GNSO Liaison Report OCT 2021-DEC 2025

GNSO Council Meeting #12 of 2024 held on 19 December 2024 

• Agenda

• Matters of Interest

• Meeting Details

• Meeting Record

• Special Summary Report

GNSO Council Meeting #12 of 2024 held on 19 Dec 2024

Full Agenda  |  Documents  |  Motions

• Item 1: Administrative Matters

• Item 2: Opening Remarks / Review of Projects List and Action Item List. 

• Item 3: Consent Agenda

  • GNSO Review of the GAC Communiqué

  • Recommendations Report for the Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) on Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) Phase 2 

  • Confirmation of GNSO Empowered Community Representative (Tomslin Samme-NIar)

• Item 4: COUNCIL VOTE - Empowered Community Approval Action on Fundamental Bylaws Amendments to Article 4 Accountability and Review, 4.2 Reconsideration

• Item 5: COUNCIL VOTE - Charter for Policy Development Process on Latin Script Diacritics

• Item 6: COUNCIL DISCUSSION - EPDP Temporary Specification Phase 1, Recommendation 18 - Urgent Requests

• Item 7: COUNCIL DISCUSSION - Request for Guidance from the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures / IDNs EPDP Phase 1 IRT

• Item 8: COUNCIL UPDATE: EPDP Temporary Specification Phase 1 - Billing Contact

• Item 9: COUNCIL UPDATE - 2025 Council Strategic Planning Session (SPS)

• Item 10:  DISCUSSION ITEM -  Request for Guidance from the Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs) PDP IRT on the Scope of Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) Recommendation 1  Moved to Jan 2025 meeting

• Item 10: COUNCIL DISCUSSION - GNSO Council PR Officer Update 

• Item 11: Any Other Business

  • 11.1 - GNSO Liaison to the GAC update

  • 11.2 - ICANN82 - funded travel emails were sent out, please action as past deadline

For notes on highlighted items click on MATTERS OF INTEREST tab above

Matters of interest to ALAC/At-Large (updated on 17 Dec 2024)

• Item 1: Administrative Matters

  • Minutes of the GNSO Council Meeting on 17 October  2024 were posted on 01 November 2024.

  • Minutes (Part 1) Minutes (Part 2) of the GNSO Council Meeting on 13 November 2024 were posted on 02 December 2024.

• Item 5: COUNCIL VOTE - Charter for Policy Development Process on Latin Script Diacritics

  • Following Council's adoption of a motion to initiate a Policy Development Process (PDP) on Latin Script Diacritics on 13 November 2024, a charter for the PDP needs to be adopted to action the PDP next steps.

  • This PDP has been informed by the Preliminary Issue Report which objective was for ICANN org to assess all relevant issues related to Council's request, and, following Community Input during the Public Comment phase, to recommend a course of action to Council. 

  • The PDP will be focused on the circumstance when an ASCII gTLD and the Latin script diacritic version of the gTLD are not variants of each other AND may be found to be visually similar to each other. The issue is theoretically possible for any existing ASCII or Latin script IDN gTLD pairs, and is essentially infinite for future applied-for ASCII or Latin script IDN gTLDs, where diacritics are involved.

  • The Final Issue Report had included a draft charter prepared by ICANN org supporting Council. Having discussed the draft charter, Council determined that edits were needed with respect to, but not limited to, the membership structure.  The amendments made are:

    • 1) limiting the scope of work;

    • 2) adjusting the membership structure to make it an “Open Model”; and

    • 3) including the Global Public Interest (GPI) Framework and its checklist as a reference for analysis when conducting the PDP, per the ICANN Board’s recommendation.

  • Council will vote on the updated charter.

• Item 6: COUNCIL DISCUSSION - EPDP Temporary Specification Phase 1, Recommendation 18 - Urgent Requests

  • ICANN org convened an Implementation Review Team to assist ICANN in implementing the EPDP on the Temporary Specification Phase 1 Final Report, which began meeting in May 2019. ICANN org published the draft Registration Data Policy for public comment on 24 August 2022. Several commenters expressed dissatisfaction with the implementation of Recommendation 18, specifically around the issue of the response timeline for urgent requests. The relevant portion of Recommendation 18 reads, “A separate timeline of [less than X business days] will considered for the response to ‘Urgent’ Reasonable Disclosure Requests, those Requests for which evidence is supplied to show an immediate need for disclosure [time frame to be finalized and criteria set for Urgent requests during implementation].”

