[gnso-dow123] Whois tf 123 Transcription 15 March 2005
[To: gnso-dow123[at]gnso.icann.org] Attached please find the transcription of the Whois task force 123 teleconference held on 15 March 2005. Please let me know if you would like anything changed. Thank you. Kind regards, -- Glen de Saint Géry GNSO Secretariat - ICANN gnso.secretariat[at]gnso.icann.org http://gnso.icann.org <!--#set var="bartitle" value="WHOIS Task Forces 1 2 3 teleconference transcription"--> <!--#set var="pagetitle" value="WHOIS Task Force 1 2 3 teleconference transcription"--> <!--#set var="pagedate" value="15 March 2005" value=""--> <!--#set var="bgcell" value="#ffffff"--> <!--#include virtual="/header.shtml"--> <!--#exec cmd="/usr/bin/perl /etc/gnso/menu.pl 'WHOIS Task Force 1 2 3 teleconference transcription'"--> <h4 align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>WHOIS Task Forces 1 2 3<br> <br> 15 March 2005 - Transcription</b></font></h4> <p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">ATTENDEES:<br> </font></b></p> <p><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">GNSO Constituency representatives:<br> </font></b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> gTLD Registries constituency: - Jeff Neuman</font><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> </font></b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Neuman</font><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> - </font></b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Co-Chair <br> Registrars constituency - Jordyn Buchanan - Co-Chair<br> Commercial and Business Users constituency - Marilyn Cade Cade</font><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> </font></b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Internet Service and Connectivity Providers constituency - Greg Ruth</font></font><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> </font></b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Registrars constituency - Tom Keller Keller <br> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Registrars constituency - Paul Stahura</font><br> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Registrars constituency - </font> Ross Rader<br> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Registrars constituency -</font> Tim Ruiz <br> Intellectual Property Interests Constituency - Steve Metalitz Metalitz <br> Intellectual Property Interests Constituency - Niklas Lagergren,<br> Non Commercial Users Constituency - Milton Mueller Mueller <br> Non Commercial Users Constituency - Kathy Kleiman Kleiman<br> At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) liaisons - Thomas Roessler <br> At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) liaisons - Bret Fausett</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> <b>ICANN Staff</b>: <br> Paul Verhoef - Vice President, Policy Development Support <br> John Jeffrey Jeff Neumanrey - General Counsel<br> Dan Halloran - Deputy General Counsel<br> Olof Nordling - Manager of Policy Development Coordination<br> Maria Farrell Farrell - GNSO Policy Officer<br> Barbara Roseman</font> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> </font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">- IANA Operations Manager ( previously Staff Manager)<br> <br> </font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>GNSO Secretariat:</b> Glen de Saint Géry <br> <br> <b>Absent:</b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> </font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Commercial and Business Users constituency - David Fares</font><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> </font></b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> </font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Internet Service and Connectivity Providers constituency: - Antonio </font></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Harris - apologies<br> gTLD Registries constituency - David Maher - apologies<br> </font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Intellectual Property Interests Constituency - Jeremy Banks</font><br> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Non Commercial Users Constituency - Marc Schneiders </font> - <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">apologies </font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> </font> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Internet Service and Connectivity Providers constituency - Maggie Mansourkia</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <br> </font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></font> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> </font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> </font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></font> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) liaisons - Wendy Seltzer</font> <br> <br> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> </font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> (Sound quality poor in some parts of the call.)<br> Coordinator The call is being recorded at this time. If you have any objections, you may disconnect.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, so for purposes of this recording this is the Whois Task Force to Combine One, Two, Three. The first order of business is a discussion with ICANN on a memo we had received or an e-mail we had received on December 20th with concerns related to the Whois Task Force, at the time, One and Two document called Procedure for Conflicts, which was posted on or about November 30, 2004. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> We have representatives from each of the constituencies. At this point in time we may be missing a member from the business constituency, but other than that we are represented by the constituencies and the ALAC and we are going through a document that we have called List of Questions for ICANN General Council.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> The first question is, and we'll just go in order of the questions. The first question was, as we read points four and five of the December 20th memo, the principle concerns seem to be a) the provision in bullet three is step three that lays down a general rule regarding the general councils recommendation, b) the requirement that enforces action against a non-compliant registrar and these circumstances be taken only with the approval of the ICANN board of directors, c) the expectation that the recommendation to the board would, at least ordinarily in step five, see step five, be made public and d) the allocation of certain views to the general council rather than to other parts of the ICANN staff. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> The question that was submitted is, are these actually principle subsequent concerns as a recommendation? If so, they seem like legitimate concerns and so are there any other concerns that we should know about with regards to this memo, I guess is the broad question.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> Jeff , Paul here.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> Jeff , before we get to the questions, maybe a couple of general things, not only for the record, but also because we haven't had a chance, all of us, to talk about this, following this, I guess, in the mean time, illustrious e-mail.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> First let me say that the intention of the staff was certainly not to stop the task forces in developing policy, on the contrary, you are there to do exactly that and we are there to assist in that. So we hope that we can make some progress.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> What we did feel was necessary to do was raise a number of questions and issues and comments to you, in your consideration of possible policy options, particularly as some it foresees the involvement of staff, not only staff, but also the board. Obviously we're also interested to ensure with you that we find the most effective way of actually implementing those policies. So the comments of the e-mails were raised in that spirit, in trying to go a level deeper and go to a deeper understanding of some of the possible implications of some of the options you are considering.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Point number three, I think we found the questions extremely useful and a good way forward in order to understand what some of the issues are in front of all of you. We have a series of broad answers too, in which John Jeffrey and I and the colleagues collectively will provide you with.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Just to summarize this, you are developing policy and we very much urge you to move further and you have all the staff, and you know in the meantime we have some extra colleagues onboard, so we would be in an increasingly good position to help you and pick up some of the necessary underpinnings of it.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Thanks, Paul. I probably should have given a better introduction to that and we appreciate that, and we know that your role is to help us. I don't think anyone on this taskforce feels that you guys are trying to get in the way. So I appreciate all of you joining this call, so that we can move forward on all of these issues.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> So I don't know, John Jeffrey or Paul or who wants to answer.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> I'm prepared to begin with question one, if that's helpful.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Sure, thank you.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> This is John Jeffrey Jeff ,I think the question is very well stated and it does summarize many of our concerns, many of our principle concerns. A couple of additional things that I thought were worthy of raising; one is that the disclosures that are required have this confidentiality provision in them. The confidentially provision, by its very nature, creates some potential conflicts with, at least for the general councils office, in terms of how to keep compliance with the contractual provisions, where there is an issue that has been raised. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> An example would be that once an investigation has started and there's been a specific direction request from the national government that the registrar not follow the Whois policy. There would be some concern that if we were provided that information in confidence, through the report, but where not able to make public notice of that, then we might be conflicted in terms of how we might be able to require compliance, if for example, there's an interpretation issue relating to the advisement by the national entity, to the registrar. So I think there are some concerns that we have about the confidentiality provision and how it interplays as part of the procedure.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Also, the procedure sets out limitations on board actions, and we're specifically concerned about that. I think that limiting board actions in a hypothetical situation is a very difficult thing to do, and I certainly would be concerned about whether that creates conflicts with our bylaws and conflicts with the provisions of the bylaws that relate to capture of ICANN.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Then an additional point that we would be concerned about is that the way that the procedure is worded it says, "Shall" a lot. I think that where we limit staff and board actions in hypothetical situations it could be dangerous, and we would prefer to have this be in the form of a recommendation. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Now we won't, of course, tell you how to make your recommendation on these policy objectives. But certainly there are concerns that we have about a procedure that sets out a specific path, knowing that the laws, the types of conflicts, the problems that might fall under this, could be very unique to the situation and might require steps that would deviate from the procedure, in order to make the most effective decisions.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> I think those are the big concepts, and perhaps some of the other issues will come out as we go through the other questions. Does anybody have any questions relating to that or how do you want to approach covering the rest of the questions?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Let's open that up for questions. I think we should also make a general statement, since this is being recorded, that the purpose of this memo was that the taskforce, actually originally taskforce two has recognized that there are a number of national laws that may, and I stress may, because I'm not aware of any specific decision out there, but that may conflict with a registrars or registry's obligation to both collect and display all of the Whois data that's required under the registrar accreditation agreement, and so the purpose of document is to try to come up with some sort of procedure, when in fact that was the case. I just wanted to take to the record, so that that's on the recording.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Does anybody have any specific questions with respect to …?