Dear Protocol Council Members, dear Helmut,
Please find attached for your consideration the draft Minutes from the last
teleconference.
Many thanks for your comments,
Best regards,
Vlad
<<PSO-Minutes-31May2002.txt>>
ICANN Protocol Standards Organization (PSO)
May 31, 2002 Teleconference
Reported by: Vladimir Androuchko, PSO-PC Secretary as of August 2001
PARTICIPANTS
---------
Helmut Schink / Director selected to the ICANN Board by the Protocol Supporting Organization
Azucena Hernandez / ETSI Representative
Geoff Huston / IETF Representative
Martin Duerst / W3C Representative
Richard Hill / ITU Representative
Mike StJohn / IETF Representative
Tapio Kaijanen / ETSI Representative
Brian Moore / ITU Representative
*******************************************
Regrets:
Daniel Weitzner/ W3C Representative
Minutes
1. Dr. Helmut Schink, Director on the Board of ICANN presented to the Protocol Council the results of
the ICANN Meeting in Accra.
As the Report of the ICANN Meeting in Accra is published on the ICANN website,
Helmut focused his presentation on some background information and raised several points concerning the PSO.
The At-Large topic was felt to be too complex, expensive and controversial. As a result, the At-Large Study Committee
did not come up with a workable solution that would really yeild into a representation in the ICANN Board, which would be
considered as fair by all participants.
>From subsequent Board debates it came out that there would not be any direct At-Large elections.
Many of the Board expressed the view, that governments would be the appropriate place to represent the end-users.
Then Helmut brought to the attention of the Protocol Council the creation of the Evolution & Reform Committe. The discussion
on the creation of this Committe started during the previous ICANN Meeting and was kicked-off
by the document issued by Stuart Lynn. The issue of Evolution and Reform dominated the entire Meeting in Accra.
It was important to understand why ICANN needs this Reform, what went wrong and what needs improvement.
Discussions about the structure of ICANN, its Board and Constituencies occurred.
Helmut stressed during the discussions in Accra that first it was important to agree on the Mission and the Objectives
of the entire group before getting into too much details on the structure.
As a consequence of these discussions the Evolution and Reform Committee was created. Two important
documents were created. One on the Mission and Core Values and another document on Policy Development process.
The Security Committee was started, which aims to advise the ICANN Board on everything concerning
the security and stability of the Internet, especially in the field of Domain Name System.
Then the initiation of the LATNIC, which is the Internet registry for Latin America.
These are some examples of the succesfull work of ICANN.
ICANN is now progressing with the re-assignment of .org, this is the part of the agreement with VerySign.
This re-assignment should be done by the end of this year. In Accra the principles and the procedures were agreed.
The request for proposals which states the criteria and conditions for the selection of .org registry was sent out.
This is aimed to be solved by the Shanghai Meeting of ICANN in October 2002.
The agreement with .pro, which is one of the seven new gTLDs was reached.
A debate on the geographic and geo-political names in .info occured during the ICANN Meeting in Accra.
Government Advisory Commettee was asked to investigate on this issue.
The redemption grace period was discussed and a new procedure was introduced, which ensures that
the Domain Name is not immediately given away, but there is a period of time where the registrant is reminded
that he is loosing name and has a chance to pay the fees in case he forgot to do so.
Finally, the Independent Review Panel was discussed. A Nomination Committee was established where a number of
high-level executives were members of the team, among them Mr. H. Zhao, the Director of TSB.
It was problematic to find the appropriate number of people with the appropriate skills. The submission of the list
of candidates was prolonged twice, but this was not sufficient. It was decided to postpone the decision on the IRP
and give this task to the Committee on the Evolution & Reform of the ICANN in order to collect views on how an
Independent Review should be performed and if it should be performed at all.
After reporting on the ICANN Meeting in Accra, Helmut invited Protocol Council Members to ask questions and
shared with the Protocol Council some views on the PSO.
Azucena asked Helmut a question on how long the discussion on the ICANN Reform could take. Azucena expressed
the opinion, that this discussion may last for at least one year. Helmut confirmed the perception of Azucena, he added that
there is a hope to have an agreement on the Mission and Core Values of ICANN at the Meeting in Bucharest. Helmut
also added, that then another long debate will be on the appropriate structure of ICANN. Helmut assumed that
as Mr. S. Lynn announced his retirement for the next year, in March, that would be the time when the ICANN Board
would come to a decision.
