The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Paris, France, from 12 to 14 November 2018. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
***
>> MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Perhaps we could ‑‑ I'm not sure this works. Yes, it does. Yes. Apologies about the ‑‑ apologies about the room, but if we could start because we have got limited time this morning.
Thank you very much, indeed for coming along to the ICANN open forum which is a traditional event on the IGF calendar for us. Today's session is going to be in four parts, Cherrine Chalaby will have some remarks and then an interactive session, and we'll then have an Interac of session on genetic top level domains and the process on which ICANN or the community has been developing policy on that. And then we'll have an open session on any questions about ICANN's work or ICANN's role in the broader Internet ecosystem. Please feel free to do so and then I will see when president Goran Marby will have some comments.
I apologize for the standing. Perhaps I can hand over the floor to Cherine Chalaby.
>> CHERINE CHALABY: Good morning, everyone. I could barely hear you, Nigel. So the microphones are not working very well. Welcome, everyone, to the ICANN open forum and it's really good to be back at the IGF.
So this morning I'm joined by Goran Marby, our CEO and Theresa Swinehart, our deputy CEO and I'm joined by several of my board colleagues, Sarah deutsch who is here and Avery, and Leon Sanchez and there are other board members. I can see Ron sitting there and any other board members around in the audience? And Duncan is there.
Thank you.
So it's a good time, an interesting time to be involved with ICANN. As you know, we celebrated our 20th anniversary in Barcelona recently and we are in the middle of developing our strategic plan, our next plan for the year 2021 to 2025. And I think most of you know and some of you who have not been to ICANN meetings, you are probably entered to know that our community is through the strategic planning work is reinforcing two things to the ICANN board, to the ICANN community. The first one is we need to work with other organizations to champion the single open Internet and prevent its fragmentation.
Each ‑‑ each, of course, working within their own remit. The second thing is there is are e enforcement of the multi‑stakeholder model, you will though it needs to evolve and become more effective but there's strong reinforcement of the multi‑stakeholder model. So it goes without concern, and without saying that ICANN is a true champion of the single Internet, and of the multi‑stakeholder model. We are also a champion and an advocate of the IGF. We have been involved with the IGF since its inception and we consider the IGF as truly a unique multi‑stakeholder forum on a global basis. There are many on a global basis, where an array of Internet topics and public policies can be discuss.
With that in mind, one, we want to engage with you on two topics that are top of our agenda and which we believe have an impact on the wider Internet community. The first one is GDPR and the second one is new gTLDs. Then we want to give you an opportunity to ask any question you want on any topic that is of interest to you.
So we are going to have three slots, therefore, each one 15 seconds ‑‑ 15 minutes each.
(Laughter).
>> Lightning round.
>> CHERINE CHALABY: I didn't have coffee this morning. So I know this ising to happen to me. So each one 15 minutes. The first one is GDPR and it's moderated by Goran and then the second one, and then the open questions is moderated by Goran and I. I know I see a lot of familiar faces and you guys are not shy of asking questions. In fact, he have difficult questions. I'm sure you will do so but there are also new faces. I hope you guys too feel free to ask difficult questions, because that's what we are here for.
So given the tight deadline and the time, Nigel, would you act as the timekeeper to make sure every session doesn't run more than 15 minutes. Is that okay?
>> Nigel: Absolutely sir!
>> CHERINE CHALABY: With that in mind, I turn it over to Theresa Swinehart to kick off the GDPR session.
>> THERESA SWINEHART: Thank you, everybody. I'm feeling the time pressure. It's great to see you. Welcome to the tail end of what might be a long fall.
For many of you in the room, the topics that I'm going to cover here are going to be familiar but for the benefit of everybody, we want to make sure that we cover it all.
One of the issues that ICANN has been dealing with over the past ‑‑ can everybody hear me okay? Because I'm in the sure how this ‑‑ good. One of the issues that ICANN has been working on, well over a year ‑‑ year and a half, two years maybe, has been the area around compliance with records to the European data protection legislation, namely the GDPR. And in the context of that, the accessibility to the would is database information, that is the information when you register a domain name, and the information that is publicly available, versus not publicly available.
As many of you know, there's no centralized database for who is information. It's a decentralized mechanism and historically, that information has been publicly available.
