GNSO new gTLDs. Session 3. Los Angeles, California. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. Those who are still outside will miss out. Just before we start this session, the much-anticipated Session 3 Paul Levins has a few words to say. >>PAUL LEVINS: Yes. Thanks very much, Chris. A brief community service announcement, if I can put it that way. As many of you are aware, this is Vint's last meeting. I'm sure all of us are aware of that. And you may not be aware, however, that we're holding a very special tribute evening for Vint tomorrow night. Now, if I'd only had a brain, I'd have made this announcement a little earlier. My reason for using that particular phrase will become obvious in a minute. We're holding this tribute at the Sony Studios, which is about 20 minutes to the north of here. It's the old MGM studios. So it's going to be a terrific night. And the old MGM studios is, of course, where they filmed the "Wizard of Oz." Hence, "if I only had a brain." "Ben Hur." What else? Maybe others. "Gone with the Wind" and so on. Lots of gags around those movies that I could make but I won't. My reason for mentioning it is because tickets to this are limited. There's 800 seats at this particular event. We have currently something like 1490 people registered. So you don't need to be Einstein to do the math and work out that you need -- if you want to come this, and it will be a really special evening, you'll need to get a ticket tomorrow morning. First 800 in get to go. You'll need to get your ticket from registration tomorrow morning. If you, during the course of the day, decide that you don't want to come and can't use it, please, please, turn it back in to the registration desk. To give you a sense of the evening, it will involve not endless speeches. There will be lots of fun. There will be backlot tours. There will be science fiction characters wandering around. It will be a terrific meal being served by a caterer who is quite famous here in the U.S. called Wolfgang Puck, and as I say, there will also be a number of tributes from people who are household names globally, and whom I don't want to spill the beans on because I want it to be a surprise for Vint. So that said, if you have any questions, feel free to find me and I'll go to the registration desk. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: What time -- >>PAUL LEVINS: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The buses will leave from here -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No, no. What time will the registration desk have the tickets? >>PAUL LEVINS: Oh. From 8:00 onwards. 8:00 a.m. onwards. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: And what time can we start camping out by the registration? >>PAUL LEVINS: That's right. Sleeping bags will be brought and -- So just very quickly on the logistics of that, the buses leave at 7:30 for the event at 8:00. Thanks very much, Chris. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Paul. It's going to be hard to concentration on Session 3 after that. >>CHUCK GOMES: Shall we just skip Session 3? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, let's just skip Session 3 and go straight there. Okay. So we're going to start Session 3, and I guess, Chuck, you're on. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thank you, Chris. And thanks to everyone for the excellent cooperation, the good comments and questions and so forth. I do want to -- before we start Session 3 -- make one comment from session 2. It's important, just in case people don't understand, that the second round of new TLDs was restricted to sponsored TLDs only. Now, the traditional definition, the original definition of gTLDs being different than ccTLDs -- right? -- gTLDs were then ultimately divided into what was called a sponsored TLD and an unsponsored TLD. The second round was restricted to sTLDs. This round, there's no distinction being made, there's no requirement that you be sponsored or unsponsored. It is quite possible -- in fact, I would predict -- that there will be proposals put forward that will be of the sponsored nature, and unsponsored as well. So please understand that, in case that wasn't clear. Now, going to Session 3, we're going to cover principle G, the last principle. We're going to cover recommendations 3, 6, 12, and 20. We're going to actually cover 12 first. We're going to cover the implementation guidelines that are -- were particularly written to go with those recommendations, and that's F, G, H, P, Q, and R. And again, I hope you have a quick reference guide there so you can see what -- which recommendations we're talking about, et cetera. And then of course, again, Kurt will give us some implementation details and there are quite a few with this particular one, because of the nature of the recommendations. Our panelists in this session are Robin Gross. Robin, why don't you raise your hand or something so everybody can see you. They might not be able to see your nametag. Kristina Rosette on my right. Okay. Jon Bing from the NomCom. Marilyn Cade from the BC. And then, of course, I think you already are quite familiar with Avri, Kurt, and I. Okay. Principle G. As you might guess, this was the last principle added, and it actually came about after quite lengthy discussions about some of the recommendations you're going to be looking at in a moment. It reads: The string evaluation process must not infringe the applicant's freedom of expression rights that are protected under internationally recognized principles of law. This principle was added after long discussions about Recommendations 3 and 6, with the purpose of balancing the goal to protect rights with the goal to promote freedom of expression. As you might expect, and as we will, I'm sure, witness in this session here today, there was very strong discussion -- lots of it -- between these two areas that quite often compete with one another. Recommendation 12 is that dispute resolution and challenge processes must be established prior to the start of the process. It's important that all aspects of the application process be known before applications for new gTLDs are prepared and submitted. In fact, the intent of the council and the committee that developed these recommendations is that all of that, including the dispute resolution processes, would be known and publicized before the 4-month communication period even started. Dispute resolution and challenges -- challenge are intended to address two types of situations. The first one is the filing of an objection against an application on certain specific grounds developed from the GNSO's recommendations, and we'll be looking at those in the other -- in the three recommendations that follow. And secondly, when two or more applicants are vying for the same or confusingly similar new gTLD, and that's a process that we're calling "contention resolution." Specific grounds from our recommendations are the following: Recommendation 2, confusingly similar strings, okay? And so it could be that that would be identified -- a string would be identified as confusingly similar to an existing TLD or another proposed TLD, or it could happen, as was previously noted, that an objection is filed claiming that it's confusingly similar. The second one is legal rights of others -- that's Recommendation 3 that we'll have several slides on. Morality and public order, Recommendation 6. And community opposition, Recommendation 20. We'll go through each one of those in quite a lot of detail. So we have fewer recommendations here, but you're going to see a lot more slides for each one. As you might guess, we spent months on these particular recommendations. The procedures, the standing of somebody who wants to file a challenge, and the criteria for assessment, still need to be developed. And ICANN staff has begun this process in consultation with outside counsel and other experts. And in fairness to staff, I think I should say that we have given staff a huge challenge in this regard, so -- we really have, but they have been working on it, they've been laying the groundwork, and once the recommendations are approved, they will continue even more diligently to work on fulfilling our recommendations. To resolve string contention, the new gTLD committee discussed methods such as comparative evaluation, lotteries, auctions, but we were unable to reach agreement on any of those. I know I've seen comments in the public fora on this that, "Well, why didn't they consider auctions or why didn't they" -- we did. I'm just telling you right up front, we were unable to reach consensus on any one of those ideas. There were some members of the group that supported each one of those, but no even close consensus on any one of them. Now, ICANN staff -- and Kurt will talk a little bit more about this -- is exploring processes that may enable contention to be resolved informally by the parties. Or through comparative evaluation auction, mediation, lottery, arbitration or some other method. But keep in mind, the committee and the council did not specifically recommend any one of those, with the exception of, as you will see, we do recommend that in the case where there's more than one party contending for the same string, that they try to -- they at least make an effort to try to come to some resolution among themselves before it going -- before it is submitted to the dispute resolution process. The role of the board in the process remains to be defined, okay? And it may be that the board doesn't have any role. That's a difficult area. I'm sure the board wouldn't want that role. I wouldn't, if I was them. But that is something that's not defined right now, and we'll see how it rolls out as these challenging implementation details are worked out. Implementation guideline F says that if there is contention for strings, applicants may resolve contention between them within a preestablished time frame. So there will be a time frame that's defined, and we would encourage people -- now, we obviously -- I don't think ICANN can force the applicants to try and work together to come up with some resolution that might satisfy both parties, and that could probably take many different forms, but there will be -- they're certainly going to be given that opportunity, within a certain time limit, because we don't want these things to drag on forever. If there is no mutual agreement, a claim to support a community by one party will be a reason to award priority to that application, and of course we're talking about here cases where a community is involved. That may not be the case in every application. If there is no such claim and no mutual agreement, a process will be put in place to enable efficient resolution of the contention. One of the big challenges we've given to ICANN staff. Third, the ICANN board may be used to make a final decision using advice from staff and expert panels. Since the board's the one that's approving these, we'll see what happens with that one. So... But that is in the recommendations from the council. And notice we did intentionally use the word "may" there. Implementation guidelines H, Q and R -- especially -- are listed there. H says, External dispute providers will give decisions on objections. So it's an external dispute provider, an independent provider, that would make the decisions when an objection is filed. Not the ICANN board, not staff. Q: ICANN staff will provide an automatic reply to all those who submit comments that will explain the objection procedure. So this is kind of a new idea that we came up with when people submit comments and they're concerned about particular TLDs that have been shown to be applied for, automatically with that submission of a comment, a message would go back and -- just to make sure that people are aware that some processes have been put in place to deal with those. R: Once formal objections or disputes are accepted for review, there will be a cooling-off period to allow parties to resolve the dispute or objection before review of the panel is initiated. G: Where an applicant lays claim that the TLD is intended to support a particular community such as a sponsored TLD, or any other TLD intended for a specific community, that claim will be taken on trust with the following exceptions: If the claim relates to a string that is also subject to another application and the claim to support a community is being used to gain priority for the application. The second exception would be a formal objection process is initiated, and under these exceptions, staff evaluators will devise criteria and procedures to investigate the claim. Under the second exception, an expert panel will apply the process guidelines and definitions set forth in implementation guideline P. Now, if you look at your quick reference guide, either on line or the printed copy you have, you'll see that implementation guideline P is quite long. And we're note going to go it over all in the presentation, but we'll go over some highlights of that a little bit later. It especially relates to Recommendation 20. Going to Recommendation 3, Strings must not infringe the existing legal rights of others that are recognized or enforceable under generally accepted and internationally recognized principles of law. By the way, I assure you this one was not written or even developed in any short amount of time. Examples of sources of legal rights include the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. In particular, trademark rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In particular, freedom of expression rights. Procedure: A party holding rights that it believes would be harmed may file an objection to a proposed gTLD. Key criterion in that challenge process: Legal rights must be recognized or enforceable under generally accepted and internationally recognized principles of law. Efforts will need to be made to clarify the kinds of legal rights that are derived from internationally recognized principles of law and applicable to the context of new gTLDs. Legal research is being done on the potential applicability of the Paris Convention, the ICCPR, and the UDHR and other possible sources. That's an ongoing process. Some examples. Rights defined in the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property is one possible example that may come into play, so if a challenge was filed and they may base it on that Paris Convention. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there may be some things in there that a challenge could be based on. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This one, again, primarily the freedom of expression rights. Those are just examples. Whether those will end up being useful or whether there will be others, work is still being done on that. It's important that the new gTLD process respect the concerns that have been expressed by groups representing both trademark and freedom of expression interests. You heard us say earlier that in our consensus process, we had tons of disagreements, and this is certainly an area where there were multiple sides, and what we tried to do is come up with a recommendation that a large percentage could support, and that's what you're seeing before you. The GNSO recommendations are intended to create a process that addresses the concerns of all key stakeholders, not just one interest group. So, in other words, we'd really like to accommodate freedom of expression rights and intellectual property rights and other rights. Now, that's -- that may be an impossible challenge. We don't know. We're trying. Because we have received input and -- through the committee and elsewhere regarding concerns on all those sides. Going on to Recommendation 6: Strings must not be contrary to generally accepted legal norms relating to morality and public order that are recognized under international principles of law. Possible examples of such principles of law include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, the international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, intellectual property treaties administered by the world intellectual property organization, and the WTO, World Trade Organization, agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property. Those are just some examples of possible international principles of law that may apply here. Procedure here: Anyone may file an objection to a proposed gTLD on the grounds that it is contrary to generally accepted legal norms relating to morality and public order that are recognized under international principles of law. Key criterion: Legal rights must be recognized under international principles of law. Now, we fully understand that efforts need to be made to clarify the meaning of "generally accepted legal norms relating to morality and public order that are recognized under international principles of law." And would be applicable, in other words, in this particular challenge process, or relating to this recommendation. Again, further legal research is being done and will be done in this regard. Some examples. Under Article 29 (2) of the UDHR, limitations on an individual's rights and freedoms may be permitted "as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order, and the general welfare in a democratic society." Article 6quinquies of the Paris Convention contains language relating to the denial of trademark registration in cases "when they are contrary to morality or public order and, in particular, of such a nature as to deceive the public." Those are just some examples that may apply in this case. Legal research thus far suggests that international law has not addressed concepts of "morality" in connection with gTLDs, the DNS, or the Internet more generally. And this will come as -- this one will come as no surprise to anyone. There may be subjectivity involved in an expert panel making determinations on objections brought on these grounds. Keep in mind our