Sections are:

• JPA/Affirmation
• Applicant Guidebook/new gTLDs
• Fast Track/IDNs
• Public comment periods
• Seoul meeting
• And the remainder

JPA/Affirmation
Last Wednesday, 30 September 2009, the Joint Project Agreement with the US government ended and in its place a new Affirmation of Commitments was signed.

This is obviously of enormous significance to ICANN, so it currently sits front and center on the ICANN front page. We have an announcement, the Affirmation itself, a video of CEO Rod Beckstrom explaining its significance, and reaction from the community. The Affirmation has been signed but obviously there is much that the community now needs to discuss, and that conversation will start in Seoul.

Applicant Guidebook / new gTLDs
The third version of the Applicant Guidebook was released today. It’s all out for public comment, as we have done twice before. We are gradually moving forward with the overarching issues and, again, Seoul will be place to have more discussions.

It is worth pointing out that today, Monday 5 October, is the document deadline for Seoul (15 working days before the start of the meeting), which is why so much stuff has appeared in the past few days. The idea is that everyone will now have plenty of time to read the documents and so be in a position to talk about their contents at Seoul.

The full rundown of documents can be found at http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/comments-3-en.htm, including red-lined versions so you can see what has changed.

Fast Track
This is the process for introducing internationalized domain names (IDNs) into the root – but only those that related to territories i.e. ccTLDs. The Fast Track final implementation plan was published last week for public comment, and the plan is to have the Board authorize it at the Seoul meeting (end of this month).

So, this is the last chance to have a look and have your say before it actually happens. You can find all the information you should need for that process at http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-30sep09-en.htm.

Public comment periods
As usual in the build-up to a meeting, we have a raft of public comment periods. Ignoring the ones for the Applicant Guidebook and Fast Track, both of which are mentioned above, we have also opened comment periods on:

• A root-scaling study by TNO
• The use of proxy services for domain registration i.e. people paying to ensure their personal details do not appear publicly as the owner of a particular domain name
• Board review final report i.e. the changes to be made to the Board itself as part of the ongoing independent review process
• SSAC review report – same as Board report above but not as far along in the process
• NomCom review report – same as SSAC above

Seoul meeting
Why we have this glut of material is, of course, the upcoming Seoul meeting at the end of October.

With respect to the meeting itself, there are several other pieces of information:

• The agenda is live - check it out to see what is going on, when and who will be speaking
• If you can’t attend, you can ask questions in the public forum online
• If you haven’t see it yet, the meeting has its own website at http://sel.icann.org

And the remainder
And there’s still more:

• Nairobi fellowship applications
• A new process for registry security requests
• A bulk transfer advisory

Hopefully that helps breaks down the work into manageable chunks. If you still have queries, please add them as a comment below.

Андрей Колесников, директор КЦ .ру:
Прекращение действия Соглашения о совместной реализации проекта между Министерством торговли США и корпорацией ICANN – крайне важное событие для российского Интернета.
Уже давно было очевидно, что JPA носит символический характер, оставаясь приметой прошлого, когда США были и основным спонсором, и главным действующим лицом в развитии Интернета.
Динамичное развитие Глобальной сети, бурный рост количества ее пользователей по всему миру, число которых уже в разы превосходит сообщество пользователей в Северной Америке, привело к тому, что Соглашение стало тормозом для развития процессов интернационализации и демократизации управления Сетью, реализации инициатив по принципу «снизу вверх».
С отменой соглашения у мирового сообщества и России, в частности, появляется реальная возможность оказывать непосредственное влияние на определение стратегических направлений развития Сети при соблюдении интересов всех основных ее акторов.
Отныне новым вызовом в сфере управления Интернет становится необходимость поиска общемирового консенсуса по выработке новых правил и процедур управления Сетью. Для нас крайне важно не растерять накопленный опыт в этой сфере и обеспечить цельность и связанность Интернета – слишком ценен этот ресурс и слишком велики были инвестиции в его развитие, чтобы позволить себе роскошь радикальной ломки устоявшихся основ этой уникальной структуры.
Мне хотелось бы отметить, что отмена JPA в его историческом формате является результатом движения не только политических сил, но и в большой степени самой корпорации ICANN. В связи с этим мне хочется пожелать коллегам интернетчикам и дальше поддерживать высокие стандарты в области технологий, процессов и процедур и не стесняться демонстрировать уникальность интернет-явления под названием ICANN.

President and CEO Paul Twomey is representing ICANN on a panel of six, in front of the Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet.

You can find Twomey’s testimony on the ICANN presentations page at http://www.icann.org/presentations/, or follow this direct link to a pdf of it. And you can view the other testimonies on the Committee webpage here.