  • After a series of correspondence between the Board and Council (3 June 2024 and 29 August 2024) and between the GAC and the Board (15 October 2024), a trilateral meeting of Council - GAC - Board was held on 4 November 2024 which discussed next steps, including potentially resuming discussions with the IRT.

  • Council will discuss GAC's proposal and determine next steps.

• Item 7: COUNCIL DISCUSSION - Request for Guidance from the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures / IDNs EPDP Phase 1 IRT

  • The New gTLD Subsequent Procedures (SubPro) PDP provided Recommendation 25.4 (approved by the ICANN Board) to allow single character gTLDs for ideographic scripts in the next round, provided that they do not introduce confusion risks that rise above commonplace similarities.  The IDNs EPDP Phase 1 Final Report put forth important additional detail and limitations on Rec 25.4, prescribing that the single character gTLDs be limited to the Han script and that applications must not be accepted until relevant guidelines are developed and put in place by the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) Generation Panels (GPs). Alternatively, the IDN EPDP concluded that if the CJK GPs determine that additional guidelines beyond the RZ-LGR are not needed, then the single character applications should proceed.

  • The matter was put out for public comment by the CJK Generation Panels.  Although the CJK GPs stated that the work done in the Root Zone Label Generation Rules (RZ-LGRs) sufficiently addresses the concerns around the risk of confusion for single character Han script gTLDs, the majority of the public comments on the CJK GPs’ statements opposed moving forward.   Commenters from the Chinese community expressed concerns about the lack of alignment with China’s linguistic laws and regulations, the complexities of Chinese character ideographs, and end-user confusion due to multiple meanings of many single characters.  One such comment received from a co-Chair of the CGP argues that the CGP should not be and was not involved in "risk of confusion" policy considerations related to single Han characters as TLDs.  Many of the comments call for further community work prior to proceeding. Similar concerns were received through the public comment on the relevant draft AGB sections.

  • This public comment was discussed with the Sub Pro IRT IDN Sub-Track which referred the matter to the main SubPro IRT.  The main SubPro IRT was asked by ICANN staff whether Recommendation 25.4 should be modified as not implementable or whether the issue should be reviewed with Council for possible further work.   It was agreed that the Liaisons should raise this with Council for direction on next steps.  A background document prepared by Lars Hoffman was shared with the Council on December 9.   Councillors are encouraged to review this write-up prior to the meeting.

  • Council will be briefed on the options for next steps, including a recommendation from the IRT Liaisons to refer this complex matter to a GNSO Guidance Process to determine the guidance necessary to allow Han single characters to proceed, with an acknowledgement that the GGP could well determine that Recommendation 25.4 and IDN EPDP Recommendation 3.17 as approved may not be implementable.  Due to time constraints, and the fact that both the SubPro and IDNs recommendations were conditional, Liaisons believe that the recommended GGP process should not hold up the next round.

• Item 8: COUNCIL UPDATE: EPDP Temporary Specification Phase 1 - Billing Contact

  • During ICANN81, the EPDP Temp Spec Phase 1 Implementation Review Team (IRT) expressed the view that the absence of a reference to billing contact data was a drafting error, and the EPDP Team intended for the collection of billing contact data to be optional and not mandatory.

  • The Registration Data Policy was published on 21 February 2024, and the policy has an effective date of 21 August 2025. The EPDP Phase 1 policy recommendations do not reference billing contact data, and the Registration Data Policy also makes no reference to billing contact data.

