a member of ICANN, and as an Australian, I would be the last person to speak on behalf of the United States government.
But let their own words speak for themselves.
Mike Gallagher, the assistant secretary of commerce and the head of the NTIA, in a series of interviews in August, September of this year, unfortunately, in some respects, interviews given with Washington-based journals, so it didn't get reported as widely as it should have, made two statements, I think, that were very interesting.
First of all, he made a very clear statement that he was pleased with ICANN's progression against the MOU milestones, recognized that we were ahead, and basically he used the phrase "it is crunch time for ICANN."
I actually had to have that translated from American into Australian.
And I understand that to be that this was -- you know, this was now the time where everything was coming to conclusion and it was a positive phrase.
But he very much pointed out that he saw the progression.
The second thing he made very clear, and not only did he say it was a case of himself, but also Ted Cassinger, the deputy secretary, Sam bottinGER, secretary, a series of people in the U.S. executive, were firm of the perspective that when the MOU was completed, that ICANN was to be independent to the United States government and he exhorted again their independence and made the point that the United States did not consider it was in this business.
The second thing he said in a related interview not long after was an interesting comment where he actually, when asked the question what was his position about where ICANN should be based or its jurisdiction, or its place of incorporation, his comments were that after the conclusion of the MOU in 2006, he didn't have a perspective on it and that the USG didn't care.
So I think there were two fairly clear statements of policy intent by senior administration figures in the bush administration about their intent about the MOU is as it says it is.
It comes to a completion.
Then ICANN is independent and they don't have a perspective where it should be based.
As far as the second set of questions are concerning zone file issues, et cetera, they are clearly issues of ongoing discussion between ourselves and commerce as we prepare towards the completion of these obligations, and sits within that milestone framework.
That's probably the most I can say at the moment.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Paul.
I think that Adam's question, in principle, is simply -- and in response also to the RIR comment -- is a request for ICANN to lay out what things will look like operationally at the completion of the MOU.
And I think that's something we can do.
Okay.
I'll take comments from the floor now.
I think -- who's next?
>>MANU NJENGA: My name is MANu NJENGA, and I am working with progressive communications, as well as (inaudible) organizations in Africa.
My question is kind of a follow-up onto the issues of being discussed early on, specifically about (inaudible) as well as information and awareness, especially among African organizations within nationals, that is, activities that are taking place at the national level.
The specific question is, to what extent are activities focused on ensuring that there is national level activities to do with creation of awareness about internet governance issues and to improve the level of participation at the international forum?
I am saying this because particularly if you go to international constituency, there is no specific identified body that's meant to deal with internet governance, no governments are -- no one of the governments are going to have a more active role, because in terms of the stakeholders, government and the private sector, there's no defined mechanism.
And all of this seems especially in terms of African institutions, all of this seems to be happening at the international level.
And nothing at all, no coordination, no information, no specific central point about internet governance.
So I would like to ask the Internet ICANN people especially what is being done to improve this situation.
Thank you.

>>VINT CERF: Alejandro.
>>SHARIL TARMIZI: Thank you for the question.
In response to your question, I think one has to make a distinction between the term "internet governance" and necessarily equating that with what ICANN's function is.
The term "internet governance," from my personal understanding is a broader issue and may mean a lot of things to different people.
But what I can say here as chairman of the Government Advisory Committee is that we have seen increased participation from African governments, particularly at this meeting.
If I may say, participants from GIBUTI, Gambia, Senegal, and Sudan, the commonwealth telecom organization is a member, the (inaudible) Francophonie is a member, the United Nations economic commission for Africa is a member.
So, in a sense, there is increased awareness and increased participation by governments in this process.
And perhaps I'll leave it at that for now.
>>VINT CERF: Thanks, Sharil.
Did you have another comment?
Okay, Alex and then George.
>>ALEJANDRO PISANTY: There is increasing -- in reply also to Mr. Manu Njenga, many of us are doing work in our own countries to reach out to society and to government and to bring together groups of consultation.
I think that the multistakeholder BOTTOM-UP, et cetera, approach has to be guided for us with a principle that in Spanish says (Speaking Spanish) a good judge starts at home.
So we are doing these multistakeholder consultations.
It has turned out in many countries that academic institutions can play a much easier role than other organizations because they are places where people assume that they can go for an open discussion.
So probably your local chapter of an organization like APC is considered as a part in that discussion and has not the same power to call everybody, every stakeholder to the meeting, but in partnership with academic institutions, you can really call these meetings either open -- to analyze what Sharil Tarmizi said, what are exactly the problems you want to concentrate on and specifically the internet governance ones that are to result internally locally in the country, which are a large number and do not concern really the global arena.
I'll be happy personally to provide some material in Spanish, and I'm trying to translate it into other languages to support this at least as guidance.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Alex.
George.
>>GEORGE SADOWSKY: George Sadowsky, global Internet policy initiative.
I hadn't expected such a good segue to what I was going to talk about.
Thank you.
I'm encouraged by the fact that Marilyn Cade mentioned that the white paper that is being prepared focuses on the larger context and concerns of WSIS rather than on the smaller question of internet governance, because internet governance, whatever we mean by it, is, in some sense, an intermediate step, an intermediate product.
And the purpose of improving internet governance, again, whatever we mean by it, is to empower users, people in developing countries, to better their lives, to increase their income, to participate more actively in the social fabric of their country and so on.
And so I would propose that the end user, again, a somewhat slippery term, but, nevertheless, one which can be concretized, be the focus or be a focus, certainly, of the paper.
And then if one accepts this, I think it makes sense to ask the question, what are the forces, the organizations in the world that empower that user or that consumer of ICT to realize these good things and what are the forces that constrain the development or the ability of that user to become empowered?
And to go one step further, to what extent are these things national in scope or local, and to what extent are they caused by whatever international arrangements exist?
My own personal view is that the vast majority of the constraints on people for realizing their potential within the information society and the use of ICTs are national and local.
And if that is the case, one ought to adjust one's focus to focusing on those things which, if solved, if ameliorated, would provide the greatest benefit.
And I would hope that the white paper would take this into account and discuss this particular issue.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, George.
Denise.
>>DENISE MICHEL: Yes.
Denise Michel with at-large.
I just want to note for the previous gentleman's question, many of the -- most, actually, of the user groups that have joined the at-large network and become active there are also involved in WSIS and internet governance issues.
So we're also using the network of at-large groups to inform and empower those groups and become engaged in other internet governance issues that they're interested in.
So I'd be happy to answer some more questions about that.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Denise.
Let me take one comment from the board, and then -- so Veni.
>>VENI MARKOVSKI: Thank you.
Although it's not fair, because George Sadowsky and Denise already said probably 60% of what I wanted to say.
The other part is that -- thanks, Alejandro.
The other 40% is that in the processes of defining what is the coordination of the -- and the organization of the Internet, it's also in every country to respond to the question. And I speak here as chairman of the Internet society of Bulgaria. A great role comes to the Internet society organizations. At least I can speak in Bulgaria.
And I urge everyone, including Vittorio who is sitting there to reach out and talk to more of these organizations that have many members, because times we help the governments to achieve easier, in a better way the results, because we have some of the expertise which governments sometimes like.
I will just give one example. In the Bulgarian telecommunications law accepted last year, including with the help of the global Internet policy initiative and the center for democracy and technology, we have specifically stated in the telecommunications law what are the responsibilities of the governments and the national regulatory authority towards the Internet. And there are three. First, no licenses on the Internet service providers, and secondly and third, IP addresses and domain names are outside of the control of the government.
The civil society in Bulgaria, even though it's a very fragile democracy, only 15 years old, has shown it is capable of handling those issues together with the government, and with the academic network, with the ISP association.
So we are ready to share this experience with anyone who is in the room or who is listening over the Internet.
Thanks.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Veni.
>>WOLFGANG KLEINWÄCHTER: My name is Wolfgang KleinwÄchter, I'm from the university of Aarhus and I want to share some observations from the first meeting of working group on Internet Governance.
Some people have said in the beginning there is a high level of confusion about Internet Governance. You know, if I look around the members of the group, I cannot see that there is any confusion. There are different positions. And this is a difference between confusion and different positions.
And so far, it was also not such a big question, if we come to the definition of the definition. You know, there are a number of different definitions. And there is a narrow definition and there's a broad definition. And we should not confuse and say, you know, there is no real definition.
There are very defined and clear subjects, but there are different approaches to the question of definition. And we should not confuse ourselves by saying there's confusion.
