[council] For the April 10 teleconference

["Milton Mueller" <mueller@syr.edu>]

Bringing the DNSO constituency structure up to date:
Preliminary notes

Principles and issues:

1. A gTLD constituency should represent prospective registries as well as incumbent registries. It is unfair and inconsistent with competition policy norms to allow those who have been granted TLD resources to rule on policies regarding who shall get them in the future. I also note that a registrar constituency was created and seated before any registrars had been accredited by ICANN. A simple membership criterion would be to extend membership to any organization that confrormed with ICANN's application process (past and future) and paid its application fee. 

2. We should create an individual domain name holders' constituency on the same timetable as the new gTLD constituency. The DNSO review lends support to that objective. The addition of 2 seats for gTLDs alone would make the NC as a whole even more slanted toward business interests than it is now, especially given the significant amount of overlap between registrars and registries.

Objectives and timetables:

1. Rough draft charter(s) should be prepared in time to be discussed at the Stockholm meeting.

2. An open meeting of prospective constituency members (IDNO and gTLD) should be held at the Stockholm meeting, to discuss the draft(s).

3. The Names Council should be prepared to review the rough drafts and offer some guidance at Stockholm, but not make any definitive pronouncements. If there are competing drafts we should allow (fixed duration) testimony from advocates before the NC session. 

4. Consensus charters should be ready for final approval at the October Names Council teleconference.

5. The newly chartered gTLD and individual name holder constituencies, with a full complement of 3 positions, should be seated at the November 2001 ICANN annal meeting.