IP: Press Release: TWO ICANN SUPPORTING ORGANIZATIONS CREATED; OPERAT IONAL RESOLUTIONS PASSED AT BERLIN MEETING OF ICANN INITIAL BOARD

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>The Internet Association For Assigned Names and Numbers
>
>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
>
>TWO ICANN SUPPORTING ORGANIZATIONS CREATED; OPERATIONAL RESOLUTIONS PASSED
>AT BERLIN MEETING OF ICANN INITIAL BOARD
>
>BERLIN, THURSDAY May 27, 1999 - At a meeting today in Berlin, the Initial
>Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
>called its Domain Names Supporting Organization into being, accepted an
>application to establish a Protocol Supporting Organization, considered how
>to handle some of the intellectual property issues relating to the
>Internet's Domain Name system, reaffirmed its intention to create a system
>that will permit individuals to select At-Large Directors as soon as
>possible and adopted several other operational resolutions.
>
>The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a new,
>non-profit, international corporation formed to oversee the Internet's core
>technical management functions. By September 2000, ICANN will have taken
>over responsibility for coordinating the management of the Domain Name
>system, the allocation of IP address spaces, the coordination of the
>adoption of new Internet protocol parameters, and the management of the
>Internet's root server system. 
>
>A global agreement on managing these functions is crucial to the Internet,
>the network that connects millions of different computers and the people who
>use them. ICANN is still in its formative stages. Its Initial Board's
>primary task is to complete the organization of a system of checks and
>balances to ensure that the Internet's infrastructure is managed to meet the
>legitimate needs all parties interested in its development.
>
>ICANN made great progress in this direction during a series of meetings in
>Berlin from May 25th  to 27th.  These meetings included the Government
>Advisory Committee meeting (which issued its own press release), the
>Membership Advisory Committee meeting  (whose task is to make
>recommendations to the Board on the creation of a representative, global and
>democratic membership system), and constitutive meetings of ICANN's Domain
>Names Supporting Organization (more information on these meetings, including
>in some cases an audio and a video record, are available on the ICANN web
>site at www.icann.org). They culminated in the Initial Board meeting on May
>27th. 
>
>The first significant decision the Initial Board took today was the
>provisional recognition of six self-organized Constituency Organizations
>representing parties interested in the management of the Domain Name System
>from six different perspectives.  The constituencies, who will elect the
>Names Council to act as the governing body of the Domain Name Supporting
>Organization (DNSO), are the core of the DNSO. The DNSO is one of the three
>supporting organizations required by ICANN's bylaws (the others are the
>Address SO and the Protocol SO).
>
>Like its two siblings, the PSO and the ASO, the DNSO will eventually elect
>three of the 19 Directors who will constitute ICANN's full Board. The DNSO
>will also prepare recommendations to the Initial Board regarding ICANN's
>policy oversight of the Internet's Domain Name System (which translates the
>Internet's numerical addresses into things humans can understand, like
>www.icann.org). The issues it will eventually be grappling with include the
>establishment of dispute settlement mechanisms, reconciling the conflicting
>interests of various Domain Name holders, and whether, how and when to
>expand the number of top-level domains (such as .com).
>
>The six recognized constituency organizations represent:
>? the registries for country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs, such as .de,
>.uk or .jp)
>? commercial and business entities
>? the registries for generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs - such as .com, .org
>and .net)
>? intellectual property interests
>? Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other providers of Internet
>connectivity, and 
>? registrars (the companies that register the names under which individuals
>or corporations wish to be known on the Web, such as www.greeneurope.org or
>www.ibm.com)
>
>The Initial Board deferred the recognition of the seventh constituency,
>designed to represent non-commercial Domain Name holders. "Their proposal
>was not yet mature enough," Dyson said. "The Initial Board asked the groups
>wishing to set it up to collaborate on a new proposal for us to consider
>next month."
>
>The Initial Board further asked that the gTLD constituency, which currently
>has only one member (Network Solutions Inc.), nominate only one member to
>the Names Council (rather than the three provided in the bylaws for each
>constituency group).
>
>Organizing meetings for all seven would-be constituencies were held on the
>morning of May 25th. A provisional DNSO General Assembly which met
>thereafter heard their reports and began a fruitful discussion on some of
>the substantive issues referred to above. Dennis Jennings, the Chairman of
>CENTR (the Council of European Top-level Domain Name Registries) was
>appointed acting Chairman of the DNSO General Assembly by public
>acclamation. He said, "I am delighted with the speed with which the Initial
>Board recognized the six constituency groups. The Initial Board's decision
>to create a provisional Names Council finely balances due process with the
>need to start substantive work. Just as importantly, it accurately reflects
>the tenor of the public discussions of the past two days."