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> Actually if I could add one more point. I think the one other concern that we have is that this deals very specifically with how national laws or national decisions or local policy or local laws conflict with contractual obligations of registrars or in some cases registries. The additional concern is that ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> If somebody could put their phone on mute, please.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>So the additional concern is that this a much broader area than just relating to Whois, and there are many other national laws, which might from time to time conflict with the contractual provisions in the RAA or in a registry agreement. So we're interested in, from a scope perspective, whether it was intended to be broader than Whois or whether it was intended to be limited to just the Whois situation, and related to that, how those issues are defined. Sorry about that, now I'm quite ready to answer questions.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller </b>I have one, Jeff Neuman.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Let me get a queue. So I've got Milton Mueller, is there anybody after Milton Mueller?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Tom Keller </b>Yes, Tom Keller here , please.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Tom Keller , okay. Anybody else?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman</b> Kathy Kleiman.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Anybody after Kathy Kleiman? Okay Milton Mueller, you're up.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> Okay, I'm trying to understand what you're saying Mr. Jeffreys, when you talk about it's dangerous to limit board and staff actions. I mean I think I understand that we don't want to have rules that are not well-suited to variations in situations. But from the point of view of the GNSO, whose task is to make policy, doesn't making policy by definition, isn't it designed to limit or direct board and staff actions? In other words isn't it the purpose of what we do here is to guide setup consensus rules, which in fact, limit what the board or the staff does or directs what they do?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> I'm happy to let Paul answer this, as well. But the issue that we have or the question that we have is whether a policy such as this is intended to be a restriction on staff and board, or whether it's intended to be, whether a policy is intended to the registries and the registrars as it comes from the GNSO. I'm not aware, and you may be, of another policy that restricts specific actions of the general council's office or restricts the specific actions of the board as it relates to a specific policy.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> I would say that the RAA itself can be modified through the GNSO process. So if we as a GNSO put something into the RAA, then you as council are obligated to enforce that or interpret it in certain ways. Right?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>Yes, I'm not clear. Are there specific instances that you're aware of where there has been policy generated that is a specific restriction on the actions of staff or onboard?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> Yes, but I'm not going to give you chapter and verse now, because I think that would require me to consult documents and I don't have time to do that. But I think it's always been my understanding of the GNSOs role that we are essentially - if we push a policy up to the board, and the board accepts it, which of course they have to do, that the board is in effect agreeing to have its actions limited or guided by the policy. So maybe this is a semantic difference, I'm not sure we mean the same thing by limiting the board and staff actions, which is what I'm trying to get at with this question.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>Yes, I think that we'd be interested in the details behind what you're asking. I think certainly if a policy comes up to the board and the board adopts such a policy, then those policies are binding on staff, they're binding on the board. I'm just interested in how the scope of the policy intended to restrict specific actions that may impact the way that we, in this case, the way that we would create compliance with an existing agreement or the way that the board could take a specific action. I'm not aware of other things like this that have required the board to act in a specific manner, in response to a specific scenario. So I would be interested in details of that, and we can certainly take this into another call, or on to some written dialogue.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> Yes, I don't think we want to get that detailed at this point.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, Milton Mueller, can I go on to Tom Keller?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> Yes.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Okay, Tom Keller </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Tom Keller</b> Yes, hi. It's just more or less a point of clarification. If we only consider Whois on that and the scope of the whole policy and the whole procedure would be only Whois, that's because John Jeffrey asked about that, it has nothing else to do with any other problems, which might arise from the RAA on other regulations, it's really only pointed into the Whois direction.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>The scope of how you define whether it falls into a Whois issue or not, could you address that, as well, Tom Keller?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Tom Keller </b>Well yes. I mean we just started, if something comes up, where a registrar can't comply to exactly the rules which are set down in the RAA, which asks a registrar to do certain things, that at that point of time, his procedure would kick in, and to no other regard.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Yes, I think just to clarify, and we could probably clarify this in the draft too, is really with respect to the collection of and display of Whois data. Those are two separate obligations in the registrar accreditation agreement. Anybody jump in, if you think I've misstated. But I think those are the two items with respect to Whois.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> If I could just raise a point there, in step one of the procedure, in the language, it's very board. The definition of a Whois preceding, basically says anything that might affect compliance with the RAA.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Who is that that spoke?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> John Jeffrey Jeff </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Sorry, John Jeffrey, it didn't sound like you. So is that something that we should address in the draft? Kathy Kleiman, you're next.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman </b>Great, thank you. Two points, one of what we were just talking about. John Jeffrey, does it help under the procedure for conflicts, the step by step, I'm pretty sure that was circulated, the very first paragraph opens, "… taskforce to anticipated "An ongoing risk of conflict between a registrar or registry's legal obligations under local privacy laws and their contractual obligations to ICANN"" and that's from taskforce two's report last year.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> It was my sense that nobody thought that the scope went beyond that kind of issue, the specific local privacy laws, not into every kind of contractual issue. So I'm sure we'd welcome how to draft that, but the scope, I thought, was pretty narrow.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> Yes, I haven't thought this through, but my question would be whether local privacy laws might conflict with any other provision within the RAA.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef </b>Well it might actually, but we didn't entrust that, to that point.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>Yes, I think the point is that we need - that ICANN is asking that we provide more clarity as to what we intended to do. I think that's easily rectified, at least from our perspective. So I think one of our action items is to clarify the scope.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman </b>Okay. Can I move on to a different point?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, I wanted to respond to the issue of the confidentiality. That the report had made the recommendation, depending on the special circumstances of the Whois proceeding, the registrar registry may request that ICANN keep all corresponding between the party's confidential, depending the outcome of the Whois proceeding. So it's not confidential in perpetuity, necessarily but just during the proceeding. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> It may help to understand the rational behind that, which is that in talking with companies that have been involved, in not the same kind of proceeding, but similar, they said that rarely is there immediately some kind of lawsuit that's filed. Initially what happens is there are inquiries by a government investigator and that you don't want to make those inquiries public, initially, you want to be responsive to them.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> So we wanted to make sure that ICANN knew about those kinds of inquiries, but we wanted to ask for the confidentiality, because it was the sense of the companies that I spoke to, as well as prosecutors that I spoke to and that others did, because a number of people contributed to this, that if you immediately make public inquiries about a criminal investigation, you will become the target of the criminal investigation, you will become the defendant, rather than just the person answering questions. So we wanted to make sure that kind of the general confidentiality of a criminal investigation was maintained, to give as much protection to the registrar and registry, as possible.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef </b>Kathy Kleiman, may I ask a question, this is Paul?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Sure, Paul, go ahead.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef </b> What then under those circumstances would be the purpose of informing ICANN during the procedure, just merely that the staff is aware of what is going on? How do I understand this? Because my reading of it is that the ICANN staff, will as a result of the confidentiality, not be able to do anything, they cannot discuss it with any existing taskforces, for example, or anything else. So there isn't very much that we can do with it.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman</b> Well there was considerable debate over this and I invite others who remember, you know going back to the deep, dark days a year ago. But there was a sense from some people that ICANN should not be notified until the end, whatever the outcome is. There was a sense of other people, and this prevailed, that ICANN staff should be notified and perhaps help out in the responses to the questions, because the government might be asking questions that have a lot to do with the origins of the RAA. Why are you doing it this way? Why are you publishing all of this data? I think there was a sense that the staff should know and perhaps help respond, help the registrar or registry respond to the government.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef </b>Okay.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman</b> Does anybody else want to add anything? Is that accurate?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> Yes, that's what I recall.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Yes.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Yes, definitely. I think I'm the one that actually ended up drafting that language and I think Kathy Kleiman stated it well. The intent was not to keep things from the public, at all, or from the taskforces. It was just to respect the company while these inquiries were going on, and until the findings could be made - until the findings were complete, at which case then a report would be released and if there were any confidential parts, then to the best of the ability of the company or the registrar or registry in ICANN, they could provide a summary without disclosing all the details.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> I point to ICANNs recent investigation of the panix.com case; it's a very similar thing. I'm sure there were confidential communications, initially, between ICANN and the two registrars that were involved. In the end there's a public report that kind of summarizes all the communications and the findings. But until that was completed, there was no real public report, maybe a couple of questions that were sent out and posted, but the same type of thing. You don't want to post that someone is the subject of an inquiry, until the findings are complete, because it's embarrassing for a registry or registrar and it's not something that that company ever wants to know.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Plus, as we know, with inquiries, a lot of times you get letters that are worded a lot stronger than the actual reality is. Then once there's an investigation and that's completed, it turns out that things are not exactly how they initially appear to the one prosecutor or to the one side.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b>I might also add that one of the motives in adding that, was that we thought ICANN would very much want to be informed and would want the opportunity, if it thought it could be appropriate, to aid the registrar in responding.