New gTLD Program Status with Economic Study and Root Scaling Updates
Cartagena, Colombia
6 December 2010


>> Ladies and gentlemen, if you would be kind enough to take your
seats.  We're about to begin our program.  Once again, if you would be
kind enough to take your seats, we're going to begin our program with
our senior vice president of services.

Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats.  This is the start of
the new gTLD program status.  Please welcome Kurt Pritz, senior vice
president, ICANN.

[Applause]

>>KURT PRITZ:  Thank you.  Good morning.  Thanks very much for coming
all the way to Cartagena and then spending time at this session.  This
is the first of three new gTLD sessions today.  Luckily for you, you
know, I won't be in front of you for most of it.  As a matter of fact,
later on today there are sessions about the overarching issues and our
progress on those where the community will be able to talk directly to
board members and then similarly after that, there's a session on the
still controversial objection process for morality and public order
issues where, again, a set of board members will come and understand
the progress that's been made and interact directly with those that
are attending that meeting.  So those will be excellent opportunities
to speak directly to the board and convey your sense of satisfaction
or dismay.

So this is probably my seventh presentation about this.  You know, I
have a job where I've become somewhat knowledgeable in trademark
protection and root zone stability.  So I think I'm almost prepared to
launch my own supporting organization or advisory committee.

So what's the agenda?  What are we going to talk about today?  We are
going to talk about the proposed final applicant guidebook.  So those
are new words for us.  We will talk about a little bit about what that
means.  And we will talk about the changes from the previous version
of the guidebook.  As Rod and others explained, the guidebook is the
instruction manual for applying for new top-level domains.  So we will
discuss the changes that are made.  And Karen Lentz of ICANN, who
primarily wrote the guidebook and is instrumental in this process,
will present that portion.

We will talk a little bit about the evaluation itself.  We will bring
the community up to speed on how applications will be evaluated,
particularly -- particularly the flow of data and the safeguards there
and how we're going to measure success because that's very important
for improving upon the process.

And then some about the key issues that are remaining, although as I
said, there are some other sessions on that scheduled for later.

So what is a proposed final guidebook?  It's intended to solve the
problem of publishing a guidebook and having the board be able to
consider it for potential approval white still allowing public
comment.  It seems unfathomable that we would post a final guidebook
and say "we are not taking comment anymore because the board is going
to vote on it."  The community -- or community would find a way to
vote or to comment anyway and so we hit on this model that we use for
the ICANN budget where we post the ICANN budget and we take comment
right up until when the board, you know, votes on the budget, so it
can consider it, comment, change the budget if it wants to, kick it
back if it wants to.  So we thought using that model of a proposed
final guidebook would work here.

So the board and staff are taking comments during the week, are
preparing comment summaries of the board starting today on a daily
basis for what's put in the comment forum.  So your comments entered
into the comment forum will be summarized and put before the board
daily.

It is also important to recognize that as a result of the comments,
the guidebook is going to change.  How the heck can you call it a
final guidebook if it is going to change?  Well, I think the guidebook
is always going to change.  We're always going to seek to improve the
process.  Just the other day, registry constituency members said "I
think you have a mistake in your SLA, it is going to make things very
difficult."  The board voting on the guidebook, whether they do or
not, would not foreclose change.  We'll continue to take comment and
make changes as necessary.

If it is a big change, we will come back to the community and say,
hey, we want to make a big change.  But the guidebook will continue to
be a living document.

So the bottom line here is that the process launch date is to be
determined, but, you know, the guidebook itself is complete and ready
to launch.  And how did this all get started?  There's some -- a few
new people in here, I suppose.  You know, it started before ICANN with
a white paper and the green paper that were the genesis of the
formation of ICANN.  And in that, one of the few objectives for the
new organization was to develop a process for creating competition in
the registry and in the top-level domain space in a secure and stable
manner that brings net benefit to the Internet community and the
community at-large.

In preparation for that, many of you know we held trial rounds in 2000
and 2004 where we introduced seven top-level domains in each one of
those rounds.  Went to school on those.  There was a lot of lessons
learned from those rounds, certainly.  And then the GNSO set upon the
policy development for this set and issued and got approved by the
board a set of 19 policy recommendations accompanied by principles,
implementation guidelines and the like.  That was approved by the
board and that set into action this set of meetings we've been having
over the last couple years where we've posted versions of the
guidebook or excerpts of the guidebook for public comment.

I think one of the real victories for the ICANN model here is how the
community worked on several key issues of the guidebook.  So with the
publication of guidebook 1, several issues were raised.  The community
formed several working groups highlighted here.  And Rod, you know,
mentioned the increase of acronyms to the ICANN lexicon, somewhat
incredibly.

And so those included, you know, the IRT and the STI on trademark
issues, the ZFA and HSTLD on malicious conduct issues, the application
support working group.  We are going to hear from Avri as part of this
presentation on the work that group is doing to work for the support
of applicants.

Vertical integration and morality and public order, all those working
groups formed and did an incredible amount of work in a short period
of time and produced very credible work product.  And it is all
reflected in the guidebook.

I better go back because I just want to tell you where we're going.
Where we're going, well, we produced a final version of the guidebook.
Posted online was a time line directed by the board where it indicated
it would consider this proposed final guidebook here for possible
approval.  We are going to listen to the community, see how that goes,
and then the board will make a decision.

We've developed a comprehensive communications campaign in order to
ensure that at the end of the launch, somebody in some region of the
world raised their hand and says "gee, I didn't know about this."  It
is a very lofty and impossible goal, but we're looking to ramp up our
current communications in a fairly intensive four-month campaign to
ensure that potential registries, registrants who might take advantage
of them, trademark owners who need to protect their brands are all
aware of the process.  And this will all lead up to the program
launch.

So where are we?  Here's where we are, I think.  After an intensive
policy development process and the first guidebook was written, we --
we in this room and those of us who couldn't make it here -- sat down
and developed a fairly comprehensive set of issues that we identified
as the overarching issues.  In addition to that, we identified a few
more big issues along the way, vertical integration, how the
marketplace should be configured and certain other implementation
issues and did a lot, a lot, a lot of community work that I described
just before that, you know -- so I just found that to be highly
commendable.

And it resulted in a generation of answers and solutions for the
guidebook that many of us think has resulted in a guidebook with
pretty darn hardened processes, definitely a new set of standardized
trademark protections intended to mitigate the cost of defensive
trademarks or the value of defensive -- or mitigate the value of
defensive registrations, so you can balance that either way.  Ten
mitigation conduct measures are in the guidebook, a lot of discussion
so that new TLDs can be launched in a stable manner.  That will bring
innovation, benefit.  What did the minister say before?  We want to
eliminate poverty, create jobs, increase competition.  Those were
pretty cool words at the end of that.

So what are we going to do here?  We're going to listen and improve
and in the meantime, we're ready, we think, to launch a timely,
orderly and predictable process.  And just to reflect some of the
change that -- I just want to indicate for you the amount of change
that has occurred in the guidebook as a result of the community
activities.  So last time we did this, we did this with the registry
agreement.  And I wanted to demonstrate how much change has gone
through that.  So you can just scroll through that as fast as you can,
like, much faster, and I just want you to catch -- it is a lot of
pages.  There are a lot of pages in the guidebook.  I just want you to
catch the amount of red -- that's really fast -- that's in the
guidebook.  So I'm going to rest my voice for a second and you can
just go through it.

So you are still in Module 1.  So I guess going fast is a good idea.
Module 2 is how applications are validated.  That's still Module 2.
Oh, it isn't.  Yay.  We are only going to take a minute more of your
time.  I found this really impressive.  Karen just did this last
night, so we didn't know how it was going to come out.

If anybody makes a comment on any of these changes, I'll be impressed.
So while that goes on, I will bring up Karen Lentz who is going to
discuss the changes made to the guidebook so far.

>>KAREN LENTZ:  Okay.  Thank you.  I will be taking you through the
part of the session where we cover what's been updated in the
guidebook since the last version we published, which was draft Version
4.  And so I will review briefly the changes that we made between that
version and that version that's up for discussion now, the proposed
final version.

The guidebook, as you may know, is organized according to module.
Each of the modules corresponds essentially to one phase of the
process.  So Module 1 is -- covers the application process, the
requirements, what happens to an application, what stages it goes
through once it's submitted.

Module 2 covers the evaluation procedures, so the scoring and criteria
that each application goes through.

Module 3 covers objection and dispute resolution procedures that occur
in the event that a formal objection is lodged against a particular
application.

Module 4 covers string contention, which is about what happens when
there's more than one qualified application for a particular TLD or
for very similar TLDs.

And Module 5 takes you through the last stages of the process where
successful applicant enters into a registry agreement with ICANN and
then goes on to have the TLD delegated.  I will go through each of
those modules and highlight the few changes that have been in each
that can help you locate if you are looking for a particular one,
where to find it.

So Module 1, there were a few changes here.  The first one is new
information that was added on batching delegation rates and
dependencies for root scaling.  Batching is really a contingency plan
for what happens in the event that the volume of applications is so
high that the process, as it's been built, can't accommodate it.  So
it covers how we would establish processing order in that case.

The other pieces of that delegation rates and dependencies on root
scaling, root scaling which you will hear about a little bit more has
been one of the issues discussed throughout the process.  And the
information -- the new information that's been included is informed by
some work that's been done to look at the process and estimates, you
know, various scenarios of numbers of applications and how many we
think could realistically come out of the process on the other side.
And that has implications for how many could actually end up being
delegated within a given time period.  So that information has been
included in Module 1 for reference.

The next couple of items here have to do with eligibility.  The first
one -- previously there were some restrictions on eligibility for
registrars.  But most of those restrictions have been eliminated, so
there's an update on that.  That's in accordance with the board's
recent direction on that topic.

And then the secondary of eligibility that's been updated has to do
with the background screening criteria.  There is in this version a
lot more detail about the criteria that is going to be used for that.
It focuses on just two areas, essentially the criminal history or
business trust violations or cybersquatting activities that the
applicant may have been involved in in the past.  So the background
screening looks at those two areas.

There's also, in Module 1, kind of a placeholder for what we expect to
be some resources to be available for applicants who need or require
or are requesting support of different types to be able to submit a
gTLD application.  So there's a place in Module 1 with the expectation
that those will be able to include those resources once they're
recommended, and you'll hear a little bit more about that in this
session also.

Finally, in Module 1, there's some information on IDN variance
strings.  And that section has been somewhat expanded in detail to
give more clarity on what happens to variance in a few different
scenarios.

