IP: Press Release: TWO ICANN SUPPORTING ORGANIZATIONS CREATED; OPERAT IONAL RESOLUTIONS PASSED AT BERLIN MEETING OF ICANN INITIAL BOARD

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> The Internet Association For Assigned Names and Numbers
>
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
>
> TWO ICANN SUPPORTING ORGANIZATIONS CREATED; OPERATIONAL RESOLUTIONS PASSED
> AT BERLIN MEETING OF ICANN INITIAL BOARD
>
> BERLIN, THURSDAY May 27, 1999 - At a meeting today in Berlin, the Initial
> Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
> called its Domain Names Supporting Organization into being, accepted an
> application to establish a Protocol Supporting Organization, considered how
> to handle some of the intellectual property issues relating to the
> Internet's Domain Name system, reaffirmed its intention to create a system
> that will permit individuals to select At-Large Directors as soon as
> possible and adopted several other operational resolutions.
>
> The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a new,
> non-profit, international corporation formed to oversee the Internet's core
> technical management functions. By September 2000, ICANN will have taken
> over responsibility for coordinating the management of the Domain Name
> system, the allocation of IP address spaces, the coordination of the
> adoption of new Internet protocol parameters, and the management of the
> Internet's root server system. 
>
> A global agreement on managing these functions is crucial to the Internet,
> the network that connects millions of different computers and the people who
> use them. ICANN is still in its formative stages. Its Initial Board's
> primary task is to complete the organization of a system of checks and
> balances to ensure that the Internet's infrastructure is managed to meet the
> legitimate needs all parties interested in its development.
>
> ICANN made great progress in this direction during a series of meetings in
> Berlin from May 25th  to 27th.  These meetings included the Government
> Advisory Committee meeting (which issued its own press release), the
> Membership Advisory Committee meeting  (whose task is to make
> recommendations to the Board on the creation of a representative, global and
> democratic membership system), and constitutive meetings of ICANN's Domain
> Names Supporting Organization (more information on these meetings, including
> in some cases an audio and a video record, are available on the ICANN web
> site at www.icann.org). They culminated in the Initial Board meeting on May
> 27th. 
>
> The first significant decision the Initial Board took today was the
> provisional recognition of six self-organized Constituency Organizations
> representing parties interested in the management of the Domain Name System
> from six different perspectives.  The constituencies, who will elect the
> Names Council to act as the governing body of the Domain Name Supporting
> Organization (DNSO), are the core of the DNSO. The DNSO is one of the three
> supporting organizations required by ICANN's bylaws (the others are the
> Address SO and the Protocol SO).
>
> Like its two siblings, the PSO and the ASO, the DNSO will eventually elect
> three of the 19 Directors who will constitute ICANN's full Board. The DNSO
> will also prepare recommendations to the Initial Board regarding ICANN's
> policy oversight of the Internet's Domain Name System (which translates the
> Internet's numerical addresses into things humans can understand, like
> www.icann.org). The issues it will eventually be grappling with include the
> establishment of dispute settlement mechanisms, reconciling the conflicting
> interests of various Domain Name holders, and whether, how and when to
> expand the number of top-level domains (such as .com).
>
> The six recognized constituency organizations represent:
> ? the registries for country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs, such as .de,
> .uk or .jp)
> ? commercial and business entities
> ? the registries for generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs - such as .com, .org
> and .net)
> ? intellectual property interests
> ? Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other providers of Internet
> connectivity, and 
> ? registrars (the companies that register the names under which individuals
> or corporations wish to be known on the Web, such as www.greeneurope.org or
> www.ibm.com)
>
> The Initial Board deferred the recognition of the seventh constituency,
> designed to represent non-commercial Domain Name holders. "Their proposal
> was not yet mature enough," Dyson said. "The Initial Board asked the groups
> wishing to set it up to collaborate on a new proposal for us to consider
> next month."
>
> The Initial Board further asked that the gTLD constituency, which currently
> has only one member (Network Solutions Inc.), nominate only one member to
> the Names Council (rather than the three provided in the bylaws for each
> constituency group).
>
> Organizing meetings for all seven would-be constituencies were held on the
> morning of May 25th. A provisional DNSO General Assembly which met
> thereafter heard their reports and began a fruitful discussion on some of
> the substantive issues referred to above. Dennis Jennings, the Chairman of
> CENTR (the Council of European Top-level Domain Name Registries) was
> appointed acting Chairman of the DNSO General Assembly by public
> acclamation. He said, "I am delighted with the speed with which the Initial
> Board recognized the six constituency groups. The Initial Board's decision
> to create a provisional Names Council finely balances due process with the
> need to start substantive work. Just as importantly, it accurately reflects
> the tenor of the public discussions of the past two days."