There is clarity, but different positions.
If it comes to definition, I think the group was very wise to start with a broad definition and have a long list of items. The list is now around 50 different items, you know, which could cover under Internet Governance. And it was also a very wise decision of the group, you know, to start by trying to create now the four baskets, you know, with the four main aims. Equitable distribution of resources, stability and security, access for all, and multilingualism, because this enables the group to pack the 50-plus issues into the four baskets and then to look into each basket and define priorities, and then to go issue by issue and to look, you know, what is the adequate governance mechanism for each issue.
And this helps us avoid the situation where at the end of the day we have to decide whether this organization or another organization should govern the Internet. But we come out with a very, very flexible mechanism, obviously. I call this a multiplayer mechanism. We will have a set of different mechanisms for different issues, which is probably, you know, much more realistic than to have a discussion who should govern the Internet.
So it is a broad range of different issues.
But nevertheless, this has some consequences for ICANN. At least two things, and this I want to raise here.
Number one is I think the microcosm of ICANN has to understand that it's operating now in a microcosm with WSIS. So it means it has to redefine its external relations and its role in the bigger microcosmos. So I think this is really an important task to re-understand what the role of ICANN is in this broader context.
And the second point is, you know, when we start to draft the inventory, mapping all the different organizations, one colleague of the group has proposed to have a horizontal approach, you know, which takes -- which will take all the organizations involved against a number of benchmarks, which are laid down in the WSIS declaration, which includes openness, transparency, democracy, multistakeholderism and things like that. And also it can be checked from the outside which means ICANN has another watchdog. And it would be good for ICANN to reconsider its internal structure and to look whether the ICANN itself will meet or meets the criteria which are in this paragraph 48 of the WSIS declaration.
Thank you very much.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Wolfgang.
Are there any other comments?
Let me also ask -- please, go ahead. I just want to find out how many more people anticipate commenting on WSIS matter at this point.
Okay. So you may be the last one. That's good because we now have used up about an hour.
Please, go ahead.
>>susan Crawford: Good morning, I'm Susan Crawford with a law school in New York City. I WONDER how many of you remember the Spruce goose? The largest airplane in the world designed at the time to carry two Sherman tanks across the ocean and 750 troops. Development dragged, and in fact, the airplane wasn't finished. It was planned to help out in World War II. It wasn't finished until after the war was over at enormous cost.
Now, the Spruce goose's core mission was to fly. It didn't focus on that mission. It focused on flying big. And as a result, it wasn't much of a help during the war.
I believe that we are engaged in a Titanic battle for the future of the Internet right now. This is playing out in many fora across the world. Obviously, the WSIS process is a major part of this.
George tenET the former head of the CIA announced yesterday that in his mind, only authorized users should be allowed to access the Internet. Only people who are worried sufficiently about security. How about that; right?
Pushed by law enforcement, intellectual property and sovereignty people are fighting about the Internet all over the world. And ICANN's role in this is a very small part, actually but nonetheless a key part of the battle. And I believe ICANN is on the right side of this battle. Netizens if you will on one side versus authorities who seek to control the Internet on the other.
Listen carefully to the language of the U.N. They refer to ICANN as the present arrangement. Something that can be reformed, should be reformed, so that new blood can come in and run the allocation of IP addresses and the insertion of domain names into the root.
That language is key, and part of this battle.
Governments, in a sense, have an advantage over ICANN when it comes to regulating the Internet, because all they can do is pass laws. Otherwise, their inaction has no effect on how the Internet is used or what innovation occurs.
The consensus policy process was designed to give ICANN that same advantage, suggesting that some consensus policies would be created if they were supported by global consensus. Everything else would be left to global control. ICANN can claim this energetically with both hands to claim this competitive advantage it has to allow innovation unless consensus policies exist to the contrary. Otherwise, the risk is we, and ICANN is us, ICANN will look worse than governments for its core mission, which is avoiding collisions in the root, handing out new Top-Level Domains, and allocating IP addresses.
So I have two suggestions. Just as the core mission of the Spruce goose was to fly, the core mission of ICANN is to, in fact, expand the TLD name space. We had a dramatic discussion about that yesterday. It's clearly not easy, but ICANN could release a lot of the pressure on this conversation and help in this battle by setting up a process for regular insertion of new Top-Level Domains into the root. And I'm convinced that you're working on that. I see that happening.
But a second thing that hasn't been adequately discussed, I think, in connection with the strategic plan that's under consideration right now is that ICANN very clearly needs to tie its considerable financial goals to its inward processes. That is, as Mouhamet has said several times, its key functions of opening up new TLDs and allocating addresses. Those central things have to work right, just as the Spruce goose really should have flown earlier.
I'm not convinced at the moment that the financial goals of ICANN as expressed in the strategic plan adequately tie to these core inward missions. Rather, they seem to be aimed at fighting this battle outwardly, setting up ICANN as sort of an alternative to other substantial intergovernmental organizations. I think that's a mistake and I hope there will be a lot of examination of that strategic plan.
You have many friends across the Internet, many people who care about your side of the battle. The question is are they going to align with you? Are they going to see ICANN as a failed experiment or as a timeless embodiment of net values, which is what it was supposed to be.
Will your friends, these other friends of the Internet, care if you carefully preserve the TLD string space so that nobody else can use it? I'm not sure they will.
Will they support you and applaud you if you manage in a very careful way the business models of the registries and registrars who have contracts with you? I think so.
On the other hand, if you join with them to protect the net from the sources of control that seek to constrain access to the Internet and control what kinds of things can happen online, you have a tremendous group of people who will help you, who will applaud you and go into battle with you.
So don't let the forces of intellectual property, sovereignty, and just all-out greed destroy the net. Join with your colleagues on this side.
The Spruce goose project was killed. The plane was kept until Howard Hughes died. It's now kept in Oregon.
I don't want to see ICANN fail. Thank you.
(Applause.)
>>VINT CERF:Thank you very much. I don't want to live in Oregon anyway, so....
All right. Sharil.
>>SHARIL TARMIZI: If I might just respond. You mentioned just now governments can only pass laws. I think speaking from a developing country, although some of you may disagree with me whether Malaysia is a developing country, I'd like to say this. There are many other things that governments do play a role in, and one of them is really to create the right environment for industry and the private sector to develop.
So in many of these respects, developing country governments do play an active role in putting in the right environment so that industry and the private sector can flourish. So it's not just about control. It's about cooperation as well and collaboration.
Thank you.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Sharil.
Let me get Marilyn and then Michael.
>>MARILYN CADE: Can I just be last? I just have a closing remark.
>>VINT CERF: Marilyn loves to be last. Okay, mike. Let's keep this short.
>>MICHAEL PALAGE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted, the strategic plan has been a very hotly discussed topic in many of the constituents here in cape town this week, and many of the Supporting Organizations and constituencies have asked for further consultation and dialogue with staff, and I hope that they will, if you will, follow-up on those invitations to, again, if you will, refine the strategic plan so that, again, we don't become the Spruce goose parked in Oregon. And it's not that bad of a place. I have been there a couple of times.
>>VINT CERF: Okay. Marilyn. Paul?
>>PAUL TWOMEY: Just saying that issue has been raised in this topic, to be quite clear, moving to extend the time for consultation by another month on the strategic plan, and there is a program in place which was announced to constituencies and Supporting Organizations, organized with each of the constituencies for specific -- arrangement of specific times to meet with constituencies to go through the plan with them, get feedback. And so an intense effort with each constituency over the next several months. Barbara roseman will help in sort of coordinating that. So that's absolutely part of the consultation process. I just wanted to reinforce that.
>>VINT CERF: Okay, Marilyn. Last word.
>>MARILYN CADE: My comment is really to issue a reminder and an invitation. As mentioned earlier by the workshop planning group, it's our plan to organize another session for the Argentina meeting, and we would welcome your ideas, comments, and input on format and speakers, et cetera. We'll be putting some plans together and we urge all of you to mark your calendars now.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Marilyn.
Okay. In case any of you are wondering, we will have a break between now and the end of this morning's meeting, but not yet.
We're now back into the regularly scheduled program, a series of board committee reports.
So I'd like to begin now by calling on the finance committee for its report. That's -- right. Ivan.
>>IVAN MOURA CAMPOS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is going to be a very brief report.
To those of you who have forgotten, the finance committee is composed of yours truly, Tricia Drakes, Hagen Hultzsch, Tom Niles, and Mike Palage.