Okay.  Module 2, in the evaluation, there are a couple of changes
here.  One has to do with the string requirements that are in place
for all gTLD strings that are applied for.  That's been updated in
accordance with some revisions to our RFC 1123 that are occurring in
the IETF.  So those have been updated.  I guess, the simple way to say
it is it eliminates the possibility of using numbers in an ASCII TLD
string.

The other one is part of the geographic names review.  One of the
parts of that has to do with what happens with an application for a
continent or region.  And there are a few reference lists used in the
geographic name section.  So the additional list is the UNESCO list of
regions that's been included as a reference in the case of a region or
continent name.

Okay.  Module 3, again, covers objections and dispute resolution.
There are four possible grounds for objection.  Three of them are
discussed here as having been changed.  The first one is the legal
rights objection that has been updated to incorporate protections for
IGOs for their names and acronyms to be pursued via the legal rights
objection process.

Another grounds for objection is the community objection.  With that,
there are a number of factors given that a panel weighs in making
determinations and those objections.  Part of that included a complete
defense for a case where the applicant could meet the standing
requirements.  That's something that we have gotten a lot of comment
on throughout the various drafts of the guidebook.  And so in this
version, we've eliminated that.  We've balanced that elimination with
strengthening of the standard for a successful community objection.

And then the last bullet there had to do with the morality and public
order objection process.  There is a community working group that has
been discussing various points of implementation and advice for how we
do that.

And Module 3 has been updated with a number of their recommendations,
and there's more detail on those, I think, later in this session as
well.

Before I get to 5, Module 4, as I said, covers string contention
procedures.  That's pretty stable, so there is nothing really
significant changing there.

Finally, Module 5 has some new detail on what the board's role is in
the approval of gTLD applications, what their role is in the process.
That, again, is something that was requested quite a bit in comments.
There was some clarity on how that part of the process would work, so
that's been added.

The last three points there are requirements in the registry
agreement.  So these would be applicable to all new gTLD registry
operators.  The first one, the trademark clearinghouse, registries are
required to offer certain launch services that rely on data that's
been submitted to the trademark clearinghouse.  Part of that model was
a -- the concept of substantive review of trademarks.  Again, this is
in accordance with comments that has been given some more definition
and detail in this version.

The URS, Uniform Rapid Suspension Service -- or System, has also been
updated slightly.  Again, this is a requirement for all new gTLD
registry operators to implement.  The change here -- the major change
is the shortening of the response time period for an URS complaint to
14 days.  And that's with the intention of keeping it within a rapid
process.

And, finally, the registry agreement has a new specification,
specification 9, which contains a code of conduct by would be required
of all new gTLD operators.  That has been put in place as a result of
the changes in cross-ownership provisions.  So it covers things like
data protection, use of data and other issues.

And that concludes my review.  I would like to invite Avri Doria to
come up.  Avri is going to give an update on the discussion of the
applicant support working group.  And following that, Kurt will come
up and resume the session.

>>AVRI DORIA:  Thank you.  The applicant support has been work that's
been done in conjunction.  It's been basically a cross-community
working group between ALAC and the GNSO and, basically, the problem
was given to us.  It was initially put on the agenda, as it were, by
GAC saying, "And so what kind of support is there for people from
developing economies who, basically, find the ideas of 185,000 rate
has a bit prohibitive including with some of the other points?"  So
the group has been meeting now for several months and has, basically,
come to a consensus on a report that has been published.  It is a
background report.  It has actually been published in all six
languages, so hopefully people can read it and comment and hopefully
support it.

The first part is, basically, we established who should receive
support.  And the most fundamental of the requirements that was listed
is a need criteria.  So, basically, it's -- first and foremost, it is
people who have a need, people who cannot enter this process without
getting some help.

Then after that, once the need was established -- and part of the work
that we haven't done yet is actually defining what, indeed, is need
and how does one, basically, determine that, how is that dealt with,
that's a work item that the board has come said to us and said,
"Interesting.  Please do more work.  Please tell us what you mean by
that and how someone would figure that out."

Then once need has been established, there's, basically, a set of
other criteria that define what it is.  So they should be NGOs or non-
profit organizations or other not-for-profit-type organizations,
service organizations perhaps.

Now one of the problems that we got -- one of the answers we got from,
for example, AFRALO, in a lot of developing countries being a non-
profit in some countries isn't always possible.  So can you make some
allowance for entrepreneurs?  So including is entrepreneurs in those
markets where the market constraints and conditions make normal
business operations more difficult.

Other traits that we're looking for in those that would be supported
are those that are community-based applications.  Those that are
applicants in emerging economies being a primary and applicants in
languages who's not represented on the Internet yet.

Now, the kinds of aid that we're recommending be supported, kinds of
support we're recommending, is that there be cost reduction.  There
are several costs within the 85 -- 185,000 that seem unreasonable to
the people working in this group in terms of applying them to people
from the developing economies, for example, the cost of developing
this program or some of the risk amortization for the program, that
those costs don't necessarily, to the people in this group, seem that
they should be paid for by people in developing economies.

We're also looking for working with other support -- other funding
organizations to see if we can't bring other forms of funding in to
assist with the payment of the fees.

There's modifications to the financial continued operation instrument
that says you need a certain number of years of escrow in terms of
running it.  And we're, basically, suggesting that for these, you
know, a six to 12-month may be sufficient.  There's logistical support
which includes primarily, you know, translation and help in
understanding how to fill out these application forms and such.

There's technical support.  Now, one of the things to be clear, we're
not suggesting a lower technical threshold.  What we're suggesting is
that in meeting some of the technical threshold help could be provided
by those that understand how to do it, by those who have v6
connectivity, for those who might live in an area that does not have
v6 connectivity.

Also, we are looking for exception to the rules requiring separation
of registry and registrar, looking for perhaps exceptions to the rule
that says you have to use a registrar to register a name when you're
in an IDN script in a territory where there are perhaps no registrars
that are supporting that particular script, that particular language.
How can you be a registry if you can't find a registrar?  So,
basically, looking at those kinds of exceptions.

Last thing I have to say -- those are my two slides -- is we will have
a much more in-depth meeting on this on Thursday where we will go into
this and we will be inviting you all to comment and to give
recommendations and advice.  So thank you.

[Applause]

>>KURT PRITZ:  Thank you, Avri.  That was great.

So I'm going to talk on a couple more issues.  One is getting ready a
little bit for new gTLDs and managing the process.  So if you could go
-- oh, I go to the next slide.  I forgot.

So we call that "operational readiness" and really there's two kinds
of operational readiness, right?

There's the kind where ICANN and its partners are getting ready to
manage the process of evaluating applications.

So procedures have been written and processes have been developed, an
on-line system is not quite finished but is in testing.

Evaluation panels are being -- you know, service providers have been
selected, contract negotiations are going on, and evaluation panels
will be stocked with evaluators.

We're forming a small customer service function in order to be able to
be responsive to those who were paying $185,000 to get their
application evaluated.  We have to work with partners in delegation,
right?  We work with VeriSign and the NTIA in delegating domain names.
They're part of the operational readiness equation.

And then, you know, how are we doing?  So we want to be able to
measure the success of the program, the success of our evaluation, et
cetera.

On the other side of ICANN, you know, it's business as usual, but
there's a requirement for increased compliance capability and span in
order to address the needs of additional registries.  Registry
liaison, IANA, all have to be expanded.

There's an operating plan in place that describes how that happens
numerically.

And then other bits of ICANN need to get a little bit bigger, too.

I think it would be interesting, and it's probably the next debate
we're all going to have about the flow of data.

So there's a lot of data associated with every application and
certainly how that data is handled, it's sensitive data and how that
data is handled is very important.

Something I'm not going to talk about are security measures, because
I'm not smart enough, but we can get somebody who is smart enough to
explain that when you want.

But I'm going to talk a little bit about who gets what data.

So the information in an application will flow from the applicant into
the TASS, which is the TLD application support system.  You know, I
don't -- application system.  I don't really like that acronym but
we're stuck with it.  And then it will flow to evaluation panels.  And
back and forth in evaluation panels, there's an interplay of issues,
so there's a great deal of complexity that can't be described in that
box or in a font that would be visible up on that screen.

The evaluators and dispute resolution providers also need access to
public comments, so that's a part of this information flow.

And then finally, the public will see a good portion of this
information.  It's a transparent process, but intended to keep
sensitive or security-related information from the public.

So in the bottom of this slide, which is -- or will be -- posted,
there's details about what the public will see, which questions that
they'll see, the objections when they're made, status reports.
Evaluation summaries will be posted.  The executed agreements will be
posted and so on.

So the public will see that.

And this is a little bit after eye chart but you can take it and look
later.

So, you know, who will have access to what information?  So it shows
the question groupings in the application, and what will be made
available to who.

So for example, a good bit of or all of the financial answers to
financial questions will remain confidential.  The security measures
undertaken by a registry, the efforts they're going through to
describe how they're going to maintain secure operations, that will
remain confidential.

So you can kind of take this Rosetta Stone and lay it up against the
questions and see and make judgments and, you know, this -- like I
said, I think this is an important part of the discussion we have with
the community to ensure we're, you know, fulfilling our transparency
and accountability requirements, but protecting, you know,
confidential information.  And at the end, that contributes to DNS
stability too.

Then we want to measure success.  And, you know, we're -- of course
we're not just thinking about measuring success now.  It would be a
little bit too late after the process is designed.  So we want to --
we want to measure success of the new gTLD process, you know, against
the original goals set out in the policy development document that was
approved by the board and also the Affirmation of Commitments.

So we want to put into place, we want to develop metrics -- or we're
developing metrics that attempt to measure success against each one of
these goals.  Some of them are quite lofty and speculative and
difficult to quantify, but nonetheless we want to measure ourselves
not, you know, against our own internal goals but against the goals
that the community has set for us in these two and other published
agreements.

So when can that evaluation occur?

Well, some of it can occur now because we have a guidebook that we
think is close to finished, and we can work with the community to test
how that guidebook implemented the policy recommendations.  And this
won't be a new discussion, right?  We have this discussion every darn
meeting.  Staff meets with the GNSO, says, "Here's progress" as a
check to see if we're implementing the process according to the
policy.  We formed the STI group to ensure that trademark protections
were in line with existing approved policy.

So we could -- we can start evaluating our work and creating a report
on how well we've implemented policy, and are in the process for doing
that right now.

As soon as we launch, we can start evaluating ourselves against our
goals with regard to how we process applications.

You know, was the process operated in a predictable and transparent
manner?  Did we provide good customer service?  Did we meet or exceed
financial goals?

I don't know if exceeding financial goals means we spent too much
money or less money than planned, but one of those.

And take some sort of overall customer satisfaction.

