Minutes | Special Meeting of the Board 1 June 2005

A Special Meeting of the ICANN Board of Directors was held via teleconference on 1 June 2005 and was called to order at 7:38 AM, Pacific Daylight Time.

Chairman Vinton G. Cerf presided over the entire meeting. The following other Board Directors participated in all or part of the meeting: Raimundo Beca, Demi Getschko, Hagen Hultzsch, Joichi Ito, Veni Markovski, Michael D. Palage, Alejandro Pisanty, Hualin Qian, , Vanda Scartezini, and Paul Twomey., and, were not present for the vote. The following Board Members were not present for the Board Meeting: Mouhamet Diop, Thomas Niles, Njeri Rionge and Peter Dengate Thrush.

The following Board Liaisons participated in all or part of the meeting: Steve Crocker, Security and Stability Advisory Committee Liaison; Roberto Gaetano, At Large Advisory Committee Liaison; John Klensin, IETF Liaison; Richard Thwaites, Technical Liaison Group Liaison; and Suzanne Woolf, Root Server System Advisory Committee Liaison. The following liaisons were not present for the Board Meeting: Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi, Governmental Advisory Committee Liaison;

John Jeffrey, General Counsel and Board Secretary participated in the meeting. The following ICANN staff members also participated in the meeting: John Crain, Chief Technology Officer and Kurt J. Pritz, Vice President of Business Operations. At the request of ICANN’s Board, ICANN’s outside counsel Joe Sims of Jones Day also joined the call.

Chairman Vint Cerf made some opening remarks and then the Board engaged in discussion regarding the following items and in some cases adopted resolutions, as set forth below:

Strategic Plan

No action was taken on the Strategic Plan and discussion of the matter was continued until the next Board Meeting scheduled for 7 June 2005.

.XXX sTLD Approval to Enter into Contractual Negotiations

Vinton Cerf introduced the discussion which was carried over from the last Board Meeting. The topics of discussion among board members, liaisons and staff surrounded the adequacy of the application with particular focus on the “sponsored community” issues among others. Hagen Hultzsch moved for a vote on the below resolutions and Joichi Ito seconded the following resolution:

Resolved [05.32] the Board authorizes the President and General Counsel to enter into negotiations relating to proposed commercial and technical terms for the .XXX sponsored top-level domain (sTLD) with the applicant.

Resolved [05.33] if after entering into negotiations with the .XXX sTLD applicant the President and General Counsel are able to negotiate a set of proposed commercial and technical terms for a contractual arrangement, the President shall present such proposed terms to this board, for approval and authorization to enter into an agreement relating to the delegation of the sTLD.

The Board approved these resolutions by a vote of 6-3 with two abstentions.

Affirmative votes were cast by Vinton Cerf, Hagen Hultzsch, Joichi Ito, Veni Markovski, Vanda Scartezini, and Paul Twomey. Negative votes were cast by Raimundo Beca, Alejandro Pisanty and Hualin Qian. The following Board Members abstained from voting: Demi Getschko and Michael Palage.

.NET Successor Registry Process

Vint Cerf introduced the issues. The Board, Liaisons, Staff and outside counsel engaged in extensive discussions surrounding this issue, including discussion regarding the RFP process, public comment, supporting organization comments, and the Telcordia report and subsequent letter in response to issues raised by the applicants. Raimundo Beca raised clarifying questions and staff responded to his questions. In the end, no board action was taken during this meeting on the .NET issues.

Near the end of the discussion, Hagen Hultzsch moved and Vinton Cerf seconded a motion to select the proposal of VeriSign, Inc. to continue its operation of the .NET registry, to approve the proposed agreement with VeriSign, and to authorize the President to take such actions as appropriate to implement the agreement. The resolution was neither approved, nor disapproved. The recorded vote was 5-2, with 4 abstentions.

The vote on this resolution did not constitute an action by the Board because it lacked the requisite majority of the Board Members present, as required under the ICANN Bylaws, Article VI, Section 17.

Affirmative votes were cast by Vinton Cerf, Hagen Hultzsch, Veni Markovski, Hualin Qian and Paul Twomey. Negative votes were cast by Alejandro Pisanty and Vanda Scartezini. The following Board Members abstained from voting: Raimundo Beca, Demi Getschko, Joichi Ito and Michael Palage.

The Board agreed to take up the .NET issues again in its next Board Meeting scheduled for 7 June 2005.

The Meeting was adjourned at 9:33 AM, Pacific Daylight Time.