Helmut stressed that now is the perfect time to introduce thoughts and views on this issue.
Helmut took this opportunity to introduce some views on the PSO, that were debated informally.
The interim report from the Refund Committee raised some questions, among them there was a question "Do we
need the PSO?". He proposed to go through this, mentionning that the Protocol Council is the appropriate place to
respond to this.
The current line of thinking is to restructure the Constituencies, to make them similar to gTLD Constituencies for example.
As for the PSO, most of the Board Members do not see a requirement for a PSO, and there is a debate whether it
makes more sense to shift the responsibilities from the PSO to a kind of a Technical Advisory Council.
Helmut invited Protocol Council Members to debate on the role they expect PSO to play in the ICANN environement.
A discussion on the role and future of the PSO took place.
Azucena expressed a view based on the discussions that occured on the Board of ETSI, that the PSO in these discussions
appears as a target body to be killed, and it is not easy to understand the reason for this. Why in all the structure of ICANN
the PSO is the one that needs to disappear? All the time that ICANN has addressed a request for comments,
PSO has always responded either by a common statement or by separate statements of the Signatories.
Helmut agreed with Azucena, and he mentioned that during these discussions he argued to make sure that the PSO remains
as it is. He explained that the argumentation is that if you look at the Mission of ICANN, as far as PSO is concerned, is the
coordination in the area of Protocol Identifiers. ICANN's role is about the coordination of Protocol Identifiers and the view of
many is that IANA is only doing the registration of the Protocol Identifiers of the IETF Protocols. In the area of Protocols it
is only seen to have very limited technical functions. This is a very general debate on how limited the ICANN scope should be.
Tapio said that the proposals concerning the technical work are blocked in the sense that they take a long time
in giving explanations how technology has political consequences and implications, proposing that technical discussions
to be put in a separate core, is a counter logic and negative action. He also said that during the discussions
within the PSO, the possible common output has often been paralized by the argument that this is beyond the scope
of PSO because it is purely technical. Tapio proposed to widen the scope of PSO.
Helmut agreed that the standards work is usually seen as purely technical, but the choice of the
standards has an implications on the economy, industry, Internet traffic etc. Helmut also said that as for the decision taken by
ICANN, it is important to make sure that the appropriate open standards are used which is now not always taken into
account in the appropriate way, for example the protocols between registrant and registry is still the protocol brought from
IETF, which is essentially owned by VeriSign and is not really open. That is why for PSO there is a task
to be fulfilled and to make sure that the protocols and solutions adopted are really open.
Geoff made an observation that to some extent the thing that makes PSO lopsided, is that the instruments and standards used
by some of the Members of the Protocol Support Organization are outside of the scope of PSO, so that the
core business of the ITU and the core business of ETSI is not within the scope of the PSO. If somehow the IETF's core
business for core standards does appear to be solely within the scope here and he can certainly sense some
disquiet amongst people looking at the PSO and saying that’s not exactly the way it should be.
Helmut disagreed with Geoff, saying that ETSI, ITU and W3C are developing Internet standards.
Geoff pointed out that the registration of the protocol instruments falls under the scope of the IANA functions
registered by ICANN and therefore fits logically within the role of PSO to consider and this is really the issue.
Helmut asked for a clarification, asking if the fact that the protocol identifiers are registered in IANA only for the IETF.
Geoff has confirmed this.
Azucena underlined that it is a mistake to consider that because the IANA functions are only related to the protocol
identifiers which for the time being are only prepared by the IETF, but all the technical advice that ICANN may require
not only for the technical scope, but of any kind, may come from the IETF. It seems that the other elements of the PSO,
ITU, W3C, ETSI and in the future ISO give a really extensive technical expertise in order to make sure that
any advice that is going to be supported by mostly all industry, governments and associations, that all together
can form the membership of this body.
Azucena drew the attention of the Protocol Council Members that it is a pity to destroy a network of knowledge
that is already here at the service of ICANN only because of the protocol identifiers functions,
which is only the peanuts of the issue. And this is why it seems to be difficult to follow the logic of association
of the existence of the PSO with who does or who does not make the protocol identifiers.
