Report on ICANN Yokohama 13-17 July,2000


Day 1.

Started with some confusion about whether the meeting of the NCDNHC was as announced
in the ICANN documentation, or was in fact the Civil Society Forum, taking place
within the hospitality of the NCDNHC.
It was the latter.

Interesting event, called historic by its organizer Hans Klein of the CPSR.
Many new faces in the NCDNHC,a modernized but oldfashioned labour unionist brought
in by Hans Klein, who reported on his APC with a string of 20 worldwide associated
non-profit ISP's with many thousands of members, of which the Japanese branch,the
little known JCAnet, was present; many Korean academics (the Korean Internet
Forum, that wants to go "beyond" the ICANN at-large membership) and organizers
who had newly joined the NCDNHC and who ended up filling a good chunk of the
room.

The microbusinesses were represented by AfterNic, a commercial organization
facilitating resale of Domain names, now an ICANN registrar after having been
able to prod ICANN into action on their requests via a lawsuit. (see ICANN website)
Judith Oppenheim is their prominent on-line spokesgirl.

Some faces, such as Milton Mueller and Kathy Klein were absent physically, but
participating by teleconference, others, such as David Maher and Randy Bush
were notably absent.
  
Key items on the speakers'lists were ICANN's mission creep, it's "democracy
deficit" , perfidious bylaw changes, chartered TLD's, .union, and items like
gender balance and a civil Society TLD.
The afternoon was reserved for NCDNHC affairs. A string of resolutions was adopted,
the most relevant for us being a repeat of the NCDNHC's Santiago endorsement
of a separate Individual Domain Name Holders'constituency in the DNSO.

The Civil Society Forum continued in the evening, rather ineffectively trying
to co-ordinate the next'day's questions to the ICANN Board.

I will draw here on parts of my report to the IDNO-discuss list:

Interesting bits of news. Massive signup of (20.000 with another 15.000 waiting
for processing) of AL members in Japan, orchestrated by the Government (according
to the JCANet rep.), specifically aimed at getting a Japanese candidate on the
Board. Opposition against this
ethnocentric approach by Japanese NCDNHC members.
Sponsors of this drive: two of the biggest commercial internet businesses in
Japan, Yahoo Japan and the biggest ISP, Niftyserve. These are the standard portals that most Japanese Internet users pass through every day.
Similar recruitment effort in Germany, sponsored by the Bertelsmann Foundation
and der Spiegel.
As a result 100.000 ICANN at large members are expected by the end of the month.

It looks like the AL- membership will grow far beyond the numbers originally
anticipated by ICANN.

I was also able to attend a part of the Business constituency meeting. Marilyn
Cade introduced me to a representative of developing country micro-businesses,
somewhat orphaned in the Business constituency. Strong parallel interests to
those of the Individual DN holders may lead to common policy initiatives.


Day 2

In the General Assembly of the DNSO, I had the opportunity to again present
the main argument
for an IDNO constituency and report on the current (lack of) progress, the inherent
difficulties of a bottom-up bootstrap process, and the way forward.

A steady stream of strongly supporting statements by other speakers followed.
Dory Kornfeld, Hans Klein, Alan Davidson, Jamie Love.
(please check the Berkman Center archive)

Following all this, the GA overwhelmingly supported the establishment of a new
WorkingGroup
dealing with the admittance of a new constituency of Individual DN holders.
It was pointed out that the GA did not have the authority to create WG's and
that the NC should be asked to create such a WG.
A resolution was passed to that effect.

Just before the meeting closed I was able to repeat my on-line motion (Roberto
Gaetano read it out)
The resolution, as posted in the GA list and presented on the floor was seconded
by Hans Klein and adopted, with an overwhelming majority
of 65 for and 3 against.
40 abstained.

No on-line contributions were read prior to the vote.

