Global Domain Name and Internet Policy News
As part of the orderly transition at the management level that’s happening at the .de ccTLD registry DENIC, Thomas Keller joined the DENIC Executive Board as new full-time member on 1 October. This follows his appointment in June by the Supervisory Board and DENIC General Assembly to succeed Dr. Jörg Schweiger, who announced earlier this year he was stepping down on 31 December.
Thomas Keller has been announced as the replacement of Dr. Jörg Schweiger as one of the two full-time members on DENIC’s Cooperative’s Executive Board, commencing on 1 January 2022. Schweiger, the current CEO, announced in December 2020 he will step down on 31 December 2021.
In BriefThe Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council adopted the Charter [PDF, 565 KB] of the GNSO Review Working Group during its meeting on 21 July 2016. This Working Group is tasked to develop an implementation plan for the GNSO Review recommendations [PDF, 407 KB] which were recently adopted by the ICANN Board. This is the Call for Volunteers to join this Working Group. Anyone interested in the GNSO Review and contributing to the development of the implementation plan and subsequent implementation is encouraged to volunteer.
In BriefThe Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council adopted the Charter [PDF, 565 KB] of the GNSO Review Working Group during its meeting on 21 July 2016. This Working Group is tasked to develop an implementation plan for the GNSO Review recommendations [PDF, 407 KB] which were recently adopted by the ICANN Board. This is the Call for Volunteers to join this Working Group. Anyone interested in the GNSO Review and contributing to the development of the implementation plan and subsequent implementation is encouraged to volunteer.
Per the GNSO Review Working Group Charter [PDF, 565 KB] the GNSO Review Working Group will be responsible for developing an implementation plan, containing a realistic timeline for the implementation, definition of desired outcomes and a way to measure current state as well as progress toward the desired outcome for the GNSO Review recommendations adopted by the ICANN Board (thirty-four (34) recommendations of the Final Report [PDF, 727 KB] of the Independent Examiner (i.e. all recommendations excluding recommendations 23 and 32). This implementation plan is to be submitted for approval to the GNSO Council, followed by consideration by the ICANN Board. Following the approval of the implementation plan, the Working Group is also expected to execute and oversee the implementation of the GNSO Review recommendations unless specified differently in the implementation plan.
The GNSO Review Working Group will also be responsible for considering any new requests1 by the GNSO Council concerning issues related to the GNSO Council processes and procedures and to Working Group guidelines that have been identified either by the GNSO Council, or a group chartered by the GNSO Council, as needing discussion. However, the first priority of the Working Group will be the development of an implementation plan and the subsequent implementation of the GNSO Review recommendations.
The GNSO Review Working Group is expected to deliver the implementation plan to the GNSO Council for consideration at the GNSO Council meeting at ICANN57 at the latest in order to meet the Board set objective of ‘an implementation plan, containing a realistic timeline for the implementation, definition of desired outcomes and a way to measure current state as well as progress toward the desired outcome, shall be submitted to the Board as soon as possible, but no later than six (6) months after the adoption of this resolution’2 i.e., December 2016.
Each GNSO Stakeholder Group and/or Constituency will identify one primary and one alternate member to serve on the GNSO Review Working Group. In addition to these appointed members, anyone interested will be able to join this working group as a participant or observer. Please note that participants are expected to attend conference calls and to actively participate in online discussions. They also must submit a Statement of Interest per Section 5.0 of the GNSO Operating Procedures [PDF, 1.31 MB]. Observers can follow the group’s work on the mailing list but can neither send to the mailing list nor participate actively in the calls.
Interested participants and observers are requested to complete the sign-up sheet by Friday, 19 August 2016.
It is anticipated that the GNSO Review Working Group will convene online for the first time in the last week of August 2016. Following that, regular online meetings will be scheduled in accordance with the Working Group’s work plan, which it is expected to develop as one of its first tasks.
For those interested in volunteering for this effort, you are encouraged to review the following materials:
The second independent review of the GNSO commenced in 2014. The Final Report of the independent examiner was published on 15 September 2015 (see https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/gnso-review-final-15sep15-en.pdf [PDF, 1.99 MB]) and contained 36 recommendations in the areas of: participation & representation, continuous development, transparency and alignment with ICANN‘s future. The GNSO Council adopted the GNSO Review Recommendations Feasibility and Prioritization analysis (see: http://gnso.icann.org/en/drafts/review-feasibility-prioritization-25feb16-en.pdf [PDF, 407 KB]) on 14 April 2016 with the modification of Recommendation 21, that the council recommends staff working with the GNSO to institute methods of information sharing of highly relevant research related to gTLDs to help the GNSO community members increase their knowledge base (low priority).