The meeting was webcast and comes in two parts (from the Subcommittee website). ICANN is also filming proceedings and will upload a video soon.

Part 1: Stream | Download
Part 2: Stream | Download

• Security and stability
• Accountability and Transparency

Last week, ICANN announced a whole security and stability plan [pdf] and opened up a public comment period on it. But that’s not what this blog post is about.

The thing that you didn’t realize was on the ICANN site (part 5) is actually the organization’s extensive response to the accountability and transparency question.

It is ICANN’s “Accountability and Transparency Frameworks and Principles” and they were approved well over a year ago by the Board, following no less than 16 months of community consultation (you can see the first public comment period back in October 2006 here).

This document was created in order to answer the simple question: how is ICANN held accountable and to whom? And the answer cames in three parts:

1. Accountability in the Public Sphere
2. Legal and Corporate accountability
3. Accountability to the participating community

The document then gives a full rundown of the organization’s status, its legal obligations, its bylaws, its promises to the community, its principles, where all the information it produces can be found and pretty much everything you could want to know about transparency and accountability at ICANN.

The result, nearly 16 months later, has been much less discussion – and so, presumably, concern – about transparency and accountability and ICANN. But there are two reasons why it is worth flagging the frameworks and principles again (and most likely reminding a few of you of their existence).

For one, as new participants arrive and try to understand ICANN, sooner or later they arrive at an inevitable question: who is in charge of ICANN? And who holds it accountable to its decisions?

It’s not a simple answer because ICANN is not a traditional organization; it is as unique as the domain name system it coordinates. But if you read through the document you can see how ICANN has been structured and what the various systems are that have been put in place to make sure that it remains accountable to the wider Net community.

Improving Institutional Confidence

The second reason to review the frameworks and principles is because of the Improving Institutional Confidence (IIC) consultation that is going on at the moment and which aims to adjust or expand on what is there already so that people can feel comfortable with the conclusion of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) that ICANN has with the US government.

The IIC will have a special session in a month’s time in Sydney, and the JPA will conclude at the end of September. So it is worth reviewing where ICANN currently is, and think ahead to where it can and should be.

You can find the full Accountability and Transparency Frameworks and Principles online and can also download them as a pdf document. Enjoy.

Previous things you didn’t realize

Part 4: Community translation requests
Part 3: Scorecard
Part 2: IDN Glossary
Part 1: Virtual Bookshelf

Read the report in full here [pdf]

The report includes information on the three major initiatives ICANN undertook last year (and which continue this year): the process for introducing new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) to the Internet; the introduction for the first time of internationalized domain names (IDNs); and an extensive Improving Institutional Confidence consultation, to enable the conclusion of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the United States government in September 2009.

Reports from the chairs of ICANN’s Supporting Organization and Advisory Organizations are included alongside detailed rundowns of each department by the organization’s staff.

Additionally, since it is 10 years since ICANN’s inception a brief history of the organization, split into its 33 international public meetings, is included, alongside a special memorial note to Jon Postel, one of the Internet’s pioneers, from former ICANN chairman Vinton Cerf.

Further contents include:

• Biographical details on each of the Board of Directors
• Highlights of the organization’s Strategic and Operating Plans
• An in-depth look at the New Delhi, Paris and Cairo meetings
• Messages from the CEO and Chairman
• The audit report for ICANN, 2007-2008
• ICANN’s compensation practices and salary structures for the corporate officers

Here’s what the chairman had to say in the official announcement: “I am delighted to announce the release of our third annual report,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN’s Chairman of the Board of Directors. “In this our tenth year ICANN and its community either accomplished or made significant progress toward many goals for the Domain Name System.”

“The Internet is growing and evolving at an accelerating pace,” Dengate Thrush continued. “The next billion users will demand more innovative products and services, will access the Internet largely through mobile devices, and will expect to be able to do so in their own languages and language scripts. ICANN’s efforts are geared towards developing policies and technologies that will satisfy this next-generation Internet.”

The complete annual report is available at: http://www.icann.org/en/annualreport/annual-report-2008-en.pdf.

Les grands sujets de la réunion de Paris ont également été abordés : IDNs, nouvelles extensions, Joint Project Agreement… Certains participants ont témoigné des inquiétudes des entreprises face aux questions de protection de leur propriété intellectuelle, notamment dans la cadre de l’éventuelle sortie de nouvelles extensions ou de la généralisation des IDNs. Anne-Rachel Inné et Massimiliano Minisci, respectivement responsables des relations avec l’Afrique et l’Europe pour l’ICANN, ont donné un message fort : l’ICANN, c’est nous tous ! En participant à ses réunions, en s’impliquant dans son fonctionnement, tous peuvent faire entendre leur voix et prendre en compte leurs inquiétudes. Car au final, lorsque le Conseil d’administration prend une décision, il le fait en prenant en compte ce que lui remonte la communauté.

