[council] Preliminary Report on 25 September ICANN Board Meeting

["Andrew McLaughlin" <mclaughlin@pobox.com>]

To the Names Council:

I thought it might be useful to send you a quick summary of the actions
taken by the ICANN Board at its teleconference on Monday, 25 September. 
The preliminary report is posted at
<http://www.icann.org/minutes/prelim-report-25sep00.htm>.  The Board
acted on these matters:

   o ccTLD Delegations

As you may know, ICANN recently received a query from the European
Commission regarding the delegation of the "eu" alpha-2 code as a
ccTLD. 
<http://www.icann.org/correspondence/liikanen-letter-06jul00.htm>  Under
existing ICANN/IANA policy <http://www.icann.org/icp/icp-1.htm>, ccTLD
assignments are made on the basis of codes on the ISO 3166-1 list. 
While the "eu" code does not appear on that list, the ISO 3166
Maintenance Agency has designated the "eu" code as approved for "all
uses."  Confronted with this situation, the IANA staff asked the Board
for guidance.  The Board's answer was that the code should be regarded
as available for delegation under existing policy, and furthermore that
no new TLDs should be established without a completed registry agreement
between ICANN and the registry operator.  See
<http://www.icann.org/minutes/prelim-report-25sep00.htm#00.74> for the
detailed resolutions.

   o Amendment to ASO MoU

The Board authorized amendment of the ASO MoU to align the terms of
Address Council members so that new members from the three RIR regions
join simultaneously on January 1.  The amendment appears at
<http://www.icann.org/aso/aso-mou-amend1-25sep00.htm>.

   o Multilingual Domain Names - Verisign Registry Testbed

In response to Verisign Global Registry's recent announcement about its
multilingual domain name testbed, the Board called on Verisign to
"consult closely with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the
Internet Architecture Board concerning the design and implementation of
the testbed, with the goal that the testbed should promote, rather than
complicate, technical standardization efforts in this area."  The Board
also:  called on Verisign to provide equivalent testbed access to all
accredited registrars; called on the participating registrars to protect
the interests and expectations of domain-name holders and affected third
parties; and asked the ICANN staff to consider what measures might be
needed "to facilitate the operation of the testbed in a manner that
protects those interests and expectations, including provisions that
facilitate evolution of the testbed to match evolving standardization
efforts within the IETF."

   o March 2001 Meetings - Melbourne

Finally, the Board agreed with the staff's decision to accept a
well-supported proposal from local hosts to hold the Spring 2001 ICANN
Board meetings in Melbourne, Australia, from 10-13 March.  As always,
the SOs are invited to hold a meeting (if you wish) in conjunction with
the ICANN Board meetings.

--Andrew