Interesting Snippets from Board Meeting

[Rubber Duck]

>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Steve. It's probably worth mentioning that registrations already are taking place using more extended character sets, but just not at the top level. So in some sense, we're already experiencing the use of those extended strings in both the backup and escrow case.

So at least Vint understands that. Perhaps he should tell Paul!

[Rubber Duck]

>>RAJASHEKAR RAMARAJ: Thank you, Vint. I'm happy to introduce the resolution on the adoption --
>>VINT CERF: I'm sorry. Could you move closer to the microphone.
>>RAJASHEKAR RAMARAJ: Thank you, Vint. Happy to introduce a resolution on the adoption of IANA root zone procedures for evaluating IDN deployment.
Whereas, the introduction of internationalized top-level domains is considered a priority by ICANN;
Whereas, the IANA root zone procedures for test IDN deployment paper is considered an important component of enabling evaluation and testing prior to deployment;
Whereas, significant consultation in the technical community and including a public posting with comment purpose has taken place with no significant recommendation for change received;
Whereas, the IDN TLD root server performance/tolerance paper has undergone the same review as the IANA procedure and is -- finalization is anticipated in conjunction with the root server operators;
Resolved, the board accepts the IANA root zone procedures for evaluation -- evaluating IDN deployment and directs staff to implement this in accordance with the contract for IANA performance and IANA's procedures.
Resolved, the board considers the root server operators' participation an important component of the further plans for IDN evaluations and directs staff to receive and implement recommendations received for the RSSAC at their 22nd July, 2007 meeting.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much.
Is there a second for these resolutions?
Peter Dengate Thrush.
I see that staff has already caught the typographical error in the first resolution, where the word "evaluation" should be replaced with "evaluating." Similarly in the title.
So thank you for that correction.
Are there any comments or questions about the proposed resolutions?
Peter.
>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Just very briefly, tonight -- this is the first of no less than three resolutions we're about to have on IDNs to reflect partly the priority this has in our work, but also the complexity, there are many aspects to this. This is simply one, the IANA process. So I'm going to be voting in favor of this and the other IDN resolutions that are coming up.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Peter. Let us know when you're also planning to run for office or something along those lines.
It's just voting -- Peter sounded so very senatorial in that --
[ Laughter ]
>>VINT CERF: All right.
Are there any other comments?
All right. I'll call for a show of hands. All those in favor of adopting these two resolutions, please raise your hand.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
Are there any abstentions? I hope not. If there are, I counted wrong.
Mr. Secretary, the resolutions are approved unanimously.

Not really that hard to agree to doing bugger all, is it?

[Rubber Duck]

WHEREAS, the board expresses its gratitude to the volunteers in the technical community, including the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Architecture Board, the Root-Server System Advisory Committee, and the Security and Stability Advisory Committee for their work related to the deployment of Internationalized Domain Names.
WHEREAS, the board recognizes the important work being done on the revision of the protocol called Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications, or IDNA, that provides the framework for what characters can be used when registering domain names, as well as successful results in the laboratory tests conducted by Autonomica.
WHEREAS, ICANN is preparing the near-term release of a publicly accessible facility for the evaluation of at least 11 IDN top-level domains that will be provisionally entered into the root zone of the Domain Name System and that will include second-level domains in the same languages as the top-level domains, all for evaluation purpose only.
WHEREAS, the board recognizes that this is a significant step towards the stable deployment of Internationalized Domain Names.
Whereas, the Security and Stability Advisory Committee has undertaken a technical study to analyze stability and security issues associated with the deployment of Internationalized Domain Names top-level domains.
Whereas the TLD registries working group has recently released IDN guidelines revisions and plans to continue this effort as further details of the IDNA protocol, Internationalized Domain Names in Applications protocol, revision is being completed.
Whereas the ICANN board remains committed to the development and deployment of IDNs that enable people to use domain names with characters other than A through Z and 0 through 9, and at the same time benefit from the promise of a single interoperable Internet.
Resolved, the ICANN board acknowledges the work performed by the members of the community working on this important topic and urges this work to continue to move forward in a manner that emphasizes the security and stability of the Internet.
WHEREAS, it is -- oh, now we are on the resolved, second resolution.
The ICANN board respectfully requests that technical volunteers continue to work closely together to complete their work revising the IDNA protocol and identifying technical requirements for IDN registrations to guide the policy-making community.
And finally, resolved, the ICANN board requests staff to consider the resulting technical recommendations as essential for the introduction of IDN at the top level in a manner that ensures the continued security and stability of the Internet.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much, Susan. Is there a second for these resolutions? I see Paul Twomey seconding them.
Susan, I want to congratulate you on two things. First of all, spelling out all the acronyms is a really good idea, and second that you spoke slowly and clearly for our scribes.
Thank you.
>>SUSAN CRAWFORD: You are welcome.
>>VINT CERF: Is there any other discussion or commentary on these resolutions?
>>SUSAN CRAWFORD: This is pretty exciting. We have you had have some discussion about this.
>>VINT CERF: I think it's all right.
I think that it's very clear from the "whereas" sections that we all care very deeply about making progress here.
So without further ado, I will call on the board to, by a show of hands, approve these resolutions.
All those in favor, please raise your hands.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
It is unanimous, Mr. Secretary.