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>Actually I agree that it's a very good idea that we get the reports. My concern is that if an investigation is started, but isn't completed for a significant period of time, and during that period of time the registrar is in breech, how do we reconcile those problems?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman </b>What does that mean, the investigation is started and the registrar is in breech? Breech of national law or breech of RAA?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>No, under your second scenario, relating to the confidentiality, I can find the step, but I don't recall it exactly, a national authority could require that the registrar take a specific step to not disclose certain Whois information for example, and there's still a confidentiality requirement that's imposed on ICANN at that point. So in that particular instance there could be a registrar that is not in compliance with the agreement, and yet a corresponding regulation by ICANN not to disclose that there's an investigation going on.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b> That's in step two, we do have that. I think the intent when I was drafting that, was more to keep the actual correspondence between the parties confidential, but to provide some way of giving notice that something was going on. We'll take that back to the taskforce, but that could be just my drafting is unclear. But I thought, and someone jump in if I'm wrong, the intent was not - if there was a certain action that was going to be taken, the intent was that ICANN should be able to disclose the action, but not necessarily the correspondence between the parties. Does anyone recall anything different than what I explained?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Stahura</b> I don't recall anything different, Paul …, didn't - I mean I'm sure we could come up with a solution for you, if there's a registrar that's in breech and you can't disclose there's an investigation, but still let ICANN call them on that breech.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller </b>Well I was under the impression that the procedure we defined gave you a way to basically make a confidential decision about where to de-accredit the registrar.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> I think let's take that back.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> Actually I didn't understand the last comment, could you say that again, Milton Mueller?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> Yes, it was that - the point, and maybe we didn't execute it properly here and that would be a good question of yours, if indeed this is the case. But the idea is that you know this is going on, the registrar may have to change your activities in response to that investigation or those actions by the local enforcement agency and then once that has occurred, you are in a position to make a decision about accrediting or de-accrediting the registrar, according to the criteria set out in the procedure. So I'm not sure I understand what the problem is. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> In other words, if as part of an investigation the local authority says you must change this, and that change puts them in breech at the RAA, then doesn't that trigger the procedure that we setup, which allows you to go through the board and find out whether you're going to de-accredit the registrar or not?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> That would presume that that step would only occur as a final result of an investigation like that. What if the investigation takes an interim step of making such a requirement?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller </b>Well that may be an ambiguity in our procedure, but the intent of what we're doing was if indeed they do order them to make a change, then the intent was to then trigger a process in which you can say, this is warranted or this is not.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman</b> John Jeffrey, can we put the question back to you, this is Kathy Kleiman, what are you thinking? For this language there could be different things, one could be very narrow requirements by the government, you know the president's daughter has registered a domain name; you will now pull off her personal information from the database, immediately. Or, it could be a massive change; you will now pull off all individual's personal information from the database. Does the scale of the requirement by the government, in the course of an ongoing investigation matter to you? How would you recommend proceeding?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>Well I think this is one of my primary concerns with the procedure and it's rigidity, because I think there are a series of different things that can happen under these scenarios, upon which we're being given a procedure to follow, that tells us specific things to do, not in response to that specific scenario. So I'm concerned that we have a situation where an investigation is launched, there are actions taken, there's a registrar that's clearly in breech of their agreement, but I'm prohibited from communicating to anyone, why. So I don't have an answer, but I'm certainly willing to work with anyone on your side to help resolve it.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Stahura</b> I think in my case, Paul, again speaking, I get the concern now, but I didn't get it until just now.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Okay, so I think unless anybody has anything specific, I think that's one of our action items, to go back to … secretary. Is somebody eating or crumpling paper or something, if they could put it on mute that would be great? Okay, is everyone ready to go on to the second question?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz </b>This is Steve Metalitz , I just wanted to let you know that I joined. Did we finish the first question?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Yes. Do you have anything to add?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz</b> No.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> I think ICANN did a good job at summarizing their concerns, they added a few others and the recording will reflect those and I'm taking notes and Glen's taking notes. So you'll get those when those are done.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Question two is in your letter of December 20th you wrote, might it be preferable to focus GNSO attention on developing improvements to its policies that will allow for the broadest possible harmony with local regulations? Can you elaborate on what you meant by that, and perhaps suggest specific ways in which you believe the GNSO might accomplish that?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef </b>Jeff Neuman, Paul here.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Yes, Paul.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef </b> Before answering the question, I just want to make a remark here. We keep on referring to ICANN, as if you are not ICANN. I would think that this is one - you know this is one part of ICANN asking another part of ICANN something, rather than the taskforce asking ICANN something, but this is maybe a linguistic issue. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Let me come back to the question. What we had in mind is the following. Our understanding is that there is quite a lot of knowledge among the members of the taskforce, as to what is going with Whois policies, at a local level, and we were wondering whether it wouldn't be useful, if this is sort of brought together. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> You know a whole range of registrars operate under Whois policies. There are ccTLDs who operate under Whois policies and the nature of the question was such that we wondering whether it wouldn't be useful, presumably with the assistance of the staff, and we're happy to do so, to get some of this stuff together, to understand much better, what actually the situation is out there, rather than having to make guesses as to what we think the situation is. Because if we have a better overview of Whois requirements or actually actual Whois implementations, like the recent direction of DOC to .US presumably give some flavor of how Whois is treated or has to be treated in the U.S., and you may have seen some of the stuff in Australia and other places. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> So there is quite a bit of public knowledge about this, whether that wouldn't help everybody to understand, as to what the actual thing is. On the basis of that, it would be possible for you to come up with the broadest possible policy, which would address the majority of the situations. So that is what we basically had in mind. As I said, there's a full offer from the staff side to assist in anything like that.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Okay, thanks, Paul. I'll start a queue and I'll put myself first. Does anyone else have any comments?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b>: Paul Stahura, okay.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> Milton Mueller.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Anybody else? Okay. From our perspective, we were given instructions, … made the taskforce, at the time I guess we were One and Two, we were given instructions by the GNSO council, to try to deal with some of what they call the low hanging fruit. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> One of the things the taskforce is definitely trying to do, in looking in the last few weeks or few months and will continue for the foreseeable future, is looking at ways that we could try to come up with a Whois policy that we believe would be in compliance with at least most of the laws that we know about, and we're still gathering information. But that's a fairly long process and one especially with tiered access, one that's going to require a whole bunch of research and we're trying to move forward on that, and we appreciate the offer for staff at this point, because I think we will certainly take you up on it.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> I think the goal in this was to try to come up with something, while that was pending. In other words, because we knew it would take a certain amount of time to address what you talked about, Paul, we wanted to come up with a procedure that registrars and registries could follow along with ICANN, that if something had come up in the mean time, until that policy is developed and also something after a policy is developed, if there were exceptions to that rule. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> I think the goal is essentially what you said, to try to address the other Whois policy, but from my perspective and other people can jump in, I think it was kind of one of those low hanging fruit things that we thought could be relatively easily addressed by coming up with some sort of process. If Paul and Milton Mueller want to jump in, as well. Paul?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Stahura</b> I think it's a good idea that members of the taskforce know the local laws better, you know there's a lot of knowledge here and we've got to bring that together. But I think we can be confused with policies and ccTLDs. What .US did is a policy of the .US registry, not law of the land in the United States and you can confuse those two.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> If I can respond to that, Paul, Paul here. My understanding is that there are certain directions from the U.S. government to .US, which presumably have to do with the implementation of the law, not necessarily with the precise details of how .US beyond the implementation of the law, wants to handle the impact implementation. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Stahura</b> I don't think that's the case.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef </b> My assumption is that a whole lot of CCs are having to comply with local, Whois policies.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Stahura</b> I think you may have a mistaken believe there.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Yes, I'll jump in; I'm probably the best person to jump in on that.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> Maybe .US. is a bad example.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Yes, but I think Paul's point is a good one.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> Which one, which Paul?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Paul Verhoef.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Both Paul's.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef </b>We're both right. That's useful.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> No, I think Paul Verhoef is right. In that one way to help us figure out what the national laws of the various countries are is to look at how the ccTLDs operate, and putting .US aside. But if you look at, for example we had a presentation a couple of weeks ago from Denic. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> I for one found that kind of enlightening. Denic told us what they display in Whois, and that was contrary, at least to what I thought, the German law was. When they said that they had kind of had their implementation blessed, sort of, I guess, by the German government, as much as it can be, I think that shed some new light as to what is truly required under German law, versus what some may believe is required under German law. So I think Paul Verhoef's point is that we can look to the behavior of some ccTLDs to the extent that it reflects national law. .US. is completely different and it really reflects a contract and not law.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Stahura </b>I agree with that.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>So since it is a sensitive topic, especially for me, I'll go on to Milton Mueller.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> Yes, I would just like to remind, everyone, I guess, that taskforce two did prepare, and I think Kathy Kleiman did most of the work here, a table, identifying the relevant privacy laws, as best as possible. This has been distributed over the List recently, or redistributed, I should say, and I would really recommend that you take a look at it.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> I think the other comment I have on this question was I was kind of trying to sound you out, Paul, on whether by making this comment, you were suggesting that the taskforce move ahead with the issue of tiered access as the ultimate solution to the problem that we're dealing with here.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> No, Milton Mueller, we didn't have any particular things in mind. So that was certainly not the purpose of that remark.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz</b> Jeff Neuman, this is Steve Metalitz Metallis, could I get in the queue?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Sure, Steve Metalitz. Paul, I just realized that I had made a point about what you were saying and I didn't give you a chance to respond, to make sure that I was supporting your statement right. So Paul, did you want to respond to what I had said about the way we're looking to ccTLDs?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> Yes, I think you're right. From what I see quite a number of CCs have been in touch with their data privacy commissioners or their governments or whatever the authority is in their countries, to make sure that they way they implement Whois requirements is conformed to national law. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> So obviously, as I said, some of it is - there is presumably an area of freedom, where they can sort of do what they think is right, and presumably there is an area where there is no freedom, that the law basically says what has to happen. But whatever the situation may be, my assumption would be that we could find out quite a bit from it. I'd be quite happy if the taskforce so desires, to ask the ccNSO to give us a hand with this, and see if they can round up some further details on this for us.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Stahura</b> This is Paul Stahura talking again. I agree with that, that it's a good idea. I just wanted to make sure that - from what I understand, and correct me if I'm wrong Jeff Neuman, but what .US. did was not to get the Whois in compliance with the law, but to interpret a contract that the registry has with the registrars.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Yes, I'll go to Steve Metalitz, but I'll just say that it was to bring it in line with an existing contract.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> Maybe the easiest is to drop the .US example and go to another place. Like you said, the presentation of Denic, my assumption is that Denic has gone out of its way to try to get its Whois database in compliance with the German data protection authority requirements on it. Then my assumption is that the registrars in Germany, at least can take pretty good guidance from that, as to what the requirements on the German law are.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <b>Paul Stahura</b> That makes complete sense to me.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> I think I've got to get to Steve Metalitz, so we can get the call moving. I think Denic gave a good presentation and we'll go back and send around the main points of that. But I think they kind of made it clear, it was interesting that they would not be able - Denic would not be able to have on their public Whois, everything that is a gTLD. So they would not be able to have a Whois that the gTLDs would be required to have. Steve Metalitz, do you want to …?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz</b> Yes, I was just going to say, and if someone raised this before I apologize, but I just wanted to make it clear to Paul and John Jeffrey that the reason this procedure was proposed was not because we were making an assumption that the existing policy is not in broad harmony with local regulations. There are probably different views about that on the taskforce, but what is true is that concerns were raised that some registrars might be put in this position, and what we were attempting to do was to anticipate that problem and come up with a suggestive procedure that could be followed in that situation. But it didn't result from an assumption that this was a widespread problem or even that it was occurring.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Yes, Tom Keller and did I hear Kathy Kleiman?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman</b> Yes, Kathy Kleiman.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, anybody else after Tom Keller and Kathy Kleiman? Okay, then I want to try to move forward on question three. So, Tom Keller.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Tom Keller </b>Thank you. Well the first thing we did in taskforce two was to kind of produce a spreadsheet where we asked all different kinds of people what kind of regulations they have in their countries. So exactly what Paul is proposing right now, that we go out to the CCs and ask what kind of regulations they have, and what kind of breech they have with their government and so on; that is all stuff that already happened in the past. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> That's exactly why we came up with this process more or less, which describes how a registrar who isn't …, can get an exception of it. Because an assumption we have is that however good you build a system, you always might end up in a situation where you have a registrar, by new created laws or by new created regulations, which puts them into breech with the RAA and so there's a point where we have to deal with it.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> So however proud and however good our lowest common denominator is, we will always have that problem, where we might have to deal with the person or registrar or registry not being able to comply with its contractual obligation, due to governmental influence or whatever. So we've already done a lot of this research and we have a really extensive spreadsheet and I think that's worth, maybe looking at again. So we standard effort, and that's more or less the effect of the effort.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, Kathy Kleiman.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman </b>Yes, Milton Mueller raised my name in connection with the spreadsheet, I want to raise Tom Keller Keller's name and all of taskforce two, team one, because lots of people spent a lot of time on it. There is a section that Tom Keller was just talking about, I'll just mention it, it's Section 5.2 of the spreadsheet that does talk about ccTLDs and shows things like - that certain countries, ccTLDs are being told to pull information off the Whois, or in some cases to create specialized opt out provisions, and these include .AU, .UK, .FR, and .KR.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Paul, you raised a good point that the ccNSO could help a lot. We did reach out to them at the time, and they weren't responsive. I think that was because they were in the midst of their own survey on this kind of information and have a policy. I'm not quite sure why, but we did ask them, but I'll bet they'll be more responsive to you.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> Well Kathy Kleiman we can test whether they're more responsive to me or to you. I don't think it makes a lot of difference at the moment. I think basically the ccNSO has only become operational in the last couple of months, so I can imagine that beforehand they were just not ready for it yet. But if you wish, I can have a talk with Chris Disspain and see whether he can get something going on this. What may be useful, in my view, before I ask that, is that the taskforce actually structures their requests to the ccNSO a bit, so that we give them some guidance as to what exactly is useful to know and in the form you want to know it, so that we get a reasonable answer to it.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Kathy Kleiman The excel spreadsheet may help us do that very quickly.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> Okay.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Tom Keller</b> There is just one point of clarification that I would like to make, it's in regard to Denic and I just want to say that Denic is not really blessed by the German government; it's just blessed by the … commissioner of the state in which Denic belongs to. For example, someone in Bavaria may have to act totally different ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, thank you, Tom Keller. That was my understanding, thanks for clarifying that. Is there anybody else with questions on number two, I'd like to go to question three, recognizing that time …. Again, I just want to emphasize that any questions we don't have answered on this call, ICANN and John Jeffrey … we can have a conversation, John Jeffrey, Paul and others; we can have this conversation on e-mail. So not everything has to be on this call.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> That said, question three is, is the subject of Whois a policy determination subject … or do you view this solely as a contractual matter between ICANN registrars and registries. In other words, does the GNSO have the right to recommend policies regarding, a) what information is made available through Whois, b) who has access to such information, c) how is such access obtained or d) what the process should be if a registry registrar believes that an existing policy or a new policy on it's face violates and existing national law?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> That's the question. I think it's in context, because reading that out loud, I think I'll let John Jeffrey and Paul answer this, but obviously they're going to say, "Yes, you're allowed to recommend whatever you want." I think the question is if there was a policy determination that says, "We think a, b and c should be in Whois, but d and e should not be. That's something that the ICANN would consider if the GNSO council ended up recommending that. Is that something that is properly within the policy prevue or is that something that ICANN views as purely contractual?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> No, I think Jeff Neuman, you're right. If this is the way - if this is what the GNSO sees as the policy on the Whois, then you're well in your right to propose that. It will, subsequently, obviously have to be reflected in the contracts. But that is then the result of it, that is actually the ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> If I could elaborate, this is John Jeffrey. The contracts already have a placeholder for policy that is developed in this area. It exists in all of the registry agreements and we certainly - the way we're negotiating the current top-level demand agreements that we're negotiating with the sponsored top level demands, we are holding the language as it currently exists, including the language that creates the placeholder for policies that might be adopted. We certainly recognize that the GNSO has a role in helping develop policy related to this area, and we're certainly interested in policies that might be adopted and how we can enforce them.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller </b>Can I ask a question about that?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Sure, let me get a queue, Milton Mueller, hold on. Anybody else after Milton Mueller? Okay Milton Mueller, it's all yours.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller </b>When you say, John Jeffrey, that the GNSO has a role in helping to develop policy on this, I'm wondering who they are helping. I mean my understanding of ICANN is that the GNSO has primary responsibility for developing policy and that the board has basically a right of refusal or acceptance. But who else is it that we're helping here when we're developing policy?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> The larger ICANN.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> The larger ICANN?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> When we talk about ICANN, we're not talking about staff versus you; we're talking about all of us. We're of the assumption that GNSO, it develops policy relating to this, and anything that I said that might be contradictory to that, I'll be happy to take back.