  • All Councilors were requested to consult with their respective groups to ensure that others are properly informed and agree with the interpretation raised by the registrars within the IRT. Accordingly, Councilors were asked to consult with their groups on the following questions:

    1. Does your group believe that billing contact data was in scope for the EPDP Temp Spec policy development? 

    2. If yes, does your group believe there was a drafting error in the EPDP Phase 1 Final Report because the intention of the recommendations, by not including a recommendation concerning the collection, escrow, etc of billing contact data was that the collection and retention of billing contact data should be optional and not mandatory? Note: If, as a matter of ICANN Consensus Policy this was the intended outcome, this interpretation would change current contractual requirements for registrars. 

  • Council will discuss next steps.

• Item 10:  DISCUSSION ITEM -  Request for Guidance from the Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs) PDP IRT on the Scope of Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) Recommendation 1  Moved to Jan 2025 meeting

  • There are currently diverging views within the Implementation Review Team (IRT) concerning the implementation of the Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS) Final Recommendation 1 in the RPM PDP Phase 1 Final Report. Specifically, there is disagreement regarding the scope of amendments to a complaint filed under the URS after the complainant receives the contact information from the URS Provider. As stated in URS Recommendation 1:

    • The Working Group recommends that URS Rule 3(b), and, where necessary, a URS Provider’s Supplemental Rules be amended to clarify that a Complainant must only be required to insert the publicly-available WHOIS/Registration Data Directory Service (RDDS) data for the domain name(s) at issue in its initial Complaint. Furthermore, the Working Group recommends that URS Procedure paragraph 3.3 be amended to allow the Complainant to update the Complaint within 2-3 calendar days after the URS Provider provides updated registration data related to the disputed domain name(s). 

  • The disagreement within the IRT centers on a limit on the scope of possible amendments to the complaint - some IRT members pointed out that if new information providing greater clarity to a claim becomes available after the party's identity is revealed, the complainant should be permitted to amend the Complaint to include this information. These IRT members believe that there doesn't seem to be any substantial harm in allowing the complainant to amend the Complaint beyond just putting in the contact details of the registrant.

  • A staff review of the PDP Working Group deliberations reveals that the WG did not discuss either expanding or limiting the scope of URS Recommendation 1.  For further details on the PDP IRT and original Working Group discussions, see the background document at https://gnso.icann.org/sites/default/files/policy/2024/draft/staff-summary-rpm-urs-rec1-en.pdf.

  • Since the IRT has not come to agreement, the next step, per the IRT Principles and Guidelines, is to raise the issue with the GNSO Council liaison. 

  • Council will receive an introduction to the topic from the GNSO Council Liaison to the IRT.

GNSO Council Meeting #12 of 2024 held on 19 Dec 2024 at 19:00 UTC: https://tinyurl.com/ybse6rda 

13:00 Los Angeles; 16:00 Washington DC; 21:00 London; 22:00 Paris; 00:00 Moscow (Friday); 08:00 Melbourne (Friday)

GNSO Council Meeting Remote Participation:  https://icann.zoom.us/j/92283565389?pwd=QnlHK1JSbzdiSFFZSjRjamxMTkNGdz09

Non-Council members are welcome to attend the call as listen-only observers.

Records of 19 Dec 2024 Meeting 

• Audio Recording

• Zoom Recording (includes chat and visual and rough transcript. To access the rough transcript, select the Audio Transcript tab)

• Transcript

• Minutes

Special Summary Report of 19 Dec 2024 Meeting to ALAC

For brevity, I will just highlight a few things here. For some of the issues, you can glean a wider perspective from GNSO Council Dec 2024 Matters of Interest and/or from GNSO Council Dec 2024 Meeting Records.

1. Consent Agenda

• Council adopted the GNSO Review of the ICANN81 Istanbul Communiqué on Issues of Importance (there was no GAC Advice provided for ICANN81) and this is to be communicated to the ICANN Board and the GAC.

• Council approved the Recommendations Report to the ICANN Board regarding the Phase 2 Final Recommendations from the EPDP on IDNs and this report is to be transmitted to the ICANN Board.

• Council confirmed GNSO Vice-Chair Tomslin Samme-NIar as GNSO's Empowered Community Representative.