[Rubber Duck]

Now it turns out that it isn't enough to make technical progress on Internationalized Domain Names if we aren't quite sure what to do with them or how to treat them.
So there also is an acknowledgment on policy progress regarding IDNs, and I would like to call on Steve Goldstein to introduce that resolution.
>>STEVE GOLDSTEIN: Thank you, Chair.
Yes, as Vint says, this is yet another set of resolutions pertaining to IDNs.
Again, I think it should illustrate and emphasize to our constituencies in general the importance that ICANN places on the introduction of IDNs.
Otherwise, you wouldn't have all these IDN resolutions coming forth.
I would like also to point out that this set of resolutions and the recitations, just as the previous one, does our best to incorporate the wishes expressed yesterday by Khaled Fattal in the clause that will read or reads in both of these sets, "Whereas the ICANN board remains committed to the development and deployment of IDNs that enable people to use domain names with characters other than A through Z and 0 through 9, and at the same time, benefit from the promise of a single interoperable Internet."
In any set of framing, we go through considerable edits and wordsmithing. And I can see that there was just some last-minute wordsmithing this morning. But I hope that this goes a long way to satisfy the request that you brought up yesterday, Khaled.
So we have our alphabet soup here again because all of our constituent bodies and advisory groups, the Generic Names Supporting Organization, the country code name supporting organization, the Governmental Advisory Committee, and the At-Large Advisory Committee, have all collaborated on this issue, are all addressing policy issues. And a joint effort involving the ccNSO and the GAC has made considerable progress publishing a list of issues and questions that need to be addressed in order to move forward with IDN ccTLDs associated with the ISO 3166-1 two-letter codes.
Whereas the ICANN community is discussing the details involved in using an interim approach to IDN ccTLDs associated with ISO 3166 two-letter codes to meet the near-term demands and to gain experience with mechanisms for selection and authorization of such TLDs that can inform a policy development process aimed at creating an overall policy.
Again, whereas the ICANN board remains committed to the development and deployment of IDNs that enable people to use domain names with characters other than A through Z and 0 through 9, and at the same time benefit from the promise of a single interoperable Internet.
And that's, I think, so far pretty dense recitations.
What I believe we are referring to is a -- is some early implementations once we get by the testing phase, of very quickly getting some IDNs into the root zone.
And there are a lot of policy issues that revolve around this. So it's not just technical. And, in fact, at that point, the policy issues may be the dominating issues. And until the policy issues are resolved, progress can be slowed, if not halted, so some considerations are being given to refer to the 31- -- to the 3166-1 tables to see if they can be used as a basis for quickly getting some ccTLD equivalents or analogs, I'm sorry, analogs, into the zone file.
And, basically, it's the policy issues surrounding that that we're talking about here.
So resolved, the ICANN board respectfully requests that the ICANN community, including the GNSO, the ccNSO, the GAC, and the ALAC, provide the board with responses to the published list of issues and questions that need to be addressed in order to move forward with IDN ccTLDs associated with the ISO 3166-1 two-letter codes in a manner that ensures the continued security and stability of the Internet. The board requests status reports regarding progress by the conclusion of the ICANN meeting in Los Angeles in October 2007.
And resolved, the ICANN board respectfully requests that the ICANN community, including the GNSO, ccNSO, GAC, and ALAC continue to work collaboratively, taking the technical limitations and requirements into consideration, to explore both an interim and an overall approach to IDN ccTLDs associated with the ISO 3166-1 two-letter codes and recommend a course of action to the board in a timely manner.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you very much.
Are there any comments -- I'm sorry. Is there a second for the resolutions?
I see Dave Wodelet's hand up.
Are there any further comments on this resolution before we go to a vote?
Paul Twomey.