As we worked to look at how to be compliant with GDPR, we engaged in extensive community dialogue around this. On what model, what mechanism needs to be put into place, to be compliant, that can address the over 2500 contracted parties that we have and how do we ensure that in relation to the contracts that we have with them.
So we went through several iterations of dialogue with the community to both better understand how to address this, through what we referred to as a calzone model. So a dialogue around that, equated someone what the pizza that has different ingredients and I will let our CEO explain how he got to the rest of the name.
From the calzone model and the dialogue we had in relation to that, with both the community and the ongoing discussions at the time with the data protection authorities, came to what was referred to as the temporary specification, which is namely an adjustment to the contract with the contracted parties.
To have publicly and nonpublicly available information, to be addressing the GDPR.
So the adoption of the temp spec occurred in May of this past year. It was reaffirmed by the board on the 21st of August and then again last week. What the temporary specification or this adjustment to the contract does, is it also triggers an expedited policy development process within our community. So that work is well underway within the G. NSO, another acronym and apologies to are throwing that out.
That expedited policy development process has a year to try to address a range of issues, including whether the temporary specification is the right avenue to go. There are many in the room who are probably participating in that. So I will let them answer some soft more detailed questions in relation to that work work.
With the temporary specification in place, one of the outstanding issues has been how does one access the nonpublicly available information? There's historically been mechanisms to do that, easier for law enforcement, potentially, but there's also a wide range of interests from other stakeholder groups, intellectual property community, cyber researchers, a range of parties that have had historical interest in accessibility to the who is related information.
So in that, in our last ICANN meeting, at 63, we also got the strong interest from the community and the mandate to go ahead and see how we can look at trying to limit the liability or lessen the liability of the contracted parties to look at how we could explore a possible avenue for unified access, that is scalable, that works globally and that might ease things and not put at risk a sort of fragmented kind of approach to this.
On the 20th of August, we put out a conceptual model that been based on community input. That has also fed into this entire process ranges ‑‑ poses a range of questions and also proposes using a technical avenue or exploring using a technical avenue, referred to as RDAP or the registration access data protocol, which is a new type of technical protocol. So this work is underway at the ICANN meeting 63, we also ‑‑ Goran had announced the technical Study Group to take a look at further exploring the technical avenues and whether that would lessen the liability and we continue to engage in discussions with the European Data Protection Authorities as well on clarifications around the law and the applicability of the law specifically as we tried to explore these other avenues.
We published all the correspondence we receive, we provide regular updates to the community, either through blog postings or webinars and those are all accessible on our website and I'm happy to delve into more detail later on, but that's the high level sort of roadmap of how we got to where we are today.
If I can turn this over now to Sarah.
>> SARAH: Thank you. So I would like to just talk in a bit more detail about the third‑party access to nonpublic registration date, which is one of the major issues under discussion, and as Theresa described, the specification resulted in the reduction of personal data from publicly available who is record and the temporary spec required ICANN's parties to provide reasonable access to this personal date, to third parties based on legitimate interest as defined in GDPR.
So as Theresa has explained they are providing a uniform access mechanism that can be used to cross contracted parties that provide who is services, and we're looking for a way to administer that with the contracted parties. At the ICANN meeting last month in Barcelona, we saw the community convalesce around this, in an effort to diminish the legal risks for the contracted parties to provide these services and this provides a mandate of sorts to continue these conversations. This support and input will be very important as we move forward on this idea, it will inform the discussions with the European data commission board and ascertain legal for if I such model.
And ultimately it's up to the community to recommend a model for implementation. That's a very important point to emphasize and ICANN's work is to provide input to help ensure the legality of that model. So we encourage everyone this room and outside this room to engage in these conversations and work with us on this. Goran?
>> GORAN MARBY: One of the learnings from this is that ICANN is an institution, has to learn how to work with new legislative proposals that comes around the world. I mean, we talked about this several times and I'm in many spaces talked about it.
When people start talking about Internet, it seems like there are two Internets. One of them is the one we use, you know, for everything from making financials to talking to our loved ones or ordering tickets or anything, and that fact seems to be one Internet.
The other Internet is the ones that has fake news or bad people or doing something. And if you ‑‑ what we see now is many legislators around the world is now looking in one aspect of how the Internet is used and sometimes they don't recognize that it's only one connected Internet which is a fairly limited box. And what we see now is that there's potential to some legislation and it can have an effect on the ability for people to connect to the Internet or actually share information with each other.