After Kuala Lumpur, we had, and we really mean it, every day budget negotiations with constituencies. In a day that I don't remember exactly in October, we reached the point where there was agreement by the -- and approval by the required number of registrars so that the actual operational aspects of billing and everything could happen.
So it was, as you will all appreciate, quite a milestone.
It was the result of an enormous amount of work by a great number of people.
So we are very proud of that result.
We had also a teleconference on November 22nd. That's very recent. And we went through an exercise of cash flow analysis with data provided by staff, who guided us through all sorts of spreadsheets and very accurate analysis for cash flow and also a cost-to-date analysis, how we are doing in terms of following the budget and the strategic plan.
And we also produced a draft fiscal year '05-'06 budget cycle calendar, which is the next slide.
This is the idea. Well, actually, the first item has already occurred. We had a finance committee meeting here, and we discussed several things again. This was yesterday. So many things happening, it seems like a week ago.
And we intend to have, on February -- well, ICANN intends to have in February a finance committee -- a joint meeting of the finance committee and the budget -- the bag is the budget advisory group, which is a group which has representation from all constituencies and is advisory to the president of ICANN.
There's this tentative date of March 17 to post the preliminary budget. By April 6, a meeting with the budget advisory Mar Del Plata in Argentina.
In April, since the meeting after Mar Del Plata will be in July, there will be a need of a continuing resolution to give provision for the time, because the -- for those of you not familiar with that, the fiscal year goes from the 1st of July to the 30th of June of the other year.
So if the meeting is half the 30th of June, you need a resolution to cover that period that starts on the 1st of July.
And the planned date to post the proposed budget is May 17th of 2005.
And I have a last slide that was a result of our thinking yesterday.
The following recommendation: As ICANN has now a new and more adequate budget, and is implementing the actions set forth in the strategic plan, the finance committee takes this opportunity to stress the importance its members attach to the implementation of processes focused upon ICANN's stakeholder relations management. In that regard, we encourage the president to continue to assign special priority to the implementation of processes and at tracking the status of stakeholder-related request and at providing timely responses and effective solutions.
That concludes my report, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Ivan. That sounds to me to be very good advice to the president.
I'd like to move on now to the report of the board governance committee and that will be offered by Alejandro Pisanty.
>>ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you, Vint. The board governance committee has, as you know in its charter to undertake design and propose to the board the internal governance matters of ICANN. In particular, the work we have been concerned with has been designing and putting forward ethics and conduct guidelines for the board and eventually this would be expanded for the rest of the corporation.
It also has a very concrete task of proposing the way to populate the different committees and positions of the board that have to be done through election processes. And it also has -- we have also been working on some amendments, some adjustments and refinements to the bylaws that are required by different administrative processes of ICANN in these days.
Today, we will make a private direct consultation with all board members regarding the possible committee assignments in order to recompose our committees, given the fact that some of the directors will not continue on the board as they are finishing their terms in this meeting, and we're incorporating new members to the board, and, therefore, we have to recompose these committees.
And this will be made public tomorrow once we have done these private consultations.
We have had intense discussions within the committee and between the committee and the interested directors in what can be the practical ways to implement rather specific ethics and conduct guidelines that embody the core principles and values of ICANN in a practical way. We will be circulating again for these consultations. Some of these consultations have to be still kept within the board but we are pushing them to have them public as fast as possible because they have to be able to address some specific concerns of directors, which could be interpreted as personal. And, therefore, we are being very careful before putting all this out for a public discussion. There will be, in our proposal, a period for open comment that will be ample and sufficient for everybody to tell ICANN's board what its conduct should be.
And to be brief, chairman, I will end there. Sorry, one more point. We will also be proposing for the board meeting some very slight adjustment to the bylaws in order to embody, to allow the specific administrative arrangements that are needed for the contract of the ombudsman, which have already been discussed in the Kuala Lumpur meeting and are now properly refined and set in language.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Alex.
I'd like to move on now to the meetings committee. And before -- Veni, that will be yours, but just before we do that, I know we have a representative here from Argentina. Is she here? Oh, he. Okay. No, no, you don't need to rush over yet. But what I would like to do is ask if you would be prepared to speak to the meeting plans in Mar Del Plata right after Veni has completed his report. So you should prepare yourself for that.
Veni.
>>VENI MARKOVSKI: Thank you. The meetings committee met on December 3rd in cape town. All members were present. And after a long discussion with participation of staff and representatives of some of the future hosting cities, the meetings committee decided to recommend to the president to move to the board the following host cities as follows. And it's written on the screen, the last three lines. 2005 -- now, note the change in the dates. November 30 - December 4th. Originally it was December 5th - December 9. In Vancouver, Canada.
The March meeting in 2007, 27 to 31st is in wellington, New Zealand, and the June meeting in 2006 is in Marrakesh, Morocco.
We'd like to thank to all candidates who sent us proposals, and we hope that even if some of them are not very satisfied with the outcome, they will be interested to renew their proposals to host ICANN meetings in the future, because as we know, we change continents every meeting, so they have -- they will have another opportunity in the next round.
Thank you.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Veni. I know it's not an easy task to arrange for the meeting schedule so that it's reasonable in terms of weather conditions and easy area to get to. So thank you for the hard work.
I'd like to invite the representative here from Argentina to give us a preview of what we can expect in Mar Del Plata when we are there next year. Please, go ahead.
>>SEBASTIAN BELLAGAMBA: Okay.
Thank you very much.
First of all, I would like to express our gratitude and appreciation to the board and to the meetings committee for selecting us as the next host.
Mar Del Plata is located in Argentina, is 400 kilometers south from Buenos Aires.
It's a beach side resort.
We are going to be there the first week of the autumn, so the weather will be nice.
There will be no rain, I hope.
We will enjoy a beautiful time there.
For your information, Mar Del Plata is a city of about a half a million people, and it has the most popular beach resort in Argentina.
You are seeing the hotel that we are going to host -- the meeting is going to be held.
The typical Argentinian beef.
And you are going to enjoy very much your staying there.
I am going to just briefly say thanks again, and we'll see you soon in Mar Del Plata.
And we expect you, all of you.
Thank you very much.

(Applause.)
>>VINT CERF: I sincerely hope that after the meeting is over, you'll still feel like you want to thank us for coming.

(Laughter.)
>>VINT CERF: All right.
The next report has to do with the conflict of interest committee.
And, Hagen -- where is Hagen.
There you are.
Hagen, I call on you to make that report.
>>HAGEN HULTZSCH: Thank you, Vint.
The conflict of interest committee has a charter, and there is a conflict-of-interest policy which the committee has carefully evaluated.
As you see in the first -- actually, the second chart, we had the following activities.
First, we tried to do a detailed evaluation of the conflict of interest committee tasks.
We focused on understanding the words "interested" and "independent," because we, the members of the board have to be independent with respect to this policy and also other outside legal requirements.
The conflict-of-interest policy itself only uses and knows the word "interested," not the word "independent" itself, for officers, directors, and for persons engaged in ICANN business.
That sends all board members except the president independent towards ICANN.
And if you go to the next chart, the full set of the conflict-of-interest statements of the members of the board were available since mid this year.
We had an evaluation by legal counsel.
We had a detailed discussion in the board conflict-of-interest committee, and we realized that there were no major conflict-of-interest situations within the board.
And we also, let's say, realized and managed that we have a proper management of these minor potential situations.
Summarizing in the last chart, the conflict-of-interest policy, we have the definition of an interested director; we have the definition of a potential conflict of interest.
And this is very clear in this policy.
This requires disclosure of such a potential conflict of interest before the discussion of a related or relevant subject within the board.
And it requires also the abstention and reason for abstaining to be clearly stated.
And it also required abstaining participation in the board's considerations in case of a conflict. And it also requires that family potential conflicts of interest are also mentioned and treated as well.
Thank you, Vint.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Hagen.
This is a very important part of board business, to ensure that conflicts of interest don't interfere with proper decision-making.
I'd like to call on Tricia now to make a report on the reconsideration committee.
>>TRICIA DRAKES: Thank you, Vint.
If I could have the next slide.
We had the meeting of the reconsideration committee here this morning, attended by myself, colleagues Raimundo and Veni.
There were two requests that we -- one was actually to note one from Danny younger which related to the archives of the GA list, which disappeared in July before reaching reconsideration process.
Actually, it was resolved and the technical aspects dealt with.
We were also grateful to Danny, because as a result of looking at the processes of this reconsideration request, we actually -- and when I say "we," it's really the staff who we should also be thanking for this -- looked at, A, the list the way it works.