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller </b>Okay. But within generic, Whois, basically a gTLD issue and my understanding of the structure is that the GNSO makes policy or formulates policy. My concern, just so you, it's not like I'm trying to confront staff or setup any kind of dichoTom Kellery here, it's just that I want to know if I'm wasting my time. We spend a lot of time on these taskforces and we want to know that it has some utility.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>I thought I was pretty clear. We are certainly interested in the implementing the policies that the GNSO brings to ICANN. There's a position in the contract that we continue to reserve for that specific instance. So I hope I haven't said anything to offend you. We certainly appreciate from the staff level what you do. I think without that, there wouldn't be policies set in these important areas.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> Thank you.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Thank you John Jeffrey, thank you Milton Mueller. Anybody else with a question? Okay that was a quick one; we can go to question four. If an entity would like to become a registry or registrar, but is based in a jurisdiction that may not allow it to collect or display who …, is it ICANNs position that such and entity would not be eligible to participate as an ICANN accredited registry or registrar? I think this also gets at the first part of the e-mail, which says that the registries and registrars should not enter into contracts that would be illegal from their point to perform. So John Jeffrey or Paul, do you want to address this?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">John Jeffrey I don't know how we could say anything else. Certainly we would not encourage registrars or registries to enter into agreements when it's not legal for them to perform. I'm not clear whether that's the full answer that you're looking for, but that's certainly the answer that I would propose.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Okay, I think that's kind of what the taskforce expected. Kathy Kleiman, do you have a question?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman </b>Yes.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>I'm sorry Kathy Kleiman, let me just get a queue first. Kathy Kleiman, anybody else? Okay, Kathy Kleiman.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman </b>John Jeffrey, almost half of the registrars accredited by ICANN, operate in countries with comprehensive data protection laws. Are you kind of saying that they really shouldn't be - that if their country's or if the regions, say the EU, raises real questions about the Whois policy, which they have, that they really shouldn't be accredited registries and registrars?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> I think you're making a number of assumptions that weren't present in my statement.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman </b>Okay. Can you help me out?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>Yes, I'm not hear to give advice to registrars or registries about whether or not to enter into a registrar accreditation agreement or a registry agreement. But certainly where they believe that there's a conflict between laws and the contract, then that's an important issue. I think that if it's clear to you that those things are in conflict then we would certainly ask for the taskforce's advice on how to approach those scenarios.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> I think it's fair to say that this is not a sort of end-all situation. I mean if this were to occur, then obviously there would be a review of it, and there may be a policy process and there may be adjustments of the accreditation agreements, is for example, one option.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> I think coming back to what John Jeffrey said, one of your presumptions seems to say, in a rather determined fashion that because of EU data protection law, it is mutually exclusive with Whois requirements or a collection and display of Whois information. I don't think that that's the case at all. There may be certain requirements there, but I don't think that EU data protection law would actually forbid Whois, not at all. So I think we shouldn't jump to too easy conclusions on this.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman </b>Fair enough.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Are there any other comments? If I can, I'm going to skip a question and come back it, because I think that question is really meant kind of a springboard. It's one thing to say, as you do, that registries and registrars shouldn't enter into contracts that they believe would be illegal for them to perform. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Question six is kind of okay. So let's say they are a registry or registrar, they signed an accreditation agreement. So the question is while we understand that it's ICANNs position that may should not enter into a contract that it believes violates its national laws, well what happens if there's a change in national law that makes the collection and/or display of Whois illegal, after the registrar is already accredited. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> So that's kind of three parts, what is the purpose, from a contractual point of view, to deal with such …, and that's kind of a matter of educating the taskforce. If it's the position that the registrar could no longer be accredited, then what's the policy in dealing with the registrars existing cusTom Kellerers? Or what happens in the opposite situation, for example, what if there's a change in ICANNs policy that in essence changes the contract midstream and the changes pose a conflict with national laws? John Jeffrey or Paul?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>Well as a starting point ICANNs registrar accreditation agreement already provides that a registrar shall abide by applicable laws and government regulations. So under RAA Section 3.7.2, all though that provision doesn't exist in many of the registry agreements, there is discussion about adding that into some of the registry agreements going forward, where there are specific issues that have been raised.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> If a new national or local law were to make it illegal to perform some of the obligations in the agreement, then we believe that the registrar would of course have to comply with that law. There are a number of steps that ICANN could take relating to that. I think some of these questions go to the very answers that you're trying to supply. So I guess is the question from a perspective of what we would do currently or is it asking us to re-review the procedure?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> I think we'll start with the first, has this ever happened, without going into any detail or if not, what do you envision the current process would be?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> I'm only aware of one circumstance where we've been notified that an action taken in a local law perspective impacts this specific provision as it relates to the RAA, and we're not clear about the interpretation of what has been called into question. So this isn't an issue that we're facing every day, and in fact it's been a very rare circumstance to this point, although we could certainly anticipate that these issues will arise in the future, which is, I think, why you're setting out your procedure or the broader procedures. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> So I think it is fact dependent and we certainly have to look at the individual scenario to understand how we would treat it. It's a difficult hypothetical situation, as I'm sure you appreciate after having worked so hard on this procedure.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz </b>Jeff Neuman, this is Steve Metalitz Metallis, can I get in queue?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Steve Metalitz and then who else after Steve Metalitz?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Stahura</b></font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Paul, anybody after Paul? Okay, Steve Metalitz.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz </b>Yes, just to follow up on your answer, John Jeffrey. I think what you're saying is that there isn't a set procedure that would be followed at this point. It would be handled, as you say it's very fact dependent, it's only arisen once that you know of. So there isn't a set procedure and suppose one question is whether it would be beneficial to have a procedure in place, when it arises or is that just too hypothetical a situation? But I guess the answer is right now there isn't a set procedure that we would follow. Correct?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>Well I wouldn't say that. We certainly deal with compliance issues across a variety of agreements. So where we have a registrar that's in breech, we have a procedure in place on how to deal with that breech. But it is fact dependent and it is circumstance dependent. I don't believe you were on at the beginning, but one of the points that I was making about the procedure is that we have concerns about whether the procedure is a very strict procedure to adhere to. It includes a lot of language like, shall, or is it a recommendation about the best way to approach a situation when it arises.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade</b> Can I get in the queue, it's Marilyn Cade?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Sure, Marilyn Cade. It's going to be Paul next, and then you, Marilyn Cade.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz </b>I don't know if John Jeffrey was done with his answer.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Yes, let's let John Jeffrey finish.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> I think I was primarily done with the answer. Did that answer your question, Steve Metalitz?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz </b>Yes, and I think you raise a very good point, and I apologize again that I wasn't on the call earlier. I think you had some back and forth, as I recall, on the language about shall or should and this type of thing, and perhaps that has created an impression about the rigidity of this procedure that perhaps we should ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz </b>Can I ask a question?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>Just one point, quickly, this is John Jeffrey again. That was the concern that we expressed. We are concerned that too rigid a process does not allow staff or the board to appropriately respond to an individual situation and that it's very difficult to project all possible hypothetical situations in an evolving landscape.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz</b> Well I would agree with that, but on the other hand, the other side of that coin is, is there some value in having some expectation in place, so that if a registrar encounters this, they kind of know what they should do and know what to expect. That's just the other side of that coin.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, let me go on to Paul and Marilyn Cade and then there was someone else I thought that ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> That was Milton Mueller.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Milton Mueller, okay. So let me go to Paul, first.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Stahura</b> It sounds like it's just such low hanging fruits, to almost being non-existent right now, but to come up with a policy, so that in case it does happen, we have some kind of procedure in place.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>I'm sorry, we might have missed the question, you were cutting out a little bit or our phone was.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> I think we might have lost Paul. Why don't we go, I hope that Paul will rejoin, we'll go to Marilyn Cade and then Milton Mueller and then check back and see if Paul is here. Marilyn Cade?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade </b>Thanks. I too, will offer my apologizes for not being able to be on the entirety of the call, but I will review the transcript and I thank Glen for arranging that. I guess I wanted to kind of just ask - I think maybe it's just an elaboration of what - is Paul back?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Stahura </b>Yes, I'm back, can I finish my question?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade</b> Sure.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Stahura</b> Sorry, I got cutoff, I'm on a cell phone. Basically I see that it's really low hanging fruit, but it seems like we should come up with a policy now, in case this happens in the future. It seems like we're getting the indication from ICANN that that would be worthwhile to come up with a policy, but that it shouldn't be - since it might not ever happen and the circumstances around it happening are going to be unique from case to case, that we shouldn't make a policy that's really constraining and kind of leaks out into other areas of ICANN. Do I get that right?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> I think it would be useful for a recommendation to be made, whether it's a policy, I think, is a question that I'll leave to the policy team to discuss.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Stahura</b> Because the policy might be even more restrictive then just a recommendation?