ICANN is a technical organization. We have no political opinions about the actual means of legislation. But we need to figure out how a way to better interact with governments so we can be there to help them to understand at some points of legislation can make it impossible for people to get to the Internet or connect to other people on the Internet which is why we are doing this.
And we are working and we will in end of this year, come up with a sort of proposal, how an institution can interact as a technical helper in those cases. We already get invited by governments to look on legislation. We have actually seen proposals for legislation that can make it impossible for people to connect to the Internet. We don't think that that's the intention of the laws. We sort of get the feeling that it's intentionally or the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
You know, know what has been done ‑‑ ICANN has never really thought about this before because it hasn't been necessary. And elected politicians are doing this for what I think is often the right reasons. Privacy is important to discuss. Security is important to discuss. And, you know, during the discussions yesterday during the peace forum here, it was sort of essential that some of those discussions have to happen. So we don't take sides in those discussions. But I think that most people agree that if you disconnect or make it less harder for people to actually connect to the internet, there's a complete other set of problems.
I also urge people to think about, there's only one Internet. There are not two Internets and if you are using Internet for something else, then, you know ‑‑ if the ‑‑ the way we use Internet is essential to have. And it's ‑‑ we have to ‑‑ the elected politicians whoever is in charge or on the political views, always have to keep that in mind so we don't break the box.
Thank you.
>> CHERINE CHALABY: So it's question teem. Who would like to raise a question about what you heard or make a comment?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello. Thank you. Sorry, I wanted new comrades and those who are not involved with the community, with ICANN community to ask a question, but I thought I'm just going to start the discussion and maybe they won't feel shy afterwards.
So you said that as ‑‑ there are a couple of comments that have been made in this session. And I would like to refrain what is being said.
So ICANN, for 20 years, did not feel the need to redact personal information of domain name registrants because it was not on the side of privacy protection. It was not on the side of data protection. It was because of GDPR that ICANN in the end had to become compliance because of the fine.
So ‑‑ and we also need to change this culture of thinking about ‑‑ saying that we need to have access to this data, while we also equally need to protect the personal information of domain name registrants. So that's just what I wanted to say because I think this keeps getting lost in the conversation and that's it.
>> CHERINE CHALABY: I do agree, GDPR has started a conversation within eye cad about privacy and I'm the first one to say, yes, we are late and it's rather good that we have it. It doesn't mean that it's easy. Who is, as you know, a part of our ‑‑ it's a very integrated part of what ICANN does and I have a great belief in the expedited PDPs ability to come up with a policy.
I mean, as Theresa sort of said, the reasons why we did the temp spec was because we were forced to do it because we had to be compliant with the law at a specific time which is why we invented a process for community input which is basically a decision that belongs to me and how do we make ICANN legally compliant? But, you know, there's been a lot of discussions about it. But, you know, you are right. There's nothing to say. GDPR has caused a lot of privacy discussions not only within ICANN, but all over the world.
And in many different sectors. So we are here for one of them that is now looking at something that hasn't been looked upon before.
Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. I think something very important was said along the way about reaching out from technical communities and more specialized communities to a larger community. And one of the advantages to do that is at the IGF. And one of the things that surprises me throughout my years, which is my ninth is how little this actually happens.
A session like this, I think, is a session that may take hours and bring in the right people to actually discuss together what certain decisions, by either politicians or by technical community mean for other stakeholder communities.
And that is something, which is severely under used at the IGF, which is something that I think is something worth exploring and discussing with the MAG in the near puture.
>> GORAN MARBY: I'm all for it. And for the record, I was not supposed to talk about GDPR. It was Becky, but she was a late arrival. I had this one day without GDPR.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I had this. Good morning. I was talking about reframing discussions and perceptions. So looking beyond GDPR, it seems like ICANN.org has been doing a better job in looking at which laws will be applicable to it. I know there was a running list that's updated on a quarterly basis. So that kind of information in seeking legal clarity is very good approach. I wanted to highlight the need for that work, that ongoing work to feed back into the community.