goal is to make the evaluation as objective as possible, but we did note there are certainly some cases where that is easier than others. Concern has been expressed that the notion of public morality varies by region, by country, and even by individual. Staff -- here again, we've been really nice to staff. I think they really appreciate us. Staff is tasked with developing a set of standards and a procedure for implementing this recommendation in an objective manner. Recommendation 20. An application will be rejected if an expert panel determines that there is substantial opposition to it from a significant portion of the community to which the string may be explicitly or implicitly targeted. With regard to the procedure here, an established institution representing a specified community may file an objection on the grounds that there is substantial opposition to the application by a significant portion of the community to which the string may be explicitly or implicitly targeted. The definitions of the terms in this recommendation, as all of you can tell, are really critical in terms of trying to limit subjectivity. Two definitions from implementation guideline P that are important -- and I want to go over here -- are explicitly targeting and implicitly targeting. We defined explicitly targeting as meaning there is a description of the intended use of the TLD in the application. For example, and I'll pick -- I'll pick on our dot Berlin folks, okay? Because all of us know them and have worked with them for quite a while now. They could -- I'm not saying what they will do, but they could, in their application, specifically say, "We are -- we want to offer this TLD for the benefit of the Berlin cities all over the world." They're making an explicit statement that they're doing that. Implicit targeting means that the objector makes an assumption of targeting or that the objector believes there may be confusion by users over its intended use. So they may not in their application say that they're even targeting that community, but there could be an assumption of that by a particular community as well. Now, there are a lot of other definitions in implementation guideline P, and what I'm going to do here is let you look at those on your quick reference guide because the full text of implementation guideline P is contained in that. Guideline P provides definition for key terms. It suggests that the objector -- and this is important -- the objector must provide sufficient evidence to allow the panel to determine that there would be a likelihood of detriment to the rights or legitimate interests of the community or to the users more widely. That took quite a while to develop. Okay? Challenges remain in implementing this recommendation. Questions have arisen about the impact on a community if the purpose of business model -- or business model of the new gTLD changes after approval. The policy recommendation states: There are some strings that should be rejected because they are -- and I'm actually jumping into your slides, aren't I? >>KURT PRITZ: That's okay. >>CHUCK GOMES: No. I'm going to let you take these. [Laughter] >>CHUCK GOMES: There you go. >>KURT PRITZ: So this first slide is slightly provocative, especially for me, but when we discuss this concept among staff and with council members and try to wrap ourselves around it and the reasoning behind it, we get to this: That there -- a string can be up to 63 letters and numbers long, and in that 60 string -- that's up to 63 long, there's an opportunity to make a string that I think all -- nearly all of us would find objectionable. There's one string that is so clearly a violation of what we agree would be appropriate, either with respect to public policy or infringing somebody's right or some misuse of a community label. But we all agree that it shouldn't be in the DNS as a top-level domain. So once we get to the fact that there can be one of these, then as an administrator of a process or administrator of a new TLD process, we're obligated to develop a procedure and standards around what is acceptable and what is not. And so whether that is a very light procedure or restriction or not, the obligation is then to have some sort of process and some sort of standards around testing -- testing these strings as to their appropriateness, and for ICANN, the optimal way to go about that is have any objections be brought up by a third party. That party -- the party that's essentially harmed can -- would bring up that objection. And if that party has the requisite standing, principally by being the harmed party, and brings up that objection in the right fashion, then that objection would be taken out of the evaluation process and brought to a dispute resolution provider and the dispute resolution provider would make a determination between the applicant and the objector, and so take that process sort of outside of ICANN and then make that determination. So start as being that very clear violation of something, one of the three enumerated grounds specified by the GNSO Council, or actually the committee, and approved by the Council and then having the obligation to fashion this dispute resolution process around that So, you know, there's a lot to talk about but just a couple slides. And the second one is that the ICANN tasks then are -- some of them are complex and some of them are more straightforward, but in the procedure, in the evaluation process that's defined in this request for proposal, the solicitation for application of new gTLDs, there will be an objection process and the standing requirements will be specified in there and it is expected that the objector would support the financing of the dispute resolution procedure. And so that would provide the standing. And then the next step -- and this will also be defined clearly in the RFP at its time of publication are what are these dispute resolution processes. So if you look at the second subbullet, the first thing you need is a procedure, right, which is fairly straight but needs to be defined with specificity. So on day 15, the applicant will respond in writing to the objection on day 32 there will be a conference, something along those lines, a specific procedure. And then the dispute resolution provider needs some set of standards to apply in the dispute resolution procedure. Now, staff thus far has held multiple consultations with outside experts to determine, you know, the feasibility of developing these standards and the form the standards might take to objections based on these enumerated grounds, right? The public policy objection, the infringement of rights or the misappropriation of a community label. So thus far, considerable research has been done to explore the standards of different jurisdictions. So I just want to make a point that it's important in considering the development of these standards to take into account the different cultures and standards of different jurisdictions. Now, that doesn't mean that this process would follow the most restrictive standards of a particular jurisdiction. In fact, that's why I -- you know, our interpretation is, the Council inserted the term "under international accepted principle" -- what does it say? Let me read it, "under principles of internationally accepted" -- I even wrote it down wrong. "Accepted principles of international law." I hope you understood that. That is intended, I think, to obviate the possibility that there will be forum shopping in trying to either include or exclude certain TLD strings. But I think it is important to understand the different culture and standards prior to making the decision not because we will create restrictive standards but I think you need to understand before you can a standard. Will the standards be overly restrictive? I'm sure in the minds of some, yes, but it is, certainly, our intent to understand first and then develop the standards later. Considerable work has been done and as we attempt to determine the feasibility of these recommendations and, if so, develop ways to approach them, there will certainly be public consultations and publication of our findings. So just to wrap up the end of the ICANN tasks here, there would probably be some appeal mechanism from the findings of a dispute resolution provider. That could be as straightforward as was the procedure followed correctly. And then Chuck also talked about a resolution process for string contention and that is when two identical strings are applied for or if they're confusingly similar. There's at least a couple steps to the evaluation there. One would be to have sort of a comparative evaluation, so if one of the strings represented a community, that entity representing that string could ask that a comparative evaluation be done about the value brought to the DNS, sort of a really tricky beauty contest sort of concept that would have to have very objective procedures written around it, very objective standards. And the other Chuck alluded to, too, whether there be an auction or some sort of choice. ICANN is getting advice on the feasibility of those options in the event that some sort of comparative evaluation would not be available. So just to recap, we're creating an objection process, a procedure, standards and then a process to resolve contention between strings, clearly, the most difficult part of this job. And like I said, considerable effort is being expended by many people in ICANN staff and outside ICANN staff and keep your ears tuned to the news and we will be posting information as we develop it. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Kurt. Before we see if there happen to be any questions or comments from the floor, panelists, would you like to take the opportunity to make some comments -- Robin, your hand was up first. You go. >>ROBIN GROSS: Thank you. I'm Robin Gross with the noncommercial users constituency. And I just wanted to explain to the Internet community why the NCUC could not vote in favor of these recommendations. In particular, the problem was Recommendation number 6 and number 20 we are talking about here. In particular, Recommendation 6, the reasons why we voted against it and our concerns remain is it will completely undermine ICANN's efforts to make the gTLD process predictable and instead makes the application process entirely arbitrary, subjective and, unfortunately, political. It will have the effect of suppressing free speech, diverse expression. It exposes ICANN to litigation risks. Karl spoke this morning about the antitrust problems that ICANN faces. There are also freedom of expression rights people have that are under threat by this policy and it takes ICANN far too far away from its technical coordination mission and into areas of legislating morality and public order. With respect to recommendation number 20, the problems we have with this broad-based objection and rejection process, it essentially empowers experts to adjudicate legal rights of people. The proposal empowers ICANN and its experts to invent entirely new rights to domain names that don't exist in law and will compete with existing legal rights. However good intentioned the proposal is, it will inevitably set up a system that decides legal rights based upon subjective beliefs of expert panels and the amount of insider lobbying. The proposal gives established institutions a veto power over applications for domain names to the detriment of innovators and startups. The proposal is further flawed because it makes no allowance for generic words to which no community can claim exclusive ownership of and, instead, it wants to assign rights to use language based upon subjective standards, overregulate to the detriment of competition, innovation and free expression. So we're very concerned about the proposals that came out, and that's in a nutshell the main reasons why the noncommercial users constituency could not vote in favor of these recommendations. Thank you. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you very much, Robin. Marilyn? >>MARILYN CADE: Thank you. I want to keep this short because I think it is very important to hear from those of you who are going to speak. But I want to make a short statement about the interests that were reflected throughout the long process of developing the policy recommendation we have here. The business user constituency for a number of years was extremely cautious to oppose to the introduction of further gTLDs, stating that there should be first a demonstrated need or market. Over time, in fact, many of the discussions that we had led us to believe that IDNs had to become a priority. However, working within the community and in the spirit of trying to take on board all of the input that we heard, we did work in good faith within this process to try to come up with a balanced approach in order to be able to move forward with the introduction of new gTLDs and as predictable and transparent a manner as possible. I just want to reassure all of you that in the many, many, many hours of discussions, face-to-face meetings and conference calls and exchanges, there was a tremendous amount of effort put together by everyone from the community, not only within the committee but many other parties who offered their consultation, their input, et cetera, to try to find a feasible way forward and balanced way forward. We still have a tremendous amount of work to do and I hope you'll talk about ideas to help to address some of the challenges still faced. But I do want to suggest that we're at a place now where we can have a predictable process for the introduction of new gTLDs but in a balanced way. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Marilyn. Does anyone else -- any other panelists like to make any comments? Kristina? Jon? No? Chuck? Avri? No. Okay. Let's start with our first comment and question. Can I please remind everybody speak slowly, tell us who you are and stay on point and tell you what specific thing you are actually talking about, what specific recommendation or implementation guideline you are referring to. Thank you, sir. Off you go. >>MATTHEW HOOKER: Yes, my name is Matt Hooker I am speaking for myself and for free men and women everywhere, and we are completely against recommendation 20 which we see as censorship. Since the printed word was developed, there has never been a greater instrument for free expression in the Internet. It is the best thing humanity has ever had for freedom of speech. We should not allow any kind of censorship on it at all. To dictate what is and is not moral is censorship and to apply cultural standards across the Internet brings us down to the lowest common denominator -- >>CHUCK GOMES: Can I interrupt for a second? Are you talking about Recommendation 6 or Recommendation 20? >>MATTHEW HOOKER: I believe they're combined, aren't they? >>CHUCK GOMES: No. >>MATTHEW HOOKER: One is deciding what's moral, and the other is deciding if a community should be allowed to reject an application. >>CHUCK GOMES: I just want to know which slide I should have up. I believe you are talking about 6 right now, right? >>MATTHEW HOOKER: I believe I am talking about 6 and 20. Six certainly but I think 20 is also part of it. I believe they're both censorship and both amount to deciding what is moral or not which in itself is censorship. I am against both of them completely. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you very much. Next person? >>WOLFGANG KLEINWAECHTER: My name is Wolfgang Kleinwaechter. I'm from the University of Aarhus, and my comment goes to the dispute resolution recommendation. I guess it is Recommendation 20 or also 6 and 20. I fully understand that you have to do something, look for a mechanism which resolutes disputes. But this approach leads into very, very slippery terrain. Kurt Pritz said we have to have a set of standards. I fully agree you have to have standards. The question is who -- what are the standards? Court says, you know, considerable research has to be done. That's true. I fully agree, it has to be done. But I'm afraid that this considerable research will lead to nowhere. The way out you have proposed is go to international law. Then you end up with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It's there. And in four categories, national security, public order, moral and public health, you know, governments have the right to restrict freedom of expression by law. Though, the solution in the real world is you can have different laws in different countries and you can co-exist. That means the United States has a different legislation with regard to national security and public order than China. And when you come to international conferences, you never agree on content-related issues. Even in the cyber crime convention, the only thing you could agree was child pornography, the only content-related issue. Even on racist propaganda, which is forbidden in my country in Germany, the United States could not agree because the First Amendment didn't allow it. It means, what do you hope what comes out? If the diplomats cannot agree on content-related issues, do you expect that such a panel of two or three experts can agree on that? I have freely my doubt. If you go back to history, there was already such a so-called code of ethics. In 1936, in Geneva, the international convention on the course of the use of broadcasting for peace was adopted and they instituted an international code of ethics. It means broadcasts, you know, which would violate the right of other countries should come to this court and the court should look into the concrete specifics of the special broadcast. You know, the whole project collapsed. It never was executed. It was recognized that something has to be done to settle these kind of disputes. I would propose, you know, to create something which is innovative. And, therefore, I would propose that you start, let's say, with a test and that you specify with a sunset period. We test it out for probably two or three years. Probably a lot of these conflicts will go. If you have 1,000 TLDs, then a lot of names do not raise any concern anymore. As long as you have a limited number of TLDs, like the dot XXX case has demonstrated, then suddenly you have big public awareness. But if you have thousands or tens of thousands, then probably nobody will take care. So far my recommendation is if you install such a mechanism, be very careful, you know. Do it on a provisional way. Have a sunset regulation for that. And review it after three years and then to look into the experiences. Probably it's good and it works. But I have my doubt that you will transport conflicts from all the world summit on information society and United Nations directly into this panel. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. >>CHUCK GOMES: Before you sit down -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Chuck, one second. Wolfgang, don't sit down. Chuck is going to respond in a second. Thank you. Can I just say -- can I counsel everybody not to get too heavily into implementation because there will be plenty of opportunity to look at the implementation measures at a later stage. This is a discussion on principles. But I know that Chuck wants it respond, so, Chuck, over to you. >>CHUCK GOMES: Wolfgang, thank you for the input. I wanted you at the microphone so I can ask you a question about something you said. Did I correctly interpret from what you said that child pornography may be one area that's of concern here? >>WOLFGANG KLEINWAECHTER: Certainly somebody could come and could ask for top-level domain dot child pornography. I think in this case, it is easy to get an international understanding if somebody would object to this. If somebody comes with dot Hitler, probably, you know, you have different opinions. You ask why not? Germans would have some ideas about it. Hitler.DE cannot be registered in Germany. >>CHUCK GOMES: That's what I wanted to clarify. I wanted to make sure I wasn't misinterpreting. There may be one example at least that may fit here according to your opinion. >>WOLFGANG KLEINWAECHTER: The problem is nationally you can regulate it. Globally, you have to take all jurisdictions and then you will be unable to find a consensus. And you have to look very realistic. Otherwise, it is dreaming that you could reach -- that such a panel could solve a problem which cannot be solved the next 100 years. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. >> This is Guanghao Li, and I have a few questions actually. It was asked that I have to provide a specific guideline or recommendation I have to point to. Actually, I would need help from Chuck. My first question is when we talk about this is a contendency for a string, same strings from two parties, then the one who claimed to support a community will get the priority. That's the implementation guideline -- yes, that would be guideline F. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes. What's your -- >> Guanghao Li: I would say about both parties can claim to support a certain community. I don't think we have thought about support from the community which will more put the emphasis on who gains the support from the community instead they claim they are supporting a community but because of some strings that both parties can claim to support but -- some may get support from the community but someone would not. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Can we go one at a time? >> Sure. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So we don't get completely lost. Who wants to talk to that one? >>CHUCK GOMES: Sure. Let me share a little bit of the thought processes that went on in the committee. One of the things that was brought up several times in the deliberation on this is that if an applicant that's intending to target a particular community really does their homework in a smart way, they're going to make sure before they ever apply that they have strong support from that community. Now, you're right, there still could be subsets of that community that would oppose. But if I'm an applicant and I have done my homework in terms of preparing my -- getting ready for my application, and I am targeting a particular community, I would sure do everything I can to make sure that I have the support of that community. Now, all I'm doing is sharing some of the thought processes that went on when we created this one. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, Avri. >>AVRI DORIA: The issues you're bringing up are exactly some of the issues we ran into and, indeed, that's why we sort of ended up with a process that had multiple steps and as you very often won't be able to resolve it because you have two contending communities and, therefore, it needs to go to another level of processing. So it was definitely something that we spent a lot of time talking about and lot of time sort of saying, Well, what happens if this is the case? What happens? And the example you bring up was indeed one where, yes, weighing the balance of support that you have from one community to another becomes very problematic as soon as you have two different communities with two different claims. >> GUANGHAO LI: That's actually the subquestion of the first question. And then the definition about a community may be needed in this regard. When we do the homework -- when the applicant do the homework to claim it is supporting a community, then who defines that the community is the right community or -- you know, a scope of the community should be defined in this regard, I would think. >>CHUCK GOMES: We don't disagree with you on that. And that's going to need to be worked out in the problems details that we've talked about. Of the objection process, correct. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Did you have a second question? >> Yes. And my second one is -- well, Chris just said we don't go to too much about implementation but I am kind of concerned about implementation. When we said expert -- when there's nothing that can be resolved like claiming support from a community, then the expert panel or expert committee will be formed to judge which one is which one and also doing the validation if there is objections of the community for that application. My question is when the expert panel or the expert community will be formed and how and under what kind of process they will be formed. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We don't have the answers to that yet, as far as I'm aware. Kurt, do you just briefly want to address anything? >>KURT PRITZ: For the community example one, one scenario might be, you know, panel of retired jurists or something like that. But, for example, where there's no certain areas of expertise, no professional community moniker then, you know, there would just be neutral parties. >> I remember one slide mentioned a third-party dispute resolution that organization will be implemented. It is the subquestion for the second question. Under what kind of process they would be selected -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We don't have any of those answers at this stage. It is way too soon. We don't know. >> Okay. %%%jen2end. >>AVRI DORIA: But one thing I wanted to bring up in that is, one of the things that we have asked for is assuming that this whole -- that the recommendations go forward and implementation, that once there is an implementation, we will get to review the answers to those questions. >>GUANGHAO LI: Okay. And I think that was the second one. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I'll give you one more and that's it. >>GUANGHAO LI: That was -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: One more, one more. >>GUANGHAO LI: Yes. Okay. The one says we're getting oppositions to the string, that an expert panel will evaluate whether there's opposition from the community to that application. My question was: The opposition -- is that opposition towards the string or opposition towards the party? The applicant, actually. Was that opposition saying that -- opposing the string or the applicant. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Marilyn? >>MARILYN CADE: Well, in our discussions -- let me just give you an example. It could be either one and I'm going to use an example that was mentioned earlier in one of the previous sessions, picking on a famous and well-known brand like IBM, right? So if it wasn't IBM who opposed -- who proposed to operate dot IBM, the opposition could be to the applicant. So just use that as an example. But the opposition could be about the string itself. It could also be because it's IBMM and, therefore, it's confusingly similar, lots of -- lots of other -- and it could be, as you saw from our earlier discussion, it could be because there are other criteria that the string violates in some way or challenges in some way. So it could be either the applicant or the -- >>GUANGHAO LI: The applicant or the string itself. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes. That's it. >>GUANGHAO LI: I'm done, I'm done. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Good. Well done, thank you. Next one, please. >>VITTORIO BERTOLA: Thank you. Vittorio Bertola. I'm not entering into the big issue. I had another one. I don't know whether you consider this problem that the TLD space is big but is not infinite. I'd say that the number of strings, ASCII strings that are less than five, six characters long and are meaningful, they're not confusingly similar to other ones, it's maybe there are hundreds of thousands, maybe, so very big but not infinite. So did you consider where there's a risk that you're actually using it in a -- or allocating it in a bad way, in a way that in the long term is not good? For example, I mean Marilyn mentioned the possibility of dot IBM, which is fine. Then maybe you get dot Microsoft and dot Google but what if every company in the world wants to have a TLD, or what if every wealthy individual in the world wants to have a TLD? I mean there are several millions of people for which even 50 or a hundred thousand dollars is not an amount of money. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Vittorio, you can't ask questions about setting policy for what might happen -- >>VITTORIO BERTOLA: No. But once you start to, for example, set in procedures and start allocating domains to companies, then how can you stop at a certain point and say we're not -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So are you suggesting that that shouldn't be possible? >>VITTORIO BERTOLA: No. I'm suggesting -- I'm wondering whether you discussed whether there should be any requirement of a minimum intended type or size of the registrant community where they should be targeted at least to -- I mean -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Who wants to take that? >>VITTORIO BERTOLA: -- a minimum size TLD or -- >>AVRI DORIA: No, we didn't set basically any sort of requirements of there would be this number available. Basically we're working off of the -- there are applications, they come in time, the technical capability to absorb names seems higher than the administrative capability to absorb names. Hitting millions is -- is sort of administratively really quite difficult to conceive of, at this point. And so we didn't, but we basically did recognize that, you know, the number of names that could be accepted is really quite large, and it's not just words within 63 characters. You can get a cute little sentence, too, and so -- and then the administration and that scalability was really the constraint. And not how many we should have. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Kristina, did you want to -- >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I would actually expand on that just a little because one thing that I found particularly helpful as we were talking about this was to really look at the underlying philosophy of the process as opposed to earlier rounds. And as someone who was really not as active in this community back in the earlier rounds, one analogy that I found to be kind of very helpful was that whereas in the initial rounds, the most recent round, for example, you essentially, as it was described to me and as I've kind of carried it around in my head, you had to prove to ICANN that not only were you technically and financially qualified to run the string, but that there was a demand for it, that there was a community for it that wanted it. Whereas this is a -- the complete opposite, in the sense that we are starting from the premise that provided that you meet the tech -- the minimum technical financial and operational qualifications, and barring any third-party objection, the string is yours. So to a certain extent, we did answer that almost from our basic premise, by saying our basic premise was that we don't want to limit the number of names, we don't want to have a situation where everybody has to prove to us that they're worthy, because once you start doing that, you run into all the issues that the process created the last time. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Robin? >> ROBIN GROSS: Vittorio asked about a community and what kind of a community must be shown in order to object, and unfortunately under Recommendation 20, a single person who believes themselves to be part of a community or who believes there will be a potential for detriment to anyone is sufficient to start the long objection and rejection process. So it's a remarkably low barrier. It's not even a reasonable person standard. It doesn't even have to be a reasonable belief. It's simply a subjective, personal, "I believe I'm harmed, I believe somebody else may be harmed" and that's enough to trigger the objection process. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Chuck? >>CHUCK GOMES: I don't think I totally agree with that, but I -- and it's not for us to debate, but let's go back to the fee structure and so forth. First of all, we've seen -- we've shown some slides that the whole issue of standing needs to be dealt with. I don't believe that the intent of the committee was ever that any individual could just bog the process down and cause harm. Now, some of the implementation thoughts that staff has provided has been that in a challenge process, both the challenger and the applicant are probably going to end up bearing the costs of that challenge. So it's not going to be a trivial matter to just -- it's not just real easy for anybody to just -- and this was in discussions with staff quite a while ago with regard to implementation questions and so forth. So I really don't believe that the intent of the committee is that any individual can just bog the process down. Now, whether or not we -- you know, the implementation guidelines come out to deal with that appropriately -- but I think it is -- it should be understood that the intent of the committee was not that result. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Vittorio, did you want to -- >>VITTORIO BERTOLA: No, just for clarity, I was not talking about the objections process. My comment was just whether you were intending to demonstrate -- that you are addressing a sizeable community other than just one person, one company or one -- or just yourself, maybe. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. Next question? >>MILTON MUELLER: You know, I have kind of a string of questions. Let me start with the easy one first. Chuck, if you could put up -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Just -- just for the sake of the record, could you say who you are. >>MILTON MUELLER: Had he know who I am. I'm Milton Mueller of the noncommercial users constituency. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. >>MILTON MUELLER: Chuck, could you put up the definition of "implicit targeting"? Because I have to admit, I just about fell out of my -- no, I think you -- you passed it. Implicit targeting. Implicit targeting means the objector makes an assumption of targeting. Or that the objector believes that there may be confusion by users. Now, come on, guys. How do you let this kind of language get into an international process that you're calling objective and designed to avoid subjectivity? I mean, totally disagree with the whole philosophy behind recommendation 20, but if you want to do it, at least try to do it well, so that it has to be explicitly targeted. Just get rid of this whole business of implicitly targeting. I just can't see how anybody can see that as anything but a license for any group that is well- organized or politically powerful enough to mount a challenge can object to anything they bloody well please. >>CHUCK GOMES: Question for you, Milton. If someone proposed a TLD called dot Los Angeles or dot L.A. -- L.A. wouldn't work because of the two-character restriction but dot Los Angeles, okay? And they had no intent to serve the Los Angeles community at all. Now, that's what I would call an implicit targeting. It could be assumed that it's targeted for that. So you think that would be perfectly okay? >>MILTON MUELLER: It would be perfectly okay for them to offer a string called "Los Angeles" that is not targeted against -- what would they say it was targeted to? >>CHUCK GOMES: They may not say it's targeted to anything. >>MILTON MUELLER: Okay. So -- >>CHUCK GOMES: Is that okay? >>MILTON MUELLER: Your procedures for defining the financial and operational requirements don't require them to say who the community is that they're targeting? >>CHUCK GOMES: No. >>MILTON MUELLER: Okay. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Korean, did you want to say something. >>CHUCK GOMES: And that's why -- you know, that's how we got into that whole issue. >>MILTON MUELLER: Yeah. >>CHUCK GOMES: Is that okay? I mean -- >>MILTON MUELLER: No, it's not okay for you to have that language in there. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Hang on, hang on. >>CHUCK GOMES: Well, the language can be fixed, okay? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: One step at a time. Kristina? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Well, one of the things that we struggle would with was when we originally focused on this and we had our definition of "explicitly targeting," it became pretty clear that the easy run- around to that is to just not identify in your application who your targeted community is, and to the -- and frankly, I would love to hear what your proposed language would be to revise this. To tighten it up. If you think that you have language that would better serve the whole process, I -- I for one would welcome it. >>MILTON MUELLER: I -- you know, I'm a free man on this, because I don't think you should have any criteria. I think you should auction and lottery them off. So, you know, you shouldn't be defining communities. You're getting yourself into this trouble. I think the problem that you're getting yourself into is this assumption that everything that ICANN does, rather than being a technical coordination, has to be some kind of an implicit endorsement, a collective global endorsement of an idea. So it's like if we're having a debate about, you know -- if there's a need for a new restaurant in a community, instead of just saying, you know, somebody wants to start a Vietnamese restaurant and they start one and it fails or not, you want to have a debate not only about whether it should be Vietnamese food, Japanese food, or British food or Italian food, you want to have a debate about whether the Vietnamese applicant is really sufficiently Vietnamese. I think this is just asking for trouble. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I mean I would, first of all, disagree and just to give you an idea of some of the examples that we were talking about, some of the strings that came up in the context of this recommendation 20 were things like dot Navajo, where you would think, for example, that an applicant seeking that string would either intend to serve that community, and if the applicant did not, then it would be entirely reasonable for Internet users to think that there was some kind of connection there. And it was that -- in that context that we were -- >>MILTON MUELLER: I know. And that's precisely my point. You're making an assumption that whoever registered dot Navajo has to be somehow the divinely ordained representative of the Navajo community and as a trademark attorney, I wonder then how -- do you defend the Jeep Cherokee company when they adopt the name of an Indian as their truck? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: No, absolutely not. I mean if you look at the recommendation, when you talk about -- I mean there are some standing requirements and some restrictions specifically built into that. Not only in terms of the recommendation itself, but in -- >>MILTON MUELLER: No, no. Let's go back to the more fundamental issue. Should the Jeep company be able to use the name "Cherokee" for a truck or should they get global community approval and should we ask the Cherokee community whether they object to that? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Sure. >>MILTON MUELLER: We should? We should have a global process? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: No, no, no, no. Sure, they should be able to use it, but having said that, if that Native American community had objected, I would imagine that ultimately the legal outcome would have been in their favor. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: There's a difference between -- I mean, what you're saying is this is about the objection process. It's not about somebody not being entitled to apply for the name, it's about people being entitled to object to the name. We're going to get stuck in a sort of like bashing this backwards and forth. >>MILTON MUELLER: Yeah. I don't want to do that. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: If you want to talk about something else or... >>MILTON MUELLER: I do. If you could go to Recommendation 6, I think that's the one -- right. Okay. Again, damage control mode here, but what is wrong exactly with just getting rid of "relating to morality and public order" from that phrase? Okay? It makes me feel better. Not that that should drive you, but it probably makes a few -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It's driving us all. [Laughter] >>MILTON MUELLER: A few million other people feel better about the implications of this. You can still apply all of these declarations, in so far as they're applicable. Why does it have to be morality and public order? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: John? >> JON BING: Well, they restrict the application of the international principles of law. If you strike them, you could take any principle of international law and the use as an objection. So it is a restriction and, therefore, I think it is proper. >>MILTON MUELLER: So why did you privilege morality and public order? >> JON BING: Well, it seems to -- >>MILTON MUELLER: Since there is no such thing at the international level, as we all know. >> JON BING: Well, but -- as we all know, the international instruments uses that -- those words, so they all refer to it. Or not all, perhaps but -- >>MILTON MUELLER: They don't all. >> JON BING: Well, yeah, but like -- it's easy to cite examples of international instruments of law that uses more or less the same phrases. >>MILTON MUELLER: Well, this is what irks me about this because there are only two instruments that have those words in them. One is a trademark thing and it's basically trying to prevent people from registering trademarks that are obscene words or otherwise have some kind of a trademark rationale, and what the TRIPS thing is doing in there, I don't even want to get into. >> JON BING: Oh, that was referring to the European convention of human rights, they use exactly the protection of morals, and that has a huge case -- >>MILTON MUELLER: The European is not -- >> JON BING: It's part of the words, in a sense. >>MILTON MUELLER: The one is Article 29, which as we all know is when Article 19 was passed thwarting freedom of expression, the authoritarian countries of the world got together and decided they had to have a takeaway clause that would allow them to escape Article 19, so IM unclear as to why you folks want to be aligned with that group. Okay. My last question and then I'll stop. Kurt, you said that there was one word that we all knew should not be published in a DNS. I don't know what word you were thinking of, but let me ask you a simple question. Is that word registered in the second level somewhere? >>KURT PRITZ: I'm sure words like that are, but I -- I am sure that - - >>MILTON MUELLER: So they're in the DNS, they're published, they're out there, right? >>KURT PRITZ: They are published elsewhere, too. >>MILTON MUELLER: Yeah. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Thank you. Chuck, did you want to say something? >>CHUCK GOMES: Yeah. Just one final comment. Why did we get here? Well, there are members of the community that expressed concerns about this issue and specifically used the terms "morality and public order." We didn't just invent this on our own. It was from input into the process. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. >>WENDY SELTZER: Wendy Seltzer, and I have a relatively simple question, or simple to ask, at least. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So you think now. [Laughter] >>WENDY SELTZER: Simple to ask. Perhaps not so simple to answer. And that's: What is the source of authority that ICANN is relying on to promulgate these restrictions on registration of new top-level domains as in Recommendation 6 and the challenge procedure of Recommendation 20? How is that related to the technical stability and security of domain name resolution? And if ICANN is going beyond that scope, isn't it inviting litigation around the tremendously ratty process that's created around this, whereas we've heard somebody with enough money and an objection -- possibly a competitor -- can hold up an application seemingly indefinitely? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Wendy, can I suggest that the first -- certainly the first part of that is actually a question that is a very good question but it's a question that you should be asking the board. I don't think that members of the GNSO Council can actually answer a question about -- that is effectively a question to ICANN. I'm not stopping them from commenting, if they want to. I'm just making a point that you might want to bring that up again on Thursday morning. Does anybody want to comment? >>KURT PRITZ: Well, Wendy, I think there's a threat of litigation in any case with regard to the implementation of new TLDs, and so the -- the best path we see is to have a process that's published and repeatable, and that's consistently followed. So that's the goal of publishing the process. I understand the risks associated with litigation of having this process. I also understand litigation risks from -- you know, from my nonlawyer employment associated with having any string available for registration. So that was -- that's a balancing. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Did you want to say -- did you want to come back on that or -- >>WENDY SELTZER: No. I think if you're suggesting that I address the question with the board, I will gladly do that. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. >>WENDY SELTZER: I guess I will sort of add an addendum there, which is that I see in the complexity here a forboding that this is sort of built to fail, and that like earlier TLD processes that got so restrictive in the applications for sponsored top-level domains, channeled the applications into such a narrow pool that by the time anyone was able to get over the hump, nobody wanted them anymore, and then a few years later, they were held up as examples of, "See, nobody really wants new top-level domains." I fear that with the reams of paper and lawyering that somebody would have to go through to put in an application for a new top-level domain under this process, we would have that same sort of winnowing, and while I'm personal -- speaking for myself personally, I'm a strong advocate of new TLDs because I think they offer opportunities for individual Internet users to register meaningful strings to point to their on-line expressions, I fear that this way of getting there isn't going to get there. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. Time will tell. >>KURT PRITZ: So Wendy, just one brief comment, and it really applies across the board to many comments. I -- a lot of these comments are echoed in staff discussions, as we try to figure our way through this. I think, though, that there's also, you know, literally millions of available strings that aren't controversial, objectionable, that the process is meant to expedite in a fairly inexpensive way the delegation into the root zone, so the first -- and the first two sessions today were meant to target all those and then there is a subset that can be objectionable, depending on the standards and so I understand the controversy of it, but there -- there's meant to be a fast track process for those that are not in that category. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks. >>WENDY SELTZER: I wish I thought that objectionable were so clearly limited. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. >>JOHN SCHNIZLEIN: My name is John Schnizlein. I am not a lawyer. I have a question. The answer may be very simple and maybe the question this time will be more complicated. The question has to do with standing. My naive reading -- and I think it's in the implementation guideline - - is that to object, the objector has to have status in the target, and I wonder if you really intend that or if you intend, as has been, I think, inferred by others at the microphone, that the target -- that the objector could be outside the target. In deference to the gentleman from Germany, there's a simple string, and I will name it, unlike the name that we all know that -- well, that you know that I don't know. The N-a-z-i is an obscenity. It is prohibited, I believe, in some places by law, but not international law. My question is: Do -- as an example, would that be allowed? Would the large volume of people who are opposed to seeing that anyplace have standing, since they're not in the target, to object to that? So it's -- it's possibly a deceptively simple question, but maybe one that you're -- you've already gone over. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It may stand for the National Association of Zoological Industries, of course. >>KURT PRITZ: What do you think? >>JOHN SCHNIZLEIN: You might get away with that. Try it. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I make no comment other than that. Kurt? >>KURT PRITZ: I was wondering what you think. So often when we discuss these implementation issues, the discussion augers in on individual examples and a discussion -- and a discussion with them. I think, you know, Chris brought up a fairly good example of a benign implementation of that. I mean, I don't -- I don't know. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can I -- can I ask a question of you, because I don't actually understand your question. Are you saying -- what do you mean by "inside the target" or "outside the target"? I'm not -- >>JOHN SCHNIZLEIN: Well, if we take -- I wouldn't myself ever try to come up with a peculiar expression for Nazi, but everybody in the room knows that it is considered offensive by a large number of people. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Uh-huh. >>JOHN SCHNIZLEIN: Those people are not the target community to be served because the people who are likely to object -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Now I understand your question. >>JOHN SCHNIZLEIN: -- are not the ones who want to use that for their -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I understand injury question. Marilyn, did you want to say something, and Kristina? You want to go first? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I mean my reaction to that is that would be covered under Recommendation 6. >>CHUCK GOMES: And not 20. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: And not 20. Unless, of course, the objection was arising from like Aryan nation or something, in which case, you know, that would be a circumstance under which recommendation -- and I don't mean to be facetious here. I'm quite serious. I mean that's a context under which, you know, you could have -- and we realized as we were doing this that there were several strings that you could have different sources of objection to, based on different recommendations. >>JOHN SCHNIZLEIN: So Recommendation 6 isn't on the screen and I've now forgotten -- >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: It's the morality and public order one. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: He's going to put Recommendation 6 up on the screen. >>JOHN SCHNIZLEIN: Okay. So is -- morality and public order can be objected to by anyone. Is that what you're saying? >>CHUCK GOMES: The standing issue was, I -- I don't know if I can say "exclusively." That may be true, but without checking, I should be careful. For Recommendation 20 with regard to a targeted community. >>JOHN SCHNIZLEIN: But if global Nazism is -- identifies themselves as a targeted community -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah, but that doesn't stop it from being objection -- it can be objectionable under both resolutions. You can't say well, it's -- because it's objectionable under this one, it's not objectionable under that. So if you're going to go down the objectionable route, it can be actually objectionable under both. The fact that they happen to be a community doesn't stop it from being objectionable under Recommendation 6. >>JOHN SCHNIZLEIN: That answers my question but I think it also pulls the rug out from under the answers to have been given to all the free speech positions you've taken earlier. >>ROBIN GROSS: As we said before, anyone can make an objection for any reason and the objection and rejection process starts, full stop. >>CHUCK GOMES: On 6 and 3. Not on 20. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Correct. That's certainly my understanding. Okay. Anyone else before we move? >>CHUCK GOMES: At least on 6. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. Not on 3. Okay. Next one. >>DANNY YOUNGER: Danny Younger. I'd like to address Recommendation 3. I presume the slide will be coming up. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah, if we could get 3 up. There we go. >>DANNY YOUNGER: Okay. Very good. I recall that back in the year 2000, we received correspondence from the bank of international settlements regarding the dot biz proposed top-level domain name, and at that time ICANN legal counsel provided a formal response to the bank. That response indicated that at the top level, ICANN does not recognize rights claimed under the Paris Convention by IGOs. That's how I understand it. In view of that particular ICANN legal council precedent, how do you feel justified to arrive at this particular recommendation? Have you, in fact, reviewed Louie Tuton's opinion on this matter? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Kristina? >> KRISTINA ROSETTE: I'll take it. I'm going to have to -- and please bear with me. I'm going to have to parse the question, because I think it deals with a couple different issues. To answer your kind of broad overall question, at any point during our discussion of Recommendation 3, did I see or was I made aware of it, and perhaps I don't know if the committee was or not, the letter that you're referring to. No, is I guess the short answer to that. The problem -- and I think there's kind of a couple issues here. The first being the whole intergovernmental organizational name issue, which I think because of the various issues it raises kind of above and beyond and because there have been concerns about to what extent they are entitled to protection and, in fact, as you probably know, the council is probably going to vote on Thursday as to whether or not to issue -- to start a PDP about starting a dispute resolution forum. So to a certain extent, I'd like to take the IGOs type names out of the equation because I think they're sui generis. To the extent, however, that you are asking whether we are of the view that TLDs can have trademark value or can function as trademarks, I think we can. And I think if you look at the core decision, which is referenced in that letter, and you compare to the fact where we were in 2000 versus where we are now, I mean, at the time, sure, it was clear that you really only had a situation where you couldn't have a registry developing source identifying significance in its TLD. I mean that's certainly no longer the case. And in particular with regard to the specific facts of the case, if you look at that, if that -- frankly that plaintiff had come to me and said, "This I'm going to use as my specimen of use for the U.S. trademark office" I would have changed it, so I think the facts of that case are bad. But if you look at where things have developed, and I mean if you look at the PTO examination guideline that's cited in that case, again, we're looking back at 1999. It specifically talks about the context of a TLD is supposed to have an intended target zone. If you look at the fact that at the time, you really were just now seeing the rollout of the sponsored-level domain, so in that context, that may have been the appropriate decision. I would say that now, you definitely see registries spending significant sums of money developing trademark value and source identifying significance in their TLDs, and, in fact, I would suggest that that's why you've got trademark registrations for TLDs own by Afilias and dot mobi and PIR and, you know, dot co-op. And frankly that's just the U.S. We're not even talking about the rest of the world, where you do have, in fact, even a broader acceptance of that. Does that answer your question? >>DANNY YOUNGER: It does. I would like to restate my concern. That if we, in fact, are going to overturn an established ICANN precedent, I'd feel more comfortable if there were a bit more discussion on Louie's specific legal arguments. Thank you. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Danny. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Danny. Next? >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: Hello. I'm Jordyn Buchanan and still I speak only for myself. I actually want to make one quick point in response to the point that Kristina just made and then -- I actually have two major points I want to make. I'm going to make one and I have already been at the mic a lot. I will go to the back of the line and hope there is time for me to make my second point. First of all, I would just point out there has been some TLDs -- gTLDs that have existed for a long time that I think have a pretty strong correlation with specific entities. Certainly, I would point at dot mil as a really good example of that. I don't think it is necessarily the case that there hasn't been a source of identification throughout the history of gTLDs. My main point I want to make is I stood up before and said how I was pleased we have made so much progress and there is a timeline ahead of us. And then as I sat through this session, I became much more disheartened that that is, in fact, the case. It seems like on all of the really hard issues that all of the hard work has been essentially been kicked down the road and it is hoping it somehow magically gets better between now and when we get there. In particular, I think looking at Principle G, it is a very nice concept. It says we really like the idea of individual expression, and then there is a bunch of specific recommendations that seem to completely contradict this principle. It seems -- specifically looking at anything from very basic things like financial requirements in order to express yourself individually, that seems somewhat at odds. But then the requirements relating to confusingly similar strings or certainly the morality and public order strings, there seems to be significant tension between Principle G and some of the specific recommendations, so I am left confused. Either Recommendation -- I don't know how -- either Principle G is either meaningless and they are just nice words on paper or as we get to implementation, there is a very hard discussion that needs to take place in order to reconcile Principle G with the specific recommendation that needs to take place. I think a more concrete example of this is looking at Implementation Guideline F which, basically, acknowledges, Oh, well, we looked at various ways of resolving this when there is more than one person vying for the same string. We talked about auctions. We talked about lottery. We talked about a beauty pageant and we couldn't really decide. So, therefore, I'm going to conclude that the staff is going to have to come up with some sort of mechanism. And I guess my question is, are we just going -- are we going to say, okay, great, the policy process has worked. We've created guidelines and recommendations. Staff, go ahead and take these and turn them into something that can be implemented and we will accept what you do, Staff. Or are we going to have this whole discussion over again the first time we see it? And based on Avri's comments earlier, it sounds like we are waiting for staff to come out with something and we will have this whole discussion over again, which makes me feel not very optimistic at all that we've made any progress on the hard topics. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Who wants to comment. Kristina? >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: I understand your concern, and I think are correct to the extent -- There is certainly a lot of devil left in the details. I would also say we spent a significant amount of time in San Juan talking with staff about where they were at that point with implementation notes on certain of these recommendations. So, you know, to a certain extent we've ruled a lot of things out so far and we've also encouraged the direction that they're heading in on other topics. So we're not really starting from a completely blank slate at this point. We're not at the end of the road but we're certainly not at the beginning. >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: My point is there is all these topics you couldn't achieve consensus. You had essentially all the options on the table. You couldn't come to consensus. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No, that's not correct. Avri? >>AVRI DORIA: With some of the issues, for example, we had various groups that were supporting the notion of lotteries, those that didn't. Some that supported the notion of auctions and some that didn't. But there was also the question of what was possible legally. And so, basically, what we carried through were saying these were the things that were the problems with the various -- in other words, there is a problem with the beauty pageant. There is a problem with the auction because the rich win. There is a problem with the lottery because it may not be acceptable in certain jurisdictions. But they're, basically, still on the table as possible mechanisms that can be used, and staff is exploring now what is the legal possibility. One of the ones we wanted to prevent -- and that's where a lot of -- you know, one of the easy solutions was to say, well, whenever there is too much contention, it just falls to the board. And, basically, we were very much looking for a way of keeping every dispute from falling to the board because at that point we don't have even a semblance of predictability. While saying they are going to come up with implementation and we are going to be able to review sort of the facts of it, they do have the guidelines. If there is ever a choice to be made, the freedom of expression principle is one that should guide their decision. With the Implementation Guidelines it was, basically, saying these are not necessarily policy recommendations. These are things that should try and help in creating the implementation but still, yes, the staff still needs to create an implementation and we have asked for community review of that implementation just so there's not a disconnect between we came up with recommendations and principles and now there's an implementation -- and, yeah, do what you want. It's not do what you want, but it's also not come back and have the whole discussion because various constraints and parameters have been put around the implementation possibilities. >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: Okay. So -- I'm sorry. I will be very brief. Just looking at Implementation Guideline F, if staff chooses one of the options you said you talked about and couldn't conclude upon when we have the community discussion in the future, we will look and say, Okay, they did what we told them to. They looked at one of the options that we laid out and they decided it was the best one. Good job, staff. Or are we going to have this same debate with half of the people sort of getting up and saying, I hate that option and half the people saying I love that option and never actually getting anywhere. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That's a question. >>AVRI DORIA: I do not know. >>KURT PRITZ: My understanding of the path home from here is that there will be a publication of the results of this implementation and there will be a public discussion but that the PDP is essentially done. The board will have approved the policy recommendations if they so choose and the board would approve the implementation. So I don't see -- I don't see a reopening of the PDP unless staff were to say this is in the "too hard" pile and it can't be implemented. In any case, staff would recommend some implementation. >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: Thank you. I will go to the back of the line. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Jordyn. Next one, please? >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Hi, I'm Eric Brunner-Williams and I'm speaking on behalf of myself. 3 and 6, there is a laundry list for them, Recommendations 3 and 6 and I have a suggestion for an additional body of law to draw upon and that's the draft Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. That is really the entire substance of my comment. It is a constructive suggestion. We were here in 1999 and the year 2000 on this issue, and we're here again, as you noticed when Milton came up and said the names of peoples were free to be sold by people other than those people. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: I would like to thank you for including that one. As Kristina mentioned, that was one of the strong considerations in the discussions for 420. >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: I should point out that the chairperson of the Navajo Nation is elected, not divinely appointed. And the three chairs of the Cherokee political entities, the Eastern Band of Cherokee, the United Keetowah Nation, and the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma will probably all be opposed to "Cherokee" being using by any party, and I would recommend that to them and I will. Thank you. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. >>KARL AUERBACH: Hi, I'm Karl Auerbach speaking again as myself and also a representative of the top-level domain .EWE, which actually does exist just not in ICANN's root. And I claim it is also not confusingly similar to .European Union because sheep came first but that doesn't matter. [ Laughter ] Chuck, I apologize for our exchange before. You are one of the white knights in all of this. This is a marvelous policy. I think it is a great policy. As an intellectual property lawyer, which I am and I own intellectual property, I own trademarks, this is a great policy because there will be no new TLDs to compete with my trademarks. If I were a registry owner, which I happen to be with dot U but it doesn't really count in this context, I would be pleased because this policy pretty much guarantees I won't have any new competitors. As Marilyn said, as a large business representative, they don't want new TLDs and this policy is marvelous because it is not going to allow any new TLDs. Look at some of the new TLDs that are coming down the pike that will have to pass muster here: Dot gay, dot Christian, dot American. I have never seen an organization as willing as ICANN to march up to the wall, face the firing squad and say "fire" because you are going to be in the position of deciding who is a Christian? Who is a Jew? Who is an American? Who has the prior right to be an American? If I were a gay person, can I get dot gay but can I not get dog fag. You are putting yourself in a politically untenable situation. I tried to think while standing in line of a phrase that would pass muster, completely unobjectionable. And I thought of the beautiful words from Shakespeare bright angel. I realized that's objectionable, there are a huge community of people that object to these ideas of floating down in space. There is not a word in this English language that is not objectionable to someone to some community. And if I were a trademark organization, I could definitely Astro turf my way into a body that objects to it. What I see here is this policy is marvelously designed to cause no new TLDs in the foreseeable future except, perhaps, a few showcases. So I predict that this policy will result in nothing but stasis and trouble and get us nowhere. And I suspect that this group go back to the beginning de novo and say what in the world does any of this have to do with the technical stability of the Internet and only do things that have a direct concrete, compelling relationship to the technical stability, the technical requirements for stability as measured by the ability of the Internet to turn domain name queries into domain name responses quickly, efficiently, reliably. If it doesn't have that relationship, if that relationship cannot be clearly articulated, then it doesn't belong in this policy. Thank you. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Karl. [ applause ] If you are wrong, what do we get? [ Laughter ] >>KARL AUERBACH: You want that whole thing now? It will take ten minutes. I will go on to competing roots now and we can create a whole system that will work in the free market without this heavily body of regulation. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Karl, I understand. Thank you. Next? >>NAOMASA MARUYAMA: My name is Maruyama. To look at the discussion of the freedom of speech and the intellectual property question, it is really interesting source for the funny questions, I think. But relates to that point, I want to ask one question to the people who prepared the report. Is there an assumption in this discussion that the gTLD once created should last forever or not? I want to explain why I'm asking this question because it seems that the freedom of speech question then, the intellectual property questions are very difficult to answer and I feel that it's almost impossible to give solution for these hundred person satisfactory solutions for these questions. And it is better to seek to find the workable solution to these questions. And to think about the workable solution, it's very important to think about that assumption. If we waiver that assumption, it is fairly far easy to find the workable solutions. That is why I'm asking this question. Could you give each of the panelists here, could you give your feeling about my question? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Chuck? >>CHUCK GOMES: Repeat the question again, please. >>NAOMASA MARUYAMA: My question is, is there an assumption that the gTLD, once created, should last forever or not? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Who wants to go first? >>CHUCK GOMES: I'll start it. It sounds like he is asking for all of us so I am giving you guys some time. Okay. No, I don't think there was that assumption. I don't think we specifically looked at that issue. I think there is a hope that they might but certainly in the group we had discussions that what happens if a gTLD fails? Because the more we introduce new TLDs, probably the increased chance there is that they may fail. So we're certainly not naive to that, that probably if we get a lot of them, there may be some that fail just like there are business failures every day in other ventures. >>NAOMASA MARUYAMA: So I'm happy to hear that answer because it seems that in this recommendation, there is no discussion about the afterwards revocation for the gTLD. If there is no such assumption, we can think about the afterwards judgment or the revocation process. But it seems that all the recommendations here is based upon the beforehand judgment. So I think the assumption is very important to think about. Could other people answer the question? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Marilyn? Robin, did you want to? You were next. Robin, then Marilyn, then Avri. >>ROBIN GROSS: I just wanted to say the way I see it is these gTLDs should be no different from other businesses. Some go out of business from time to time and others continue on longer. I don't know why we would want to make a requirement that they should have to show that they can be in business forever and ever in order to provide us the service in the near term. Thanks. >>MARILYN CADE: I think I have a slightly different perspective in that I look at gTLDs as being an element that actually needs to be reliable and be as stable as possible. Other parties build businesses and services on the domain name that they register. So the question that the business participants had, no, I don't think we can guarantee that a gTLD will not fall over just as we can't guarantee that the existing gTLDs won't fall over, but I think we have to take reasonable steps to ensure that there is stability for the parties who entrust their business to this. So just as I -- and I think we tried to do that by putting some reasonable steps in place for technical criteria, et cetera, et cetera. If one of the gTLDs in existence today fell over, I think we've all recognized that there needs to be a certain amount of ability to have escrow, et cetera, and for there to be some kind of a transition plan. We can't guarantee that we won't have failure, but we should be as pragmatic and responsible as we can be. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Avri? >>AVRI DORIA: Quickly to answer your question, I think we actually had a difference of viewpoints within the committee on this, too, on those that felt that there should be some sort of iron clad guarantee that these things will survive forever and, you know, those that sort of said there is no forever, things come, things go. I think on the other part of your question -- and I certainly was probably more on the side of things can fail. They do all the time. But the question that you brought up, if I understood it correctly, of a notion of revokability, I don't think ever was discussed. I don't think we discussed the notion of revokability. We talked about failure but not -- >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: We actually did talk about it. We talked about it in the context of what do we do and it really primarily came up in the context of Recommendation 20 in the sense of what do we do if we get an applicant that comes in and says "I want dot fill in the blank TLD because I am going to use it for this community," at that point in time they have the support of the community. They meet all the other requirements. They get the TLD and then three years later, whether it is intentionally or whether it is a result of a change in business conditions, the TLD has a completely different function and completely different purpose. There were some very strong feelings on both sides of that and I think ultimately we really -- I think where we ended up was that that's just kind of a chance we are going to have to take. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Last comment? >>NAOMASA MARUYAMA: If we waiver, if we give up the assumption we can seek more possibility for this process that introduce some kind of afterwards revocation or just that is done by the UDRP for gTLD second- level gTLD domains. And you can -- I think we can release the beforehand judgment by introducing the afterwards revocation process. That is my comment. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. >>CHUCK GOMES: Just a quick comment there. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes, Chuck. >>CHUCK GOMES: I don't have a question, if I understand you correctly I think the concern you are talking about is dealt with in the contractual conditions area, in particular the failover policy that Kurt addressed there. And that's an ongoing process that the goal is that that would be incorporated like Kurt said into the contractual agreement. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Thank you. Next? >>RON ANDRUFF: Good afternoon, Ron Andruff. In looking through the recommendations, I wondered if the community had given some consideration to the idea of kind of a cross between an IDN and application? What I mean by that is if someone came forward with an application such as dot music and said I want to apply for dot music in these 10, 20 languages, so effectively it is the same application but it is multiple translations of that name, was any consideration given to that? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Avri? >>AVRI DORIA: Yes, there was. First within the IDN group and, basically, the decision was made that each TLD would need to be a separate application, that there wouldn't be a notion of one application with the TLD in multiple representations. So each one of those -- you're talking about, therefore, would be 10 applications. >>RON ANDRUFF: Well, the net result is that the processing fee, as I understand it is on a recovery basis. So once the body responsible for reviewing that has gone through and reviewed it one time in the one language set, to review it another nine times would be the same review, just with a different name. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Not necessarily. >>AVRI DORIA: Not necessarily, no. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: It depends. Are you saying it is an implicit assumption the fact you say these ten words mean music actually all mean music? >>RON ANDRUFF: They would be in those languages of -- of those particular languages. >>AVRI DORIA: Whether there was another existing one to be confusingly similar. Many of the issues would come up in each one. There certainly is an argument for saying, yeah, there might be some scalability that you could get by doing 10. It was certainly -- in this round, it was certainly one TLD per application decision. >>RON ANDRUFF: Very good. Thank you. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Ron. Yes, sir? %%%jen3end. >>MAURICIO TELLEZ: Hi. My name is Mauricio Tellez and I'm speaking for myself. Now that we're testing IDNs and also speaking of failures of top-level domains, first I see a situation that let's say China, Japan, Israel or whichever country that uses a different alphabet might want to get rid of the Latin.com or.org or dot CN or dot JP and maintain just one alphabet on the whole string, even though the country code is a success, it's not a failure, because there will be many conflicting registrations on generic names, and on two different alphabets on the same alphabet, on different meanings, et cetera. Would you consider deleting the Latin alphabet in favor of the country code original language? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Is that really a question -- >>CHUCK GOMES: First of all, are you talking about ccTLDs or gTLDs? >>MAURICIO TELLEZ: Both, but mainly country codes. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. Well -- oh, you want -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Well, I was going to say, it's not a question for you guys to answer. >>CHUCK GOMES: Yeah, it's not a question for us. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I'll happily answer it for you later, if you don't mind, rather than here in this context because this is a gTLD context. >>AVRI DORIA: But in the gTLD context, no, there was no discussion of eliminating an ASCII TLD in favor of an IDN TLD. And we did not talk about the CCKs because it's not our business to talk about the CCKs. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Marilyn. >>MARILYN CADE: I have just a clarifying question. I'm trying to understand if you mean eliminate an existing string which is active and has registrants in it, or did you mean eliminate the possibility of there being an ASCII application in favor of an IDN application? >>MAURICIO TELLEZ: More to the change in alphabets. Like say transferring all the domains that were previously registered on the Latin alphabet to the Chinese alphabet, let's say. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: You mean if an IDN is created and the policy -- the policy -- and it is a ccTLD question -- the policy of the country is that we will transfer all of the domain names currently existing in dot AU to a Chinese equivalent of dot AU and cancel dot AU. That's what you're asking. >>MAURICIO TELLEZ: Correct, yes. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Can we take that out of here and I'll answer it later. >>MAURICIO TELLEZ: Okay. I have another question -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Go ahead. >>MAURICIO TELLEZ: -- that has to do with future top-level domains delegations. It's a practice nowadays that registrars are not letting the valued domains expire, and I don't know who gave them authority to withhold them, and they're proceeding on different ways, either by one releasing them, auctioning them, privately selling them or keeping them for themselves. So are we going to implement some rules for registries to release those names or at least auction them? Because they are getting those names through the back door. They're not the owners, and they are keeping them. There -- I had an instance of a domain that I was tracking. It didn't go to deletion. The registrar renewed it for themselves, and instead of paying six dollars, they were asking six- figure pricing. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We've got -- it's not a -- that's nothing to do with new gTLDs. However, I will ask if anybody wants to talk to it. >>CHUCK GOMES: That's what I was going to say as well. Notice you said "registrars." With new TLDs, we are talking about registries and the agreements associated with them, so that's what Chris means by -- that's not an issue for this forum. Now, is it a GNSO issue? Yes, but not for new gTLDs. >>MAURICIO TELLEZ: Maybe it has to go into the agreement. >>CHUCK GOMES: Which agreement? >>MAURICIO TELLEZ: That you have with the registrars. >>CHUCK GOMES: No. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: That's a standard agreement across -- >>CHUCK GOMES: Probably not. That's probably an agreement with ICANN and the registrars, but we -- it's probably better to talk about that in a different forum. >>MAURICIO TELLEZ: I don't -- >>CHUCK GOMES: Keep in mind registrars have two agreements, one with ICANN, a registry -- registrar accreditation agreement, and a registry/registrar agreement. Issues like that are typically in the RAA, the -- with ICANN. >>MAURICIO TELLEZ: All right. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Jordi you're back. Or that's actually your front back -- >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: I'm back -- yes. Okay. The second point I want to make is regarding the -- I guess the confluence of Recommendation 20 and guideline P, specifically as someone else previously brought up, the implicit portion of guideline P. So what I'm concerned about here is Recommendation 20 basically says, "If you are -- if someone in another community -- if someone in a community doesn't like your thing and they have better -- you know, they can show the community -- a community doesn't like your theme, then you can't have it, essentially." Am I not right? >>AVRI DORIA: No. If someone has an objection, they can raise an objection and it may or may not. It's not -- there isn't a direct necessary connection. >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: Let me rephrase. If a community proves that you're trampling on their rights, the rights of this particular community, then you can't have the string that goes along with it that you've requested, is that right? >>CHUCK GOMES: Keep in mind that the applicant may have produced some pretty good evidence of support as well, so they may have to be weighed against each other. >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: Right SO what I'm concerned about here is that the same string can possibly refer to multiple communities, right? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yes. >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: And so you could perfectly well be representing community A, so I'll use an example I used in a previous open mic. I want to register -- well, Steve Jobs wants to register dot apple for Macintosh and iPod enthusiasts worldwide, okay? So he puts forward an application that says, "Hello, here I am, I'm representing these people." The apple farmers of the world become very -- become enraged that someone else would have dot apple, and they say, "Oh, we represent the apple farmers of the world. You are implicitly by the language in guideline P, targeting our people, because we can reasonably prove to you that -- you know, that our people would also associate themselves with the phrase 'apple' because they're apple farmers." That seems not unreasonable. And none of the apple farmers like your idea. So under Recommendation 20, if there's substantial opposition from a significant portion of the community -- in this case, the community is apple farmers -- then Steve Jobs can't have his Macintosh enthusiasts TLD. That seems strange and I think what's missing here is a balancing of rights. One thing I really like about the UDRP -- and maybe there's language that's just not shown here, but in the UDRP, if you can prove that you have rights to a name, then someone else can't come along and kick you out of it, even if they also have rights. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Let Kristina answer the question. >>KRISTINA ROSETTE: Well, part of what we struggled with was exactly this point, and I think that we addressed it by requiring the objector -- and the language that we ultimately agreed on, after extensive discussion, was that the objector must provide sufficient evidence to allow the panel to determine that there would be a likelihood of detriment to the rights or legitimate interests of the community or to users more widely. So you do have that showing of harm that's required. >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: But why wouldn't that be true? Like why wouldn't the apple farmers actually be harmed? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Well, I have to say, but surely you have to take it back to the basic bottom line: You've got apple farmers, now and you've got Apple called "apple." You also, incidentally, have a record label called apple, all three of them which seem to be getting on quite well together now that they've settled their disputes, and so why would it be any different? >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: That's my point, though, is that usually -- that's why in the UDRP, we have language that says if you have rights to the name, someone else can't come along and boot you out of it. There doesn't seem to be anything like that here. This says if you damage a community, they can boot you out of it. You can't have it. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I thought you just said there was. >> KRISTINA ROSETTE: I guess I'm not -- I mean, from where I sit, I see the requirement of having the apple farmers in this context would have to show a likelihood of harm to their interests. >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: Well, right, so I'm asserting that that's true,right? Like apple.com, Apple Computer owns that, right? >> KRISTINA ROSETTE: Right. >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: And it might be that that would actually harm, you know, apple farmers -- >> KRISTINA ROSETTE: Well, if you can show evidence of it, it may well work out that way. If I were Steve Jobs, though, I'd make sure that I'd come and talk to you first before I put in my application. >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: So the difference between this and the UDRP is if I can prove -- if I'm Steve Jobs and I have apple.com and apple core comes along and sues -- and tries to UDRP me out of it, they don't win, right? Once I prove that I have legitimate rights to the name, then the UDR -- that's one of the requirements of the UDRP claim is they have to prove that I don't have any legitimate rights in order to evict me from my space, whereas here -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Jordyn, slow down, slow down. >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: Sorry. Whereas here, all you have to do is show that you would be harmed. You don't have to show that -- if I have rights to the name and you have rights to the name, none of us can have it, is basically what you're saying. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: So maybe I've misunderstood, but I thought that all you have to do to show that you've been harmed is to get you in the door. Is that right? >>CHUCK GOMES: That's going to be up to a panel that would decide whether or not there's legitimate harm. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah. >>CHUCK GOMES: So there's nothing automatic about it. >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: Right. But I guess what I'm saying -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Hang on. Jordi. Let Robin -- >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: -- what I'm saying is in situations where there is harm, I guess is there any notion as in the UDRP that if you have rights to a name, that someone else can't evict you from it. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Robin, did you want to say something. >> ROBIN GROSS: I didn't want to -- I had a comment before that particular question. And it has to do with exactly this issue, though, is what we're talking about here, with this -- if somebody claims they're harmed and they get to file an objection and start the objection and rejection process, which is time-consuming and expensive and almost sure to doom your application, what we're doing is we're making social policy. We're talking about using the new gTLD process to protect unprivileged peoples, indigenous peoples. We're talking about using the DNAME process to ban hate speech, et cetera, et cetera, make sure that people act morally. These are all social goals, and I'm not here to say whether or not these are appropriate social goals one way or the other. That's not the point. That's sort of the red herring. The point is, where does ICANN get the authority, get the legitimacy, to start making global social public policy for people. It's using this new gTLD process as a means by which to do this. It has nothing to do with technical administration. It's all global social policy. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I think -- >> ROBIN GROSS: And I think that ICANN is opening itself up to enormous litigation and liability. This can of worms is not going to lead to anything positive. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I think we've kind of done this one now. We need to move on. >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: Okay. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. >>MARK BLAFKIN: Hi. Mark Blafkin with the Innovators Network. Seems like there's a lot of interesting questions about the new gTLD policy, but one of the concerns that's being brought up over and over and over again seems to be the idea that there's this new policy is going to somehow hinder free expression by not allowing new gTLDs into the wild and I guess my question really is: Why does that matter? I, for one, don't feel like there's not enough free expression on the Internet today, and I don't see why individuals necessarily need their own TLD in order to express themselves freely on the Internet. Is there something I'm missing or what is it? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Well, at the risk of reopening the whole debate again, I'll give you a minute. >> ROBIN GROSS: Well, yes. I mean, the Internet is -- has been created as the -- this incredible forum for global communication. It has enabled people to express themselves far and wide, more than anyone else has ever had the opportunity, and so it's an incredible thing, and we want to keep it that way. We want to make sure that the -- that the Internet can continue to be a place where innovation and the open exchange of controversial ideas and different perspectives is a place where that can happen. But if we start making a new gTLD policy that says you can't have offensive words at the top level, we're making social policy that says we're going to try to steer people away from having certain thoughts or having certain conversations or -- or meeting others with similar goals and perspectives. So this is absolutely a free speech issue. This is absolutely a policy that will lead to enormous censorship of the ideas that people want to be able to express, and they will be prevented from expressing it at the top level, just because somebody else objects to it, and that's the problem. >>MARK BLAFKIN: Why do they need to express it at the top level, I guess is my question. I mean, if they do express it at the top level, it just seems like it would be much more easy to censor. If China wants to remove anything that's really bad and if everyone puts their stuff which is anti-China in the dot IhateChina domain then it's really easy for China to just pull it out. I guess it just doesn't, from a practical sense, make sense. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Marilyn, you want to say something? >>MARILYN CADE: You know, this is an area you can see there was much -- in spite of how closely Robin and I were seated to each other, we were not aligned on this particular point. [Laughter] >>MARILYN CADE: But I just -- I do want to say that there was extensive debate, just like this, within many of the meetings, where some parties -- myself among them -- kept talking about the fact that the second level offers a huge amount of flexibility that the top level does not. I also will say in my years of being involved in the technical and policy community, I actually do not think the technical policy can exist -- technical policy cannot exist in a policy vacuum. And I think the other point that I want to go back to, that I opened this on, I didn't say that the business users are opposed to new gTLDs. I said that we have changed and tried to reflect what we hear the broad community saying. But I do think we're spending a huge amount of time focusing on controversy, controversy, controversy. I think there will be a good number of noncontroversial strings that people will put good business plans and strategies behind and they will create new and interesting space. So I don't want to -- I don't want to hold up what we can -- what we can do because we can't solve every controversial issue. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. >>CHUCK GOMES: Before we go on to that, I think it's really important to understand that on recommendations 6 and 20, we spent a lot of time redrafting and redrafting the language to try to accommodate concerns of people that weren't comfortable with it, and changes were made as a result of that. Now, the end result was that there was still some that were uncomfortable with it. But the recommendation we came up with, albeit it needs a lot of work in terms of implementation, was supposed by most of the people. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay, Chuck. [speaking in French]. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: I'm Sebastian Bachollet. [speaking in French] make other companies -- create a lot of business. It's something that -- it's a whole chain of users, of customers, who are going to have a lot of problems, and that's why I do not believe that a registry is a company, just like any other company, and I do not believe that any company could say, "You know what? Any company could fail because the users that are in the background, whether they are users, customers, companies, or whatever -- and that's why I believe that [inaudible] Not only the base, meaning the person who is [inaudible] thank you very much >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We lost it at the end, but -- >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: You want me to do it in English again. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Just a summary. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Okay. I will do a summary but I will encourage you to use this, even if you are just listening in English, because it's a truth for everybody. It's not -- I am not supposed to translate because we are -- people here who pay for that, and that's a very good announcement for ICANN, and I urge you, even if you are just English speaker here, to use the headphone and to listen to the other in their own language. Thank you very much. My point was a TLD is not a company like other companies, because they have clients, individuals, or entrepreneurs who have put a lot inside the gTLD. It's not the same thing that if you are an airline, for example, who disappeared from the business, you can take another plane. Here you have really invest in your name, and you can decide that, okay, a gTLD is like the other company. If they go out of business, it's not my problem. For ICANN, it must be a real problem because it's not just a problem of the registry, it's a problem of the registry of the registry, the registrar, the registrars, the registrant, and all the clients after that. It's very important. It's not just a single type of company like -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Sebastian. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Thank you. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: One second, Carl. >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: Sorry. You want me to do it in Spanish too? [Laughter] >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Yeah, right. Fantastic. Just so that everybody knows, we're coming close to the end so if you want to get in line, don't wait. Get in line. Thank you, Carl. >>KARL AUERBACH: Okay. And also to reiterate, the translators do an amazing job. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Oh, they do fantastic. >>KARL AUERBACH: Yeah. We should thank them. So thank you, translators. [Applause] >>KARL AUERBACH: And I'm speaking as one of this these provincial Americans who speaks exactly one language so I'm actually the one who is weak here. Speaking first to his point about we have to protect the customers of TLDs, when did ICANN become a consumer protection body? We don't protect people who buy airline tickets for airlines that go out of business. It's their business or they have consumer protection laws or agencies that to deal with, not ICANN's business. Speaking on behalf of the speaker before him about why does one need a TLD to speak, why does Apple need a TLD to speak? We does anybody need -- we could get by with exactly one TLD. To label individuals or small groups as second-class citizens is just the same as telling me that I have to sew a yellow star of David on my clothes on the Internet. It's a second-ranked citizenship. Third rank, even. We do not want that. We want to allow everyone to be equal before the law of ICANN. And finally, Chuck brought up the point of the contracts, and you left out one contract. That's the contract between the registrant and the registrar, and I would strongly urge that ICANN incorporate third -- explicit recognition of third-party beneficiary rights in all of its contracts, according that to the registrant, so that the registrants can walk into court as -- and do what ICANN has shown in the RegistryFly case that it is unable or unwilling to do, which is to enforce the terms of the contracts. Thank you. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. Yes, sir. Which channel is Spanish? >>AXEL MEJIA: Two. One of the problems in these courses have to do with the North American market. I think it's a good idea. We talk about the U.S., North America, but everything we talk about is good. Everything is a good idea. But the point I want to focus on is this. The panel, the specialist panel, has put out a resolution in favor of or against, rejection or exception, but let's say the form [inaudible] exclusively by United States, as an example. There is a kind of a broad fight that goes on in the market. What about representation of this part of Latin America in the same arena? So that we could also manifest, put on stage, and debate and air all of the same points? >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: I'm not sure I understand the question. I don't understand the question. >>KURT PRITZ: Did your question go to the development of the policy recommendations or does it go to the formation of panels that will take standards and evaluate objections and resolve disputes? >>AXEL MEJIA: I was talking about panel formation. >>AVRI DORIA: I don't think that there was any intention that the panels would be of a single country, of a single culture. In fact, I think there was -- there was very specific thought that especially when you got to the IDN -- and one of the things that got talked about a lot in the IDN space was the need for language communities and cultural communities to be part of any panel that was put together. So the notion of panels that was put forward for the objections or the dispute resolutions was to be as broad as was needed, and definitely never a concept that it was just U.S.-centric or, you know, just business- centric or just English-centric, but that it was, indeed, as broad a panel as would be needed to deal with an issue appropriately. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Avri. Yes, sir. >>THOMAS ANDERSON: My name is Thomas Anderson. I'm a private person interested in global Internet issues. I just want to say how amazed and impressed I am by the complexity and details of the whole issues which you're trying to deal with. I just want to thank you and congratulate you so much for doing this very difficult work. If I understand, you would like to base your policies on the premise of international -- on the basis of international law, and I just think you are right at the point, and I just understand that we can need a jurisdiction for this cyberspace which we are creating, and I'm just wondering if you're going to address these issues of Internet and international law more in the future or how you see this. This kind of Internet is creating a new type of law, actually, which is half the real law and half cyberspace law, so thank you so much for how it works. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Did you want to say something, Marilyn? >>MARILYN CADE: You know, I think that's an interesting point, and I especially want to express my own appreciation and I'm sure others as well for your recognition of the complexity of this work. There are many people in this room, and not in this room, who devoted numerous hours and even weeks of work and time on this, as well as the staff. It is complex, but it is, I think we've all agreed, very important to try to do. On the question of, you know, first of all, I think we've all -- within the community -- accepted the fact that ICANN does not create international law, but can refer to international law. So the question is really: How is the international law developing in relevant areas outside of ICANN? And there, I think many people in this room are participating in other settings, where that is being discussed, and I -- it's an important topic, as you said. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Does anybody want to make any closing remarks before we wind this up? Chuck? >>CHUCK GOMES: Well, first, a question and then I'll make a closing remark, but do we need an open mic or is -- is that -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Oh, we do. I'm sorry. You're quite correct. A mic. >>CHUCK GOMES: Okay. So maybe we should hold off. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Sure. I apologize. Yes, indeed. Open mic. Okay. It's open mic. Well, yeah, we -- what are we open mic'ing about? Chuck? Anything at all? >>AVRI DORIA: No. Anything -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: On new TLD. >>AVRI DORIA: On the new gTLD process. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Just so that we'll clear. It will be useful to not discuss anything else. Yes, sir. >>THOMAS LOWENHAUPT: My name is Tom Lowenhaupt. I'm here on behalf of Connecting.NYC, a not-for-profit organization established to remedy -- to acquire the dot nyc TLD and remedy many of the problems that have been caused to our city by the lack of proper domain name space over the past decade. In that context, I remember Paul Twomey saying today that there were many, many people that were paying attention to this process that had not been paying attention before, and with the discussion of dot IBM and dot apple and such other things, I can imagine if I were a CEO of a Fortune 1000 company, I'd say, "Well, there's going to be a hundred thousand, five hundred thousand, I want an application in for my company come first quarter, fourth quarter of '08 or whatever." So in that case, if there are going to be hundreds of applications, or maybe a thousand or maybe more, I would think that organizations that have been harmed, entities that have been harmed by the existing process -- dot NYC, other cities, perhaps dot Berlin being another one -- that they be given priority in the processing, that the mechanism for implementation take into consideration the issues as to need and past harm done. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. >>THOMAS LOWENHAUPT: Thank you very much. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you very much. Next? >>DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: Dirk Krischenowski, from the dot Berlin initiative and I'm referring to Kurt's thoughts on top-level domain name no one's -- no one wants to have, and I was thinking about the name which is mentioned in Harry Potter, and maybe that dark Lord Voldemort no one wants to have but maybe Kurt can clarify what he means. But the point -- there are two other points I'd like to make. One point is in the reference I found something very helpful. It is a sentence, "It is expected that a date for the second -- for a second round will be communicated in the RFP for the first round." I find this very, very helpful because it decreases the pressure when the first round comes, and when we know there's a second round and a third round or a continuous process or something like this, but that should be clarified a lot more when these -- this second and third round will come after this. >>CHUCK GOMES: Could I get -- >>DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: But another point. >>CHUCK GOMES: Dirk, could I just make a comment in that regard. That was a very specific intent by the committee in that regard, because we realize that if -- we all know that in past rounds, it's been a long time in between rounds so it creates pressure on people? If you think it's going to be four, five, six years before the next round, you think you have to do it now. And we thought it would be helpful to provide some assurance that that will not be the case this time around, and that was the rationale. As you well know, as you've been very involved in the process. >>DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: Yeah. But another point makes me worrying today. I was not sure in which film I am today. It looks like I'm in Bill Murray's "Groundhog Day" film where there is a time loop Bill Murray stops every morning. So every time we are coming to an ICANN meeting and is the eighth time we are coming to an ICANN meeting from the dotBERLIN project the timeline slips away and that is really curious when I am coming back to an announcement Paul Twomey made on June 29th this year after the ICANN meeting in San Juan, he said there that new TLDs will be introduced by mid of 2008. When I saw today the announcement which was made on the slide, we have all seen it looks like that the applicants cannot apply before end of 2008 and maybe new TLDs are going online beginning 2009 or mid 2009 or something like this. So that's hard for all the applicants which are here and I mean not only dotBERLIN but also Paris, New York, BZH for Brittany, Galicia and so on, it is hard for them to follow these timeline slips. I have no explanation as to why the timeline slips from June up to now for six or nine months. So can anybody explain how this can happen? >>CHUCK GOMES: I can only say because I can't speak for others, okay, I can only say that those of us on the council, and especially those of us that have been part of the recent planning process have certainly strongly expressed our concerns that it keeps slipping. Now, as I said several times earlier, I'm fully cognizant of the fact that we've dumped a lot on staff's lap, some very -- not just a lot of work, a lot of very challenging work that is going to require a lot of work but we are equally concerned as a council for the slippage as you. But in fairness to staff, we have -- and we continue to push them to try and move the dates back in, but, again, they do have a very challenging task ahead of them. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Thank you. Lucky last. >>THOMAS NARTEN: Oh, yes. Thomas Narten here. Let me sort of summarize a few points I had in the back of my mind going through the whole afternoon here. One is I heard a couple times that the intention is in the first round that it be, basically, any qualified applicant get in. And I think that's a fine principle, but I think it would be - - it would be worth thinking very carefully about sort of what is scenarios. What if you get 100 applications that are all, basically, good to go? Is that something that the system can actually handle? And the reason I say that sometimes we find you can't, and you have 100 applications. You have to weed out half of them just to get them through in the next two, through he, four, five, years. How are you going to decide the criteria? Having that kind of conversation after the fact is much more difficult than having something up front that at least lays down principles or guidelines or the possibility that something here will be done. >>CHUCK GOMES: That's the intent of the first come, first served principle with regard to processing. >>THOMAS NARTEN: Presumably the follow-up round would happen until the first round is completed. So there's -- okay. Just... >>CHUCK GOMES: The difficulty here, as you well know, Thomas, it's nearly impossible to predict how many we're going to have but you raise a real issue and it is one that could complicate the whole process. >>THOMAS NARTEN: Second point is I thought the discussion that was held about requiring that all -- basically, going through a registrar - - an accredited registrar for all new TLDs and there is there was a whole discussion about dot IBM that I thought was interesting. My observations stepping back if I put into a technical context, architecturally I could see how you could make it all work and have a single IBM registry set up that was all funneled through. And we still had this mirage of going through a registrar. But it would be sort of like architecturally you would do it but you would run slow as can be and nobody would implement it that way. I think if you actually were forcing somebody to implement something that way, people look back and say that's crazy, why are we doing that. The system is broken if that's the model we're forced to. And what I would suggest here is -- I mean, I think the separation of registries and registrars is a great principle that served the community well for a long time. But I think it is also, perhaps, stepping back and looking at that, going back to first principles and asking whether it applies in all contexts. >>CHUCK GOMES: Let me comment on that because -- and I'm not commenting in the basis of the committee so much right now as one constituency, as a representative of the registry constituency. Very early in the process, possibly within the first six months of our 20 months of work or so, the registry constituency was advocating some sort of an exception procedure. And that's what we're still talking about with registrars. At that time, there was no support from others. That's not a criticism, it is just I don't think people recognized some of the special cases and we probably didn't do a very good job of communicating it, me in particular. So what I'm saying is that there was discussion about a possible exception process for certain cases, but there was not support from that. Now, at the end of the process, a lot more comments have come in from others be size the registries in this regard and the registrars are still willing. We're meeting with them on Wednesday afternoon. I say "we," the registry constituency, and we are still going to talk about this idea to see if we can maybe pursue something there. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Hang on. Marilyn, did you have something? >>MARILYN CADE: I want to be a little -- I want to make this comment because I think it is very important for the room and those listening to understand that we did not in our 20 months of work thoroughly discuss the idea of a brand name company, whoever it is, Dell Computer Deutsche Telecom, whoever it is, applying for a top-level domain, I assume would be a TLD that would serve only their internal uses, we did not spend time on that. Other parties kept trying to -- certain parties kept trying to convince some of us that every brand name company in the world will want to run a registry but the committee did not embrace that concept or devote time to it. So in some ways we may have done a disservice to the community by exploring -- by sending too much time on dot IBM as an example. Let me as much that we -- because that to me was described as a special service TLD that would serve only internal purposes versus potentially a Tier 1 or an ISP who might decide that they wanted to offer a TLD for the purpose of providing a unique space for e-mail addresses. We didn't discuss that either. People may have referenced it, but it hasn't been thoroughly discussed. >>THOMAS NARTEN: I'm not trying to -- to promote that idea as a way to G. I think it is more relevant in the context of the sponsor TLD or it is a small user community and it just doesn't make sense to force sort of the overhead of going through a registrar if it is not really going to be cost effective for the main goal of that TLD. >>MARILYN CADE: Chris, do I have a follow-up comment. I am just going to say that when we -- and the business users made this comment throughout the 20 months of work, we have concerns with the importance of structural separation in these functions because of competition issues. >>THOMAS NARTEN: The last comment I will make pretty quickly, there is a number of comments about failures of registries. I think that's a really important topic and one that maybe hasn't gotten enough attention. And that is, in some sense, it is perfectly fine for a business running a registry to fail but it is not acceptable for the end users that are relying on those names working properly to be left out in the cold for weeks or months while this all gets sorted out through the cores. There needs to be a balance that protects the interests of the actual users of the domain name so that they aren't left out in the cold if a business failure does occur. >>AVRI DORIA: Yeah, I think that's probably, you know, an issue that should go on our list of issues to be worked on as we move forward. It wasn't absolutely necessary for the introduction of new gTLDs but it definitely is an issue that as new gTLDs get introduced, we should certainly consider it before they have a chance to fail. >>THOMAS NARTEN: Right. I think other people mentioned this as well. It is sort of the more TLDs you have the more likely you are going to run into the scenario. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. I am just -- we got 15 minutes, I am closing the line. Becky? >>BECKY BURR: Hi, Becky Burr representing no one, myself. Maybe these are implementation questions that you haven't gotten to, but I have two questions. The first is, when there is a reference to an expert panel making certain decisions, what kind of expertise does that panel have? I'm just curious about what the -- what the expertise is required for that. >>AVRI DORIA: I think it is actually rather broad and really depends a lot on the question. If we're talking about dispute over name contention, then it's going to have to do with people that are language experts and such. When it has to do with some of the either legal or social issues, then it would be experts there, as was indicated in one of the answers. If it is a multi-cultural question, it has to go beyond any notion of U.S. experts. So it is actually a very broad notion of what are the set of experts and at some point it was indicated it may be retired jurists because it is a values judgment, it is a morality judgment. So it actually was a very broad notion of the appropriate set of experts to deal with a specific issue. >>BECKY BURR: Okay. So the expert panels get created sort of specifically -- >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: For each task. >>BECKY BURR: For each task. >>AVRI DORIA: Sort of. Yes and no. One of the notions we had was looking kind of at -- and this is something that, you know, the staff needs to do more in the implementation, was something that was, perhaps, similar to a RSTEP process where there is a sort of on-call large body of experts that are the economists, the sociologists, the cultural, the language and then based upon the particular question, a group of those is formed as the panel. So it isn't necessarily that for each objection you'd need to go out and recruit. And that was one of the ideas that was representative in terms of we've got a RSTEP notion. It is kind of an idea that may be able to be built on in terms of gathering a group of -- a wide group of experts, and you still may have to go outside of that for a particular issue. But that would sort of then become the responsibility of those that, you know, were responsible for that RSTEP-like process. >>BECKY BURR: Okay. So I just want to follow up. You mentioned something about it may be a morality question. Could that ever properly be the question? Isn't it whether it's prohibited by international standards? I think that's an incredibly different kind of expertise and incredibly important distinction. >>AVRI DORIA: Yes. That's why I was mentioning once you got to those types of issues, you were talking about the retired jurists, the people that had a grasp of what was relevant within international law. >>BECKY BURR: Okay. And then I have just a really simple-to-ask, probably hard-to-answer question about explicitly defined communities. Can you explicitly defined a self-defined community? The question is, if I say I am offering a top-level domain for everybody who wants to be in my top-level domain. This is an incredibly important question because this is the self-defined question from the last round. The board apparently changed its mind midway through what the answer to that question was. And so going in, do we need to know that? >>AVRI DORIA: One of the things is that because it's not a supported TLD, it is -- as is a gTLD, one can define a community. Define a narrow one and be the dot bank. Or they can define people who like X. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Or XXX like, maybe. [ Laughter ] >>AVRI DORIA: People who what? No, just one X, not any more than one X. And you can define that. There isn't any set of criteria that says you have to prove that you've got a community to get it. It is only when it comes to a question of there is an objection that do you actually represent that community. So we went back and we were always started on the dot bank and, you know, were they actually representative or did another group come through saying, no, we are a bigger dot bank -- we represent a larger community. But there wasn't a notion that if you say you're doing it for a community and no one challenges that notion of community -- >>BECKY BURR: The question is really. I understand and I will sit down. But to demonstrate this, this is not a very good example, but say I come and I say "I would like to have a top-level domain for banks in California," dot banks or CA banks or something like that. So it's CA banks. The Canadian banks who are not in the community that I've defined, I've said this is CA banks, meaning California banks, the Canadian banks complain. They're not in the community. Do they have standing to object? And if that's the case, then, you know, you're going to get objections on every single proposal. >>AVRI DORIA: Right. The issue is, yes, they do have standing to say, "Wait a second, what about us?" and that would go into a dispute. Now, would they be able to show it causes them detriment? Would it be possible for dot CA bank to say, Oh, you're right, Canada. We will call ourselves dot Calif bank or California banks and would it be possible to actually when you were dealing with the Canadian bank and you hadn't thought of the fact that, yes, dot CA bank could cause detriment to Canadian bank and the detriment standard was also a compromise. We ranged from, you know, harm to detriment to, you know - - >>CHRIS DISSPAIN:. >>BECKY BURR: I guess mine -- I will stop. I will just say this and stop. I understand you guys are dealing with a very difficult thing. But I'm afraid that you have created a system where only things that are not controversial become top-level domains. >>AVRI DORIA: Right. I think there is also, though, a notion that on most of these with -- with compromise -- and this whole issue has required compromise -- that the California banks in your example on realizing that it caused detriment or someone felt it caused detriment have a non-controversial option that they can probably go to. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. We are going to move on. Please keep it brief. >>BRET FAUSETT: Bret Fausett. First of all, thank you for all the compromises you may to pull this together. One thing that has been clear over the last five hours that this is a compromise. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Six hours, actually. Let's not be picky but it is six. >>BRET FAUSETT: This is a product of compromise which I thank all of the constituencies for coming up with something that was generally agree rather than continuing to fight to the last drop of blood to get something that you would consider a win. Any way, my comment pulls off of something that Chuck said a minute ago about the timeline slipping. As someone who has worked on large projects before as we all have, you know that whoever is drafting the RFP or putting the details into the devils or devils into the details, whoever is doing that drafting, some parts of that are going to be relatively complete and ready to publish almost immediately. Some parts are going to wait until the night before it is being published to be complete. But I wonder whether we could get some time back in the process by having the pieces published for comment as they are complete rather than waiting for this whole massive report to be finished sometime, you know, in the second quarter. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks. >>BRET FAUSETT: Just a suggestion. >>CHUCK GOMES: Just a real quick comment on my part. We've also not too broadly but talked about another idea because one of the things we told staff is we want the RFP totally finished before that four-month process starts. So one idea that was thrown out -- let me tell you it hasn't been discussed very much yet -- what if maybe the final RFP didn't have to be ready until maybe one month or two months into that so that we don't have quite as much serial processing and maybe we can pick up a month or two. So I think your suggestion is good, and we're also trying to think of things like that. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Okay. Excellent. Vittorio, last one. >>VITTORIO BERTOLA: I wanted to spend ten seconds in support of Thomas' observations on Recommendation 19. He mentioned four or five different types of TLDs that are being forced to use registrars that would be unadvisable. I think we can make this point in general. I think we will see many applications that we are not expecting yet are not really fitting in the idea we have in our minds. So I would urge you, the board and staff to leave room for maneuvering and for making case-by-case judgments even if they are, of course, subjective to allow situations that have not been foreseen. Thank you. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you. Okay. >>AVRI DORIA: I just wanted to give a quick response to that, that is one of the reasons -- we know that we cannot anticipate everything and that is one of the reasons why we've said from the beginning that we've got a process, we let it run as much -- you know, and then we have to review and look and understand what could work better, what we got wrong, what we didn't even conceive of and do that. And it will be an ongoing, you know, after a round, look at it, fix it, keep going. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Avri. Okay. We are going to wind it up. I have one thing I want to say. >>AVRI DORIA: I want the last word. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: You can have the last word, that's fine. I was just going to say thank you to the staff and the committee and all of the panelists of putting this whole thing together today. And I think we should all thank them. [ applause ] >>AVRI DORIA: And I want to thank you. In other words, you took half of my final word. [ Laughter ] I want to thank you especially for the effort you put into this, for actually reading, I understand, several times this whole report we put out for dealing with six hours of this. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: No problem. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you very much. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Pleasure. [ applause ] >>AVRI DORIA: And thank you for your comments and your questions and for staying this long.