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade</b> Can I ask my question, I think it's very related, Paul?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Yes, but did Paul Varhoof want to respond to that?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Stahura</b> Yes, well I'm just thinking about it. Let Marilyn Cade put her question in and then we'll see where we get.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Okay, Marilyn Cade.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade</b> I'm trying to sort of refresh my memory about why we did this, and remind myself that we were trying to be helpful. But I think there was a lot of discussion at the time, about we didn't have evidence of an existing problem. Maybe what we are struggling with is, maybe we think the only tool we have is a hammer and this particular problem is a nail. Maybe it's not a nail, maybe it's not a policy, maybe it's something that is in the form of a recommendation or advice to the board and staff or something of that nature, which isn't actually policy, but provides guidance or a framework of how people are expected to deal with such a problem. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> I'm wondering if we're stuck on, it is very difficult to devise a policy that is high level enough to allow the flexibility that would be needed. Maybe thinking about what other vehicles exist that the policy entity can provide guidance on would be helpful, but it doesn't become an actual consensus policy at this time.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> Okay. It seems like if it's not a policy, then the contracts won't change.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>It seems like Paul has got a point in that it depends what the goal of the taskforce is, but Paul Sigura has got a point that if it's just advisory, then it's not, and this may be okay, but then it's not necessarily binding on actual purposes. Again, the taskforce has to decide what its main intent was. Milton Mueller, I believe, was next on the list.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> Right. Okay, so I'm getting a clearer picture of what John Jeffrey's concerns are now. One of the interesting things that you said, John Jeffrey, was that you have a procedure in place now for sort of monitoring and enforcing compliance with the RAA. I would like to know, first, whether this procedure is published and if we can have access to it, because you said that it is a procedure, but you also emphasized that it is fact dependent. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> All law is kind of - the application of law is fact dependent, but judges have to be guided by some kind of rules or principles and indeed that's what the laws are supposed to be. So I would say that fact dependency is not so much the obstacle here. Our goal is to - you know, what is the criterion that guides your decisions and your applications? What is it that the facts depend on or what is it that your decisions depend on? The facts might vary; I guess is really the question that we're talking about here.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> Yes, as I believe you're aware from the strategic plan, there is a plan to develop an entire compliance program. We don't have that in place and we don't have the staffing available to fully manage that at this particular point. What we do currently is when we receive notice of a breech of a contract or a concern regarding the breech of a contract, we investigate that breech and we determine whether it's material and whether it requires further action. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Typically action is a letter, often a private letter that indicates what the breech is, seeking compliance with the agreement. There have been to my knowledge, no instances where we've been required to litigate. So I hope that's fairly responsive to your question and if there's any additional clarity I can provide, I'm happy to do so.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller </b>Yes, I think that that's pretty much what I figured is the situation. If the contract is indeed something that is fixed, then we would obviously need to give the staff the ability to flexibly determine whether the facts make a particular registrar in compliance or in breech. But I think the question is whether we can give you, as GNSO, whether we can give you policy guidance as to how that might be applied in cases of national variation. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Indeed, even without changing the contract, to take up Marilyn Cade's point, not that I wouldn't like to see the contract changed on this particular issue, but if indeed the GNSO created some kind of policy guidance that would in effect help you to evaluate facts, in a way that was compliant with the policy wishes of the constituencies, would that be useful?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> From my perspective it would be useful and well-received by staff.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller </b>I'm finished.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Okay, thanks Milton Mueller and thanks John Jeffrey, that does help. That gives us a direction to move in. I think that also kind of answers, if you go back to question five, has ICANN received any increase in national governments regarding the collections. Although I think you said that you received it, the question not from the national government, but from ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> Yes, that was a different question.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, so why don't we go back to that question five. Has ICANN received any inquiries from any national governments regarding the collection or display of Whois information as it relates to privacy protection? If so, what are the steps ICANN has taken to resolve these issues. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> Certainly we've received a number of questions from governments. The questions are typically informal, although we recently received a letter from a specific U.S. FTC (Federal Trade Commission) commissioner. Not from the FTC itself, but from a specific commissioner asking some questions. We've also received some notice from a house committee, a U.S. House of Representatives committee, seeking information and cooperation from us, in helping determine the harm to the U.S. economy, caused by patently false Whois information.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Those are the things that we've seen recently, and I would imagine that there are a number of other informal questions or inquiries that are made on a regular basis regarding this. I'm certain we've heard from different law enforcement authorities with questions about how the Whois taskforces are working and whether a policy would be set in the absence of the Whois taskforces and how those things might be changed or adapted within agreements. We've referred those bodies to the taskforces, telling them that the appropriate place to participate in that policy development would be with you guys.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Tim Ruiz</b> This is Tim.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Jeff Neuman Is that Tim Ruiz?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Tim Ruiz</b> Yes.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Okay, Tim and is there anybody after Tim? Okay, Tim.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Tim Ruiz</b> John Jeffrey, I'm just curious to clarify, especially in regards to the inquiries you received from the U.S. government, or it's agencies, where they really - it doesn't sound like they were inquiries regarding privacy protection, but more about accuracy issues or access issues, is that fair?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>That's correct, those are the recent inquiries that we've received.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Have you received, maybe not recently, but have you received anything from any privacy commissioners or data protection officers, on the other side of the coin, concerned about privacy?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>Certainly not since I've been at ICANN, but I can't speak for the period before that.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Yes, the closest thing I can think of, I think it was in Italy, and maybe Kathy Kleiman you can help. Who is the speaker from the Italian privacy?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">M Giovanni Bartorelli.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> What was his official title?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> He's the data protection commissioner for Italy, I think.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman</b> He's number two, right under the senior data protection commissioner, I think.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> He had said during the - it seemed like what he said during the presentation was that there ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman</b> He was very concerned, he came to the ICANN meeting, it was a very late scheduled session and he seemed very concerned over the gTLD Whois policies, the conflict that they had with the Italian data protection laws, and kind of issued some implicit threats against not only registrars based in Italy, but registrars reaching in and seeking the business, the registration of Italian citizens.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> We also had a session with a joint registrar, a non-commercial constituency session with George Papapovlo. Milton Mueller, maybe you remember more directly what he said. It wasn't as powerful as Bartorelli, but he also raised a number of very clear and expressed concerns and we'd be happy to kind of provide the materials that we still have from those meetings, to you.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> I guess the point is that nobody, at least what ICANN is saying, nobody has brought that …. It's one thing to make a presentation, it's another thing to actually file something or formally or even informally complain. But what John Jeffrey is saying ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> We've received no follow-up to those comments that I'm aware of.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman</b> Jeff Neuman, can you tell us what day … month he came in. I'm not sure whether this was before or after.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> He was at Rome. You were there for Rome, right, John Jeffrey?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>Yes. I came in, in September of 2003. I was at the Rome meeting and I'm roughly aware of the comments that you're referring to. But we've received no follow-up inquiries or official correspondence or inquiry regarding that; that I'm aware of.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman</b> Have you seen the EU paper to the GAP dated May 12, 2003?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>I can safely say that I do not recall every document that's sent to any advisory committee or supporting organization. So I'm not intimately familiar with that document.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman </b>Okay, so you're talking about - these would be documents sent directly to the board, the chair or the general council?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>Yes.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman</b> Okay.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade</b> Who was that paper sent from, to the GAC?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman</b> I have a link to it, I don't remember.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller </b>But there's kind of an issue here, regarding official communications. I mean I would imagine that when Giovanni Bartorelli, or George Papapavlou gave presentations at ICANN meetings, they assumed pretty much that they wee doing the same thing that, let's say that the U.S. congress or the U.S. FTC commissioner would be doing, in the sense of signaling to ICANN their position on Whois policy. The idea that these comments don't count because they didn't formally send a message to the staff, I think - I mean I could understand why a staff person would need to be officially informed in that way, from their point of view. But on the other hand, nowhere is it written down or no where is it clear that that's the way these things have to happen.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Milton Mueller, let me jump in there, the question we asked them was has ICANN received any … from any national governments. So while you're right, that we should, we the taskforce take into consideration anything that was submitted formally or informally to us. I think the question that we addressed was, ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller </b>Well I'm just making an interesting observation that obviously the staff is answering that question correctly and that we are looking at it in a very different light, because of the fact that the information is just going to different places. I think that's something that we need to be very cognizant of.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade</b> Jeff Neuman, can I get in the queue?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Yes, Marilyn Cade and anybody else after Marilyn Cade?