I found it really interesting this morning in previous session where one of ICANN's strategic plan objective is the maturation of the multi‑stakeholder model, as a governance model. I wanted to emphasize that if ‑‑ as the ICANN org replies on the community to develop this bottom up consensus‑based policy, it's rally important for us to have all the resources available to us, as the community members. And part of that is being able to anticipate laws where changes in the ecosystem and be able to make better policy, just because if the EPDP, you know ‑‑ I don't want to jinx it, but if it doesn't deliver on its mandate, then that means that we would have to kind of go back to scratch and we would fall further behind the curve. I think it's in everyone's interest, both in ICANN and the broader ecosystem to have the tools available to us to make things ‑‑ make policy that's more toward looking and anticipates changes before they happen.
>> GORAN MARBY: That's why we assembled this list so we can ‑‑ so we can give the community an opportunity to see the legislations that's now under discussion. Without taking sides within the actual ‑‑ the GDPR, I call it the mothering law. My mother told me I could go out and I could behave. Then I went out and behaved. And she had a different definition of what behavior meant. It tells you, you should behave, but it doesn't tell you how to behave.
The ecosystem, especially, we had thousands of databases. Internet is built around transparency and accountability by naming people's names. Its back in history. If you look at policies and IGF, you want to know who actually wrote a policy, wrote things that become standards because it's a part of it.
I think it's very important that we together in the community talk about the right balance for this. And it goes ba being to what we talked about already more than a year ‑‑ one and a half years ago. Everybody's life would have been easier if we actually had a policy for who is. We don't. So you are right, we are chasing the tails and there are a lot of things we should have done differently but now we are where we are. I don't have ‑‑ I have only been around for about three years. So I don't ‑‑ you know, history is interesting but it doesn't help me.
But to have that conversation within the community ‑‑ and I think going into the expedited PDP., I went on record and said the same thing. If we can come out with a policy about privacy, that would be much better, I think for everybody. It would help us in the conversations with ‑‑ help have conversations.
The thing is, my understanding is we actually have had conversation within ICANN for the last 20 years but we have never been able to reach a conclusion about it. And it's unfair to say that we never talked about privacy. We talked a lot about privacy. We just never came up with the right solution. We share with almost everybody else. So I ‑‑ you know, again, I agree. If we can come up with a policy for privacy, that is in the remnants of the law. The European law is the 28 states and other countries in there. Other countries will come up with similar laws and it's much better for us if we can come up with something that gives ‑‑ sort of provides the opportunity for information to be there when it's necessary. And takes away information that's unnecessary.
>> MODERATOR: I will bring to attention that our 15 minutes plan has been completely busted. What I said, we will have a session on GDPR and gTLD and an open session.
I see there's interest in GDPR. Why don't we continue a little bit and then move to gTLD and I think we'll have to be flexible and see where the interest is. So we continue a little bit with GDPR.
So there is Sarah and Leon and then Derrick and then yourself, okay?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. So you raised an interesting point because many of these laws and regulations are at least on their face, some of them don't even look to be within ICANN's remit, but they could have an effect on ICANN. It will be very important going forward to get ahead of them and track shadow ‑‑ what we call shadow regulation. These are sometimes called best practices and could still have an impark on the Domain Name System and ICANN can a good job of tracking things but I would urge the community, since you are the eyes an ears out there to keep us informed things you may be hearing or learning about. Some of these are kind of submarine issues. They look innocuous and surface later, but thank you for raising that.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thanks. Just following up on Sarah's comments and Colin's. I think input from the committee here, ICANN has eyes in manies but the community is wider. We need to look at this a wider perspective and legislation and some trade agreements are incorporating some of these positions that actually ill pact or could impact some of the community members like ccTLDs. And so we need to be wear of these. If anyone in the community is aware of a piece of legislation, trade agreement or any other regulation that might be just having to ‑‑ to surface anywhere, just make us aware of that and we'll be able to add this to the list of legislations that ICANN is following.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. So raise your hand if you want to speak about GDPR so I know would is on the list. Derrick? Anybody else? Okay. We'll close the list after these two questions and then start on new gTLDs. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Running the Berlin and the Hamburg top level domains. I think we don't find behind the position in privacy. If the EPDPD process is going to fail in the next year, in May, and that's because all the European registries and registrars and we have made some studies about this, have implemented measures to a grand access to a legitimate parties like law enforcement, and so this ‑‑ this process has been proven, meanwhile, because all we have, like.E,.UK and.Berlin, we have all gotten our requests from interested parties and granted access to these datas.