And then finally, you know, in accordance with the AoC, we'll measure
the market impacts in accordance with the requirements described
there.  That's one year after the delegation of new TLDs, so about,
you know, two years from the launch of the process.

So we'll have success measures each step of the way that we'll
collaborate with the community on.  So I hope that's helpful.

Just -- I'm just going to get back to key issues for a bit because I
thought that that would be a good precursor to opening up a question-
and-answer period.

So as you know, we identified -- we as a community identified --
actually you, not me -- identified four overarching issues with the
publication of the first applicant guidebook.  You know, that is
whether -- you know, with regard to root stability, whether the nearly
simultaneous introduction of new gTLDs and IDNs, IPv6 and the signing
of the root zone would affect root zone performance.

They're all very important ICANN initiatives and they all kind of came
to fruition at the same time.  The other is economic studies.

You know, try as best we can to quantify the costs and benefits
associated with new gTLDs.  Will the new gTLD program, as envisioned,
bring net benefits to the community?  "Net benefits" meaning, you
know, more benefit than detriment.

With regard to trademark protection, you know, one of the
implementation recommendations initially was that there be no
consistent or required trademark protection mechanisms in the
guidebook, but that registries could adopt their own.

And working hard with the community and really the community doing the
work developed a set of trademark protections that have been
incorporated into the guidebook.

And then finally malicious conduct.

There's malicious conduct in the DNS now, right?  So how do we work to
ensure that we adequately hope to -- we actually mitigate
opportunities for malicious conduct by putting into place measures to
prevent that?

So take the opportunity of this reconfiguration of the space to
actually get away from the so-called wild west and into -- into a DNS
architecture and environment that's more secure for TLD registrants
and users and domain name registrants and trademark holders.

So the overall approach to these issues was consult with the
commenters and, you know, essentially secret expert advice.  And I've
already said a few times during this ceremony that the -- or during
this presentation about the formation of some very important
community-based groups that developed solutions for each one of these,
where we publish relevant reports, we put stuff in the guidebook, and
continue to discuss implementation proposals.

Going forward, what are we going to do?

Well, most important, we want to monitor the effectiveness of these
measures.

So as an example, in working with economists, we ask them to quantify
the effectiveness of new trademark protections.  And the answer is,
"Well, we can't.  It's very speculative."  And that's not really
surprising.  So what's really important is to measure those, the
success of those measures, and augment them or change them in a way
that maximizes the benefit to the whole community.

So, you know, I have some slides here that are going to be repetitive
because I talked too much during the first slide about this, but --
and I want you to know that we're going to have a session regarding
overarching issues after this, so you can ask questions to me and I
will -- and our staff will answer them the best I can, and then -- but
you're going to get another opportunity to pose questions to board
members.

So you might want to think about which questions you might want to ask
us and which questions you might want to pose later for board members.

So two bites at the apple.  Probably most valuable later without me.

But the gravamen of the root stability discussion has been that the,
in fact, the introduction of new gTLDs will be very limited.  A
thousand TLDs a year sounds like a fantastic number.  We really
expect, you know, the number, say, 215 to 245 delegations per year
based on the expected amount of applications, but even if we receive
infinitely many applications, the process of evaluating them is really
limited, so that less than a thousand TLDs will be delegated a year.

This -- in discussions, anyway, this has caused some -- resulted in
some comfort among those who are concerned with stability of the DNS.

So do you hear that buzzing?  Do you think that's my phone?

I shouldn't have this on anyway, right?

So Economic Study Phase 2.  So just released and, you know, we welcome
comments about timing as well as substance, because it's very
important that everybody gets a chance to read and consider it.

I'll tell you the board is -- has been commanded to read it.  Not by
me.  And we're having a work session -- the board is having a work
session on Wednesday to discuss what they read in the economic status
report.

I'm not going to discuss comment because I think it's for you to read,
but, you know, it does empirical studies as advertised -- i.e., uses
the past as a prologue, uses the experiences of existing TLDs to
forecast what we might see in the future to discuss whether or not
there would be competition in the pure generic TLD space, what are the
benefits and successes or not successes of restricted TLDs, community-
based TLDs, IDNs, what are the frequency of defensive registration and
the effectiveness of past trademark protection mechanisms and what
might be the effects of new TLDs on the ease of navigation.  You know,
the benefits to users.  The establishment of dot brand as a trusted
side, what's the effects on domain name scarcity, is there any issue
really there now or not.

The report also points out the difficulty of judging future
developments.  Innovation is difficult or impossible to forecast, as
are the effectiveness of the trademark protections and malicious
conduct mitigations that we've created especially for this process.

With regard to rights protection, this is just a graphic of the suite
of trademark protections that are being implemented in this process.
There's trademark protections that address registry services before
launch, the requirement for a TLD to have either an IP claims or a
sunrise period, and those services will be facilitated by a
clearinghouse.

So registry -- I'm going to start again.  Trademark holders only need
to register a name once in the clear house for all new TLDs.  And then
there's a suite of protections after Uniform Rapid Suspension, which
is a cheaper, faster method of UDRP but with a -- only for clear-cut
cases of abuse.

There's a post-delegation dispute process so that if there's
significant trademark violations by the registry after redelegation,
there's remedy there.  And there's also the implementation of thick
WHOIS.

So these are a suite of protections that were not in place before.
How effective with will they be?  How effective will they be in
trademark holders examining themselves -- examining their situations,
saying, "We don't need to make defensive registrations"?  That will be
really the test, if they'll lower costs overall for trademark holders.

I'm not going to read all these, but these are all malicious conduct
mitigation solutions that are inserted into the guidebook.

There's one exception.  The high-security TLD, there's still work
going on there for what's going to be a voluntary program that's
operated independently of ICANN, but the rest are pretty much baked.

There's a new malicious conduct mitigation measure this time and we'll
talk about vertical integration in a moment, but what's included to
help prevent data abuses is a registry code of conduct.

So, you know, consulted with the experts in the industry, developed
this suite of protections and implemented them in the guidebook.  Are
we done?  I don't -- you know -- well, I didn't know we were going
there, but are we done?

Of course the answer is no.  There's a lot more work that can be done
in order to improve the namespace, and the question is:  You know, is
all this on the critical path to launching a new TLD process or do we
-- will we continue to evolve this space and make it better as we
grow, as we measure the effectiveness of what we're doing now and make
it better.

So we can undertake policy developments to amend WHOIS requirements,
to require registrant verification, eliminate or enhance privacy or
proxy services.

We can work hard, maybe, without policy development but just to
implement a WHOIS tool that will accommodate IDNs with good
information, implement root zone monitoring to ensure ongoing root
zone stability, and like I said, with the availability of real data,
we'll be able to effect change and continue to make it better.

So I urge you to come to the overarching issues meeting this
afternoon.  I think it's going to be good.  Because -- well...

So there's just two more issues I want to talk about, and then you can
ask questions, if you want.

One is the dreaded VI, vertical integration.  A lot of -- it's a very
important issue to I think all users, and particularly those
interested in acquiring a top level domain.  Who can apply for a top
level domain?  It's one of the questions the GNSO set out to answer in
its policy development.

Received expert economic advice on two -- we've received serious
reports on vertical integration or vertical separation.  On two
occasions there have been numerous proposals described for attacking
this issue.  We had a GNSO working group convened and that worked
mightily to develop different alternatives.

And so at the end of the day, the board voted to allow cross-
ownership, but decided not to become a regulator of the marketplace
where they thought the regulations might be ineffective or expensive,
but instead separated the issue of vertical integration from data
abuse.

So if there's a potential -- an increased potential for data abuse by
a combined registry/registrar, well, let's address that.  Let's not
interfere with the market; let's address that through the registry
code of conduct and additional compliance and enforcement mechanisms.

So that's the rationale.  There's been discussion at this meeting
already about what was the rationale for the board making those
decisions.  It's -- in seeking to publish the information right away
and get news out, the board wrote one of the more complex, detailed
sets of "whereas" clauses because that's how the board communicates
with the community right away, and posted that.

So while more analysis and reporting of the board thinking will be
published, I invite you to read the board resolution on vertical
integration where it says it needed to rely on a factual basis for the
decision, so it relied on the economic advice given in two very
serious reports, got legal advice, and of course did a lot of
listening to the community as you know.

You know, I just want to pause here because the board has spent days
and days of time considering this issue, working very hard.  And I
could talk a lot about that, but literally hundreds of hours
personally working on understanding these very complex issues.

So unpause.

The GNSO vertical integration group didn't get to a consensus, so the
board points out that because the board would have adopted a consensus
position of the GNSO.  It noted that current agreements were -- are
negotiated individually, so there is no real historical prohibition on
that.

So this -- so there is some rationale for this decision.  It's already
published.  And there's more to come.

And a couple more points.

So what are the new enforcement mechanisms associated with these
integrated entities?

Well, there's a code of conduct prohibiting misuse of data.  Read it.
It's the very last page of the base agreement.

More robust auditing requirements, graduated sanctions and ICANN's
right to refer issues to competition authorities, where they need be.

So a comprehensive set of data protections.

I just want to say one word about compliance, because there's a lot of
discussion about ICANN's contractual compliance department and its
actions, effectiveness, and need to build up.

So while admittedly there's three open recs in the compliance
department, those are being filled, and there is a detailed plan for
how compliance is going to grow with the launch of new gTLDs, but in
the meantime the department continues to operate very effectively and
at ever higher standards.

And so for example, during the period from August to November, the
compliance department sent out 1600 enforcement notices.  1600 notices
that says, "You're in breach, buddy.  You better do something about
it."

And historically, 75% of the breaches are cured from these first
notices.  Follow-up notices get another 75%.  So by the end of the
day, we're sending fewer breach notices out and doing relatively few
contract notifications.  But, you know, divide 1600 by the number of
working days in that period and you'll see quite a robust function and
I just want to point out most of the -- most of the notices are about
transfers and WHOIS.

A number of registrars are being terminated.  The number of those is
going down a little bit because we've ended a comprehensive effort to
clean up registrars who are not escrowing data or who haven't complied
with that requirement or not complying with some really clear
registrar requirements.  So we undertook a six-month effort that
bridged the two years and wound up terminating a number of registrars.

So, you know, under John's leadership, the compliance department is
going to do a better job of describing this kind of data, so they can
brag about what they've done.

So back to new gTLDs, and the last issue, which is morality and public
order.

The community -- this has always been a contentious issue and there's
been lots of discussion about it with no real concrete suggestions how
to approve -- improve the existing implementation model.

So in the last few months, a cross-SO/AC working group -- you know,
GAC, GNSO, ALAC, others -- have convened this cross-constituency
working group that I think is a powerful model for ICANN to come, in
considering these questions to provide implementation, not policy
guidance, on addressing culturally objectionable or sensitive strings.