There are thousands of requests that come into the list, and probably only one's got a genuine reconsideration request.
So they're actually developing Web-based reconsideration request forms for the future, which will make everything very efficient.
So that was dealt with.
There's a new reconsideration request, submitted by network solutions, and the process that's followed by the reconsideration committee is, firstly, it acts as a gatekeeper.
So it decides whether there's a genuine request that really should go into the reconsideration process.
And, in fact, this morning, and I think it's one of the few things that the committee itself can decide without going to the board.
So this morning we decided that, actually, 04-3 could go into the process and move forward for final recommendation, and being dealt with within 90 days.
What we also did was to approve, as required under the bylaws, an annual report of the reconsideration committee, which we'll be putting in for the board for tomorrow.
Note on there.
I would like to thank not only my colleagues, but John, Dan, and also the technical team for actually getting all of this slot in there, because we actually finished the meeting at 8:30 this morning.
And for all their good work.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Tricia.
I look forward to seeing the annual report from the reconsideration committee tomorrow, and those of who you sit in on the board meeting tomorrow will have a chance to hear that report also.
At this point, we move to the section on advisory committee reports.
And just to give you a heads-up, I will schedule a half-hour break -- in fact, now I think about it, it's almost 10:00.
Why don't we do this: Why don't we take a half-hour break now and reconvene at 10:30, and we will start the advisory committee reports at 10:30.
(Break.)
>>VINT CERF: Okay.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to get started.
This is a two-minute warning.
If there are any errant board members around, they should be sent towards the stage.
(Pause.)
>>VINT CERF: Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to reconvene the meeting now.
We've come to the section at which we begin advisory committee reports, the first one of which is given by the Governmental Advisory Committee.
And I'm calling on Sharil Tarmizi to make that report.
>>SHARIL TARMIZI: Thank you, Vint.
Good morning to all present here today.
By way of introduction, the ICANN governmental advisory committee met in Cape Town South Africa from the 29th of November to the 2nd of December, 2004.
GAC participants at this meeting comprised 38 members and six observers.
Since the Kuala Lumpur meeting, new GAC members are Fiji Islands, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Turkey.
New observers are the AGENCE governmental Francophonie, the commonwealth telecommunications organizations and the United Nations economic commission for Africa.
The GAC also welcomed the participation of Gibuti, Gambia, Senegal, and Sudan in the Cape Town meeting.
On matters discussed, particularly the consultation with ICANN board, the GAC consulted with the ICANN board, the GAC welcomed the ICANN briefing which addressed current ICANN priorities and initiatives.
In particular, the GAC took note of the publication of ICANN's strategic plan, the strategy for introducing new TLDs, and the adoption of the 2004/2005 ICANN budget.
GAC recalled its interest in the work of the security and stability committee and in the implementation of the WIPO II recommendations.
GAC welcomes the letter from the ICANN president of 1 December, 2004, proposing to strengthen the interaction between GAC and ICANN and outlining a number of issues on ICANN's agenda involving public policy.
In respect to its commitment to public policy, GAC will continue to deliberate on these issues.
GAC will also explore the possibility of establishing a priority ranking of the proposed issues as well as proposing new issues, as appropriate.
On generic top-level domains and GNSO, the GAC GNSO working group consulted with the GNSO Council.
The GAC took note, with interest, ICANN's strategy for the introduction of new gTLDs, which sets out a process to fully consider the significant issues associated with an expansion of the top-level domain name space.
GAC members supported increased competition as a means of increasing consumer choice and are equally committed to ensuring the continued stability and security of the Internet.
In particular, GAC members look forward to contributing to this important initiative by clarifying the associated public-policy aspects.
GAC also recognizes the public-policy dimensions of the GNSO policy development process relating to WHOIS data and is engaged in consultations with its members and with the GNSO Council on these matters.
On country-code top-level domains, the updating of the GAC principles for delegation, administration of country-code top-level domains, based on a document prepared by its working group on ccTLD policies, the GAC continued the discussion on updating the GAC principles for delegation and administration of ccTLD registries, also known as the ccTLD principles.
Members present at the Cape Town meeting share the view that for the time being, the resulting final public draft update adequately reflects the position of the GAC on this important issue.
The GAC will make this document public through its Web site and announces its intention to adopt the updated ccTLD principles at the Mar Del Plata meeting.
The GAC would like to draw the attention of the ICANN board to the final public draft update.
On country code supporting organization or ccNSO, the ccNSO and GAC have established a joint liaison group which will identify issues of common interest and will prepare future meetings within the GAC plenary and the ccNSO.
GAC welcomed the interest shown by the ccNSO in the GAC's report on progress and updating its ccTLD principles and is pleased that the ccNSO intends to take the GAC paper up through its appropriate working group.
On WIPO II, GAC recalls its advice to ICANN, notes the range of opinions among the ICANN community, and encourages all parties to work together to resolve the matter without further delay.
GAC considers the -- that the additional consultation period envisaged by ICANN is a positive and necessary development, with a view to arriving at an acceptable solution.
On the address supporting organization, the GAC consulted with the ASO and received a comprehensive briefing and updating.
GAC welcomed the signing of the MOU between ICANN, the number resource organization, or the NRO, and the four RIRs, outlining new policy processes for the ASO.
GAC has constituted a liaison group, reflecting the ASO's regional representation and working methods.
Brazil, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, and the United States will constitute this group.
GAC also welcomes the progress in establishing the AfriNIC organization.
On the world summit on information society, the GAC had an exchange of views with the chair and the executive coordinator of the Secretariat of the United Nations working group on internet governance or WGIG.
GAC members also attended the third ICANN workshop on the WSIS.
The GAC Agreed that it would submit to the WGIG through its chair a factual description of its role and activities as the Governmental Advisory Committee to ICANN.
I'm coming to the last part.
On outreach and the Cape Town regional forum, the GAC welcomed the presence of several new participants in Cape Town and confirmed the priority of communicating effectively with countries that are not presently GAC members.
The GAC regional forum addressed the following topics: ICANN and the GAC briefing, ccTLD redelegation, regional Internet exchange points, IV version 6, and AfriNIC.
Participants in the regional forum noted that traffic routed through national Internet exchange points can contribute to individual countries' economy and contribute countries to establishing ISPs.
During the forum, it was also noted that there are numerous issues relating to ccTLD redelegation and that ICANN is willing to help resolve issues that the redelegation process for countries that are planning to do so.
In light of the discussion in the regional forum and recognizing the current deployment status of IPv6 and its -- end-to-end communications and et cetera, GAC continues to support ICANN's efforts towards the deployment of IPv6.
There is a need for individual workshops on the deployment of IPv6.
The GAC thanked all those from the Internet community who had contributed to the preparation and realization of the regional forum.
The Governmental Advisory Committee also expresses warm thanks to the government of the republic of South Africa and the organizers, for hosting this meeting in Cape Town.
The GAC also thanks all those among the ICANN community who have contributed to the dialogue with the GAC in Cape Town.
And last, but not least, the GAC meetings will be during the period of the ICANN Mar Del Plata, which will take place in early April 2005.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I end my communique.
Thank you.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much.
I want to make an observation about the operation of the GAC.
It's my sense that in the last year or so, there has been a remarkable opening up of communication between GAC members and all components of the ICANN process.
And I certainly want to thank you for your part in that and to encourage this continued dialogue.
I think it strengthens our entire process and improves the outcome of any policy decisions that we have to make.
So thank you very much for that, Sharil.
>>SHARIL TARMIZI: Thank you.
>>VINT CERF: Izumi, I wasn't planning to open the floor.
If -- is this short?
>>IZUMI AIZU: Just a (inaudible) question, if I may.
Izumi Aizu.
Can you hear?

>> No.
>>IZUMI AIZU: Very minor.
Hello.
You said the WSIS workshop was the third one.
As a joint meeting or workshop, it was the third one.
But ALAC organized an WSIS workshop in Tunisia.
If you count that, it would be the fourth one.
So, please, if you can, fix it.
Thank you.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you.
I'm.
Is it relevant to this report?
All right.
Please go ahead.
>>ROBERT CONNELLY: I want to make sure it's understood that there was no consensus in the WIPO II discussion, either on the IGOs or country names.
>>VINT CERF: That's why we have continued discussion, to try to find resolution.
Thank you very much, Sharil.
Appreciate your time to prepare that communique.
The next report comes from Steve Crocker and the -- I'm sorry.