And what I think ‑‑ what I think is we don't need that unified access model. Some call it ugly access model because I think we ‑‑ we won't implement this in the European registries and regular Starr won't implement this model because it's against European GDPR. That's my opinion.
>> Goran wants to respond.
>> GORAN MARBY: What you said is everybody is agreed is not right, and you know that. If you look at the cc community, they implemented many different solutions.
The other thing is you don't know ‑‑ you don't know today. The only thing you know about which information could be legally stored or displayed is because we did the work for you.
So because of the guidance we got from the DPX which is by the way, about you as well. What we did was actually lowering your risk by doing that. And that is the only thing that's ever been written down. It's not about what you think but the DPS has given us guidance and that guidance has given you a lower risk.
So much of the work in this ‑‑ and by the way, if you go outside the temp spec, which is in there, which the DPAs has acknowledged ‑‑ because they have written us and acknowledged it. If you go outside that, it's your risk. And it's your risk alone. And if anyone wants to ‑‑ ising to that I that risk, I'm fine with that because it's your risk, not my risk. It's within what ICANN is about. Who is is a part that. We are trying to diminish your risk. And if we can get ‑‑ I don't know if we can get. But if we get the DPAs to do the next thing that we are asking them for to diminish your legal risk, and you still don't comply. That's a contractual discussion that we will have.
Thank you.
>> Okay.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Just a slight change in the context. I wanted to share an experience of last weekend. I was last weekend in meetings with private sector companies who were all affected by this legislation, and they were bitterly complaining about the impact, one significant part of this was none of them had ever heard about ICANN. And I think it's very important that, for example, yes, there is a ‑‑ a business sector and business constituency in ICANN, but there are much more people who don't even know what's going on there. And I think they are natural allies there, which really need to have a little bit of ‑‑ of more information and better context, and one thing which came out of the meeting was quite simply, they were very clever.
They actually got some of the politicians from the EU in this meeting and described it. And some of these EU legislators came out of the meetings that if we knew that, we never would have done that and that. I think ICANN, partially in the community is in the same position. We have to explain better the background. We have to explain better the technology. We have to explain better the mechanism, how the DNS works and then I think some of the stuff will ‑‑ will actually happen smoother and the goal will actually become realistic and can be reached. We can get privacy but can he can't get privacy based on things which are half cooked.
>> MODERATOR: I think we are done. Yes. Okay.
Yes, the message was we're done. Okay.
I think we can go on with GDPR for a long time. So let's switch subject and talk about the new gTLDs. There's a lot of discussion from different parts of the community asking the board and asking the GNSO, when is the next round? And when is the next round? And the community has to make that decision. It's not the board that's going to make that decision on behalf of the communicate.
So I'm going to hand over to Avery, who will just brief us on where the GNSO is and what are the various issues and then we will open it up for wees.
>> AVERY: It's interesting to find myself briefing of where GNSO is, as a board member, I have been watching it and a long history of being very interested.
They are basically working very hard, I would say to try to get it right this time. Now, at the last round, there was a true belief that we would learn a lot from that round, that we would spend time and we would fix everything that we had learned about. We assumed that we could do that in a year. We were very wrong about that. And basically, the work is going on, and ‑‑ and basically, working through everything, a year was actually spent gathering up all the issues that people had with that previous round. Everything from the application, to contention to how objections were done, to how contracts were done, to how public interest. Basically every issue, I think there were 90 plus issues and over the years, the Working Group, the policy development process Working Group has been working through them methodically, in sub groups and in plenary and they have gotten now to the point on many of them, where they are putting out their first comment periods. We have seen the first of two comment periods. We're about to see one come out soon on the geographic names issue, which has been one of the great questions.
Within that area, the GNSO has done some very new way of working with the policy development process, in terms of not only inviting the other stakeholders that care about geographic names to participate, but actually offering them the opportunity to participate in the leadership of the groups that were working on that. We expect to see fairly soon the comment period, the comment periods that have been coming out and these are for everyone, not just the ICANN smaller community.
Not onlies ‑‑ gives suggested recommendations for the things they thing they have reached consensus on, put asks questions about things they haven't. So it's very important that people actually read these things and ‑‑ and answer the questions.
So that was it. I don't know if you wanted to talk a little bit about the timing, just so we shared the conversation.