Tapio supported the view of Azucena and underlined that the organizations mentioned above have a broader view
of the Internet and therefore ICANN should take full benefit from the potential of these organizations, being together
in one system like PSO and able to give broad and expert views on the matters not only how the bit is being twisted,
but also what are the implications of the technical work being done on the Internet.
Brian shared the views expressed by Azucena and Tapio. He also said that in the evolution and application
of the Internet in the future IP networking not only IETF is involved, but also the ITU, ETSI, W3C and other
organizations are involved.
Brian underlined the fact that if there is a willingness to collect views on which directions or policies to take, there is a need to
listen to all the voices of all people who are using IP, not just the Internet development in the IETF.
During this discussion, Brian said that the Protocol Council should decide wether it contents with the existing
mandate of PSO, which is limiting the Protocol Council to a number of issues, or the scope might be broaden.
Martin said that Daniel can not join the discussion, and that the main interest of W3C is to maintain the stability of
Domain Name System and of IP addresses and also the various protocol identifiers registrered by IANA.
Helmut invited the Protocol Council to think over the issue of broadenning the scope of the PSO or to restrict
it to the terms which are now written. He also invited the Protocol Council to come up with the contribution
for the upcoming ICANN Meeting in Bucharest.
The Protocol Council decided to elaborate on two separate steps:
1. What the PSO-PC wants to do
2. How the PSO-PC should or should not proceed
Richard joined the conference.
Richard asked whether the Protocol Council should come up with the common postion or each organization
should come up with the separate statement. Richard agreed with Azucena and stressed the importance of
elaborating the common position.
It was decided to put together a draft plan with some bullet points on which the discussion of the Protocol Council
might be focused.
Azucena volunteered to put together some bullet points that may be further elaborated through e-mail discussion.
Before Helmut left the conference call, Brian invited Helmut to make an update on the ICANN activites during the
PSO General Assembly, as the ICANN CEO Mr. S. Lynn and the ICANN Secretariat did not respond to the invitation
of the Protocol Council and it is not clear whether he will attend this event, or, as happenned during the previuos GA,
when the ICANN CEO and Secretariat were invited, but did not take even the opportunity to join the General Assembly
on the interactive webcast offered last year by ETSI.
Helmut promised to check his availability and will let the Protocol Council know in the near future whether he
would come or not.
Protocol Council Members thanked Helmut for joining the conference call.
2. ISO application for SDO membership of the PSO was considered again. ISO Secretariat has filled in the missing
criteria and send this document to the Protocol Council. A discussion on this issue occured.
Azucena started the discussion. She proposed to look again at ISO application and to consider the missing part
which is already here. Azucena proposed to accept the ISO application, as the ongoing ICANN Reform may last for
a year and there is no apparent reason to postpone the admission of ISO into PSO. ETSI is in favour of a positive
decision.
Agreeing with Azucena, Richard said that nevertheless, the Reform Committee is going to publish a new paper
for the discussion very soon, and this paper will be discussed at the Bucharest ICANN Meeting. He stressed that
it may be better to wait until after the Bucharest Meeting, because some of the proposals call for significant restructuring
of the PSO so the Protocol Council Members would not want to admit them to an organ which may
become a completely different one and proposed to wait for one month.
Geoff referred to the Section 8 a (ii) of MoU: "...process is open to any person or any organization of any nationality
on equitable terms...". Geoff said that reading the ISO response, to the question the Protocol Council raised, it is evident from
the response, that the Member Body shall be those national standards bodies most broadly representetive of
standardization, is not the same as the criteria of MoU, of being open to any person or organization of any
nationality, but referring to a person, the application given by ISO does not meet the criteria of the Section
8 a (ii) of MoU and there are still some issues regarding ISO with respect to the criteria of MoU.
Richard replied that this is the question of interpretation, and it is difficult to interprete the MoU
restrictively to refuse the ISO application, if ETSI and ITU are parts of the MoU, and for them this was not
interpreted restrictively.
Azucena mentioned that participation in the ISO standard developing process is open to individuals and to organizations
therefore there is no problem regarding the openess in the application of the ISO.
Richard added that if we take an example of ITU, anybody can apply to be a member of ITU and
there is no restriction criteria.