The idea wasn't to revisit the policy.

In the guidebook, we've adopted seven of the recommendations of this
working group.  One is to change the name of the thing.

So we're not sure this is the right name, so it's in brackets, and
we'll still talk about it but it's called the limited public interest
objection, and it incorporates new -- additional treaties recommended
by the group, clarifies how we rely on principles of international
law, and identifies a couple new processes.

One for encouraging applicants to pre-identify potentially sensitive
strings, and also a new mechanism where governments can provide a
notification without objecting to applicants where they deem the
application might be sensitive.

We've also incorporated the fact that the -- the panel making the
decision can use -- consider the string and also consider the purpose
of the TLD and provide a lot more detail about aspects of the process.

So there's some rubs left and we're going to have a session about this
late, if you can make it, tonight.  5:00 or something like that.

What are we going to talk about?  What's the board role?

The policy guidance is to create an independent dispute resolution
process for considering these calls with the people with the expertise
to -- that resolve disputes and resolve disputes brought by
governments and resolve disputes in these sorts of areas.

The working group also seeks to broaden the standards -- i.e., allow
more objections for morality and public order -- so a discussion is
needed around there because I don't think there's agreement on where
the differences are, let alone what the differences should be.

And then who should have standing to base on community objections and
this is -- you know, it would just take five minutes to describe why
I'm talking about community objections in morality and public order.

But come to the session this afternoon and you'll have fun.  So do not
miss any of these.  The overarching issues discussion this afternoon,
followed by the morality and public order discussion.

Tuesday, there's a new TLD basics discussion for -- or presentation
for newcomers.

Wednesday, we want to -- we're having panelists that are bringing
their experience in developing the process, community participants
advising you how to get ready for TLDs.  If you're going to apply for,
how do you get ready.  If you're a trademark holder, how do you get
ready.  If you're not going to apply for one, how you might take
advantage of thing.  So that's a good session.  And then Thursday, per
Avri's good talk before, we're going to talk about assisting gTLD
applicants.

So at the end, we're going to continue to listen and improve, but
we're ready to launch what we think is a timely, orderly, and
predictable process.

So with that, I'll close and take questions from the floor, and we
have a group of really knowledgeable ICANN staff that can help me
answer questions when I can't.

So thank you very much.

[Applause]

>>KEN STUBBS:   Good morning, Kurt.  My name is Ken Stubbs.  I got
just a couple of questions.

First of all, a clarification on the schedules.

When will we actually have -- what is the public session with the new
gTLD, the DAG with the board?  Is that this afternoon?  Tomorrow?
Wednesday?

If you don't mind me asking.

>>KURT PRITZ:   Yep.  So at 1530 this afternoon, we are going to talk
about overarching issues.  There will be some board members in that
discussion, a few.  At 5:30 tonight there will be this morality and
public order discussion.  There will be board members in that one.  So
those are the two with board members.

>>KEN STUBBS:   A couple of questions on comments that you made and a
couple of concerns. You left the impression early on that even though
the DAG may be substantially approved by the board, there may be some,
like, carve-outs or some continuing parts of the DAG that will be --
you will be accepting comments on, not only accepting comments but are
open to discussion for modification.

There are some issues in the -- first of all, one of the issues that
there are concerns over are the escrow requirements.  This could
penalize many communities there.  I believe, is a three-year
requirement there.  And I think we need to revisit that and look at
the economic impact on both the small communities and how we can help
deal with those issues as well as taking other side of the coin where
you have people who have been doing this for many, many years and have
a very strong financial background and operational background.

Another one of the issues I would like to point out would be the
questions -- there are some issues in the contractual agreement with
regard to pricing policies and so forth.  I'm somewhat concerned about
that because as you know, ICANN is trying to move away from being
involved in pricing issues, and I think we need to have as much
flexibility in dealing with those pricing issues, and I'm -- I think
that we need to have the opportunity to discuss that with you a little
bit more.

There are some other issues that the registry constituency will be
pointing out in a small one-and-a-half page caveat, and we would like
to have you take a look at that.

We just need some sort of comfort in knowing that the board is not
approving, necessarily, the registry agreement as outlined in the DAG,
and that they're still willing to discuss some of these issues.

Thank you.

>>KURT PRITZ:   So is that one and a half pages in really big font or
really small font?

>>KEN STUBBS:   48 points.

>>KURT PRITZ:   More seriously, I am aware of some of those issues.
Brian Cute came to me and described some of them that are important
because we don't want to enforce SLAs that are onerous or overly
expensive for the benefit that you get.  And I think we have the same
spirit of -- we have like an agreement in principle on pricing.  But
if you are not reading what we are thinking it says in the agreement,
it must not be clear so we want to make sure it's clear.

>>KEN STUBBS:   Yeah.  What it boils down to, I think there are just
four or five items and each item is one paragraph.  So we're not
talking about a book.  Thank you.

>>KURT PRITZ:   Hi Marilyn.

>>MARILYN CADE:   Hi, Kurt.  My name is Marilyn Cade and I am speaking
as an individual business owner.  I have three questions.  I may be
back to the microphone later in my elected capacity but that's not
what I am speaking in now.

The first one is easy, I think.  It's a clarification.  Yesterday I
was fortunate to sit in a briefing that you did for the GNSO, that is
the Generic Names Supporting Organization, in which you answered
questions.  And I perhaps misheard.  So I thought yesterday were you
asked have the evaluators been retained, and are they ready to go.  I
thought the answer was no, but I thought you said yes, the answer was
yes.

So 24 hours is a long time, but maybe not that long a time.

>>KURT PRITZ:   You want me to -- So one by one, we have selected the
evaluators but not contracted with them yet.  I thought that was the
answer I gave.  So we are in contract negotiations.

>>MARILYN CADE:   Okay.  So my second question is, this confuses me.

So --

>>AMADEU ABRIL i ABRIL:   (Off microphone).

>>MARILYN CADE:   This PowerPoint confuses me, and I think it's
important for us to, as a community, have a good understanding.

So I read an economic study, phase 2, that was delivered on Friday
that presents new information.  And I understand that the board is
receiving moment-by-moment updates.  Now doubt they can't be in the
room all the time because they are busy studying those moment-by-
moment updates that the staff are having to do.

However --

>> (Off microphone).

>>MARILYN CADE:   Oh, good.  Thank you.

However, I am confused by this, because if there is new information
presented, I'm familiar with the ICANN bylaws.  If there is new
information presented, I think we have to assess how we're going to be
able to take that new information into account and then make any
adjustments that are necessary.

I would make one other comment, and that is I am very familiar with
product and service introductions, having done a number.  I know what
alphas are, I know what betas are, I know what CIs are.  I know what
CI-1, 2 and 3 is, and I know what a final product is.

While I am okay with us doing a CI, because I think that ought to be
cooked enough that it is stable, I really think we have to make sure
we are not doing alphas and betas.

My third point is that -- I'm really going to go back to this point.
If we're sitting here giving information and doing our work and
assessing what is being presented to us, and coming to the microphone
and saying here is new information and this is what we are concerned
about and we think our concerns are valid, how do we figure out at
what point that's a waste of our voice and our time, and we just need
to pack up and withdraw.

>>KURT PRITZ:   So, I am going to start with the last question first,
because I think the process has been very responsive to those who
bring questions and issues.  So not all requested changes have been
made and there is contention with the community on just about every
issue, as you both painfully know.

But, you know, the guidebook has a lot of red, and it's done with --
and the staff don't have a dog in the fight except to launch a process
we think is going to be stable, predictable and all those things.  So
we are continuing to look for a combination.

I think that -- I have sat with the board now much more than they
wanted me to over the last month, at three face-to-face meetings --
well, two face-to-face meetings and a teleconference in a month to
talk about new gTLDs, and they are sensitive and listening to the
public.

So I think, and I sit in there and I think every comment like this is
heard.  And if the board detects that we need some way to make time to
-- you know, that we have looked at the economic study, it looks like
we need to listen to the community on this, I think people saying that
will have effect.

You know, but the board will listen to everybody.  So I have a lot
more confidence and faith in that.

You know, you think I would be jaded now, but heck no, I'm not.

>>MARILYN CADE:   Thank you.

>>KURT PRITZ:   Hi, Bret.

>>BRET FAUSETT:  I'm Bret Fausett, and I'm thinking about the next
steps from the point of view of a new TLD applicant.  And both in 2000
and 2004 ICANN provided a very helpful fact period that followed the
publication of the application guidelines and the opening of the
application window.  I want to ask whether ICANN was planning to do
that again and if not, I would highly encourage ICANN do that.

This was the process whereby people could say I have a question about
number 34.  And you can ask a question, it's published anonymously,
and then ICANN provides an answer that the entire community can see.
And I think both in 2000 and 2004 there were dozens of questions like
that that were very helpful to applicants.

>>KURT PRITZ:   Thank you.

Amadeu.

>>AMADEU ABRIL i ABRIL:   Hello.  You're getting the usual people, the
usual order.  It seems like we were rehearsing that for many years
now.

This is Amadeu Abril i Abril from CORE.  I am asking for three very
short clarifications, one short request, one short comment.  Let's
start with the clarifications.

In the draft agreement there were some special clauses for
international organizations and governments or governmental
organizations.  Now, my question is whether this is read in non-Anglo-
Saxon world as public authorities.  That is, it comprises both the
central governments of sovereign states and nations slash countries
wherever, or it also includes things like the Commonwealth of Virginia
or the City of New York; that is, local authorities, regional
authorities or state authorities.  Because they have exactly the same
problems regarding jurisdiction, mandatory arbitration and things like
that.

Second quick clarification.  It specifically says in the draft --
sorry, in the final draft proposed something that the same entity can
act as registry and registrar.  But this is always under the level
cross-ownership which seems to imply different entities.

I have seen some people being confused about that.

So perhaps that should be clarified whether it's cross ownership
between different entities or it's simply the question of integrated
services.  And just changing the heading could help.

The third clarification is regarding the question of uniqueness of
names in the community evaluation.  Because this is -- there's some
clarification regarding non-uniqueness of geographic name in the same
geography, but there is no matched clarification what does it mean
that it's not unique globally.

For instance, dot cat, there is apparently an animal in English that
uses that name that everybody else knows refers to my language and
culture.  Dot gal, they thought they had no problem, but apparently in
some slang English it means girl or something like that.

And then we were checking with dot aus, (saying terms), Erse language
and culture.  They were sure there was nothing in an English
dictionary, but there is.  AUS is the usual abbreviation for asofacial
ultrasonography.

So more clarification.  "Com" needs "rise" in Vietnamese.  "Net" means
either grandson or cleaning cattle, depending whether you have an open
or end closed "e."  So some clarification, what does it mean.