>> LEO: Thank you. Just a brief comment to reiterate that the timing for the new ‑‑ for the second round is depending on the community input. We as a community have received comments, reviews, and advice from almost every constituency within ICANN. Touching on different issues, from lessons learned from the first round.
So we as a community will need to reconcile all of these observations, comments, advices and we have to do that before going to the second round. So that is my time. Some of these reviews are already there. Some of these advices are public and already there. We may be waiting for a few more. But in any case, we need to take into account all of those, and come up with a better invention of the round of the gTLD rounds.
>> Since you are the third one who is talking about this, AWOC has a process of its own where we see everything from those who say there should never be any more gTLDs, we have enough of them to those that say, we should be doing more public interest, more community, more whatever, gTLD. And I wonder if you can give a quick snapshot of what that looks leek.
>> Thank you very much. Indeed, there are different points of view within the at‑large community, yes, to ‑‑ should next round of new gTLDs happen or not, and as you rightly point, there are those who don't think that there's a need to open the next round, but there's also another part of the at‑large community that thinks that it actually brings a lot of value to open the next round of new gTLDs.
Maybe the main concern from the at‑large community, as I read it, is to have better ways to support community applications. So this is where I think the at‑large community is now centered the discussions. Mainly in two issues. One is customer protection, community trust and the other is community applications that should be supported and given priority over noncommunity applications. So the discussions are going along these edges and it's something that's on top of mind of the large community.
Also the at‑large community has been very active in different subgroups and tracks in regard to the geonames provisions. We have a very active group of participants, and that is something that is also on top of the concerns of the at‑large community.
And as my colleagues have said, it's up to the community to set up the timeline for this, to actually go forward and we as board members will continue to work with the community and ‑‑ and review the different work that is being carried out. So when the community feels that we are getting to the moment in which we can have the next round of new gTLDs, then we will get the ‑‑ review all the information at hand and make a decision. Thanks Avery.
>> Avery: Thanks. Just to end this and it's a broad topic, which I could talk about endlessly ‑‑ I could talk about most anything endlessly.
(Laughter)
The other side of that coin at the last ICANN meeting, I had several people come up to me and say, we need dot brand gTLDs and we will accept any set of conditions. Just let us go.
So we have a very wide community of very different interests that were basically ‑‑ that the GNSO is trying to massage into one set of consensus recommendations that the board will be able to accept. I guess we'll open it up for questions now? Do you do the questions? Do I do the questions?
>> MODERATOR: I will do the first question, if you want. Can you tell us on the subsequent procedures is there ‑‑ where is GNSO coming from in terms of should there be one next big round or first come, first serve, or should there be various rounds, one for brands, one for community and so on? What is the thinking?
>> Avery: Obviously, I cannot speak for the G. NSO, but in reporting what I have been watching in the comment procedures, there's definitely enough time that we created pent up demand. So one cannot go into a first come first serve with the pent up deman. So the consequent procedures will be some kind of round recommendation.
Now, one of the things that is still pending, it was in their last review. It was part of what they asked the community, should there be multiple rounds. One of the things they definitely want to achieve, I believe, is that no more stopping. That this time, there was a stop review planned after the last round. I was part of the GNSO at that time. We knew that we would probably need to learn that we didn't get everything right.
Even if this is the case this time that the GNSO doesn't get in everything right, the proposal is that we don't do in another one of these stops, that we also learn how to ‑‑ whether we are doing successions of rounds, whether we get to the point some day where there is a first come, first serve or perhaps short blocks. That any policy that needs to be delivered to fix things would happen in parallel and would happen without stopping the ongoing process.
So I think there's a fair commitment to that, to exactly what kind of round, how long it is, the succession of rounds. There are various proposals they are still working through them.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. So time for questions. We have a question there.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: The no stopping is something that's really gotten my attention, but I have to think about that. The question that I have is in our first round, I think that there was some disappointment, at least I know disappointment and I'm sure it's shared by others, that we didn't have enough community applications and we didn't have enough IDN applications and we just didn't see the mix of applications that we had hoped to see. I know following that initial round, there was some human cry, particularly from Latin American countries and African countries that not enough was done to raise country's attention to this opportunity.