>>PAUL TWOMEY: Thank you, Chairman. I just -- I know we've discussed this a lot in the community this week, so I don't want to add to that. But I think for an external audience, I just want to point out the extreme importance here of the way in which, to use the wording of the World Summit on the Information Society, we have enhanced cooperation being undertaken in great detail between governments, country code operators, technical community, and representatives of users of the Internet in thinking through what is a very difficult issue but what is a fundamentally very significant issue for use of the domain name system, particularly in parts of the world where Roman characters are not commonly used.
This is a very significant example of the multistakeholder model really working to ensure good Internet governance. And I would hope that people who are watching this area carefully will note the emerging discussion amongst the Governmental Advisory Committee and the Country Code Name Supporting Organization about both an interim action for near-term demand and a long-term policy perspective and will recognize that the discussion that is significantly going to affect their interests is presently taking place inside those two organizations. So that the discussions which will be setting the actions that will affect the interests of many Internet communities and related governments are presently being discussed in the Governmental Advisory Committee and in the County Code Name Supporting Organization.
>>VINT CERF: Thank you, Paul. It seems to me very critical here to make two points. The first one is that the discussions taking place in the GAC and in the ccNSO might well result in outcomes that would be of interest to other constituencies, and it's very important that their views also be heard.
And the second one is that the sense of interim measures or, you know, multitrack measures and the like in some sense implicitly assumes that the track that we are on fails to complete quickly enough or that it has no potential possibility of producing an opportunity for an early implementation. So I want to suggest that we not accidentally think we have to do things in parallel when we could in fact go down a main track and have an opportunity to implement something sooner if all things that are needed are in fact in place.
All right. Any other comments on this resolution?
In that case, I'll -- oh, I'm sorry. Janis Karklins. And was there someone else that had a hand up that I didn't see?
Janis, you were --
>>JANIS KARKLINS: I think that David's asking --
>>VINT CERF: Dave Wodelet. Oh, I'm sorry, David -- no? Okay.
Janis.
>>JANIS KARKLINS: So thank you, Vint.
This issue, indeed, took prominent place in the work of the Government Advisory Committee in the runup to this meeting, as well as during this meeting.
We -- I would like to put on record our appreciation to the ccNSO Council in a way how we interact with each other in developing this set of issues.
I think you are right saying that this is an extremely complex issue. And as we -- when we read through these questions which now need to be answered, we may think that this will take considerable time.
But, of course, the pressure is -- the pressure to introduce IDNs in the root in many countries is very strongly present, and we need to reflect in the best possible way how to address those pressing issues, pressing need to be able to operate the Internet in different scripts and thus bring more people to the community of Internet users.
So we certainly stand ready to continue our work. And we will try to develop or start developing answers to the set of issues and will inform the board and the community on developments already in the Los Angeles meeting.
Two more points. I think it is very good that the board on so short notice, since the list of issues was presented to the board only yesterday, found the possibility to react and propose this draft resolution for adoption.
We are not losing time, and that gives a very positive signal to the GAC and I believe also to the ccNSO Council, who is awaiting this signal from the board.
And the last comment. I think it is very good that the board is suggesting to engage in discussion on possible answers to the list of issues, also other communities and other organizations, like GNSO and ALAC. It is important. This is a collaborative effort. And we're looking forward to working with all interested parties in developing the answers.
Maybe only one suggestion to the text of the resolution. That would be -- maybe that would be useful to put URL to the site where the list of issues will be published on the ICANN Web site.
I think it is not yet published. But if we could sort of put a place mark and add the URL once the list of issues is published, I think that would be useful.
>>VINT CERF: Certainly either -- we may not need to amend the resolution for that purpose. It will be part of the record. But, in any case, points well taken that we want people to see that list.
Are there any other comments before we call for a vote?
All those in favor of these resolutions, please raise your hand. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Thank you. It is unanimous, Mr. Secretary.