De quoi inciter les entreprises françaises à profiter de la première réunion internationale de l’ICANN organisée à Paris pour y participer et ainsi approfondir leurs connaissances des différents collèges – gouvernements, business, registrars, registries, extensions nationales, techniques, ALAC – qui font la richesse et la diversité de l’ICANN. D’ailleurs, il a été rappelé que même si les inscriptions enligne sont maintenant fermées, il reste tout à fait possible de venir s’enregistrer directement sur place pour la réunion. Un enregistrement gratuit, et ouvert à tous, comme la plupart des ateliers et autres réunions prévus au programme de Paris.

Ainsi, pour Paris, plusieurs nouveautés sont au programme. Les habitués remarqueront le planning raccourci d’un jour. Traditionnellement, les réunions se terminent le vendredi matin par la réunion du Conseil d’administration. Pour Paris, cette réunion a été avancée au jeudi. Une modification finalement assez complexe à mettre en œuvre, puisqu’il a fallu retravailler plusieurs éléments du planning et pas uniquement la réunion du Conseil. Le but de cette semaine raccourcie est de réduire les coûts, mais aussi de laisser aux participants le loisir de profiter de Paris au mois de juin s’ils le souhaitent.

Autre nouveauté, un thème “business”. Les ateliers et les réunions concernés seront ainsi étiquetés afin de mieux identifier les sujets pouvant intéresser les entreprises. Il s’agit d’impliquer les entreprises au maximum dans le processus des réunions ICANN. Les anglais appellent ça “outreach”, c’est-à-dire “aller vers” les gens. C’est l’un des aspects clefs du modèle multi-acteurs de l’ICANN. A Paris, l’ambition sera donc de permettre aux entreprises d’identifier plus facilement les ateliers susceptibles de les intéresser ou de les concerner.

Toujours au chapitre “changement de programme”, le public forum a été scindé en trois parties pour cette 32e réunion ICANN. Véritable tradition, le public forum se présente à la fois comme une tribune libre où tous peuvent s’exprimer, et comme une grande réunion d’information donnant aux membres des différents comités et groupes de travail ainsi qu’aux équipes de l’ICANN l’occasion de faire le point sur leurs actualités respectives. La première partie du public forum aura lieu le lundi 23 juin. C’est à cette occasion que le président de l’ICANN présentera son rapport. Il y aura une deuxième séance le mercredi 25 juin. Troisième et dernière partie le lendemain, avec notamment la présentation des différents rapports évoqués plus haut.

La réunion de Paris promet par ailleurs de donner lieu à plusieurs discussions intéressantes. Sur les nouveaux gTLD, d’abord. Un atelier spécial est organisé autour de ce sujet qui intéresse énormément. Y seront posées les grandes questions autour de l’augmentation éventuelle du nombre d’extensions Internet.

Un autre dossier clef sera la politique de traduction de l’ICANN. La volonté est en effet de s’ouvrir de plus en plus à d’autres langues que l’anglais. Mais pour y arriver, de nombreux paramètres sont à étudier : comment financer ce type d’initiative, quelle portée ou quelle envergure lui donner, etc. ?. A l’occasion de la réunion de Paris, les francophones pourront donner leurs avis et faire connaître leurs suggestions.

Le dernier point fort de la réunion de Paris sera la discussion autour du JPA, le “Joint Project Agreement” avec le gouvernement américain. Certes, ceux qui découvrent l’ICANN ne percevront peut-être pas immédiatement l’importance de ce dossier. Pourtant, c’est de l’indépendance de l’ICANN dont il est question. Là encore, les opportunités d’en discuter publiquement et ouvertement seront réelles lors de la réunion de Paris.

Full transcript below:

Hello. My name is Paul Twomey, and I’m the President and CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — or ICANN.

ICANN is an international, non-profit organization created in 1998 by the Internet community in response to a call from the United States government to coordinate a key part or what enables billions of computers and other devices worldwide to connect quickly and easily with one another and to share information between themselves.

This system, known technically as ‘unique identifiers’, includes such things as domain names and internet protocol addresses. Without that system, the internet as we know it simply would not exist.

The blueprint for this new institution was as unique as the Internet itself. Recognizing that a global addressing system this powerful should not be managed by one interest group or one individual, a new type of multi-stakeholder model was envisioned where all parties would sit down, devise and agree a policy before it was implemented.

This institution, ICANN, was specifically designed to be led by the private sector. Indeed, it was the President of the United States who directed that this should occur.