Yet, I think in that situation, I think we explored the reality that there are reasons why notwithstanding all of ICANN's best ends to promote the program, to promote the initiative that there may not be sufficient infrastructure. There may be other reasons why anyone might be able to step forward. As we move towards a second round, I'm not sure that we have yet adequately addressed what can we do as a community to heighten awareness of interest in and support for more of these different kinds of applications that we had hoped to see.
>> AVERY: And I was among those that shared that disappointment at that time. I think that's also part of being discussed. It's part of this whole universal acceptance thing. Pay no attention to the rabbit but to the universal acceptance which is another one of the projects that's ongoing within ICANN, because when the IDNs started, while there was an infrastructure where they could be handled at the root level in terms of handing them in mailers, and in terms of handling them in people's systems and in terms of handling them everywhere, there just wasn't the support.
So while at the root, an IDN, an internationalized domain name could be handled, it just ‑‑ it wasn't quite possible and still isn't quite possible to do it.
Not all email can handle an IDN. Not all email can handle a five letter. So that's part of it.
There's also discussion ‑‑ and I think this is up with of the strong pushes that comes out of the ALAC side of that, I think there's also some push from it in the GAC for trying to make sure that we do a larger preparation, a more ‑‑ using some of the resources that we have got in the ‑‑ you know, the outreach parts of the company, and in some of the outreach with the at‑large organizations that are, you know, spread.
To basically try to get the word out for the applications. But some of the things that you mentioned, about the absence of infrastructure and stuff remain an issue and I'm not sure watt answer to that is. I don't know if anyone else here ‑‑ yeah, Leon wants to add something.
>> Leon: Yes, thank you, Avery. I wholeheartedly agree with you. I mean, many of the processes we follow at ICANN are learning processes and I think this is one example. Having the first round happen, we learned there are many things that can be proved, how to better communicate and how to have new communities apply for new gTLDs and how to support those applications. So I think that input from the community is key for whatever outcome we get of the different processes that are feeding into possible next round of gTLDs.
To let us improve how things are getting done, and ‑‑ I mean, I have nothing else to add to that. I know that many members of the community are worried about how we are going to improve support for community applications. So any input you can provide during the different processes that are being held parallel to feeding to the next gTLD round would be key for the organization and the board to actually be able to address these concerns.
>> MODERATOR: So I have got one hand there. Sorry, I didn't see you. Okay. Sir, did you want to add to ‑‑ or shall I move on?
>> You can move on.
>> MODERATOR: Go ahead first and Derrick after that.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: So this is Pat King from Verisign. On the brands topic, we see a non‑insignificant number of brands and some significant brands actually returning their TLDs from the first round because they have not round a reason to do that, to do anything with them.
My concern about a brands only round or even brans in the future is we have a lot of suppliers who are talking about the pent up demand from the brands. I don't think we have seen any studies that actually talk about what the brands are looking for. And the 1:00 thing I wanted to add was on the no stopping Avery. On the no stopping, I'm concerned that at some point in time, we will have a root zone which is gated by our regulator that will be competitive with some of the TLDs that we are issuing to other operators.
>> Avery: On the bands, you are right, people have called for it, and I was not going there. My impression, and it's a decision that the GNSO would have to make to recommend that, is I have gotten requests for a brands only, a communities only, an IDN only, basically just about every type of gTLD one can think of, have asked for a round of their own, a first round. I think to find ourselves ever in a position of deciding which one would get a solo round would be almost impossible.
What I think I meant about the not stopping, it's no the that there's ever a reason to say, you know, we don't need more gTLDs, that would be I policy question in the future, because we ran into issues, though I think would take us quite a while to get there. It's that basically if we see a problem in the policy that we don't stop the whole process of gTLDs, that we basically ‑‑ like we do at the moment, we don't stop registrars from registering simply because we are doing a PDP on how to fix a registration issue and that's what meant about the not stopping.
You know, we have various constraints like from the stability and security advisory committee that, you know at a certain point we may reach a number that's problematic. We are nowhere close to it and nor would we get close to it in a decade and there could be other policies that would say, stop. That's what I mean by not stopping to do a policy correction.