It comes from the Root-Server System Advisory Committee.
Who's going to present that?
>>SUZANNE WOOLF: Yes, I think in the interest of time, I can stay right here.
>>VINT CERF: Yes, go ahead.
>>SUZANNE WOOLF: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen of the Internet community.
I'm Suzanne Woolf.
I'm here to give you a very brief update on the activities of the Root-Server System Advisory Committee.
Many of you probably think if you have seen these reports before that you've seen this slide.
There's always people here who don't know who we are.
So I include it.
RSSAC is one of the original ICANN advisory committees, advises the board on -- content of root zone is out of scope for us.
We publish the data as given to us.
And the members are root server and name server operators and other liaisons and observers.
We typically meet at the IETF and will meet next in Minneapolis with IETF in March of next year.
Next, please.
Keep today's comments to a very brief update on our last meeting and current work.
One item of business that's been outstanding for a while is the appointment of a liaison to the ICANN board from RSSAC as provided for in the bylaws.
I'd like to say I'm very pleased to have the opportunity of taking on this role.
And I think it's a chance to promote wider discussion and interaction between RSSAC and other ICANN constituencies than perhaps we have been able to have before.
So I think that we can make that a very productive thing.
I'm not here to do this particular liaison chore alone.
I couldn't and don't plan to try.
You will still continue to see others of my colleagues at these meetings and active in other forums regarding the technical operation of the DNS.
In fact, several of them are here at this meeting.
The RSSAC continues to be part of the work of moving forward the deployment of DNSsec, as the IETF has matured the specification, the root server operators are working with the security and stability committee and various other interested parties, with IANA, on deployment practices and standards so that we can move those from a rather academic exercise and a development exercise into an operational one.
We are also proceeding on a recommendation to ICANN regarding another piece of the full support for IPv6 on the DNS, these in the root server of ip6V in the quad A records for the root servers themselves.
There are some subtle difference between how quad A will operate for the root servers than as they operate for the TLDs.
And we're just making very sure that none of these differences are at all -- will cause any unexpected -- any unexpected side effects or issues.
There has also been a consensus that RFC 2870, which was written some time ago, as best practices for root server operators and TLD operators is in need of some updating in light of more recent experience.
And several members are presenting a draft, will be working on a draft that we expect to have published through the IETF by, you know, the normal IETF processes as a best current practice, sort of to expand what the community can readily refer to as the guidelines and practices we operate on.
The other boilerplate I always tend to include is a little bit of information on where to find us and find more information about our operations so that I don't have to take up any more of this assembly's valuable time.
Thank you very much.

>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Suzanne.
Your work is -- and the work of the RSSAC, is very much appreciated.
I'd like to move on now to the security and stability advisory committee report, which will be given by its chairman, Steve Crocker.

>>STEVE CROCKER: Thank you.
See if we can -- lighting up my screen.
There we go.
Thank you very much.
First of all, I'd like to join in welcoming and congratulating Suzanne in her new role as liaison from RSSAC.
I've had the great pleasure of working with her over the past year.
And as you will see, she's also a valued member of this team.
The -- the main thing that I want to take up in a very few minutes here is that we've gone through a rotation or replenishment process.
As most people know, the security and stability advisory committee was formed in the spring of 2002.
The initial members were selected by the ICANN staff.
There were very few changes over the past couple of years: Two additions and two departures.
One of the departures was pro forma, that is, Doug Barton was on the committee and then took the job as IANA general manager and as ICANN staff member not eligible for membership on the committee.
We've made several changes which I will show new a moment.
But I want to say that the process is not a fixed or closed process.
We're somewhat peculiar in that we do not have a limited number of slots nor do we have particular terms of service.
So it's -- it's a bit fluid.
I'm very, very pleased with the group that we have.
The one thing that would be nice to have would be some greater geographic diversity.
And so in terms of continuing to look for additional people, I'm particularly interested in more candidates from Africa, from South America, from -- and from the Asia-Pacific region in particular.
Here is the committee that has been constituted up till now.
And here are the members who are rotating off.
Everybody on this committee, the people who are leaving and the people who are continuing, has served very well, very ably, and it's been a tremendous pleasure to work with each of them.
And tomorrow in the board meeting, we will present a formal recommendation for a formal thanks to everybody.
The new people who are joining are KC CLAFFY, Rodney JOFFE, Jon Peterson, mike saint johns, and Suzanne Woolf.
We've also created the position of vice chair, and Ray Plzak has agreed to fill that.
And there's a new sense of sort of renewed vitality in the committee.
And I think there will be good things to committee.
We still need a full-time researcher and writer in a position that I have been calling SSAC fellow.
And we will restart the recruiting of that right after the holidays.
Major topics, you've heard already from Doug Barton about DNSsec. And Suzanne just mentioned it.
That has been a very major topic for us over the past year.
And we've spun off an allied project, but it's still sort of tightly intertwined.
Been working with Doug Barton as the IANA general manager on the process of getting the root signed with the root server operators, with the gTLD and ccTLD operators and with others.
A Number of workshops have taken place.
I am looking forward to trying to prepare a workshop and a set of interactions with various constituency committees, including particularly the GAC, and present a relatively substantive report on the progress in our next meeting in Buenos Aires.
We've also spent a little bit of time reviewing a report from the Internet architecture board on proposed research topics.
They wrote that report aimed principally at funding agencies who are considering what their research agenda might be.
We took up the relevant sections of it within our committee because some of the topics that they pointed to in terms of network research were very directly related to DNS and to a lesser extent about addressing.
And we'll be issuing a brief report on our thoughts about that, mostly in the form of a collegial response of, "these are interesting.
Here's what we think about those things."
That's the set of things that I want to share today.
Vint had admonished us to keep it brief, and I'm trying to comply here.
>>VINT CERF: I think you succeeded.
Thank you very much, Steve.
And, of course, thank you personally and for the work that the SSAC does on behalf of the ICANN community.
We'll move on now to the report of the ALAC.
I think I see Vittorio Bertola on his way up.

>>VITTORIO BERTOLA: Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity of offering the usually report on the activities of the at-large advisory committee.
And I'd like to be very quick so I'll maybe skip a part of the presentation.
This is just to tell again to the audience what the at-large is for, which basically means we are there to advocate the interest of individual users and we are expected to build on a network of existing organizations or at-large structures that get accredited and form regional coordinating points called regional at-large organizations, which in turn should in the end elect members of the committee.
So our activities, as usual, have been focused on two main threads.
One is the organizing of the at-large, which basically means doing outreach, and encouraging organizations to participate in ICANN, explaining to them what ICANN is about and how they can participate.
And, well, in the last month, we have been trying to bring this work more out in the field, I'd say.
So many of us have started traveling and attending more and more meetings in different parts of the world and starting contacts to encourage organizations to participate.
And as far -- I mean, for what we got, the number of accredited organizations, we have three new organizations, so now we have arrived at 19 on a global scale.
And for what we got for policy development.
We are mostly involved, I'd say, in the GNSO, so particularly in the WHOIS task forces and now in IDN, which is a very important thing for us.
And we organize public meetings and we participate, for example, within organizations or many workshops here.
And we are willing, of course, to get engaged on the upcoming policy-making processes.
So I will not go into detail about all the events that we have been attending.
But as you can see on the screen, there is a significant number of events that we have been participating or in some cases even organizing.
So, for example, in Latin America or here in Africa in Cape Town, and there are more planned, actually, for the future.
So in some regions, for example, in Africa, we are planning to organize a three or four meetings in different parts of the continent.
This is the second part.
This is about Asia, Latin America.
Also in Asia there are some meetings planned to take place in the next month.
And in Latin America, too.
So, okay.
Actually, one thing we have been doing in the last couple of months is to encourage these structures to participate more and also to provide candidates.
Both because we have to replace a couple of members for the committee who are leaving and because we need more and more people to participate in policy making processes.
So, I mean, while we proceed, the amount of work we have to do grows and so we need more people, basically, both for the organizing part and for the policy-making part.
So I will skip through the list of accredited organizations.
Well, I just wanted to give you a couple of points about what we are expecting to get from the policy-making processes.
About WHOIS, we already made very clear in the past what we expect the outcome to be, and we are particularly worried by the results of -- current results of the third task force, because we are worried by the effect that they could have on good faith registrants, while we don't think they are effective at all against bad-faith registrants.