Mike raised the issue which came up with ITU: ENUM numbers in Taiwan. He stated that Taiwan could not join the
ITU and asked whether the ITU was an open organization. Giving this example, Mike also said that concerning
the openess, he does not believe that any person who walks in can participate in the work or become a member of ITU.
Richard said that this statement is incorrect on a number of factual issues, and reminded that the issue of who claims
national sovereignty to certain parts of the world may not be most appropriate for discussion in PSO-PC.
He also reminded that People's Republic of China claims sovereingty over that particular part of the world.
Alabama had to come to the ITU through the U.S. Federal Government , and this is about the mechanisms
by which they came through.
Brian has supported the general line Azucena was taking. First, whether or not
ISO application meets the requirement of the MoU, and wether or not the Protocol Council can accept it.
Secondly, when the PSO-PC does it. It seemed clear that it is impossible to leave it hanging for a year.
Brian suggested to continue with the evaluation of the ISO application and to take the final decision after the
Bucharest Meeting. If there is any clarification to be made, PSO-PC may ask ISO to do so.
ETSI representatives supported this suggestion proposing that this time PSO-PC should give a clear answer
to the ISO application.
Martin explained that IETF, in any case does not recognize an organizational membership in any way.
Richard reminded that the text of MoU was drafted without the intention of exluding any of the existing organization.
Richard supported Brian and proposed to look at this application again right after the Bucharest Meeting.
As a representative of IETF Geoff had to disagree with this particular point, saying that there are clauses in the MoU, and the ISO
application does not demonstrate that it meets the criteria of that particular clause.
Martin proposed to ask ISO to provide an explanation, with respect to the criteria mentioned above.
Azucena supported this proposal and suggested to tell the ISO secretariat that as the various Members of PSO
are having difficulties with the interpretation of the requirement on the openess, to describe the method by which
a person and an organization can participate in the work of the ISO in order to demonstrate whether it is
internationally open or not.
Secretary was tasked to prepare the answer to ISO, asking to respond to the particular Section 8 a (ii) of the MoU.
After receiving this information the Protocol Council will consider this application again and will give a
final reply by the end of July 2002.
3. Preparations for the PSO General Assembly were discussed.
The secretary presented the actual state of the preparation for the upcoming Protocol Supporting Organization
General Assembly.
Brian reconfirmed his participation.
Azucena will confirm the participation in the PSO GA within a week.
Geoff said that there was nobody available to attend the PSO GA from the IETF side.
Martin said that W3C will be represented by Daniel Dardarier and will make an update from W3C.
Protocol Council Members expressed their dissapointment about the fact that ICANN representatives
did not make any response to the invitation sent out by the Protocol Council.
4. Protocol Council agreed to post the links to the documents discussed.
5. VeriSign request for comments was discussed. Please see: VeriSign material on the request:
http://www.verisign-grs.com/wls.html
ICANN General Counsel's analysis:
http://www.icann.org/minutes/report-vgrs-wls-17apr02.htm
VeriSign's response:
http://www.icann.org/minutes/response-vgrs-wls-21apr02.htm
The proposal was evaluated for potential technical issue and the Protocol Council Members did not find any
technical issue on which they should comment.
6. The Evolution and Reform Committee has posted working papers on ICANN's mission and core values,
on the policy-development process and on on the ICANN Structure and the Nominating Committee Concept.
ETSI prepared positions on ICANN Working Papers (E&R Committee). These three papers will be sent to ICANN
as a separate ETSI position.
Through the discussion it was agreed that ETSI sends these statements separately and the Protocol Council
will discuss these papers again in the future and if the common position could be achieved, would join the ETSI
positions with some amendments.
ETSI Positions can be viewed at: http://www.etsi.org/icann/home.htm
7. Azucena asked how many of the Protocol Council Members will attend the ICANN Meeting in Bucharest.
Azucena and Richard will attend this Meeting.
8. The Open Call for Nomination was discussed. The dates were reconfirmed. Please see:
http://www.pso.icann.org/ICANN-BOD/icann-bod.htm
9. Friday, the 14th of June 2002 was fixed as the deadline for sending the slides with the presentations
for the PSO General Assembly.
10. The next PSO-PC conference call was scheduled for Wednesday, 24 July 2002,
12h00 GMT (14h00 CET).