Conflict of a name for a community regarding the global, if that's
only English or any language in the world, would be helpful.  And I am
not against the idea.  Simply that's not clear to me when I read the
guidelines.

And finally the request and the comment.  The request is, CORE's
experience is that when we have been dealing with internal evaluators
-- internal doesn't mean internal to ICANN staff; it means internal to
the DNS community -- things have been pretty smooth.  When dealing
with completely external evaluators like in dot net or in 2000, very
often there was misunderstanding in the questions and the answers.

So please provide the system where there is a resource to somebody
inside to the DNS community and the staff to somehow mediate when some
people don't understand the questions.

I have a comment.  It was regarding community evaluation, but probably
this goes better in the written comments than here.

>>KURT PRITZ:   Okay.  Thank you, Amadeu.

Amy or Dan, can you help me with regard to the international
governments, you know, the type of form of agreement, whether it would
apply to, you know, governments or, like, state governments?

All right.  We'll try to clarify that.

And the comment about integrated services and cross-ownership is a
very good one.  The important distinction I want to make is that a
cross-owned or integrated registry/registrar still needs to get a
registrar accreditation in order to perform registrar services.

You know, I can't really always understand -- Oh, and your other
comment -- so your comment about clarifying about the uniqueness is
well taken.

This side?  Hey.

>>JONATHAN ZUCK:   Hi, Kurt.  Jonathan Zuck from ACT.  I was excited
when you got to your slides about measuring success, but as you read
them, they seemed like they were still fairly abstract concepts and
not really measures.  And I was wondering if any of that was going to
get reduced to some measurable things and maybe some objectives and
goals for those measures that might be produced prior to the launch of
the program so that there actually is some way to determine whether or
not those objectives were met.

>>KURT PRITZ:   Yes.  So we have some candidate objective measures.
On the board, Bruce, if he is still there, specifically requested a
board session where staff can present to the board what we think the
measures of success are and get board feedback on that.  And we'll be
also sharing that with the community, specific measures.  So --

>>JONATHAN ZUCK:   When is that meeting happening?

>>KURT PRITZ:   Oh, it's just a private -- it's just a board workshop
update as part of that.  So I wanted to let you know the board is
interested in the same things as you are as to specificity in
measures.  Because we all want to stand up at the end of the day and
say we won.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:   Thank you, Kurt.  Name is Mike Palage.  Just a
disclosure statement here.  Over the last 11 years, this is my 35th
ICANN meeting, over the last 11 years I have contracted with over half
of the new gTLD applicants that ICANN have approved for entry into the
root.

And I am working with a number of applicants as well waiting for the
process to be finalized.  So I have an interest in ICANN beginning the
closure of this process responsibly.

Three points I would like to make.  Number one, I would like to
highlight the importance of the work Avri Doria and that working group
is doing.  And to highlight the importance of the work they're doing,
I'd like to refer back to a statement you'd made earlier about the
importance of eliminating poverty as one of the panoply of things we
would be solving with new gTLDs.  And you referred to the comments
from the Colombian official during the welcoming ceremony.

So my question to you is how long would it take for the average
Colombian family if they didn't need medical expenses or anything, how
long would it take for them to save up and apply for a new gTLD at the
current rate?

>>KURT PRITZ:   I don't know.  I know it would take me a long time.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:   It would take -- Well, it would take --

>>KURT PRITZ:   Your point is well taken.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:   It would take 14 years, 14 years.

Moving on to point two --

>> (Off microphone).

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:   I don't know.  I'll leave that to the other
wonderful panoply of issues that these new gTLDs will solve.

Get to go point two, okay, and it deals again with economics here.
Approximately two years ago, I engaged with negotiations with ICANN
staff and the renegotiation, the renegotiation of the dot coop
contract.  And at that time one of the terms we agreed to was for the
registration of 50,000 names for $5,000 a year.  That was the registry
fee.

Now, in the new template agreement, for those same 50,000 names it's
now $25,000.  So that's a 500% increase in two years.

Now, this is not part of the cost recovery, the $186,000.  This is
part of the ongoing operation.

So I was wondering, and I have asked for an explanation in numerous
foras, even in last year's budgets.  So perhaps as part of the
Affirmation of Commitments which talks about explaining its decisions,
you could explain this 500% increase.  Because one of the things I was
hearing about how new -- what new gTLDs are going to bring is cost
savings, innovation.  500% increase on ICANN's base fees, I'm having a
little hard time sort of reconciling that.

And I just forgot what the third point is.  If I remember it, I'll
come back.

>>KURT PRITZ:   I'll talk four a while if you want.

It's 500% increase on the existing coop fee but not 500% on other
registry agreements.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:   That would be all the sTLDs.  That's the same fee
you put in museum, the same that you put in aero.

>>KURT PRITZ:   Yes, but with the transaction fees, it's different.
We're trying to establish a fairly low baseline.  But I will share --
you know, what are the other things we're going to hear in here?
We're going to hear about increased compliance cost and, you know,
monitoring registry compliance with new trademark protections and
other new registry obligations.  And think about, you know, $25,000 of
a fully burdened, you know, employee is, you know, a sixth of an
employee or something like that.

So then take the employee across registry liaison, compliance, IANA,
you know, a little bit of finance.  A little bit of me.  And you know,
parse that.

We want to provide services to the community, and services to the
registry in a competent way.

And so to us,, you know, we continue to hone numbers, but to us the
$25,000 fee is a little scary.

We talk about some of the initiatives we want to take as ICANN in
service to the community are quite expensive.  And so, you know,
$25,000 can be framed up by you as a lot, and in the world of dot
coop, with whom we seek to make accommodations because we know they
are a small registry, but for us in trying to accomplish our mission
and thinking about the world of a few hundred registries can be
daunting.  So we can sit over cocktails and scribble on numbers on
napkins.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:   Instead of scribbling on napkins, what I would
like to do is I would like to raise the point I raised each of the
three years I served on the board.

>>KURT PRITZ:   I am still publishing that information.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:   Exactly.  And just to go back, when I was on the
board and served on the Board Finance Committee, since ICANN is
supposed to act in a cost recovery manner, one of the things I asked
for and  but never got was the implementation of time sheets.  And
using coop as an example, the number of UDRP disputes they have had in
eight or nine years of operation, zero.

So if ICANN is going to operate on a cost recovery mechanism, it would
be helpful to see what staff resources are going to be allocated,
because perhaps there are some small registries that may involve
actually more than $25,000 of ICANN time and effort.

So if we do that, that's probably a responsible way to serve all
applicants.

And I now just remember what my third point was, and it actually goes
to a point that Amadeu raised yesterday.

As part of what you think you now have as a final product that you
have now test stressed it through different things.  And the point
goes to what Amadeu says.  That if dot cat was to come forward today
and apply in this application, it's very doubtful that they would have
made it through the process.  And I think that's an important check
that the board needs to ask itself, because when you look at the 2004
round, they're kind of a success.  They have 40,000 names.  I don't
know of any trademark disputes.  They are serving -- one trademark
dispute.  They are serving a distinct community.  And more
importantly, from a branding standpoint, I think they have the highest
number of index pages and Googles.

So again, your economic report that talks about past successes
predicting future events, I would suggest you scale your current
process against dot cat.

Thank you.

>>KURT PRITZ:   So, Steve, I just want to point out that dot coop has
zero UDRPs and dot cat only has one.  So where are the trademark
problems?

[ Applause ]

>>KURT PRITZ:   That was a joke now.

[ Laughter ]

>>KURT PRITZ:   But in serious answer to Michael's question, the
process is meant to test names against -- with a nexus against the
community.  So Amadeu pointed out earlier that in his neck of the
woods, dot cat means Catalan, you know.  In other areas of the world,
cat means something completely different.

So that gets, you know, a pretty high score.  If he applied for dot
Catalan in this environment, you get a very, very high score.  So it's
meant to encourage nexus between the names and the community.

But I do want to refer to the success of the dot cat registry.

Mr. Foody.

>>PAUL FOODY:   Hello, Kurt.  Paul Foody.  Kurt, in view of the
comment by Harald Alvestrand in Brussels, that he thought the single
component domain name would be -- TLD, would be a very bad idea, I'm
very surprised there doesn't seem to be anything in this latest
applicant guidebook that would prevent the million name root.

>>KURT PRITZ:   So a single component domain name, do you mean a
single letter domain name?

>>PAUL FOODY:   Yeah, the root of a million TLDs is what Harald was
talking about back in Brussels.  There doesn't seem to be anything in
the Applicant Guidebook that is going to prevent that.

>>KURT PRITZ:   Yes, so the process is not limited in that way, but
the process is limited in the delegation rates.  And it is limited by
the world economy and --

>>PAUL FOODY:   So you say it's limited in the delegation rate.  You
are referring -- Is that the maximum of --

>>KURT PRITZ:   Yeah.

>>PAUL FOODY:   -- a thousand a year?  How long are you going to
maintain that for?  Is that going to last for a year?  Two years?

>>KURT PRITZ:   So we are going to go through a round of applications
and process them, and --

>>PAUL FOODY:   So it doesn't really restrict anything, does it?  If
you're saying this time it's a thousand but next time it could be
unlimited, you know, it really doesn't answer anything.

So in view of the amount of red line in this -- in your latest -- your
latest Applicant Guidebook, quite honestly I think you should chuck
the thing away and start again.

You are talking about a thousand gTLDs.  As a suggestion, why not go
to the world's biggest thousand cities, say, right, you each get your
even TLDs, you can have it in your IDN and we are going to do a test
run and see how this goes.

Because the way it is at the moment, it's really ill conceived.

>>KURT PRITZ:   All right.  Thanks for your comment, Mr. Foody.

>>PAUL FOODY:   Thank you.

>>KURT PRITZ:   Hello, young fellow.

>>RON ANDRUFF:   Ron Andruff, RNA Partners and a member of the
business constituency speaking on my behalf and also a potential
applicant.

Kurt, I was very happy to see in your success measurements you noted a
differentiation as one of the things that will be measured.  We in the
B.C. and many other constituencies have had concern about market
differentiation in that we don't create a cloned space going forward.
And the idea of this whole round in many people's eyes was to get away
from the idea of multiple or duplicative registrations.  Photograph so
my first question, go you could give us some definition of what market
differentiation means in your view, if we're going to measure against
it what does that mean.  And the second question is a little more
simple.  Has to do with compliance.  As you mentioned, three people
need to be filled, the head of compliance and two junior staff.  And
the concern is that we have not had a head of compliance now for about
four or five months and we are about to embark on this process.