On 25 June, the ICANN Board accepted the Final Report from the independent examiner, taking into account the GNSO Working Party’s Feasibility and Prioritization Analysis of the GNSO Review Recommendations, adopted with modifications by the GNSO Council. The Board adopted thirty-four (34) recommendations of the Final Report (i.e. all recommendations excluding recommendations 23 and 32). Furthermore, the Board requested that the GNSO Council convene a group that oversees the implementation of Board-accepted recommendations.
Per the motion adopted on 21 July 2016, the GNSO Council adopted the Charter [PDF, 565 KB] of the GNSO Review Working Group and directed staff to send a Call for Volunteers for the Working Group.
1 For items that are submitted for review ‘on request’, the GNSO Review WG expects to receive detailed input from the group affected by the process/operational change concerned. See request template at: https://community.icann.org/download/attachments/14713135/GNSO-SCI-ReviewRequest-yyymmdd_template.docx?version=1&modificationDate=1469143165000&api=v2 [DOCX, 102 KB].
2 The Board resolution was adopted on 25 June 2016
This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2016-07-27-en
Brief OverviewPurpose: This public comment proceeding is being opened to obtain community input on the Preliminary Issue Report on New gTLD Subsequent Procedures.
Brief OverviewPurpose: This public comment proceeding is being opened to obtain community input on the Preliminary Issue Report on New gTLD Subsequent Procedures.
Current Status: This new Preliminary Issue Report on New gTLD Subsequent Procedures is posted for public comment and submitted to the GNSO Council in response to the Council’s request, pursuant to a Resolution passed during its meeting on 24 June, 2015.
Next Steps: Following review of public comments received on this report, the Staff Manager will update the Issue Report as appropriate to reflect public comment. The Staff Manager will submit a summary of the public comments received together with the Final Issue Report to the GNSO Council for consideration.
This Preliminary Issue Report [PDF, 1.28 MB] was created in response to the GNSO Council request to analyze subjects that may lead to changes or adjustments for subsequent New gTLD Procedures, utilizing a set of deliverables from the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Discussion Group (DG) as the basis for analysis. This Preliminary Issue Report is intended to help establish a baseline scope of subjects and to provide analysis that will hopefully further the work of the potential PDP Working Group, but it is not intended to discuss and provide solutions, as that is work expected to be accomplished by the PDP–WG.
This Preliminary Issue Report seeks to review the subjects identified by the DG in depth, to help the community in determining what, if any changes may be needed in regards to the existing GNSO Final Report on Introduction of New Generic Top-Level Domains, which has “been designed to produce a systemized and ongoing mechanisms for applicants to propose new top-level domains,” meaning those policy recommendations remain in place for subsequent rounds of the New gTLD Program unless the GNSO Council would decide to modify those policy recommendations via a policy development process. The DG saw the subjects it identified as possibly being addressed in the following ways:
There are a number of New gTLD-related review efforts underway or planned within the community, which to the extent that they are known, are discussed in this report. A potential Policy Development Process (PDP) should not be expected to be limited to the subjects identified in this Issue Report, and should take into account the findings from these related efforts. In some cases, it may be determined that certain subjects can be fully addressed in these related efforts. The subjects identified by the DG have been organized in suggested groupings that could facilitate establishing teams to undertake the work. The list of subjects is a starting point, and a suggested method of organization, but it is not intended to be exhaustive or impose constraints on how a potential PDP–WG operates or the issues it discusses, provided that the issues are directly related to new gTLD subsequent procedures. The list of subjects may need to be supplemented, shrunk, or reorganized, to meet the needs of the substantive policy discussions of the PDP–WG.
The provisional groupings suggested by the DG and discussed in this Issue Report are enumerated directly below, which each contain a set of discrete subjects that have been researched and analyzed for the purposes of this Issue Report, and are likely to warrant additional discussion and possibly the development of recommendations by a potential PDP Working Group:
This document is being published for public comment to seek community input particularly with regards to information that may be missing from this Preliminary Issue Report, or necessary corrections or updates to information, as well as any feedback on the proposed PDP Working Group Charter. Furthermore, comments are sought on whether there are any issues that should be explored in the PDP in addition to those described above and in the Preliminary Issue Report.
In 2005, the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) began a policy development process (PDP) to consider the introduction of new gTLDs. The two-year PDP process resulted in a set of 19 GNSO policy recommendations for implementing new gTLDs. In order to implement the policy recommendations of the GNSO, and to take into consideration subsequent additional policies and recommendations from the community (including the GNSO, GAC, ccNSO, ALAC, SSAC and the ICANN Board through the New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC)), a number of draft Applicant Guidebooks (AGBs) were developed by ICANN staff.
In June 2011, ICANN‘s Board of Directors approved the final AGB and authorized the launch of the New gTLD Program, although subsequent revised versions of the Final Applicant Guidebook were released by ICANN staff, including the ultimate final New gTLD Applicant Guidebook dated June 4, 2012, a few months after the application window closed.