2. Latin Script Diacritics

• Council adopted the PDP WG charter for Latin Script Diacritics, which included the following amendments: 1) limiting the scope of work; 2) adjusting the membership structure to make it an “Open Model”; 3) including the Global Public Interest (GPI) Framework and its checklist as a reference for analysis when conducting the PDP, per the ICANN Board’s recommendation. 

• Next Steps for the Latin Script Diacritics PDP, following up on the Council’s adoption of the WG charter, a Call for Volunteers for Members and Chair will be published in the beginning of January for confirmation by the end of January. The WG plans to kick-off in February.

3. Han Script Single Characters as TLDs

• The New gTLD Subsequent Procedures (SubPro) PDP provided Recommendation 25.4 (approved by the ICANN Board) to allow single character gTLDs for ideographic scripts in the next round, provided that they do not introduce confusion risks that rise above commonplace similarities.  The IDNs EPDP Phase 1 Final Report put forth important additional detail and limitations on Rec 25.4, prescribing that the single character gTLDs be limited to the Han script and that applications must not be accepted until relevant guidelines are developed and put in place by the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) Generation Panels (GPs). Alternatively, the IDN EPDP concluded that if the CJK GPs determine that additional guidelines beyond the RZ-LGR are not needed, then the single character applications should proceed.

• Although the CJK GPs stated that the work done in the Root Zone Label Generation Rules (RZ-LGRs) sufficiently addresses the concerns around the risk of confusion for single character Han script gTLDs, the majority of the public comments on the CJK GPs’ statements opposed moving forward.   Commenters from the Chinese community expressed concerns about the lack of alignment with China’s linguistic laws and regulations, the complexities of Chinese character ideographs, and end-user confusion due to multiple meanings of many single characters.  One such comment received from a co-Chair of the CGP argues that the CGP should not be and was not involved in "risk of confusion" policy considerations related to single Han characters as TLDs.  Many of the comments call for further community work prior to proceeding. Similar concerns were received through the public comment on the relevant draft AGB sections.

• This public comment was discussed with the Sub Pro IRT IDN Sub-Track which referred the matter to the main SubPro IRT.  The main SubPro IRT was asked by ICANN staff whether Recommendation 25.4 should be modified as not implementable or whether the issue should be reviewed with Council for possible further work.  

• Council discussed options for next steps, including a recommendation from the IRT Liaisons to refer this complex matter to a GNSO Guidance Process to determine the guidance necessary to allow Han single characters to proceed, with an acknowledgement that the GGP could well determine that Recommendation 25.4 and IDN EPDP Recommendation 3.17 as approved may not be implementable.  Due to time constraints, and the fact that both the SubPro and IDNs recommendations were conditional, Liaisons believe that the recommended GGP process should not hold up the next round.

• A small group of Councilors will review this issue in more detail and suggest next steps for Council's consideration.

Action by ALAC Liaison

• • Justine Chew to provide an update on the Han Script Single Characters as TLDs as and when an update becomes available

4. EPDP Temporary Specification Phase 1, Recommendation 18 - Urgent Requests

• ICANN org convened an Implementation Review Team to assist ICANN in implementing the EPDP on the Temporary Specification Phase 1 Final Report, which began meeting in May 2019. ICANN org published the draft Registration Data Policy for public comment on 24 August 2022. Several commenters expressed dissatisfaction with the implementation of Recommendation 18, specifically around the issue of the response timeline for urgent requests of registration data.

  • The relevant portion of Recommendation 18 reads, “A separate timeline of [less than X business days] will considered for the response to ‘Urgent’ Reasonable Disclosure Requests, those Requests for which evidence is supplied to show an immediate need for disclosure [time frame to be finalized and criteria set for Urgent requests during implementation].”

• A series of correspondence between the Board and Council (3 June 2024 and 29 August 2024) and between the GAC and the Board (15 October 2024) on this issue led to a trilateral meeting of Council - GAC - Board which was held on 4 November 2024 and which discussed next steps, including potentially resuming discussions with the IRT.