Now the board has taken the decision that vertical integration is
allowed and we will handle that through compliance but we don't seem
to have anybody on the horizon to be able to manage that.  And when we
look back historically, compliance has been the biggest bugaboo we
have had within ICANN.  And now we are about to expand by the orders
of magnitude of ten and 20.

I'm concerned that we really need to get those individuals in place.

So could you please shed some light on that for the community.

>>KURT PRITZ:   Yeah.  So I appreciate the last comment, and, you
know, I, in fact, was anticipating it with my digression during the
presentation.

The compliance department is performing really well.  It's going to be
staffed, and you know it just -- I understand the community concerns.
I know how hard people are working to meet those goals.  So
personally, of the things I lose sleep over, I think the people
operating the compliance, contractual compliance department, are going
to be very successful.

And I just also want to describe briefly that, you know, a regulated
environment really requires more compliance activities than an
unregulated environment.  If we have separations put in place, ICANN
compliance staff would be performing functions that are really not
value added to the DNS.  You know, making sure that you don't have an
agreement somewhere with you.  I need to know with whom you have
agreements, where your staff works, or how long your -- you know, what
your staff lists are.

So actually, I think the departure from a regulated environment will
actually help ICANN concentrate compliance activities where they have
real value added and that is contributing toward user and registrant
protection and DNS stability.

So I think the move to that environment is helpful.

And then, you know, market differentiation is going to be difficult to
measure.  I don't know if it can be set up a priori.  That is
something we could talk to economists about.  They have had trouble
predicting it but maybe they could know it when they see it.

So I don't think measurements can really -- specific measurements can
be set up a priori.  Just like categories of TLDs are really difficult
to set up a priori until the marketplace develops and we see where
entrepreneurs want to take their TLD.

>>RON ANDRUFF:   Well, one simple measure is to ask how do you
differentiate from anything else that's in the DNS.  Now, that could
be a very clear statement.  "We differentiate because."  And I think
any person would look at that, with common sense, would be able to
start making steps in that direction.  But we really need to have
that.

We cannot go forward and just say it's now time to have open
competition.  There's one shared root in the world.  And that root
needs to make sure -- we need to make sure, because we're the stewards
of this process, that, in fact, we are making differentiation.

When I go into a shop, I want to buy a bag of potato chips, I expect
there will be multiple brands there that will offer me all kind of
different things and I make my selection.

The Internet is not like that.  We have one.  And so we need to make
sure very clearly that market differentiation is there and that we do
not have a clone space because that is not competition.  That is
catastrophe.

>>KURT PRITZ:   Thank you.  Hi.

>>CONSTANTINE ROUSSOS:  Hi, this the Constantine from the dot music
initiative.  I have a question on the term "community."  Is there any
way to get a full score of 16 for a proper noun -- for a nonproper
noun?  This is the gTLD program.  It's called generic top-level
domains, but when you talk about brands or cities or regions, they are
not really nouns; they are not really generic.

>>KURT PRITZ:   Yeah.

>>CONSTANTINE ROUSSOS:  So there's a component in the guidebook that
says community.  So for the last two and a half years we have been out
there for the music community getting support, talking to a lot of
trade organizations.  And it seems even with an industry-led
coalition, there's no way you can get a score of 14.

And the other thing is, people that are out there public, with their
plans, creating support, under the support opposition, it says
relevant opposition from two or more groups of nonnegligible size, you
lose two points.

So let's say I bring in 20 trade organizations and there's two big
ones that are against it.  Does that mean I get 14 points?  That's my
first thing.

So there's a tradeoff to being public and gathering a lot of support.

And my other question is, why isn't there any points on the
differentiation of the top-level domain?  What differentiates me with
another applicant?

I think that's really important and should be taken into
consideration.  And if community outreach is important, transparency,
openness, I think that should also be part of the support.

Because the way that I'm seeing it, we'll get two points for support,
lose two points because two out of the 20 are opposing to what we're
doing, because there's always opposition.  You can't please 100% of
everyone.

So it just seems with an industry coalition on board there's going to
be some significant support because some people just don't want them
to be successful.

So how do we deal with these things?

So I'm hoping that the community part of the application would be more
-- you know, can a generic get 16 points?  That's my basic question.

How do we help bring differentiation, innovation, and have a community
point system that reflects that?

Thank you.

>>KURT PRITZ:  So when you said 16 points at the end, you really meant
14, right?

>>CONSTANTINE ROUSSOS:  It says you can only get community if you get
14 out of 16.  I'm saying I'm starting at 14 because for sure I will
get two points for opposition lost.

>>KURT PRITZ:  So, anyway, your comments are really well thought out.
You need to really write them down and send them in.

>>CONSTANTINE ROUSSOS:  Whenever I write something, I never get any
responses back.  Is there any way I could get a response on it?

>>KURT PRITZ:  Yeah, so read the comment summaries and write them in
the detail you just described.

>>CONSTANTINE ROUSSOS:  I shall do that.  Thank you.

>>KURT PRITZ:  Hi.

>> ELAINE PRUIS:  Hi, Kurt.  Elaine Pruis.  Thank you for the work you
have done to get the program to this point.  And I just wanted to say
I really enjoyed the opening ceremony this morning.

>>KURT PRITZ:  Me too.

>>ELAINE PRUIS:  One thing I heard in the opening ceremony was Rod
Beckstrom say that opening up the namespace to new generic top-level
domains is intended to promote competition, innovation and consumer
choice. Yet, I'm hearing in the halls and even at the microphone some
rumblings that despite several economic reports over the last many
years claims that ICANN still hasn't proven that adding more TLDs to
the root would be beneficial to society.  And that has to be done
before we can open the application window.

So I think it is important to us to hear the list of studies that have
been completed at a cost of, you said yesterday, roughly 1 to $2
million to the ICANN community:  Report from CRAI International,
revisiting vertical separation of registries and registrars, October
2008; preliminary analysis of Dennis Carlton regarding price caps for
new gTLD Internet registries, March 2009; preliminary report of Dennis
Carlton regarding impact of new gTLDs on consumer welfare, March 2009;
comments on Michael Kende's assessment of preliminary reports on
competition and pricing, June 2009; report of Dennis Carlton regarding
ICANN's proposed mechanism for introducing new gTLDs, June 2009; an
economic framework for the analysis of the expansion of generic top-
level domain names, June 2010; and Friday, economic considerations in
the expansion of generic top-level domains, phase 2, December 2010.
So that's the list of the reports that have been done.

Also, in the opening ceremony this morning, I heard Colombia's
Minister of Technology provide a detailed presentation of his efforts
to bring innovation and jobs to Colombia through the Internet.  The
Colombian government is committing $2.8 billion to that effort.  And
despite the fact that numerous surveys conducted show the majority of
Colombian citizens see no personal need to have the Internet, they are
proceeding with that.

He said if we make it available and build applications that are
appealing, there will be more users, more demand and, therefore,
growth.  I'm suggesting that if the groundwork and infrastructure is
in place, innovation can occur and applications appealing to consumers
can be built.

He also said the opportunity to create innovation on the Internet will
reduce poverty, create jobs and increase competition and safety.

Here at ICANN meetings we are supposed to develop policies that's
based on consensus positions.

Yet, for the last two years we've heard several self-protectionist
opponents demand study after study that proves the consumer need for
innovation.  And in response, we have seen some blog posts that give
analogies to this expression.

Did the Wright Brothers do market studies to get a solid number on the
demand to fly from consumers?  And on that line, Mr. Palage asked how
long will it take for a Colombian family to save up for a new TLD.
When really all they really want to do, they don't want to save up for
an airplane.  They just want to fly on it.  That analogy is a little
obscure.

But what about the bicycle?  How about the iPhone?  Have there been
studies that have proven the benefit to society based on that
innovation?  I don't think so.  So I think it's time to put the demand
to prove the unpredictable to rest and allow innovation and progress
to flourish.

So my question is:  Are you planning any more studies?

[Applause]

>>KURT PRITZ:  That sounds like an erudite version of a coffee break
at ICANN.  Thank you very much for your comment.  I think -- well, I
think there are more economic studies because we want to at least
measure the success of the projects.  So we want to see what we've
accomplished and change the process so we can continue to improve both
in the areas of bringing benefits and, more importantly, to make sure
that the trademark protections and other protections we put in place
can be made more effective.

But anyway, if you could send that to me, it would be great.

>>ELAINE PRUIS:  Okay.  So that's a measure of success which implies
that there will be some product out there to be tested.

>>KURT PRITZ:  Right.

>>ELAINE PRUIS:  Thank you.

>>KURT PRITZ:  Hi, Steve.

>>STEVE METALITZ:  Good afternoon, Kurt.  Steve Metalitz speaking on
behalf of the Coalition for Online Accountability, eight leading
organizations and companies in the music, movie and software space.

I have two brief comments and one question.  First, it is interesting
there is still a lot of questions and issues about the community
objection process and the community evaluation process.  These are
points that you identified as 99% complete about six months ago.  But
apparently you're hearing from the community that maybe they're not
quite that complete.

I want to associate myself with Amadeu's third clarification point.
The COA has made this point at least twice, and you've rejected it
twice.  So I think we know what the answer will be with Amadeu sends
it in again.  But we still agree that uniqueness should be based on
the language relevant to the community and not any language in the
world.

Second, I appreciate your slide on what information will be made
public.  That was helpful to have that.  As ICANN increasingly
outsources, it seems to me, the responsibility for ensuring that --
for minimizing the risks of negative impacts from new gTLDs to the
public and relies -- says this is not our job or we've gone as far as
we need to go in doing this, for example, with malicious conduct, the
role of public comment becomes even more important.  So it is
essential to make sure that the public will actually have the
information that they need to make intelligent comments on new gTLD
applications as they come in so that those can be considered by the
evaluators.

My question actually was triggered by something that Avri said, which
is in the registry -- vertical integration issue, it isn't just about
ownership or cross-ownership.  There is also questions like why is it
always necessary for registrations in the new gTLD to be handled by
registrars?  Aren't there circumstances in which the registry should
be able to do that directly?

Similarly, aren't there situations in which it shouldn't be necessary
to ban a certain type of TLD registry from entering into an exclusive
arrangement with one or more accredited registrars rather than making
it open to every registrar.

This obviously wouldn't necessarily be the case in all circumstances,
but there certainly could be circumstances.  And in our prior
comments, we've elucidated some of those.

So my question is:  In the vertical integration decision, what
consideration was given to any relaxation of the requirements that
registries not be allowed to conduct registration directly and that
registries be barred from exclusive arrangements with accredited
registrars?

>>KURT PRITZ:  You know, can you read the last two sentences of your
question again?  So when considering the vertical integration?

