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Board Activities and Meetings

View records of actions and decisions made by the ICANN Board from recent activities and meetings.

Preliminary Report | New gTLD Program Committee 1 February 2013

Note: On 10 April 2012, the Board established the New gTLD Program Committee, comprised of all voting members of the Board that are not conflicted with respect to the New gTLD Program. The Committee was granted all of the powers of the Board (subject to the limitations set forth by law, the Articles of incorporation, Bylaws or ICANN's Conflicts of Interest Policy) to exercise Board-level authority for any and all issues that may arise relating to the New gTLD Program. The full scope of the Committee's authority is set forth in its charter at http://www.icann.org/en/groups/board/new-gTLD.

Formal Minutes are still to be approved by the New gTLD Program Committee. This has not been approved by the New gTLD Program Committee and does not constitute minutes but does provide a preliminary attempt setting forth the unapproved reporting of the resolutions from that meeting. Details on voting and abstentions will be provided in the Minutes, when approved at a future meeting.

NOTE ON ADDITIONAL INFORMATION INCLUDED WITHIN PRELIMINARY REPORT – ON RATIONALES -- Where available, a draft Rationale for each of the Board's actions is presented under the associated Resolution. A draft Rationale is not final until approved with the minutes of the Board meeting.

A Meeting of the New gTLD Program Committee of the ICANN Board of Directors was held on 1 February 2013 at 5:00 pm local time in Los Angeles, California.

Committee Chairman Cherine Chalaby promptly called the meeting to order.

In addition to the Chair the following Directors participated in all or part of the meeting: Fadi Chehadé (President and CEO), Chris Disspain, Bill Graham, Olga Madruga-Forti, Erika Mann, Gonzalo Navarro, Ray Plzak, George Sadowsky, Mike Silber, Judith Vazquez, and Kuo-Wei Wu.

Thomas Narten, IETF Liaison and Francisco da Silva, TLG Liaison, were in attendance as non-voting liaisons to the committee.

Heather Dryden, GAC Liaison, was in attendance as an invited observer.

ICANN Staff in attendance for all or part of the meeting: John Jeffrey, General Counsel and Secretary; Megan Bishop, Michelle Bright, Samantha Eisner, Dan Halloran, Karen Lentz, Denise Michel, Margie Milam, Cyrus Namazi, David Olive, Diane Schroeder, Amy Stathos, and Christine Willett.

This is a preliminary report the Meeting of the New gTLD Program Committee, which took place on 1 February 2013.

  1. Consent Agenda:
    1. Approval of Minutes of New gTLD Program Committee Meeting of January 10 2013
  2. Main Agenda:
    1. Update on Addressing GAC Advice on Enforcing Applicants' Commitments
    2. Monthly Status Reporting

 

  1. Consent Agenda:

    The Chair introduced the Consent Agenda, and called for a vote. The New gTLD Program Committee took the following action:

    1. Approval of Minutes of New gTLD Program Committee Meeting of January 10 2013

      Resolved (2013.02.01.NG01), the New gTLD Program Committee approves the minutes of the 10 January 2013 Meeting of the New gTLD Program Committee.

    All members of the New gTLD Program Committee approved of Resolution 2013.02.01.NG01. The Resolution carried.

  2. Main Agenda:

    1. Update on Addressing GAC Advice on Enforcing Applicants' Commitments

      The Committee received an update on the new format of Board briefing papers, and then proceeded to a discussion regarding the proposal of a mechanism to address the GAC advice on enforcement of applicant commitments contained in applications. The Committee noted that the recommendation presented was addressing this posting of this process for public comment as part of the revisions to the Registry Agreement, though some discussion on the proposed mechanism was necessary in order to give the Committee a deeper understanding of how this mechanism would work if implemented. The Committee also engaged in a discussion about the use of the term "public interest" in this context.

      The Committee then took the following action:

      Whereas, applicants for new gTLDs identified certain purposes of the applied for gTLD and certain business plans that they intend to incorporate into the operation of their registry, but much of these plans are not currently anticipated to be incorporated as obligations into Registry Agreements.

      Whereas, the GAC's Toronto Communiqué includes advice to ICANN that "it is necessary for all of these statements of commitment and objectives to be transformed into binding contractual commitments, subject to compliance oversight by ICANN."

      Whereas the New gTLD Program Committee has devised a proposed mechanism to address the advice of the GAC.

      Resolved (2013.02.01.NG02), the New gTLD Program Committee directs the President and CEO to seek public comment on a proposed mechanism to address the GAC advice on these additional applicant commitments.

      All members of the New gTLD Program Committee approved of Resolution 2013.02.01.NG01. The Resolution carried.

      Rationale for Resolution 2013.02.01.NG02

      It is important to determine if it is possible to address the advice received from the GAC on this issue. Creating a mechanism through which applicants will make binding commitments to ICANN in alignment with their applications could serve to promote the transparency and accountability of all within the ICANN community. While work still remains in developing this mechanism, it is anticipated that the creation of these binding commitments will benefit the public interest.

      The work called for in this resolution will require resources to complete, though it is not anticipated that this planning work will exceed budgeted resources. If properly implemented, the introduction of a mechanism to incorporate additional binding commitments could result in a positive benefit on the security, stability and resiliency of the DNS.

    2. Monthly Status Reporting

      No resolution taken. The Committee received its update for the month of February on the status of the New gTLD Program and overall program activity.

      The Chair called the meeting to a close.

Published on 12 February 2013

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