  • In bref, the GNSO and the Board's concerns revolved around whether disclosure of registration data was feasible when the requestor is not authenticated entity even if the requestor claims to be an LEA representative. The GAC then proposed the idea of starting work on an authentication method and for GNSO to start or continue policy work to support implementation of Recommendation 18.

  • Of note also is that the EPDP Phase 2 referred to a response timeline of one business day but not exceeding three calendar days in respect of the SSAD - System for Standardized Access/Disclosure (SSAD) but which also suffered the challenge of a lack of authentication mechanism for the requestor.

  • Further to the authentication mechanism aspect, any request would still be subject to other steps to determine its validity, regardless of the requestor, and whether the request is truly "urgent".  Therefore authentication of the requestor does not automatically lead to disclosure of data to the requestor and does not necessarily imply any urgency associated with a request.

  • And finally, the timeline refers to a response by the relevant registrar and not necessarily completion of a disclosure.

• Council discussed whether there needs to be additional policy work to be contemplated on the assumption that the authentication mechanism is in place. Council concluded that further clarification is needed and should be sought at the next trilateral meeting, including:

  • How is the work on GAC's proposed authentication mechanism progressing and what role could GNSO have in it (if at all);

  • A better understanding of what policy development work is contemplated by the GAC per its request;

  • Whether the issue of timeline could be within the remit of the IRT to resolve (assuming the authentication mechanism is in place) instead of any need to take on more policy development work.

• It was decided that Council leadership would take on the task of rationalizing the clarifications needed, formulate a correspondence to set the agenda for the next trilateral meeting. Council will discuss this output at its January 2025 meeting.

5. EPDP Temporary Specification Phase 1 - Billing Contact

• This is another issue arising from the EPDP Temp Spec Phase 1 Implementation Review Team (IRT) deliberations which that of a view that the EPDP Team had intended for the collection of billing contact data to be optional and not mandatory. 

• The EPDP Phase 1 policy recommendations do not reference billing contact data, and the Registration Data Policy published on 21 February 2024, which has an effective date of 21 August 2025, also makes no reference to billing contact data. However, the collection of and placement in escrow of billing contact data is an obligation under the 2013 RAA. And hence, in short, Council is being asked which position should be authoritative, in other words:

  • 1) Should billing contact data no longer be required, i.e, that it is optional

  • 2) Is this the case despite the fact that the EPDP Phase 1 policy recommendations makes no mention of billing contact either being optional or required.

  • 3) Noting that billing contact data is not something that is transferred as part of the RDDS or RDAP, but is instead separately collected under the registration data escrow specification, and it is not going to be included in a response to RDAP or RDDS

• Council decided to ask staff to provide more extensive background information for Council's better understanding.

GNSO Council Meeting #11 of 2024 held on 13 November 2024 

• Agenda

• Matters of Interest

• Meeting Details

• Meeting Record

• Special Summary Report

GNSO Council Meeting #11 of 2024 held on 13 Nov 2024 (as amended)

Full Agenda  |  Documents  |  Motions

• Item 1: Administrative Matters

• Item 2: Opening Remarks / Review of Projects List and Action Item List. 

• Item 3: Consent Agenda

  • Motion to Defer the Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs) Policy Development Process (PDP) Phase 2 for an Additional Six Months

• Item 4: COUNCIL VOTE - Motion to Adopt the Revised Charter for Permanent Standing Committee on Continuous Improvements (SCCI) 

• Item 5: COUNCIL VOTE - Expedited Policy Development Process on Internationalized Domain Names (EPDP-IDNs) Phase 2 Final Report

• Item 6: COUNCIL VOTE - Initiation of Policy Development Process for Latin Script Diacritics

• Item 7: COUNCIL DISCUSSION - Policy Status Report (PSR) on Rights Protection Mechanisms PDP Phase 2

• Item 8: COUNCIL DISCUSSION: Draft Charter on Latin Diacritics

• Item 9: COUNCIL UPDATE: Registration Data Request Service (RDRS) Standing Committee Update

• Item 10: COUNCIL DISCUSSION - GNSO Liaison to the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) Annual Report

• Item 11: GNSO Chair Q&A 

• Item 12: Any Other Business 

  • 12.1 - Ethics Policy & Statements of Interest (SOIs)

  • 12.2 - Review CIP-CCG’s proposed edits on continuous improvement

  • 12.3 - Farewell to Outgoing Councilors

  • 12.4 - Open Mic

For notes on highlighted items click on MATTERS OF INTEREST tab above

Matters of interest to ALAC/At-Large 

• Item 1: Administrative Matters

  • Minutes of the GNSO Council Meeting on 19 September 2024 were posted on 07 October 2024.