The New gTLD Program application window opened on 12 January 2012 and a total of 1930 complete applications were received. The first set of Initial Evaluation results were released on 22 March 2013, followed by the first set of new gTLD delegations on 21 October 2013.
All applications have completed the evaluation process and as of the writing of this Preliminary Issue Report, there are over 700 gTLDs delegated and approximately 600 applications still proceeding through the remaining steps of the program. Though the 2012 round is ongoing, efforts to examine the round have already begun, which includes the creation of the GNSO New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Discussion Group (DG), was created to discuss the experiences gained by the first round of new gTLD applications and identify subjects for future issue reports, if any, that might lead to changes or adjustments for subsequent application procedures.
The DG prepared a set of final deliverables, which included a set of subjects that it anticipated should be analyzed in detail in the context of an issue report. On 24 June, 2015 the GNSO Council passed a resolution requesting the drafting of this Preliminary Issue Report on New gTLD Subsequent Procedures.
Open Date: 31 Aug 2015 23:59 UTC
Close Date: 10 Oct 2015 23:59 UTC
Staff Report Due: 24 Oct 2015 23:59 UTC
This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
https://www.icann.org/public-comments/new-gtld-subsequent-prelim-2015-08-31-en
Purpose (Brief):Â ICANN is opening a Public Comment Period for the proposed Whois Information Status Policy. Members of the Internet Community are asked to provide feedback on the proposed document. The proposed Policy is based on a recommendation from the Generic Names Supporting Organization Council related to the display of statuses in the Whois output by registry operators and registrars
Purpose (Brief):Â ICANN is opening a Public Comment Period for the proposed Whois Information Status Policy. Members of the Internet Community are asked to provide feedback on the proposed document. The proposed Policy is based on a recommendation from the Generic Names Supporting Organization Council related to the display of statuses in the Whois output by registry operators and registrars.
The Generic Names Supporting Organization Council (“GNSO“) initiated a Policy Development Process in June 2009, which resulted in the submission of several policy and process recommendations to the ICANN Board of Directors, which the Board approved on 6 May 2012. ICANN staff developed this proposed Policy on the basis of a recommendation from a Working Group convened by the GNSO.
ICANN will review the submitted comments and, where appropriate, incorporate suggested modifications into the Policy. Once finalized, the Policy will be implemented and made effective for all gTLD registrars and registries.
Detailed Information
Section I: Description, Explanation, and Purpose:
The Registry Agreements between the gTLD registry operators and ICANN as well as the Registrar Accreditation Agreement between the ICANN accredited registrars and ICANN require registry operators and registrars to provide a publicly available Whois service that makes available certain data related to the domain names that are registered via the respective registry operators and registrars. In most of the cases, those data include domain name statuses. The names of the existing statuses often vary between the registry operators and the registrars, while some of them don’t make any information available about the meaning of each status they use, which might create confusion among users.
The purpose of the proposed Whois Information Status Policy is to create consistency across by requiring registry operators and registrars that display statuses in their Whois output to only refer to EPP status codes [PDF, 98 KB] and to include a link to an ICANN web page with a list of the statuses and their meaning.
The proposed Policy does not require registry operators and registrars to display statuses in their Whois output if they are not already obligated to do so, but it requires those who do display statuses to only use the EPP status codes and to provide the link noted above in their output. In that regard ICANN is also seeking comment from the community about whether the Policy should require all registry operators and registrars to display Whois statuses in their Whois output.
Section II: Background:
On 24 June 2009, the GNSO Council launched a Policy Development Process (PDP) in connection to the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy (gnso.icann.org/en/council/resolutions#200906 â resolution 20090624-2) and the PDP working group submitted its Final Report on 30 May 2011 with a set of recommendations (gnso.icann.org/issues/transfers/irtp-b-final-report-30may11-en.pdf [PDF, 972 KB]), including Recommendation #8: to standardize and clarify Whois status messages regarding “Registrar Lock” status. On 22 June 2011, the GNSO Council resolved that prior to the consideration of approval of the recommendation regarding the standardizing and clarifying Whois status messages regarding Registrar Lock status, the GNSO Council would request ICANN staff to provide a proposal designed to ensure a technically feasible approach can be developed to meet this recommendation. In response to this request, ICANN Staff developed a proposal in consultation with the IRTP Part B working group, which was posted for public comment and subsequently adopted by the GNSO Council on 16 February 2012 (gnso.icann.org/en/council/resolutions#20120216-1). Following another public comment forum on the recommendation and proposal (www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/irtp-b-rec8-21feb12-en.htm) the ICANN Board adopted these on 6 May 2012. (www.icann.org/en/groups/board/documents/resolutions-06may12-en.htm#1.5)
Section III: Document and Resource Links:
Whois Information Status Policy [PDF, 52 KB]
Comment / Reply Periods:
This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/wisp-10may13-en.htm