>>STEVE METALITZ:  Yes.  In considering that, was any consideration
given to either of the following:  One, relaxing the requirement that
registries always act through registrars in making registrations in
their TLD?  And, second, the requirement -- the ban, I should say, on
registries entering into any exclusive arrangements with registrars to
accomplish registration, was any consideration given to that?

>>KURT PRITZ:  Yeah.  So, I think the answer to the first one is no.
And so -- but I understand it is a very valid point.  Understand the
different business models going forward, that wouldn't affect DNS
stability or users or anything like that.  So I think that's a
discussion that needs to evolve.  I think it will take a longer time.

The latter question, though, you know, I think that was anticipated.
There is a perception that might be right or wrong, that a company
owning a TLD self-registering names can register them with whoever
registrar they want.  So they can pick one and register all names
there.

I understand a scenario where they'd want their users, their
registrants registering with that registrar, too.

I'm not so sure there is not a way to accomplish that in the existing
regime with discounts or agreements, similar to ones that exist today.

>>STEVE METALITZ:  You think a registry can pick one registrar and say
we will channel all the registrations through that?

>>KURT PRITZ:  It certainly can channel all their own registrations.
It can certainly enter into -- registrars and registries have
agreements now where volume discounts are offered.  So it can make it
attractive for that, your registrants to use that registrar.

I guess the rub is barring other registrars from considering that, so
we'd have to -- that would have to be developed.

>>STEVE METALITZ:  Thank you.

>> BOB HUTCHINSON:  Hi, I'm Bob Hutchinson from Dynamic Ventures.  I
have two comments or questions that I would like a little
clarification on.  One is the area of security and stability in the
applicant's -- in the application.  I'm not a believer in security by
obscurity.  I believe their plans should be published and available to
the public.

Is that going to be considered?  Apparently not according to your
current slide.  So I will let you comment on that.  I have one other
comment.

>>KURT PRITZ:  So that's a balancing, right?  When we talked about it,
we came to the opposite conclusion.  But, you know, here's a meeting
with the -- where the SSAC is meeting and we would certainly take
their advice if they had an opinion on that.  And there's other
portions of the ICANN technical community that if they were to offer
an opinion on that, we'd certainly take that.

So, you know, I'm certainly not the best person or administrative
people, not the best people to make that call.  You know, it makes
sense to me to keep it secret.  It makes sense to publish it so the
security plans can be publicly vetted.  So I would talk to members of
ICANN -- SSAC and technical community and have that discussion there.

>>BOB HUTCHINSON:  The part of security that needs to be kept
contained is incident response, okay?  And I don't think anybody is
objecting to that.  But new registries need to have solid security and
stability plans.  And I think that they need to be vetted by the
public.  That's my opinion.

The second question that I --

>>KURT PRITZ:  Don't -- so your job is not done then.  You need to
talk to, like, SSAC.

>>BOB HUTCHINSON:  I hear you comment.  Thank you.

The second part is:  Could you give us a brief summary of where you
believe IPv6 support for new registries is?  Is that a requirement for
all throughout their operations and their registrant data or just the
registrant data or where is it?

>>KURT PRITZ:  There is a requirement for IPv6 deployment by the
registries.  And I can't answer that as far as the detail, but I will
go over there and make a note about it and go find out and answer your
question.  And you're recommending the full --

>>BOB HUTCHINSON:  I absolutely think that we are -- what we're
talking about running out at Christmastime.  Merry Christmas, no more
IP addresses.  It seems foolish to allow new registries to begin
operation without a full IPv6 plan.

>>KURT PRITZ:  Okay.  Thank you.

>> ANTONY VAN COUVERING:  Hi, Kurt.  Antony Van Couvering from Minds
Machines.  I would like to make a few comments about the economic
study.  We are in the middle of what I hope is our lifetime's gravest
economic crisis.  And economists today are having a hard time figuring
out what happened and very few of them are daring to predict what will
happen next.  They have hopes, but that's all they have.

So to -- and I understand why ICANN is performing an economic study,
it is because it has agreed to do so under the Affirmation of
Commitments.  And I fully support them standing up to their
commitments.  I hope they will do that when we start registries and we
rely on ICANN as well.

But the value of predictive economic studies, I think, is at best very
doubtful.  And in this current one, I'd like to point to a fundamental
flaw that sort of shoots through it which is that the author seemed to
assume through all of the statements of potential applicants and many
other people that a Latin-based unrestricted generic TLD, one is the
same as another.  And they compare between them and say, why is it
that if mospizza.com is taken in New York, why isn't mospizza.biz
registered in San Francisco?

Let me assure you that all TLDs are not the same.  And to say that no
competition will be given to dot com because a new TLD is Latin based
and unrestricted is completely unwarranted.  Thank you.

>>KURT PRITZ:  Thank you.

>>STEVE DelBIANCO:  Hi, Steve DelBianco with NetChoice.  Two very
brief questions.  Module 1, the guidebook includes a very important
but relatively limited detail on the notion of batching and, quote,
recognizing capacity limitations due to managing extended evaluation,
string contention, et cetera, quote, go on to set a batch.

I think I was there in Korea last year, about a year ago, when you
said based on your calculations you thought 500 was the batch size.
In the year since Korea, there have been a lot of changes, so many
changes that your red-lined scroll made the screen look pink.

But a lot of changes and a lot more emphasis on the objection of
public comment process to try to vet and stop and correct applications
rather than build all of them prescriptively.

Recognizing all that and knowing that you will be measured by the
effectiveness of the evaluation process, do you really still think 500
is a doable batch for application processing?

>>KURT PRITZ:  So I think so.  The critical path or the tall pole in
that are the technical evaluations of the applications.  And our
models say we will need 75 evaluators to process 500 applications in
the 4 1/2 months promised.  And that remains the same.  It gives me a
platform to comment that all the red lines and all our public
discussion is about objection in dispute resolution process, community
TLDs, trademark protections which are very important but not about the
evaluation process and the questions and the criteria.

And we come to each meeting and nobody says, "You got to make these
questions more clear."  You know, we think they're good. We go back
every interim.  We mark them up ourselves.  We consult with experts.

But that portion of the guidebook while red-lined by staff in
consultation with experts has not really been discussed much by the
community yet.  It is the place in the guidebook where every single
applicant will pass and be evaluated.  So not much has changed with
regard --

>>STEVE DelBIANCO:  You believe you could handle the extended
objection contention process for 500 simultaneous applications?

>>KURT PRITZ:  So there's not -- so every -- every application goes to
evaluation:  Technical, financial, some other stuff, right, string
evaluation, which is sort of going to be rootinized.  And then there
is an objection process, and we have assigned -- they're definitely
wrong but we have assigned percentages of how many applications will
go where.  And we have sort of a pachinko machine to model that.  Like
I said, the critical path is in this part up here where we are going
through this rootinized application.  The objection processes are kind
of like on their own time frame.

>>STEVE DelBIANCO:  Second brief question, you said this morning the
effectiveness of safeguards, per the AoC was so important that a lot
of that won't be known until post-delegation.  So when you said it was
speculative, we won't know until then.  Doesn't that argue for a
similar batching concept or even a trial period in the first set of
delegations to evaluate whether effective safeguards are really there
for security, stability and rights protection instead of just
delegating based on the technical capacity of the root to accept new
records?  You've indicated there is another real concern about whether
we'll meet the effectiveness of safeguards test, and that argues for
batching as well.

>>KURT PRITZ:  Well, there already is an Internet, right?  And there
already is practices of TLDs.  So you are making an excellent point.
I will make another one.

So what do we do?  We want to try and make this version of the DNS
safer, more stable for trademark holders, business owners, users,
registrants, the whole lot, and try to maximize benefit so when the
community raised -- like you, raised these issues about trademark
protection or malicious conduct, you know, we got the people that know
what they're talking about in the room, the IRT and people from the
anti-phishing working group and FIRST and CERT -- not CERT, RISG and
said develop a set of protections that we can implement.

So we think that we've taken -- we can brag about ourselves.  We've
taken some of the best minds in the world on these issues, right, and
crafted a set of solutions that aren't to the satisfaction of all but
certainly a big change from where they were.

>>STEVE DelBIANCO:  Totally different point, though.  However good or
bad they are, the point is once they're launched, you admitted
yourself, it is speculative as to how effective they'll be.  The
clearinghouse is new.  The sunrise processes that we have, the TM
claims, these are new processes.  We won't really know how well
they're working in your own words until they are up and running for a
while.

And to do that simultaneously with hundreds of apps while new ones are
piling into the root every month strikes me as maybe taking more risks
than you need to take.

>>KURT PRITZ:  We think we're launching in a stable way, but I take
your point.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:  Hi, Kurt.  Mike Palage again.  I just wanted to
follow up on a point that Steve Metalitz had raised about the use of
registrars and certain brand TLDs.

What I would like to do is if you go back to the original economic
report, the CRAI, they specifically mention the inefficiencies of
using registrars with BIGCO.  Why would a company have to go to a
third-party to register names with itself?  Again, they use the word
"inefficiencies" in that model.

During the Seoul presentation, Kaminsky in the panel discussion talked
about registrars adding another element in the registration process
and how that represented a potential security threat.

And the reason I'm raising these points is I think you've heard in the
GAC as part of the Affirmation of Commitments the need for ICANN to
explain itself.

And what would be very helpful here is in the vertical integration, I
applaud the board for the choice they did.  In large part, they
adopted the proposals of CAM which I co-authored with Milton and Avri
Doria.  I'm happy with this solution.

But what I would like to do is have an explanation on what they
considered and didn't consider.

Here, your first economist said there is not a need for registrars.
But they decided not to adopt that.  And this is why it's so important
to have this explanation.  And the reason why is there's the potential
for some to be cynical, that ICANN only is imposing the use of
registrars because it then gets to double dip in the fee collection,
18 cents --

>>KURT PRITZ:  Woo-hoo.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:  Well, but see, "wahoo" is not -- that's not the
right answer.

>>KURT PRITZ:  Of course, it's not.  So look at me, right, look at
those guys over there, they're all concerned with stability and
security, being able to enforce agreements.

So two things.  One is, yes, the board described a lot of the basis of
its decision in the Whereas, but I know they've discussed with the
publication of the detailed board report on that meeting more
information about how that decision was derived.  So that's one.

I know that one of the discussions that took place in the staff
evaluation of this is that if we agree to not have registrars for
certain registries, that sets into place a very -- very complex
compliance environment where you have to monitor a registry to make
sure it is a brand TLD, you know, who are its employees, give us your
employee lists or your agent's lists.  How do you monitor that?  It is
all very expensive work that's not value-added.