  • Minutes of the GNSO Council Meeting on 17 October  2024 were posted on 01 November 2024.

• Item 5: COUNCIL VOTE - Expedited Policy Development Process on Internationalized Domain Names (EPDP-IDNs) Phase 2 Final Report

  • In May 2021, Council voted to initiate the EPDP-IDNs that was tasked to develop policy recommendations that will eventually allow for the introduction of variant gTLDs at the top-level and build on the existing body of policy work on the IDN subject, specifically the Outputs produced by the GNSO New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process (SubPro PDP). The Team’s focus was to fill the gaps not addressed by the SubPro PDP, including applying SubPro PDP Outputs to existing gTLDs and second-level variant domains.

  • In November 2022, Council approved an EPDP Team request to divide its work into two phases, with Phase 1 covering topics related to top-level gTLD definition and variant management and Phase 2 pertaining to second-level variant management. The two-phased approach was intended to allow the EPDP Team to focus on the charter questions that are most likely to impact the implementation of the Next Round of the new gTLDs and avoid potential delays.

  • Council went on to approve the Phase 1 Final Report including all sixty-nine (69) policy recommendations and implementation guidance, in November 2023. 

  • The ICANN Board subsequently adopted a scorecard on the Phase 1 Final Report on 8 June 2024, plus another scorecard on 7 September 2024, leaving two (2) pending recommendations out of fifty-eight (58).

  • In October 2024, Council received a comprehensive overview from Donna Austin, Chair of the EPDP-IDNs, on the Phase 2 Final Report and the policy recommendations noting they all received full consensus designations.  The Phase 2 Final Report covers charter questions pertaining to second-level variant management on the following topics:

    • “Same entity” at the second-level and IDN Table harmonization

    • Adjustments in registry agreement, registry service, registry transition process, and other processes/procedures related to the domain name lifecycle

    • Adjustments in registration dispute-resolution procedures and trademark protection mechanisms

    • Process to update the IDN Implementation Guidelines

  •  Council will vote on the Phase 2 Final Report from the EPDP on IDNs.

• Item 6: COUNCIL VOTE - Initiation of Policy Development Process for Latin Script Diacritics

  • On 16 May 2024, Council passed a motion, requesting ICANN’s Policy Support Staff to draft a Preliminary Issue Report on Latin Script Diacritics. The objective of the Preliminary Issue Report was for ICANN org to assess all relevant issues related to Council's request, and, following Community Input during the Public Comment phase, to recommend a course of action to Council.

  • The Final Issue Report is focused on the circumstance when an ASCII gTLD and the Latin script diacritic version of the gTLD are not variants of each other AND may be found to be visually similar to each other. The issue is theoretically possible for any existing ASCII or Latin script IDN gTLD pairs, and is essentially infinite for future applied-for ASCII or Latin script IDN gTLDs, where diacritics are involved. On 16 May 2024, Council requested an Issue Report on this topic which once received, will aid in determining next steps. The Preliminary Issue Report opened for public comment on 18 July 2024 and closed with 41 submissions on 27 August 2024, a summary of which can be found in Annex B. The Final Issue Report includes a draft charter prepared by ICANN org supporting Council. Council may determine that edits are required before adopting the charter, in the event a PDP is initiated.

  • Council will vote on the recommendation from the Final Issue Report to initiate a Policy Development Process on Latin Diacritics.