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz </b></font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Kathy Kleiman </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Jeff Neuman Marilyn Cade, Steve Metalitz and Kathy Kleiman. Okay, Marilyn Cade.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade </b>I don't think that we should convey that the taskforce is of one mind on the last point made, because I don't think we are. As the co-chair of the previous taskforce, we received a number of communications, some of which were formal, some of which ere informal and we made efforts to explain to people, who for instance, spoke at our workshops, that they were helping to educate the community, but that this was not the same things as a formal contribution to an open public policy process.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> I wouldn't feel comfortable suggesting that because someone makes a comment, that that counts as a formal contribution or document and I had in my past, and still continue to work with government folks all around the world. I find them very savvy about who to contact, whenever they want to make a complaint. So I'd prefer that we stick to the specific purpose of this call. On the other hand, the taskforce may decide that it is important to seek more information, in a different way, about what positions exist and where they exist. But that would be a separate work item for the taskforce.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, thanks Marilyn Cade. Just to be clear, when you say, you didn't … taskforces of the mindset, on the last point, the last point you were referring to, as to whether to accept both formal and informal additions. Just for the recording.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade</b> That's right.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Jeff Neuman Okay. Steve Metalitz and then Kathy Kleiman.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz </b>Yes, I just wanted to agree with the last comment. I mean people say a lot of things at ICANN meetings or at meeting that take place at the same time and place as ICANN meetings, even though they're not ICANN events, which I think is the case for at least one that was referred to. But I think if a government wants to formally raise a concern about this, they know how to do it, and I think that was the thrust of the question.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, Kathy Kleiman.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kathy Kleiman</b> I would agree that the governments know how to reach important people, but they may not need to know that they need to repeat their message. So if I could share that there is a body of literature that has been generated on this Whois by governments and governmental participants, from the Article 29 working group opinion on Whois. The International Working Group for Data Protection and Telecommunications sent a letter to Stewart Lyne, the reason I know all this is it's kind of the spreadsheets, I'm taking … today. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> There was an EU paper to GAC, something formal and in writing and these organizations may not need - you know for them this has been an ongoing process and they've put in their thoughts, early on. We may need to reach out to them, and I look for some staff direction on this, if you need to hear from them again, kind of from a certain date forward, then who would be responsible for contacting them, I mean how should we do that? But they do have material on the record that was submitted to ICANN, officially through some channel, but it may be too long ago to be part of kind of the current record. So the question is what do we do about that? What do you recommend?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> If we received an inquiry like that, we would likely send them to you, because staff wouldn't be setting policy on this, although we would certainly try to be responsive to any inquiry. We would send them to you and direct them to you, as the appropriate body to help set the policy related to this area. So I'm not clear on, although I'm certainly interested in any information that you'd send us and we'll certainly look at it and see if there's anything that we should take action on, as staff, I think the policy setting is intended to exist within the GNSO, and we would certainly send those types of inquiries to you.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller </b>Could you then forward us the FTC and the congressional inquiries?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey</b> Certainly, we can do that immediately.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller </b> Thanks.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> here. I think the other thing is with the remarks and comments, concerns and other things of the governments here, I think we need to distinguish a bit, and we cannot just put it all in one big heap. I mean obviously there are data protection commissioners and their agencies who are and have dived into this over a while, and they're still trying to learn what this is all about. That is one thing. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> The next thing is that I can well see that they issue some general warnings often, the kind, well though shall comply with the requirements and make sure that it happens, and we are not sure that you are. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we're not.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> The last category would be then the ones who are actually explicit in saying, well what you're doing is wrong and against the law. I think what John Jeffrey has been saying is in the first two categories we have heard all these things, in the latter category we have yet to hear anybody who tells us that what we're doing is actually illegal. So obviously we need to be attentive to the remarks which are made and we need to make sure that the data protection commissioners around the world understand what is going on and what we're doing and why we're doing this and help us in devising ways forward. I don't think we've yet confronted the situation where somebody is actually saying, this is plain unacceptable under the law. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> So I think we need to look at this in a fairly nuanced way and as some have said, Marilyn Cade in particular, if they think that we're doing something which is not acceptable to them, they'll for sure know how to find us. It's not that ICANN is a sort of club that is in the anonymous sphere any longer that they wouldn't know where to reach out to us.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Tom Keller</b> Can I get in the queue?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> First Tom Keller and then who else after Tom Keller? Okay, Tom Keller.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Tom Keller </b>Thanks. I just want to mention …, I guess most of the governments, once you do have an issue, probably first of all don't really know where to go, so the most probable point of contact they have, is the registrar, who isn't … the problem with. So they probably wouldn't even go to ICANN, but they would go to the registrar, and the registrar might be able to bring the government to ICANN. So it's probably that way that would be ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> Yes Tom Keller, I fully accept that, and that would be fine and we'd be happy, I guess, to answer any question they'd have and/or as John Jeffrey said, to point them to the taskforces, if they want to understand some sort of policy development is going on and what needs to be taken into consideration there.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, anybody else in the queue on this question? Okay, I think that covers all the questions that we had submitted. There was initially a question, but it was retracted, it was on competition, on the comment that we're worried about setting different registrars on a kind of level playing field. I don't know if anybody - there's been kind of a lively discussion the last few days on the Whois taskforce list, which is actually a public list. But I was wondering if anybody wanted to ask a question on that topic or whether we can kind of table that, some people had ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller </b>I would make a comment and perhaps a question of clarification for Paul Varhoof.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, Milton Mueller.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> One of the problems I had with the original letter was that you sort of expressed the idea that making these exceptions in the contract, might indeed be inimical to the level playing field competition goals, which we know ICANN has and which we generally support. But it seemed to me again that you were sort of straying into the area of dictating policy rather than letting the GNSO determine the balance between a level playing field for competitors and a privacy protection or compliance with national law and that that was, again, something that I at least, viewed as very sensitive. As not so much because of your actions in this particular instance, but because of the full scope of ICANNs history, in which there have been numerous incidents in which we are told go in there and make consensus policies and beat your brains out against the wall to do that, and then the staff intervenes at the last minute and says, "Well we don't really like this policy."</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> So not that I'm accusing you of doing that, but I'm saying when you edge up against that, anything close to that, it sets off alarms, in my mind. When you make pronouncements that this might lead to some kind of competition policy gaming, certainly, that's something that we in the GNSO and particularly, the registrars are very concerned about, so you can trust us to give that due consideration. But the policy balance is going to be struck here, is it not?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Paul or John Jeffrey, if you want to address that.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> I'm sorry, Jeff Neuman, I just dropped off the call, so I have only heard Milton Mueller's last four or five words.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> Then just say yes, and get it over with.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> Yes, Milton Mueller.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> That's where the question was.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> What do you say, I'll go for your advice, Jeff Neuman, should I repeat the question?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> If you could briefly.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller </b>Okay, the question was that you had expressed concerns about the procedure that we had defined, sort of contradicting the goal of a level playing field for competition. My question was isn't the proper balance between a level playing field and the Whois policy as used to be struck within the GNSO, isn't that a policy issue to be formulated in the GNSO, by the constituencies, and not by the staff?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> I think you're right, but that doesn't mean that we cannot ask the question, whether you have taken this into account and how you have taken it into account. Is it?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller </b>Yes, I think it's acceptable to ask that question, certainly especially in the early stages of the process. But as I indicated in my longer question, there's a historical sensitivity to this issue, because of some interventions in the past; not by you, but by other staff members, in which it seemed to me that policy formulation processes at the botTom Keller/up level had been circumvented or short-circuited by staff interventions. So if you're just ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> Let us leave history for what it was. We are currently with the current staff complemented, and I guess we're going to work with that. I can give you my promise that we're going to pay full attention to this and act as early as possible.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Milton Mueller</b> Thank you.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> I guess the broader question, not one to be answered now is, if there is a policy that comes out from the GNSO, … considered the competition …, if for example there's a policy that says that registrars should … hypothetical, but I guess if the policy was something as strange as, if registrars can show different data, depending on where they are in the world, I guess at some point we want to know if there are concerns like competition concerns, during the process and not so late as it was in this particular instance.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> I think what we'll take back is that Maria Farrell is now in here and is going to be, hopefully, providing some guidance, Barbara, as well, to the ICANN staff, so that we can have input while we're creating the statements and not just after we've already … comments.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef</b> Well Jeff , what can I say, I think there are five staff members on the call at the moment, you see that we're giving you our full attention.