[registrars] Satuts report on NC

[Amadeu Abril i Abril <Amadeu@nominalia.com>]

Hi, all,

Really overdue, but here it is finally a preliminary report on Names Council activites.

As decided by the ICANN BoD in Berlin:

"FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Names Council representatives chosen by the
provisionally recognized Constituencies shall constitute the provisional
Names Council, with all the powers set forth in the Bylaws other than the
selection of Directors (pursuant to Section 2(e) of Article VI-B of the Bylaws),
which selection powers will be deferred until such time as the Board
determines it has made sufficient final recognitions. "

The NC will not elect the three DNSO Directors to the ICANN Board (not before
the Los Angeles meeting in November, btw). But it can perform most other
actiuviies, and it in particular:

* Administrative issues: webs; mailinglists; preparation of next meetings: budget
* Decision-making: setting rules for NC,  WGs and General Assembly; list
rules; etc.
* Outreach program
* Setting up and managing WGs in general
* Setting up the three "fast track" WGs on different Chapters of the WIPO
Final Report.

This is essentially what the names Council will be doing form now until Los
Angeles thru Santiago de Chile. All Consituencies, not only those who already
submitted this otpion to ICANN as ours, will be required to hold new elections
before the end of the year.

It is crucial that we take an active role on these works for various reasons.
But before we discuss the current work, let me describe tyhe current composition.


A) COMPOSITION

NC currenly has 9 members they are:

Jon Englund (ITAA)
Theresa Swienhart (MCI WorldCom) and
Javier Sola (EuroInternet)

 on behalf of the Commercial and Business Constituency.

Jonathan Cohen (FICPI)
Susan Anthony (INTA) and
Ted Shapiro (not sure which group does he represent)

on gahalf of the IP and counterfeiting intersts Constituency and 

Michael Schneider (EuroISPA)
Tony Harris (eCOM-LA&C) and
Hirofumi Hotta (NTT)

on behalf of the Network Connectivity and ISP Constituency.

Elisabeht Porteneuve seats there as interim DNSO Secretariat, with no vote.
Interim NC has also invited Observers form the already approved consituencies
that have not yet elected their reps: Don Telage on behalf of gTLDs; Fay
Howard on behalf of ccTLDs and Michael Palage, Ken Stubbs and myself for the
registrar constituency. We are asked to "build bridges " with consituencies,
(like sending this report ;-)) We have no vote, indeed.

Note that only the ISP Cinstituency complies with regional diversity rules,
and this only after Siegfried's public resignatuion in favor of Hottas-san
during the open Board meeting.

More importnatly, we should be aware of the inherent imbalance in the current
NC composition. IP; Business, and ot a certtain extent, ISP consituencies
represnt wat we could call the "demand side" in domain name registration
business. None of the "supply side" groups, gTLD and ccTLD registries and
registrars are represneted yet. This is clearly abnormal.

We should bear in mind that the DNSO, and ICANN itself, is in fact the result
of the long debate on domain name registration policies. One of the core
issues (no pun intended) has been indeed the introduciton of comeptition in
domain name registrations, ie, the appearance of "we the registrars" as a
group. All current and heated debates: dispute resolution polices; new gTLDs;
competitive regisrtation.... are in fact "about us". And all the complicated
structures we are building (Genral Assembly; Names Council; Working Gorups;
DNSO; other SOs; Board of Directors; at large membership; GAC, ICANN.....) has
been thrown out there to a great extent to "solve our problems". 

It is therefore ironic that no registry or registrar rep has been yet elected.
This is somehting that is difficult to understnad for the current nine NC
reps, and something they confess in privat the frustrates them. And I
understand it: somehow they feel that we are telling them to do the dirty job
on our behalf and to our behnefit, but without our cooperation. Even if the NC
had no urgnet issues on the table this would be a reason enough to really get
our own processes started. We should not allow the boat to sink for apparant
lack of interest. Most other consituencies could afford so, we simply cannot.

To make things more clear (adn more furstrating to those groups who have been
dilignet and even expediitive to fill their duties) we should not expect the
registries to move forward soon.

We all know that, to put it politely, NSI seems to beleive that it is not in
their best interest to accelerate and consolidate ICANN processes, including
DNSO. They have not appointed any NC rep, even if the "constituency processes"
could seem rather straighforwad from the outside....

ccTLDs are playing the game, but are in no way accelerating it, as their view
is that "ań this is about hTLDs" and fear being involved in some of these
·battles".. They will take some time to hold their elections. The process is
nt yet started.

In conclusion, we should show some commitment to the DNSO and some ability to
keep it moving forward at a reasonable speed. We need to provide the rest of
the consituecies with a clear schedule.

B) NAMES COUNCIL IMMEDIATE TASKS.

The NC has a lot of work, urgent work to do. Part of it is the barely
glamourous task of establsihing the the basic DNSO administrative tools and,
more importntly, defining DNSO decision making porcesses. This is indeed an
issue where we should be actively involved as we are not only "subjects" but
also "ojects" of DNSO works.

 Besides that, the NC will be setting up some WGs, probably duirng tomorrow's
teleconf they are asking all consitunecies, including our, to provide
volunteers to serve in all these WGs.

* DNSO Business Plan and Administrative Procedures
* Global Outreach
* WIPO Report, Chapter 3 (dispute resolution mechanism)
* WIPO Report, Chapeter 4 (famus trademarks)
* WIPO Report, Chapter 5 (new gTLDs).
I insist that we should be in a position to provide voluteers for them all.
The most urgnet one is the Chapter 3-duspute resoltuion, as it will be set up
tomorrow. The other ones might be delayed for some days.

Let's see whether we can compile a preliminary list during the telconf.

Amadeu