>
> The constitutive work for a second Supporting Organization, the Protocol
> Supporting Organization, was also sufficiently advanced to be accepted by
> the Initial Board, which consequently passed a resolution welcoming the
> PSO's formation and asked its prospective members (Internet standards
> development organizations such as the IETF, the World Wide Web Consortium,
> the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the
> International Telecommunications Union) to prepare a Memorandum of
> Understanding formalizing the PSO's status. It is hoped that this memorandum
> will be ready by the time of the IETF's meeting in Oslo in July. 
>
> Two of ICANN's three Supporting Organizations have thus been called into
> being through today's meeting of the Initial Board. This leaves the Address
> Supporting Organization as the last one to be created. "I have high hopes
> that we will be able to accept the efforts of the groups seeking to
> constitute an ASO by the time of our next open meeting in Santiago," said
> Esther Dyson, ICANN's Interim Chairman.
>
> The Initial Board also considered a report of the World Intellectual
> Property Organization (WIPO) on Domain Name policy commissioned by the
> United States Government in the same white paper that launched the process
> of setting up ICANN. WIPO was asked to consider the intellectual property
> issues posed by the first-come, first-served system by which Domain Names
> have traditionally been allocated in the Internet. While designed to enable
> users to reach Internet resources easily, Domain Names have acquired a
> further significance as business identifiers and as such have come into
> conflict with the system of trademarks that exists in the off-line world.
>
> Among others, the Initial Board considered a number of issues dealt with in
> the WIPO report: how the contact details of Domain Name holders should be
> treated and payments collected by registrars, payment procedures, dispute
> settlement mechanisms, the policy on "famous names" and potential new gTLDs.
>
> The Initial Board noted that the report's suggestions concerning customer
> payments and the way registrars should treat the contact details of Domain
> Name holders are "closely similar" to what ICANN requires in its
> accreditation agreement with its accredited registrars, and that it has
> already scheduled a review of those issues early next year. 
>
> The Initial Board noted that a uniform dispute settlement mechanism was a
> necessary element of a competitive registrar system. The Initial Board noted
> that the scope of this policy should be wider than the cases of abusive
> registration with which the WIPO report deals, and ultimately covers all
> commercial dispute issues linked to Domain Name registrations. To this end,
> ICANN-accredited registrars are being encouraged to develop and voluntarily
> adopt a model dispute resolution policy while the DNSO has been asked to
> consider the relevant chapter of the WIPO report, chapter 3, by July 31st,
> in time for public comment before the Initial Board's next meeting on August
> 26th.
>
> The Initial Board also referred two other important issues, how to treat
> "famous names" and whether, how and when to introduce new gTLDs, to the
> newly formed DNSO for analysis and recommendations.
>
> One of the most complex tasks ICANN faces is creating a workable mechanism
> to ensure that individual users of the Internet can participate in the
> election of nine of ICANN's nineteen directors. As the Membership Advisory
> Committee, which met on May 25th, made clear in its commentary, the
> logistical, administrative and financial challenges posed are enormous. 
>
> Given ICANN's principal responsibility - first and foremost to preserve the
> operational stability of the Internet - the Initial Board is approaching
> this issue with the utmost caution. The Initial Board asked its staff and
> legal counsel to report to it before its next meeting on the administrative,
> legal and financial issues thrown up by this challenge.
>
> The Initial Board also passed several other resolutions dealing with
> operational matters. These included its budget (a global envelope of USD$5.9
> million has approved for the fiscal year starting on July 1), and a
> resolution through which the Initial Board accepted the principles set forth
> by its Advisory Committee on Independent Review. The Advisory Committee
> recommended that ICANN set up an Independent Review Board empowered to
> consider complaints that decisions by the ICANN Board violate of ICANN's
> bylaws. Details remain to be worked out and the Advisory Committee on
> Independent Review has been asked to complete a final report for the Initial
> Board's consideration by August 10th.
>
>
> Background
>
> The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a new,
> non-profit, international corporation formed to oversee a select number of
> the Internet's core technical management functions. Between now and
> September 2000, ICANN is gradually taking over responsibility for
> coordinating Domain Name system management, IP address space allocation,
> protocol parameter assignment co-ordination, and root server system
> management.
>
> Contacts
>
> If you have questions, please contact:
>
> United States
>
> Pamela Brewster and Josh McCloskey
> Alexander Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
> (+1-415) 923 1660 
> pbrewster () alexanderogilvy com
> jmccloskey () alexanderogilvy com
>
> Europe
>
> Patrick Worms and Rick Flint
> Ogilvy PR Worldwide - Brussels
> (+32-2) 545 6609 or 6602
> patrick.worms () ogilvy be
> rick.flint () ogilvy be
>