So that -- while I don't disagree with your assertion that -- and
Steve Metalitz's assertion that for certain TLDs registrars are sort
of superfluous, I think a policy discussion needs to occur to identify
those cases where registrars are not required because it is a complex
and potentially expensive undertaking.

And, you know, I don't think that's a staff call for developing
criteria just based on public comment for canceling that need in
certain cases.

>>MICHAEL PALAGE:  Actually, it is a board call.  And they made a
board call on the initial vertical integration.  So I don't see why
they couldn't make it here.

And, you know, not to belabor that point, but I think your suggestion
here about while it's complex, we need to see how things evolve,
actually ties in brilliantly to the point Steve DelBianco made.  Can
you necessarily respond with 500 at the same time?  Smaller batches
may be the way to go.

>>KURT PRITZ:  Amadeu, did I say something wrong a little while ago?

>>AMADEU ABRIL i ABRIL:  No.  The only thing you missed to say is the
exact date in which we can send the applications in.  So that was my
question.  No, seriously --

[Laughter]

For one thing, I might grow older but I could not hear and understand
your answer regarding what "government entity" means in the draft
agreement (inaudible.)

Sorry, but this is important for many of our customers who are cities.
And I can tell you, for instance, the city hall of Paris or Barcelona,
they cannot submit to mandatory arbitration.  It is not that they
don't like, they are not allowed to.  Or, for instance, they cannot
sign insurance policies forbidden by the law in most European
countries for public authorities.

They are responsible.  They cannot even insure themselves against
that, but they have enough funds, more than most applicants you will
see to cover that.

Now, the problem is if they are not allowed to have these exceptions,
they need to create a new entity because you will not accept entity's
information which is perfectly okay but new.

Now, they cannot form a new entity for a resource that does not exist
legally, has been given to them and fund that, so they will fail the
financial evaluation if they need to form a completely empty new
entity.  And they cannot apply as themselves.

Just clarify that in either sense so we will know what to do and at
what speed.

Second clarification is you said there was one trademark case, but not
one UDRP case for dot cat.  There were two others.  But one of them,
none of the parties had a trademark.  They just wanted to fight
because they've been doing that for the last 30 years, two rival
associations of engineers.

And the third one was a case in which -- in fact, it was not a
trademark -- you know, a URDP case because it was a terminated car
dealer using the signs but he had a contract showing he had the right
to use those signs.  Since it was terminated, the registry could not
know at the time of registration.

Now, for the important thing, on the discussion of whether dot cat
would pass or fail, it's not important whether dot cat would pass or
fail because it's already there.  The question here is it's not
because of the name being unique or not.  The question is that when we
go to the policies, you say, "well, eligibility is important."  It is.
Who can register whether -- you check whether they belong to the
community or not.

Absolutely fair.  We support that.

On the other hand, enforcement, serious enforcement, credible
enforcement, punch or lack of punch, absolutely logical.

In the middle, when you regard the registration policies, eligibility
and content and use are two different things, when in reality it's one
or the other.

You have eligibility and name selection -- sorry.  Not eligibility.
Name selection.  That is, you say "Only people from the community can
apply" and they can all use their own name, for instance, so they
cannot use any name for which they don't have a concrete and prior
right to.  You don't need any use control.  Because, you know, what
could happen there.

If, I don't know, the Guggenheim Museum only can use "Guggenheim."  It
could be harmful for the community if they are allowed to use
"art.museum," correct?  Because art is larger than the Guggenheim.
But if they use "Guggenheim," neither dot museum nor anybody else
should tell them what you do with your own name.  You're eligible,
you're -- you're using only your name.  So content and use is usually
a replacement --

>> Kurt -- Kurt, could you ask Amadeu to slow down?  The scribes and
the interpreters are just going into meltdown.

>>AMADEU ABRIL i ABRIL:  Oh, they are not the usual scribes?  They
should know.

Sorry.  Okay.  I get excited when I talk about, you know, policies for
name registration, you see.

Sorry about that.

Now, the question is that in practical terms, Kurt and all the staff,
these two things in reality are -- you use one or the other to achieve
the same goal of having a very low level of possible conflicts outside
the community and even inside the community.

If you do name selection, you don't do content and use checks.  If you
do content and use checks, it's because name selection is impractical
for many reasons or because you had to change that, like dot coop at a
certain point, right?

So please don't make this one and the other; it's one or the other.

Here people are using one point plus another point on, you know, the
question of (inaudible) communities for the question of opposition.

I don't agree with Constantinos.  Sorry.  If there is a position,
there is a position and all communities should deal with that.  But
this name selection or -- plus use is absolutely artificial.

>>KURT PRITZ:  Thank you, Amadeu.

Dan, did you have an answer for Amadeu's first question?

>>DAN HALLORAN:  Yes.  Thank you, Kurt.  And thank you, Ahmed for your
comments.

This is Dan Halloran from ICANN staff.

Just on the -- there were a lot of good questions and comments there
and, please, Amadeu, I think the scribes were having trouble keeping
up and we'll have trouble going back and -- so, please, written
comments are most helpful.  Especially on the one that you asked twice
the question about who can get the modified base agreement.

So we have the base agreement, which is supposed to be in substantial
form for all applicants, but we've noted in the base agreement where
we could have different provisions that would only apply for
governmental entities.  And we meant that.  Governmental entities.
But, I mean, as you pointed out as we're just beginning to understand,
we can guess that's a complicated question, what exactly is a
governmental entity.  It could vary.

There are public/private partnerships.  There are quasi-governmental
or city associations.  There are --

So we'd like any comments you can give on that, and especially if you
can help with guidelines, parameters, criteria for helping us decide
when that should apply and when it should not, we'd appreciate that.
Thank you.

>>KURT PRITZ:  So two more comments and then I think we're over, so...

>>ANDREW MACK: Thanks, Kurt.  Andrew Mack.

We've heard an awful lot about the cost of this new round, and that
that's a real -- going to be potentially a real barrier for a lot of
people who are either in an emerging markets context where there's not
a lot of resource, a community context, or people who want to serve
them, right?

We talked also about the complexity of this round, the 500 -- for the
500 potential applications and all the effort that that's going to put
and the strain that that's going to put on ICANN staff.

And so one of the things that we talked about in our working group was
this idea of bundling.  That you might be able to offer multiple --
you effectively put in a group of applications using different IDN
scripts so as to get more IDNs in the root, get more people -- lessen
digital divide, that kind of thing.

When we were talking in Brussels, you seemed pretty warm to that idea.
Make sense?  And how can we move that forward?

>>KURT PRITZ:  So you'll have to describe "bundling" for me a little
bit more.

>>ANDREW MACK: Sure, sure, sure.  The idea is this, basically, is that
if we want to serve -- if you want to get your new gTLD out into
multiple scripts -- right? -- smaller scripts especially wouldn't be
able to be built out if you are charging a whole 185, right?

But if you say, "We'll go and we'll buy the 6-pack, not just the
individual beer," you get a bit of a discount, you support communities
that need that support, that kind of thing.

So that's the idea behind bundling and, you know, wanted -- you seemed
warm to it in Brussels.  I wanted to just get some feedback, you know.

>>KURT PRITZ:  Warm beer.

>>ANDREW MACK: Yeah.

>>KURT PRITZ: I don't know.  I think what I said in Brussels, that the
-- so I think I said the opposite, but I think I said that the costs
-- the costs for the new TLD program will smack right up against the
fee we're charging as far as a cost basis, and we think the cost
average of all the applications will rise to absorb that, so bundling
and volume discounts --

>>ANDREW MACK: Well, the challenge is this, okay?  When you're looking
-- we're already in a situation of digital divide -- right? --

>>KURT PRITZ: Yeah.

>>ANDREW MACK: -- where there are already have's and have not's in
this community, and the problem is that you make it such that Amharic
or Arabic or some of the smaller languages -- Arabic not being a
smaller language, but some of the smaller languages really can't get
on the Web because they can't afford this.  This 185 is going to be
way too high for them to get over.  Then what you're effectively doing
is saying to them, "Lose your language," right?  "Lose your script,"
at least, "or you're off the Web."

And so the idea behind bundling was basically a way to get them in.

These are things that wouldn't otherwise happen, right?  And a way of
addressing the needs of underserved communities and underserved
language groups.

>>KURT PRITZ:  I got your point exactly and I understand the need.

And, Avri, so this is --

>>ANDREW MACK: This is one of the things --

>>KURT PRITZ: -- don't stand up and don't shake your head.

[Laughter]

>>KURT PRITZ:  But, you know, we're trying to parse between those with
need and maybe very well-to-do entities that are looking for volume
discounts that are already very well-to-do and I wonder if there's a
way to parse between that when you're making criteria for who has
need.  So okay.  Thank you very much.

Werner.

>>WERNER STAUB:  My name is Werner Staub.  I speak in a personal
capacity.

First, I would like to commend the board for having finally come out
with a time line.  It is not maybe the best time line that we could
imagine, but at least there is one.  And I'm really concerned that
we're losing it again.

This has been going on for six years.  The last time line that the
board was able to -- well, that was reportedly an announcement was in
2003 for the process to be ready no later than 31st of December, 2004.

We're now six years delayed.

Now, if you look at the cause of this, maybe the reason may be a
misunderstanding and we may be looking at the wrong way of handling
it, and I think we have in front of ourselves the picture of a city at
this event at the back of the stage where we have the metaphor that we
might probably want to look at.

The Internet is just like a city.  We have to do the city planning for
this.  There must be a process.  The absence of the process, or the
internal delaying of the process, is absolutely deadly.

You know, could you imagine a city where there's no decisions going to
be taken until we have the perfect thing available for any
construction whatsoever to be allowed?

Imagine what the city would look like.

That also leads us to ideas how the process should be run.

If we are not ready with the process as it is right now, if there are
concerns -- you know, specifically on the trademark side -- about
externalities -- I'm happy that this word finally made it to the
vocabulary and that we're using it -- about the external costs being
excessive and not bearable for certain parties, then why don't we put
this as an objection?  Why don't we introduce an additional filter,
rather than stopping the entire process, and say, "There is going to
be an externalities objection.  We have objective grounds on which a
specific proposal that was reasonably regarded as not acceptable to
parties who are going to be affected, and we can have actually in the
models to be seen, or the plan, exactly the same thing.

If a new street or a new road is constructed, people can complain
about emissions and that kind of stuff.

So we've got something very similar.  It's not just about rights or
collisions.

Thank you.

>>KURT PRITZ:  Thank you.  That was a good comment.

[Applause]

>>KURT PRITZ:  So I really want to thank everybody for sticking here
and all the time you've invested in this and all the energy you've put
into this process.  So thanks very much.  Have a great meeting, okay?