• Item 7: COUNCIL DISCUSSION - Policy Status Report (PSR) on Rights Protection Mechanisms PDP Phase 2

  • On 18 February 2016, Council resolved to initiate a two-phased PDP to review all existing Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs) in all gTLDs. The Phase 1 Final Report issued by the PDP Working Group assessed the effectiveness of the relevant RPMs established as safeguards in the 2012 New gTLD Program, including the Trademark Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Procedure (TM-PDDRP); Sunrise and Trademark Claims services offered through the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH); and the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) dispute resolution procedure. Phase 2, when launched, will focus on a review of the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP), which has been an ICANN Consensus Policy since 1999.

  • ICANN org published a Policy Status Report (PSR) on the UDRP in March 2022. Council considered the PSR and expressed some concerns, such as that the manner of presentation of some of the data was rather misleading or indeed, in some cases, incorrect. Council agreed that it needed to further discuss those concerns prior to the Org engaging in any further work on the PSR.

  • Council will discuss preparatory elements for RPMS Phase 2, including the Policy Status Report.

• Item 8: COUNCIL DISCUSSION: Draft Charter on Latin Diacritics

  • Pursuant to item four on this Council agenda, the Final Issue Report includes a draft charter prepared by ICANN org supporting Council. Some Councilors expressed concerns with the membership model suggested in the charter and requested additional time to review the details with their respective groups.

  • Council will discuss if updates are needed to the draft charter for the PDP on Latin Diacritics.

• Item 9: COUNCIL UPDATE: Registration Data Request Service (RDRS) Standing Committee Update

  • In June 2023, Council approved a Charter for the Registration Data Request Service Standing Committee, which outlines the Standing Committee’s tasks.

  • Specifically, the Standing Committee is tasked to review the data that will be produced by ICANN org on a monthly basis following the launch of the RDRS (see data points outlined here). The Scoping Team is expected to analyze the data and consider: 

    • Assignment #1. Trends that can be identified over a month-by-month period; 

    • Assignment #2. Possible technical updates that should be considered to RDRS and/or related messaging and promotion (recognizing that the RDRS will only be running for a two-year period and limited resources may be available to implement such updates); 

    • Assignment #3. Specific lessons learned that should be factored into the consideration of how to proceed with the SSAD recommendations; 

    • Assignment #4. Suggestions to the Council for a proposed recommendation(s) to the ICANN Board in relation to the consideration of the SSAD recommendations.

  • The Standing Committee has been reviewing monthly data since the inception of the RDRS in November 2023 and Council will receive an update on the RDRS Standing Committee’s observations to date. 

• Item 12: Any Other Business 

  • 12.1 - Ethics Policy & Statements of Interest (SOIs)

GNSO Council Meeting #11 of 2024 held in  Istanbul, Türkiye on 13 Nov 2024 at 13:15 - 15:15 EEST: https://tinyurl.com/25kf4xs6  

Coordinated Universal Time: 10:15 - 12:15 UTC

02:12 Los Angeles; 05:15 Washington DC; 10:15 London; 11:15 Paris; 13:15 Moscow; 21:15 Melbourne 

GNSO Council Meeting Remote Participation: please refer to the ICANN81 Schedule

Non-Council members are welcome to attend the call as listen-only observers.

Records of 13 Nov 2024 Meeting

• Audio Recording (Part 1)

• Zoom Recording (Part 1) (includes chat and visual and rough transcript. To access the rough transcript, select the Audio Transcript tab)

• Minutes (Part 1) 

• Audio Recording (Part 2)

• Zoom Recording (Part 2) (includes chat and visual and rough transcript. To access the rough transcript, select the Audio Transcript tab)

• Minutes (Part 2)

• Zoom Recording (Wrap-up)

Special Summary Report of 13 Nov 2024 Meeting to ALAC

For brevity, I will just highlight a few things here. For some of the issues, you can glean a wider perspective from GNSO Council Nov 2024 Matters of Interest and/or from GNSO Council Nov 2024 Meeting Records.