>
>The constitutive work for a second Supporting Organization, the Protocol
>Supporting Organization, was also sufficiently advanced to be accepted by
>the Initial Board, which consequently passed a resolution welcoming the
>PSO's formation and asked its prospective members (Internet standards
>development organizations such as the IETF, the World Wide Web Consortium,
>the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the
>International Telecommunications Union) to prepare a Memorandum of
>Understanding formalizing the PSO's status. It is hoped that this memorandum
>will be ready by the time of the IETF's meeting in Oslo in July. 
>
>Two of ICANN's three Supporting Organizations have thus been called into
>being through today's meeting of the Initial Board. This leaves the Address
>Supporting Organization as the last one to be created. "I have high hopes
>that we will be able to accept the efforts of the groups seeking to
>constitute an ASO by the time of our next open meeting in Santiago," said
>Esther Dyson, ICANN's Interim Chairman.
>
>The Initial Board also considered a report of the World Intellectual
>Property Organization (WIPO) on Domain Name policy commissioned by the
>United States Government in the same white paper that launched the process
>of setting up ICANN. WIPO was asked to consider the intellectual property
>issues posed by the first-come, first-served system by which Domain Names
>have traditionally been allocated in the Internet. While designed to enable
>users to reach Internet resources easily, Domain Names have acquired a
>further significance as business identifiers and as such have come into
>conflict with the system of trademarks that exists in the off-line world.
>
>Among others, the Initial Board considered a number of issues dealt with in
>the WIPO report: how the contact details of Domain Name holders should be
>treated and payments collected by registrars, payment procedures, dispute
>settlement mechanisms, the policy on "famous names" and potential new gTLDs.
>
>The Initial Board noted that the report's suggestions concerning customer
>payments and the way registrars should treat the contact details of Domain
>Name holders are "closely similar" to what ICANN requires in its
>accreditation agreement with its accredited registrars, and that it has
>already scheduled a review of those issues early next year. 
>
>The Initial Board noted that a uniform dispute settlement mechanism was a
>necessary element of a competitive registrar system. The Initial Board noted
>that the scope of this policy should be wider than the cases of abusive
>registration with which the WIPO report deals, and ultimately covers all
>commercial dispute issues linked to Domain Name registrations. To this end,
>ICANN-accredited registrars are being encouraged to develop and voluntarily
>adopt a model dispute resolution policy while the DNSO has been asked to
>consider the relevant chapter of the WIPO report, chapter 3, by July 31st,
>in time for public comment before the Initial Board's next meeting on August
>26th.
>
>The Initial Board also referred two other important issues, how to treat
>"famous names" and whether, how and when to introduce new gTLDs, to the
>newly formed DNSO for analysis and recommendations.
>
>One of the most complex tasks ICANN faces is creating a workable mechanism
>to ensure that individual users of the Internet can participate in the
>election of nine of ICANN's nineteen directors. As the Membership Advisory
>Committee, which met on May 25th, made clear in its commentary, the
>logistical, administrative and financial challenges posed are enormous. 
>
>Given ICANN's principal responsibility - first and foremost to preserve the
>operational stability of the Internet - the Initial Board is approaching
>this issue with the utmost caution. The Initial Board asked its staff and
>legal counsel to report to it before its next meeting on the administrative,
>legal and financial issues thrown up by this challenge.
>
>The Initial Board also passed several other resolutions dealing with
>operational matters. These included its budget (a global envelope of USD$5.9
>million has approved for the fiscal year starting on July 1), and a
>resolution through which the Initial Board accepted the principles set forth
>by its Advisory Committee on Independent Review. The Advisory Committee
>recommended that ICANN set up an Independent Review Board empowered to
>consider complaints that decisions by the ICANN Board violate of ICANN's
>bylaws. Details remain to be worked out and the Advisory Committee on
>Independent Review has been asked to complete a final report for the Initial
>Board's consideration by August 10th.
>
>
>Background
>
>The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a new,
>non-profit, international corporation formed to oversee a select number of
>the Internet's core technical management functions. Between now and
>September 2000, ICANN is gradually taking over responsibility for
>coordinating Domain Name system management, IP address space allocation,
>protocol parameter assignment co-ordination, and root server system
>management.
>
>Contacts
>
>If you have questions, please contact:
>
>United States
>
>Pamela Brewster and Josh McCloskey
>Alexander Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
>(+1-415) 923 1660 
>pbrewster@alexanderogilvy.com
>jmccloskey@alexanderogilvy.com
>
>Europe
>
>Patrick Worms and Rick Flint
>Ogilvy PR Worldwide - Brussels
>(+32-2) 545 6609 or 6602
>patrick.worms@ogilvy.be
>rick.flint@ogilvy.be
>