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> We appreciate it. That ends the questions that we had prepared. Is there anybody else that wants to ask a question or hasn't been …?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Okay, well I would like to thank the ICANN staff; I'd like to thank John Jeffrey and Paul and Barbara and Maria Farrell and Dan, and just anyone from ICANN. Thank you for attending. I think the taskforce still has a couple of things to discuss. You're welcome to stay on if you'd like to listen or you're welcome to drop off, it's up to you.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Paul Verhoef </b>Thank you very much.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> So thank you.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>John Jeffrey </b>Thank you, every one.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> We'll wait a minute for some beeps. I guess … leave. Okay.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <b>Steve Metalitz</b> what else is on our agenda?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> I thought what we were supposed to do, what we're trying to setup for next week, is calls with - to have the …, yes, that's their official name, … to come on and talk a little bit about their … and also to have the Australian Domain Authority come in and talk, as well. Kind of similar presentations as DeNIC and Tiered Access Providers gave a couple of weeks ago. So that's for next week.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> We were supposed today, try to come up with - I don't know if Jordan is on the call, he may have had to drop off. But we were supposed to try to get an update, as to Taskforce Three, where they left off, so that we can try to figure out how to move forward. I'm not sure if Bruce or others, Bruce Tonkin are you on? No, okay. … I dont think you're on.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade</b> Is Jordan on? I guess not. Bruce sent an e-mail and I think there were some follow-up e-mails that kind of tried to recover the work that had been done. Is that what you were referencing, Jeff Neuman?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Yes, but that was before the last call and then on the last call, Bruce was supposed, I think, compile some of the other information that was referenced and then send it out to the group.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade</b>Right.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> I think what we'll have to do is put that on the agenda for next week. At this point we haven't confirmed, Jordan hasn't confirmed the . au or the SSAC, so we're going to try to do that this week. But next week the main items are going to be prepare for the - to do those two things and prepare for the Argentina meeting. I don't know if we're officially yet on the schedule, Marilyn Cade maybe you can help, has the GNSO decided, the council decided what time is going to be reserved on Sunday, for which activities?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade </b>The last I saw, and I think Glen is on, the last I saw the only time that seemed to be available for the Whois taskforce and the council, was in the middle of the day, because we have a council working session, on the strategic plan later in the day on Sunday. That was the last that I saw that. But I haven't seen a firm, I don't know if I'd call it, a firm draft schedule.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Glen </b>I think that synopsis has been put up, Marilyn Cade.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade</b> Right, that's what I thought.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, so we've got to firm up, Glen, a ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Glen</b> From 11 to 2 o'clock.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Wow, right in the middle for lunch.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade</b> Yes, I think what we will probably need to do is either take a break and people grab lunch and come in or work around that, which I think we'll have to do.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Yes, we'll figure that out. I know everyone in here is going to be disappointed that they will not be able to go to the orientation luncheon. If any of you are first time ICANN participants, sorry, but you'll have to invite your own staff member or board member out to lunch for a separate ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, then we were also going to try to get some conference bridge.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Glen</b> Do you want it transcribed too, Jeff Neuman?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> I'm sorry, say that again.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade</b> Glen, how are we paying for all the transcriptions?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Glen</b> ICANN is very kindly doing that for us, Marilyn Cade.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, and what about the conference line, teleconference, people who can't come to Argentina?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Glen</b> Do you want me to setup a bridge for that, Jeff Neuman?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Jeff Neuman Yes, please.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Glen</b> Okay, I'll do that.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Also, people that are on the taskforce, if you can send around a note to Glen, not necessarily on the full list, if you are planning on being there on that Sunday. It would be good - or if you're planning to by bridge or by phone, that would be great.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Glen</b> Thank you, Jeff Neuman, that would be very useful.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Don't send it to the full list, because it will basically be on the public site. So those are the housekeeping things and we'll hopefully have all this ironed out by next week, because the week after, we'll already be leaving, I think.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz </b>Jeff Neuman, I had one more item that I wanted to raise, before we adjourn.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, good.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz </b>Is this the time?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Yes, sure.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz </b>I wondered what was the status of the taskforce report on recommendation one. I made a posting on this last week, and we're now at a point where we don't have the opportunity to get this acted on in Bar Del Plata, but I think we should still push forward on it.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Yes, I think that's a good point; we need to get back to that. We need to put out the options of what we can do. That still needs to go out, but we had kind of a different constituency, like there was a split, and I'm not talking about voting wise, but just from different members.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz</b> I don't understand what you just said, because I thought that we had agreed that what Maria Farrell was developing would fit the criteria that's in the PDP for the final taskforce report on this topic.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> You're talking about the issue of ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz</b> Notice to and consent from registrars, and it would include, obviously, the minority views. I mean I think it could be easily done, simply by packaging together, the submissions that were made from the different constituencies, that's most of the report right there.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">M Right.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Right, but the taskforce, technically, still has to vote on it. But we can't vote until we see the final - ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz</b> No, this is a final report. If you look at Section 7E of the policy development process, that's the point we're at. It's ready to go out for public comment, and what we need to do is have that package put together so it can go out for public comment. It's now been several weeks we ordered that up and I just wondered where it stood.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> I think we can move forward with that. So Maria Farrell, are you on the call still?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Maria Farrell </b>Yes, I'm still on. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Have we moved forward or do we need to - we probably need to talk to you about that offline?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Maria Farrell</b> No, I was actually going to butt in, just before Steve Metalitz came on, just to give a quick update on where we are. I have been revising the paper that Glen had circulated last week, and it's going to be something more in line with a final taskforce report. However I'm still talking to Bruce and we'll be talking to you guys offline about exactly how many of the issues outstanding are going to be in that report. Whether they're all going to be in one big bumper, kind of omnibus report, or whether we're going to section them off and do them separately. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> But also, I will be circulating a revised version of the report, based on the comments that we got from people last week. That is going to be going out on Thursday. I don't want to exhaust people's patience, but the comments were very gratefully received and if people could take another look at it, as it's developing and we'll also be able to give a much more firm answer on the exact status of the different taskforces and what stage their taskforce reports are at, in the PDP, over the next day or so. Apologies, we don't have a proper answer on that, but I haven't been able to talk to Bruce about that one yet.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade</b> I'm sorry, it's Marilyn Cade, Maria Farrell. You're talking to Bruce about it; I'm not exactly clear in what role you're talking to Bruce about it.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Maria Farrell </b>Sorry, I was confusing my taskforce chairs, I've been talking to Jack about it.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade </b>Oh, okay, sorry.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz</b> Thank you Maria Farrell for that report, I appreciate it.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, so we'll have an update.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz </b>We'll see something Thursday.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Yes.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Steve Metalitz Great.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman </b>Okay, any other questions or comments? Alright, we're going to send around, and Glen, you have the transcription, how long until that becomes available?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Glen</b> Jeff Neuman, the transcription usually takes about three days to arrive.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, so we'll post that, I think we also need to ….</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <b>Glen</b> I'll get it posted when it gets cleaned up.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, when people have had a chance to digest it, the transcription will go around and then summary notes and action items as to what need to do with this second report. I think this is curable, as far as what we have in the conflicts. I think there's a couple of simple things that we can do, as far as changing the shall's to may recommendations. I think there are some other things that we can clarify, the scope and some other action items that we got from the staff. But I think this is still worth pursuing, obviously, so that we can get it to a stage where we can get a report out for public comment.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade</b> I'm sorry, Jeff Neuman, this last set of comments you're making, you're referencing the work that we were talking about, in the early part of our call, is that right?</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> The part that we spent an hour and half on.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade </b>Okay.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz </b> Recommendation two.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Yes.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Marilyn Cade </b>Alright.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz </b>Maybe we can put that on the agenda for next week, especially if we aren't able to setup SSAC and .AU, maybe we could talk next week about what our next steps are.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">J<b>eff Neuman</b> Yes, I think we should put that on the agenda.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Steve Metalitz</b> Great.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Jeff Neuman</b> Okay, I appreciate everyone for hanging for almost two hours. I know these calls are getting long and everyone is volunteering, so I appreciate it. Thank you everyone for being on the call.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Bye Jeff </font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Thank you.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Bye-bye.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b><br> </b></font></p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> |