And I think that ICANN needs to do much more work in the IDN field, and especially maybe turn it from the technical side to the coordination side, so maybe ensuring that in terms of policy there is a proper introduction of IDNs in all gTLDs, and those who coordinate maybe on three basis, the -- common policies in the ccTLDs.
So this is really a sector where we are expecting to release a statement in the next weeks and we are expecting to contribute more and more to the work of ICANN.
And, finally, WSIS.
Well, we had I think quite important results, since, myself, I was appointed one of the members of the WGIG, which means that we have actually got a good point of recognition both inside and outside of ICANN, so in the wider governmental circles.
This is important recognition not just for the committee, but also for ICANN itself.
And, of course, we still are trying to encourage the community to participate more and more in these processes.
Okay.
So this is -- was the -- this is what I was talking about basically going to replace a couple of members.
And in particular, I wish to take this chance to thank Esther Dyson and Thomas Roessler, who maybe in different ways have contributed really a lot to the work of the committee.
And, actually, we are to the point where we have a good list of possible candidates.
And, of course, we have to submit them to the board because we are still in the interim phase.
So we need the board to appoint the replacement.
And we will come up with the recommendations very soon.
And we hope that the board will be able to take a decision in a short amount of time.
So now my last couple of slides is really about the challenges we are facing, because we think that the committee has arrived to a sort of critical juncture, because the organizing work is not going bad, and, actually, we have -- I mean, as I was telling before, we have reached a good level of recognition and we are successful in involving more and more people and organizations.
But still, this is much less than we were expecting honestly two years ago when we started this work.
And so especially in terms of organizing the regional organization, this work is ongoing, but it's taking much more time than we expected.
So we think that the -- we have to succeed in the next year, and so we have tried, and we are trying to identify a set of possible problems, which mostly depend on the fact that we are all volunteers, so we have to basically take our spare time from our daytime jobs mostly to participate in this.
And this is really hard for us.
And also, we are wondering whether the model is completely good or maybe there are parts of it that should be changed.
So we don't have answers now.
But we are planning to have a sort of an internal assessment in the next weeks and maybe come up with a statement or maybe in the ICANN strategic plan or like a sort of minimal internal strategic plan about where we think we are going and maybe come up with proposals also to the board to slightly adjust the mechanisms of the committee.
And so, well, my last consideration is really about who needs the at large? Because when we started this work, it was mostly seen like sort of an allowance to a group of people or stakeholders that wanted to participate in ICANN much like the other ones. So the idea was does a group of people like that who represent stakeholder and they want to participate, so as long as they can sustain themselves and self-organize, it's fine, we'll let them in. But we really think that openness doesn't just mean opening the door. And this was already said yesterday or the previous days by many people.
So there is a number of, I would say, less powerful, less rich, maybe, stakeholders which include the civil society but also developing countries and you cannot really expect they will just come if you open the door. You have to be perhaps more active in involving them. Ask this is what we are actually trying to do. But this needs a lot of time and a lot of resources.
So we just wanted to point out that it is in the interest of the global ICANN community to have these people on board. And so we just expect all the constituencies, keep in mind that the at-large is not just for the at-large or the users, but it is of benefit to the whole community.
And so we expect to get I'd say even more cooperation from all the constituencies of ICANN in our work.
So thank you.
And finally, I just wanted to remind you about the football tournament that our Latin American members are going to going to organize at the Argentina meeting. So stay tuned for that because it will be interesting. Thank you.
>>VINT CERF:Thank you very much, Vittorio.
Mike Palage.
>>MICHAEL PALAGE: Vittorio, in your presentation you were talking about sort of a self-assessment. One of the things that the GNSO council is currently undergoing right now through work with an outside expert is a review of its process. Now, that I believe is under the bylaws. I don't believe that the ALAC calls for that periodic review.
If, in fact, the ALAC is undertaking their own self-assessment, perhaps it's possible for staff to offer some assistance in that review since most of them were volunteers, to see how to make them more effective. I don't know if that's something that the ALAC would be interested in, but the feedback that I have heard from the GNSO council has been somewhat positive of the review process that has been currently undertaken.
>>VITTORIO BERTOLA: Well, as far as I know, the ALAC is going to be subject to that kind of review, essentially the same kind of review the GNSO has been undertaking this year, and in ALAC next year. So we actually are looking forward to that. But still, time is an important matter in this thing so we do not want to have to wait until the end of next year to understand whether something is going wrong.
With the mechanism, we think we could do it maybe not exactly the same thing, but something maybe more oriented to changing the way we work or asking for specific things to ICANN in a brief amount of time.
And by the way, I mean, this doesn't mean that we are not getting separate from ICANN. Actually, we got a significant budget from you last year, at the end of the year. And we are getting more and more support. One thing, ICANN actually had a consultant in Africa to help organizing the at large in Africa. So we do appreciate what ICANN is doing for us. We are just thinking whether this is enough or perhaps maybe there are even small things that the staff could do to help us.
So we are willing to work to identify them, and come to ask for maybe specific points or changes.
>>MICHAEL PALAGE: I'm glad to hear that staff is helping them. That's encouraging.
>>VINT CERF: Veni and then we need to please keep this brief.
>>VENI MARKOVSKI: Very short.
Yesterday, Ivan Moura Campos mentioned he would like to hear what he would like to hear what they had to say about the Top-Level Domains and I think Vittorio could take the proposal of this question as one of the things you may be doing. After all, you are representing the users. You are trying to represent the users who generally don't care about elections and stuff like that. So this could be one of the things that you do.
>>VITTORIO BERTOLA: Actually, I don't want to repeat myself for the eighth time. I think that we have been releasing a statement on the introduction of new gTLDs, and that was 18 or 20 months ago. And we still stick to that.
As I was telling yesterday in the discussion, I think that there is interest in the registrant community to get more Top-Level Domain names and maybe even in ways we cannot anticipate at the moment. So I don't want to further this discussion now, but I think there is still the need for new gTLDs.
>>VINT CERF: Okay. Thank you very much, Vittorio.
>>VITTORIO BERTOLA: Thank you.
>>VINT CERF: I appreciate your time and energy and this report.
Let's move ahead now to the ASO report, please.
Let's see. Where do we have -- here he comes. Mark is on his way down.
Go ahead, Mouhamet.
>>MOUHAMET DIOP: Thank you, Vint. Before mark connects his laptop, I just want procedure from the RSSAC committee particularly. People are commenting so many time about the root server evolution, how many root server we got now, I just wonder if these stat are available somewhere, because sometime you don't have any clear idea about the new extension that are using the anycast protocol.
>>SUZANNE WOOLF: Sure, I can attempt to address that really quickly.
As far as anycast, each of -- not all of the root servers are doing anycast. Each of the ones that are publishing their particular configurations and their particular sets of locations and so on on their own. And I can tell you that the more widely anycast ones are, let's see, F root is in 25 or 26 locations now. Some of the others, I can't speak for other individual operations and operators, but -- which is one of the reasons why this is a hard question to answer. Operators each make their own decisions about the specifics here.
But several of us are in any number of locations. Earlier this year we passed the point that there are now more operating root servers outside the United States than inside, which was very, very good milestone, good moment. And I can certainly discuss with you -- we can go further into detail without taking more time in this meeting about exactly how to find that information and where that can be better documented.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Suzanne.
Mark.
>>MARK McFADDEN: Thank you, Vint. I will join the crowd who is attempting to be brief here.
This is an update from the Address Supporting Organization. My name is Mark McFADDEN. I am the chair of the address council.
Since I last spoke with you, quite a bit has happened. ICANN has signed a memorandum of understanding between the number resource organization and ICANN. That's a very big development, and the address council salutes that.
The address council has sent an IP version 4 global policy to the ICANN board. That came through the RIRs, through established procedures. That is awaiting action by the ICANN board, I believe. And a big thing that's going on for the address council is the transition to the new numbers council which takes place on January 1st, 2005.
The address council, I put this slide in sort of like Suzanne puts her slide in about the root server advisory committee. This is here to remind you of what the address council is there to do. It is a body that is there to advise the ICANN board on addressing issues and policy. It doesn't represent either the regional Internet registries nor the number resource organization.
The representatives come from all of the regions around the world that have RIRs. The four that currently exist and the one that's about to emerge here.
The people who are on the address council are not necessarily RIR members. It currently happens that they are. And any person from the Internet community can participate in the work of the address council and the work of the ASO.
One of the big changes in the last year is the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the number resource organization and ICANN. That has an enormous effect on the address council because it basically turns the address council into the NROs number council, and that sounds like a lot of complicated bureaucratic speak, but basically this is an effective way of making sure that the numbers community and the Internet protocol identifier community and the Internet address community have a way of making sure that they have a liaison with ICANN.