In 2006, however, the memorandum of understanding between the United States government and ICANN was changed to recognize the significant progress ICANN had made. The community and ICANN have achieved more in 2007 than in any previous year.

Now, the United States government is asking people for their comments in a review of the agreement. Over the past nine years ICANN has built an Internet-style liberty where anyone at all can get involved in developing the policies that help define the Internet’s future expansion.

What the past nine years has taught us, however, is that there are no signs of the internet’s capacity for change ending. The steady state of the internet is in fact a state of change.

And so ICANN, as a body that seeks to keep pace with the internet’s twist and turns, has learned to embrace change going so far as to hardwire it into its constitution. Change has become part of ICANN’s makeup. It simply has to be.

We must always strive to do more to serve today’s 1.1 billion users of the internet and tomorrow’s billions more.

What has happened since 1998 could hardly have been imagined when the United States government first helped create ICANN. And with hindsight the original plan to grant the organizational autonomy within two years was profoundly optimistic.

But over the course of ICANN’s nine years the organization has developed from the ground up to become a stable and transparent body where coordination is valued above control; and where no one party can claim precedence over another.

At ICANN meetings held three times annually individuals from every corner of the globe and significantly from every corner of society sit and debate the future policies of the internet’s naming and addressing system.

It is evidence that the organization is fulfilling its mandate and responsibilities. For example, input from the community has shaped our principles and frameworks for accountability and transparency which you can find on this website. [http://icann.org/transparency/acc-trans-frameworks-principles-10jan08.pdf]

The international board of ICANN believes that ICANN is fulfilling the responsibilities it assumed in the JPA back in 2006. Moreover, the move towards greater community ownership has led to more effective and more efficient policy development.

As such, ICANN believes it is now time to take the next logical step and recognize the successful completion of the joint project agreement. This will not change the way things are done now to coordinate the internet’s addressing system.

It could, in fact, be a move that makes it more secure as the model is enshrined rather than being perceived to be still being evaluated by one government. Let me be clear.

We’re not talking about terminating the JPA tomorrow, but it’s equally clear that the model ICANN represents of coordination–not control– of multi-stakeholder participation and led by the private sector needs to be confirmed once and for all.

Until the 15th of February, the United States Department of Commerce will be receiving comments from the public. If you think now is the time for another step in creating confidence in a globally coordinated internet–not a controlled one– then now is the time to make your voice heard.

To find out more, please read the ICANN JPA submission for more detail. You’ll find that here on the ICANN website under the heading ‘Joint Project Agreement, ICANN’s Response.

Thank you for listening.

В опубликованном заключении (pdf) говорится о том, что окончательная версия JPA станет очередным шагом на пути к независимости ICANN и выводу системы доменных имен (DNS) из-под контроля Правительства США.

“Утверждение Совместного Проектного Соглашения обеспечит долгосрочную стабильность и безопасность существующей сегодня модели [управления Интернетом]“, – считает Питер Денгейт Траш, Председатель Совета директоров ICANN. – “Соглашение даст всем уверенность в том, что работа, длившаяся более девяти лет, сделала процесс управления Интернетом более безопасным и обеспечила его подконтрольность всем заинтересованным сторонам”.

Американские власти начали вывод DNS из-под своего контроля еще в 1998 году. С тех пор было опубликовано 13 отчетов о ходе этого процесса. По мнению представителей ICANN, окончание работы над JPA докажет успешностьпредпринятых ранее шагов.

Совет директоров корпорации призывает интернет-сообщество принять участие в обсуждении Промежуточного обзора и до 15 февраля 2008 года направить в Министерство торговли США свои предложения по его доработке. Примечательно, что российские пользователи могут делать это на русском языке.

___

* – Из РуЦентр

Depuis ses débuts, le travail de l’ICANN est suivi de près par le gouvernement américain. La progression de l’ICANN a été ponctuée par des accords successifs, appelés Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) en anglais, avec ce gouvernement.

En 2006, un accord différent a été conclu, le Joint Project Agreement (JPA). Trait commun aux deux types d’accords, ils sont basés sur une vraie collaboration. Les deux parties travaillent ensemble pour fixer les objectifs à atteindre.

Le JPA pose très clairement la question : où souhaitons-nous aller maintenant ? Vers un autre accord bilatéral, ou entrons-nous de plein pied dans l’étape suivante du processus de transition ?

Vous avez certainement un avis sur la question. Alors si vous souhaitez voir l’ICANN continuer d’avancer, n’hésitez pas à répondre à l’appel à commentaires du gouvernement américain. La date limite est fixée au 15 février 2008.

(Vous pouvez aussi utiliser l’email du Département du Commerce américain pour envoyer des commentaires).

Voir les posts en français du blog de l’ICANN.