1. Consent Agenda

• Council voted unanimously to defer the Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs) Policy Development Process (PDP) Phase 2 for an additional 6 months

2. Expedited Policy Development Process on Internationalized Domain Names (EPDP-IDNs) Phase 2 Final Report

• Council approved, and recommends that the ICANN Board adopt, all fourteen (14) final recommendations as documented in the EPDP-IDNs Phase 2 Final Report.

3. Latin Diacritics

•  Council resolved to initiate a Policy Development Process for Latin Diacritics. This PDP to start as soon as its PDP WG Charter is approved by Council.

• The WG charter is pending confirmation on 2 elements: (1) nature of the WG: whether Open or Open + Representative; and (2) clarity on narrow scope of PDP.

Action by ALAC Liaison

• • Justine Chew to report to ALAC if and when GNSO Council determines the charter of its PDP on Latin Script Diacritics and next steps

4. Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP)

• The Rights Protection Mechanisms PDP Phase 2 is the GNSO's intended review of the UDRP. Council posits that due to workload that GNSO is currently managing, the RPM PDP Phase 2 ought to be deferred for a further 6 months while Councilors considers how to improve upon the Policy Status Report (PSR) on RPMs PDP Phase 2 prepared by GNSO policy support staff.

• Council noted that WIPO and the Internet Commerce Association (ICA) has announced that they are jointly reviewing the UDRP independently of GNSO. Some councilors were unperturbed by this development; others opined that the WIPO-ICA review output could help inform the RPMs PDP Phase 2 work.

5. DNS Abuse 

• As an AOB, I requested that Council reinitiate / reconstitute the GNSO Council Small Team on DNS Abuse, given that the INFERMAL Report has been released by ICANN org, which was one of the reasons for suspending the work of that small team. The GNSO Chair acknowledged my request and Council leadership will take it into consideration in organizing Council's work moving forward.

Action by ALAC Liaison

• • Justine Chew to report to ALAC if and when GNSO Council determines next steps on the Small Team on DNS Abuse.

6. GNSO Council 2025 (per Council Meeting - Part 2)

• Greg DiBiase is returned as GNSO Chair for a second term, as are Tomslin Samme-Nlar and Nacho Amados, as Council Vice-Chairs for the NCPH and CPH, respectively.

• There are also several new Councilors: 

  • Vivek Goyal, replacing Mark Datysgeld, for BC

  • Farzaneh Badii and Julf Helsingius, replacing Stephanie Perrin and Wisdom Donkor, for NCSG

  • Sam Demetriou, replacing Kurt Pritz, for RySG

  • Hong-Fu Meng, who starts his own term, having served out the remainder of Antonia Chu's term, for RrSG

• The incumbent or returning Councilors are:
  

  • Paul McGrady, Desiree Miloshevic and Anne Aikman-Scalese, being the NomCom Appointees

  • Damon Ashcraft and Susan Payne, for IPC

  • Jennifer Chung and Nacho Amadoz, for RySG

  • Greg DiBiase and Prudence Malinki, for RrSG

  • Lawrence Owale-Roberts, for BC

  • Osvaldo Novoa and Thomas Rickert, for ISCPC

  • Manju Chen, Taiwo Peter Akinremi, Bruna Martins dos Santos, Tomslin Samme-Nlar, for NCSG 

• And there are new Liaisons:
  

  • Sebastien Ducos is the new GNSO Liaison to the GAC

  • Antonia Chu returns to Council as the ccNSO Liaison to the GNSO, having stepped down as a councilor from the RrSG earlier.

7. Registration Data Policy (RDP) (per Council Wrap-Up Session)

• The Registration Data Policy (RDP) resulted from the EPDP Phase 1, with the RDP now finalized and to be implemented soon. Since it needs to be read in conjunction with other documents - namely the Base RAA 2013. The RAA requires a billing contact data to be collected and put in escrow but the RDP, in superseding documents for registrar obligations, is silent on collection of billing contact data as well as such data being put in escrow, hence raising an inconsistency.

• Council needs to facilitate the publishing of an update RDP which states that collection and putting into escrow of billing contact data is optional, and to get ICANN Compliance's understanding on this approach to allow for what was intended and at the same time, disallow reopening discussion on any other aspect of the RDP.