>> My comment goes both to what Susan raised about community and also your comment about brands. I think it's important to focus on how can we improve the value of these new TLDs and not just kind of the volume, because if you are ‑‑ if you are a top brand and you just register on the fear that someone else may give up. Speculating for the sake of speculating may not be the use. I would love to see us encouraging kind of valued use of domain names and teaching people about the value that is there.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: So with my different hat of TOD consultancy, we in the last round had consulted a lot of community top level domain names and recommended to do so for them, and the result was that the community feature, which is itself a super thing for communities ended up in a really long delay of most of the community, top level domain names because they were dragged by competitors in ICANN's compatibility mechanisms which themselves are good too, but bringing this together, I couldn't recommend communities any more because you can say to interested parties, it will take you years and years before you get your top level domain name.
Adding to this, I would like to reiterate that we as a consultancy, we have quite a number of geographic top level domain, interested parties like community or like cities and regions and also some brands. Not thousands, but nice number of interested parties.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. So we have six minutes left. Any other questions on the new gTLDs. All right, you are delaying the general questions about anything else. All right. Go ahead.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: (No audio).
>> Avery: If a new round could start in 2019. I don't know of any recommendation that that would be the case. So while it's impossible for me to say something is impossible, I see no way in which it could be possible.
(Laughter).
>> MODERATOR: Okay. No more questions on new gTLDs? One more question.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. I'm a Ph.D. student. We just learned some weeks ago that Akron was leaving ICANN. How do you prevent some ICANN to join or create a new company related to gTLD.
>> MODERATOR: Goran, we have five minutes for that.
>> GORAN MARBY: First of all, from time to time this question comes up and first of all, inside the community ‑‑ I mean, look at this. The one who writes policies are actually within the community. Because what ICANN can do is implementing what the community decides. So the ‑‑ sometimes they show me that they are regulators. It's the ICANN community, it's and the G. NSO, and my understanding is that people change jobs all the time there. So the second thing is that Akram left. He worked for us for eight years and he's a good friend of ours and he started working for a company which I think is called cinnamon bun. It's unusual that executives of that level leave for any reason.
California employment laws are very specific but we have some very hard rules in mace, when anyone leaves ICANN for anything, and that is ‑‑ you know, it's not like you can just leave. So there are documents. There are agreements and there are written things how this is handled. But then again, you know, we don't ‑‑ we don't tell you that entering, for instance, in a work group that if you change jobs, you can't do that.
People work for ICANN and join the ICANN community for different reasons and they move on and they leave. That happens all the time. My understanding is also that many, many, years ago, there was a board member who left to do something and that was handled within board.
So I always think that we should caution ourselves to see a bigger problem than actually exists. I'm grateful for the people working for ICANN.org and I'm grateful for as long as they stay. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Any other questions of any nature on any topic? Michaela, nothing?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm not in the mood to get into a tit for tat with you.
>> GORAN MARBY: So what aM. I doing here?
>> MODERATOR: Anybody else need to be entertained? Any questions? No? I think we have a minute to go. Can we leave that dialogue outside this room, please?
(off microphone comment).
>> MODERATOR: He got your attention. Okay. All right. I think we are done. We have to be respectful to the other session. Goran, you wanted to say something, one minute before we leave?
>> GORAN MARBY: First of all, I appreciate that so many people come and I think it's ‑‑ for me, it's an important environment that we can discuss other things as well. But ‑‑ and I think that one of the most important things going out of here is that we continue to the discussion, that we update our opinions based on information we receive and connections with other people.
I mean, ICANN is a multi‑stakeholder and built on conversation and changing ideas. And sometimes if I may, we dig ourselves into very hard positions an we don't listen.
It is important for us, and it's important for me and all of us that we actually talk to each other, we exchange our opinions and go on together because that's really how you reach a consensus policy. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Nigel, master of ceremony.
>> No, I just wanted to also endorse Cherine thanks for coming. GDPR is an interesting session. There is a session tomorrow, session 50 running from 12:30 to 1:30. It's not specifically on ICANN and the GDPR but it does touch on who is in CERTs and Sarah, one of you are board members is appearing in that and I urge you to come along to that. And the second thing, of course we did apply and we are always very willing to do sessions at the IGF on the GDPR and who is and we had hoped we would have a wider workshop, but it was an awful lot of competition this year as you know.
So come along tomorrow. And there's an NCUC session on Wednesday. At 12:30. So ‑‑ (Off microphone comment).
So there will be a lot of discussion.
>> CHERINE CHALABY: Okay. All right, everybody. Thank you. This session is closed. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you.