So the MOU actually has a numbers -- the NRO has a numbers council, and that number council becomes the same thing as the address council.
The changes are actually not very, very significant. One of the changes is in the makeup of the address council. One of the directors now is actually elected by the RIR Board of Directors.
That transition is underway. We are currently working on it here. The address council is talking about that transition, making sure that it goes smoothly so that on January of 2005, no one will see any changes.
The current address council is here. I won't go through all of the names. Four of these people are here today. And you can see that they're representing the four regions represented by RIR communities. And again, as we have a fifth RIR here in the very near future, and the address council is looking forward to that, that fifth group will be represented on the address council.
In terms of administration, the work of the address council is supported by a Secretariat. That Secretariat is generously supported by one of the RIRs in rotation. The current one, and great thanks from the address council goes to them, is the RIPENCC. And next year it will be LACNIC, the Latin American regional registry.
And the current chair is me. I've been the chair for two years. And my co-chair -- one myself co-chairs is here, Hartmut Glaser, and then Hans-Peter Hollen is also a chair.
That address council elects directors. Currently two directors, and you can see here their dates of election and where they're from.
One of the things that the address council is responsible for doing previously is holding a general assembly. This was an annual event for the address supporting organization. In the new MOU, there is no facilities for this. This isn't actually part of the MOU. There's a discussion currently going on amongst the address council about how to make this happen next year. And you can actually see the results of our previous face-to-face ASO general assembly which took place in Amsterdam at the RIPE meeting in May of this year.
I've mentioned this, and I'll say again, that as an address, all of the people on the address council are very, very excited about the prospect of the emergence of a fifth RIR, AfriNIC. Expect that to be recognized in short order here. We recognize they've made great progress on both the technical and also the business parts of actually establishing an RIR. And we look forward to next year recommend to go the ICANN board the establishment of that new regional registry.
In terms of other activities, last year there was a standardization of much of the work of the address council. That work is pretty much done. Currently in draft is a roadmap for the activities of the address council in 2005. And as I mentioned, there's some work going on right now in terms of finishing the transition from the old address council that is the oldest now of the supporting organizations to the new NRO number council and address council that we'll be working with in the future.
And Vint, with that, thank you.
>>VINT CERF: Well, thank you very much for the brevity. I see a couple of hands up. I see Paul and Alex.
Paul. Alex first? All right. Alex.
>>ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thanks, Mark, for this report. I'll take a few seconds to underline the momentous importance of the milestone that this represented by the signing of the MOU.
I think all parties are very pleased that we really achieved the very deep understanding among all participants in order to write this MOU. And I would like to encourage everybody in the addressing community as well as outside it to use this as a platform for intensifying our cooperation, especially in the subjects that are of common interest, of doing as much as possible of informal, intensive consultations before those actions -- before undertaking those actions that can have an impact globally on either part of the organizations, the ASO or the world outside the ASO. And to make sure that there is a renewed reserve of good faith for making this very -- I mean this thing that was very complex, to get started to really work. And I would commit that good faith on my part and the part of many other board members.
>>VINT CERF:Go ahead, Paul.
>>PAUL TWOMEY: Mark, I wonder if I can ask you -- sorry you're looking at my shoulder -- ask you a question. It's how to keep building on that working relationship Alejandro is referring to.
The ICANN board and the other constituencies, but particularly the board I think has very valuable interaction several days of its sort of meetings every three or four months with supporting organizations and their constituencies. It's quite a good way of communicating. The one Supporting Organization and council that doesn't have that interaction is the address council.
The address council tends to meet at RIR meetings, and then the board of ICANN meets at these meetings.
Have you got any thoughts or any considerations about potentially ways we could begin to bridge that -- well, I don't want to use the word bridge, but is there ways of bringing that communication better such that we can actually have a higher degree of interaction? It's just a sort of "getting to know you" thing, I think.
>>MARK McFADDEN: Let me quickly answer that in two parts. First of all, to explain the history of while the address council tends to meet at the RIR meetings, it's a historical artifact, actually, that most of the people who are interested in global addressing issues get together at regional Internet registry meetings. That's the community where they most often get together.
The RIRs have between two and three meetings a year in each one of the regions.
The people who are on our address council come out of those communities, and so in a way, in the past, the natural place for those people to get together has been in their open communities, to sort of do outreach into their own communities on ICANN's behalf, if you will.
But I think in recognizing that the communication isn't as bidirectional as it should be, there's proposal that's being just now circulated amongst the address council to actually hold the 2005 -- a 2005 face-to-face meeting of the address council with an ICANN meeting. What's been suggested is to have the first one be in Mar Del Plata.
>>VINT CERF: That's good. That's a good start.
Paul.
>>PAUL TWOMEY: And just as an idea, potentially one of the things, at a meeting's perspective at the meetings committee for us, is we sometimes -- proposals come up for meetings in different regions that often relate to what's happening with, say, APRiCOT meetings, et cetera and we may be able to link those up to be able to respond to each other.
>>VINT CERF: that's a good idea. Raimundo, you had your hand up.
>>RAIMUNDO BECA: I would like to indicate that I -- obviously I support this idea to have at least one meeting of the new address council back to back with an ICANN meeting.
And also to start that in Mar Del Plata.
Besides that, I would like to mention that I have been -- or I was a member of the address council since its creation, and so from November '99 to May 2004, I have been a participant as a member of the address council.
In May 2004, I was elected to the board, but I continue to be an observer at the address council. So I attend the meeting of the address council. And for sure, I am always available to make the best bridges between the ICANN board and the address council.
>>VINT CERF:Thank you very much, Raimundo. We'll certainly take advantage of that. Thank you very much, Mark.
The next report comes from, actually, Paul Wilson had asked to make a quick report on behalf of the NRO.
>>PAUL WILSON: Thanks very much, Vint. Paul Wilson from APNIC. I'm also the chair of the NRO and I asked Vint to give you an update of some developments within the NRO. I'll just see if I can bring this up.
I won't spend too much time on this, but the addressing community doesn't use too much of the valuable time of this meeting so I hope you'll bear with me.
Access violation; oh, dear.
Okay. There's not much in the presentation slide anyway, so I'll leave that.
I'm just going to talk about a few issues starting with the ASO MOU which was mentioned. That was signed by the NRO at ICANN on the 19th of October. And we also are very, very pleased with that final step in a very long set of negotiations and discussions. And we do thank the ICANN staff, and the board members who are involved for all their time on that effort.
The NRO and the RIRs individually are taking steps now to implement the changes in the new structure. As you've heard by defining the appointment processes and appointing the address council members who will be appointed by the RIRs in each reason.
The terms for those new members are going to start on the 1st of January, 2005, so we're proposing to consider the first January, 2005 as the effective date for the new reformed ASO.
Related to that matter, as Mark mentioned the address council submitted a global policy to ICANN a while ago in September, but on the first of January we'll ask the address council to resubmit that to the board for consideration in accordance with the new policy development process just so we're restarting that process with a clear step.
AfriNIC, we're also very pleased that the ICANN board granted the provisional membership, the provisional recognition to AfriNIC on the 30th of September, and ask the president to work with the NRO towards the final recognition. It's a very significant step, as we've all heard.
Accordingly, the NRO has decided to offer to AfriNIC provisional membership of the NRO from now, including full rights of participation in NRO activities at the staff and executive and board levels.
As we've heard, AfriNIC's aiming for final recognition during the Argentina meeting next April. And we're fully supporting that.
All four RIRs to that end have agreed to prioritize their work in support of AfriNIC between now and then, and to provide staff support and any other support that's needed to achieve that goal.
On the ICANN strategic plan, we've welcomed the strategic plan, the publication of the plan as an opportunity for ICANN to continue its development work. We also welcome the extended time line to respond to this important document, announced this morning by Paul Twomey.
We're going to review and respond to the strategic plan through an open process, and we'll make an open call for comments in each of the RIRs regions in the near future and we'll be incorporating comments from those communities into our NRO response which we'll submit by the deadline.
During this week, the NRO attended a session of the Governmental Advisory Committee, and we're very thankful to Sharil and the committee for their time. We held fruitful, constructive discussions about current matters, including the NRO and the ASO, which we were able to explain in a fair amount of detail and to respond to questions.
We discussed the NRO's response to the ITU or to Hualin Zhao's paper.
Also, we established communication with the GAC, and we welcomed that opportunity and welcomed the opportunity to continue dialogue with the GAC.
The NRO, as some of you will be aware, posted some comments on Haulin Zhao's comments on the Internet Governance and we're continuing to see supporting statements from numerous parties to the position that we expressed there. We don't plan to issue any more further responses publicly to the draft, but we'll continue to participate in the discussions about that and related issues. So that's what I had to announce on behalf of the NRO. Thanks very much for the opportunity.
>>VINT CERF: Thanks very much, Paul. I want to appreciate the support we get from the NRO and the daily work of the RIRs.
>>PAUL WILSON: Thanks.
>>VINT CERF: So Bruce has already figured out he was next. This is the GNSO report.
>>BRUCE TONKIN: Okay. It looks like we've got the electronics worked out. Just reminding everyone, the purpose of the GNSO is to develop and recommend to the ICANN board policies relating to generic Top-Level Domains, such as com, net, org, biz, info, et cetera.
The GNSO policies that are currently going through the policy development process in the areas of WHOIS, we're looking there at how do we provide adequate notice to registrants of their obligations with respect to providing data for the display, looking at mechanisms of controlling access to the WHOIS data, potentially tiered access. And looking at how to improve the Accuracy of the information that is collected.
We also have a process looking at when a gTLD operator wishes to make a change to their operations, what process the ICANN staff should use to approve that change if it's related to the contract.
The -- one of the areas or one of the recommendations that has come out from WHOIS for discussion is registrars, although there is conditions IN agreements between registrars and registrants about the collection and display of WHOIS, that's often buried in agreements that can, in many cases, be several pages long, and it's an effect of the Internet that many people don't necessarily read all the terms in these agreements. So there's a push for registrants to make the WHOIS part of those agreements more prominent at the time of registration, and in particular, their obligation to provide accurate data and the requirement for registrars to display that data.
The other, I guess, work items that are being refined, one is looking at a mechanism to resolve conflicts between local contracts -- between the ICANN contracts and local laws where a registrar might reside.
There's also examination going on of whether tiered access is feasible.
Looking at improving the process for responding to accuracy complaints. Currently, if a person has a complaint, they may lodge it with a registrar. And then the registrar can take -- must make regional efforts to contact the registrant if the data is found to be wrong, that's a breach of the agreement, and the registrar may delete the name.
Looking at mechanisms potentially where, after a certain period of time, if no contact has been received, a name may be put on hold where it's removed from the zone file and, hence, is not active. But long a longer period of time would be available to contact the registrant before canceling the name.
Also considering how to act more promptly in instances where there's a serious problem associated with the use of a domain name, and the contact detail, contact information is not sufficient to contact the registrant, and if, in certain very narrowly defined circumstances, action can be taken more quickly.
In terms of the process for ICANN to approve changes that might be proposed by registry operators, I guess the essential criteria here is really coming back to ICANN's mission, and that is the change that's being requested, would it have a detrimental and a material impact on the security and stability of the Internet's unique identifier systems? And maintain consistency while fostering competition where appropriate. So that's really the essential test that would need to be applied.
And then what we're looking at is in some cases it would be appropriate for ICANN staff to do a fairly quick review of the change, and then assuming that in the view of the ICANN staff there is no issue with security or stability and it doesn't impact on the competition and the registration of domain names there may still need to be a short public comment period, especially where third parties may be affected.
And then, so, ultimately, that entire process is hoped to take a matter of weeks rather than months.
The other option which is defined as a detailed review is if the ICANN staff believe that there may well be an issue of security or stability or there may be -- there's a reasonable chance of problems in the competition of domain names, that a thorough review would be conducted.
In this case, ICANN would use an external evaluator or maybe a panel of external evaluators that would have -- that would be engaged on some sort of contract to perform a review over a period of time.
They may collect further facts on the issue.
They may run certain briefing sessions for stakeholders that are likely to be most affected.
And, of course, there would be an opportunity for public comment there as well.
Because of the need to identify the right external evaluator in the particular area and the need to do thorough analysis and fact-finding, maybe even testing, this process may take several months.
But a review of recent decisions by ICANN in the past two years is the vast majority of those decisions would fall into the quick-look category and there's probably only two instances in the past two years that would require this detailed review.
So those are the two policy areas that are currently going through the policy process.
The other thing that the GNSO community does and the council facilitates is discussion on other issues, and, really, to inform the community and consider potential solutions.
One of those problems is the growth or problem surrounding the contention for deleted names.
And, essentially, the problem is that previously-registered names often have a market value well above the standard retail price for a domain name.
The registry operator publishes a list of domain names that are about to become available and the time when those names are about to become available.
So the obvious thing that happens here is that registrars compete very strongly to obtain those names on behalf of their customers, and the value of those names then causes huge resources to be allocated, and, essentially, what we see here is that under the current first-come, first-served model for domain registration, the first add command that reaches the registry within microseconds of the name actually becoming available gets the name.
And that works quite well where there's not a particularly high value on a particular name.
But where there is a high value on a name, that generates a huge amount of attempts to register that name.
And the way this works is, if you send as many add commands to the registry as possible, and the more you send, the higher the probability that one of those commands would be successful, the registries have responded by limiting the bandwidth or the capacity that an individual registrar can flood the registry with commands.
But under the current equal access arrangements, the registry needs to give each registrar the same amount of capacity.
And so what people have determined in the last six months is the way around this is to apply for many accreditations from ICANN.
So we've seen the number of registrars accredited from ICANN double, but we certainly haven't seen the amount of actual domain name registration activity double in that period.
So what we're getting here is an inefficient use of resources from registrars that are using massive amounts of computing power to obtain names.
Registries are having to provide substantial amounts of resources.
And ICANN itself is having to process hundreds of requests for accreditation purely to obtain additional capacity to send add commands for a few names that become available each day.
So we had a workshop on this on Wednesday this week, and a number of different solutions to this problem were proposed.
And those solutions are available on the ICANN Web site for the community to review.
The other topic of discussion is GNSO review.
As part of the standard process that ICANN is using as an outcome of evolution and reform is to review each advisory committee and council and these supporting organizations more widely.
At this stage, this is a review of the council itself.
There's an external reviewer who's been engaged to review the council.
As part of that process, the council is itself doing its own review to think about, you know, what we believe ourselves we could improve upon and what we might request the board to consider in terms of process changes.
Those review documents will be available shortly.
And then they will be available for public comment.
It is still the belief of the GNSO Council that we should retain three representatives per constituency.
This ensures broader geographic coverage and also ensures more resources, I think, as some others have mentioned.
In ALAC, one of the issues is the amount of things to consider.
There's just not enough people to really work on those issues.
So we find that we need to get a value between having too few and too many people.
And we think that balance is -- that current balance that exists is the correct one.
We're also seeking some flexibility in setting time frames for policy development, depending on the complexity of the issue.
So the council's requested that the ICANN board extend the current arrangement of three representatives per constituency until the ICANN meeting in Argentina.
This will allow time for the external review to be completed and any changes to the bylaws to be drafted and subject to public comment.

The other -- WIPO, again, featured in discussions at the council level.
I think the council's been fairly consistent in its view that the UDRP process that was developed for trademarks should continue to retain its narrow focus on trademarks.
But we agree that there may well be other mechanisms for dealing with the issues raised by the second WIPO process relating to names and acronyms of international, intergovernmental organizations and country names.
So we certainly welcome further work in that area to look at different mechanisms and options and see if some agreement can be reached.
Strategic plan.
I think, essentially, the constituencies are still absorbing the content of that document.
We would like enough time to ensure that we have dialogue between the ICANN staff and members of the GNSO community before the board approves the plan.
And certainly we recognize the need for a rolling strategic plan.
And we need to plan how, as part of that rolling plan each year, there's sufficient processes in place to get input on updating that rolling plan.
Finally, just to thank some departing members of the GNSO Council.
Amadeu abril was appointed by the nominating committee, and his term has expired.
Thomas Roessler has done a huge amount of work as the liaison between the ALAC and the council.
And JISUK WOO has recently departed as the elected representative of the noncommercial constituency.
So I finish the presentation there, Mr. Chairman.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Bruce.
I want to -- and you your colleagues to know how much the board appreciates the efforts that GNSO has made to contribute very positively to the work of ICANN.
I'm looking forward to seeing your recommendations.
And, of course, as actions come to the board, we will take them up.
Alex.
>>ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you, Vint.
I think it would be a shame to have this report go