Roberto, acting as Chair, was a bit reluctant to hold the vote (he started with
saying that
fewer members were present) and later reluctant to recognize the result
and make the count. He started pointing out, rather irrelevantly, that the number
of abstainees
was roughly equal to that of the FOR voters.
Cries of "count! count!" followed, and that produced the final result.
********

Next came the issue of reducing the number of ICANN at-Large directors by Bylaw
Change.
Alan Davidson brought to the attention of all constituencies and the GA, the
proposed new Bylaw Changes, to be voted upon by the Board on Sunday.
These bylaw changes would reduce the guaranteed number of AL directors to 5
(instead of 9) for the next 2 years and after that it could be reduced to zero.
Andrew McLaughlin (staff) had reportedly confirmed bluntly to Alan that this
was the intent, thereby justifying the alarm.
For the Board's decision, see day 3.

The Names Council meeting.

YJ Park complained about the NC ignoring the WG-C consensus (on adding new TLD's).
Ken Stubs put a stop to YJ's attempt to address the point of the ignoring of
the WG C consensus.
No mechanism for the WG members to complain.
Cochetti blames the problem to absence to any staff to deal with such complaints.
Dennis Jennings insists that input is sought from the constituencies.
Roger Cochetti calls for the creation of a WG (G) on performance review of the
NC and of a task force to gather the input of the constituencies.

Proposal by Pindar Wong: establishment of a NC review committee.
Michael Schneider (ISP constituency) wants to add to the charter of the task
force and the WG *whether and how an Individual DN owners constituency should
be established*.
This amendment was adopted without opposition.
Each constituency appoints a NC rep. to the task force. The chair of the GA
will add a GA member. The Task Force can be constituted by the 25th of July.

Ken Stubs (NC) promises a decision (and report to the Board) "fairly quickly"

Day 3.

The question and answer session with the Board was one-sided, as lot of speakers
vented their frustration, but the Board found no time to comment or reply to
concerns. On the contrary, the very flood of speaches allowed Esther Dyson to
limit the time per speaker to a strict 2 minutes and of course no time for response
from the Board.

Day 4 , the public Board Meeting.

THE ISSUE of BYLAW CHANGES

After the GAC meeting two public officials Paul Twomey (now Australia's "ambassador"
to ICANN) and Christopher Wilkinson (EU) publicly criticized the Board for proposed
bylaw changes that would do away with the guaranteed user representation on
the Board. They warned that such a move might invite Governments'intervention
against what then could be seen as an Industry cartel without balancing input
from users.

Perhaps as a result at least the issue of changing the bylaws to seemingly do
away with the 9 at-large directors after 2 years, was addressed seriously by
the Board and there
is now language that preserves the number, even if in the meantime (until LA
2000) that means
holding on to 4 interim directors.
Remarkable that it was Amadeu that objected against that idea. He did not find
it appropriate to extend their term once again. It was unclear if he wanted
to preserve the original proposal for bylaw change, prepared by Joe Sims after
the Cairo resolution; in view of Amadeu's record, probably so.
Only Vint Cerf questioned the (temporary) reduction of User representatives.

In general, the Open Board meeting was a little less stage-rehearsed than the
one in Santiago.
There was some genuine debate although mainly on issues of boring detail, rather
than substantive issues, of which it was hinted that they would be discussed
elsewhere.

The Board came out with a clear resolution on the requirements for new TLD applications.

The Bylaw change issue, decided upon in Cairo, was now phrased in slightly more
appropriate
language, leading to a cordial private exchange between Alan Davidson, who initially
drew attention to the issue, and Joe Sims, who had to somehow admit defeat on
behalf of the
Board that had not managed to get the language that it wanted.

This is how the Board presented the meeting to the press:

Yokohama, Japan (July 16, 2000) - Today, the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
held a regular meeting of its Board of Directors.
Items on the agenda included:

 * Addition of New Top Level Domains (TLDs)

 * At Large Membership and Election

 * Root Server System Enhancements

 * Administrative and Other Matters

Complete archives of the meeting are available at
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/yokohama/ and the
text of the final resolutions are posted at
http://www.icann.org/minutes/prelim-report-16jul00.htm.
Here is Hans Klein's interpretation:

"Nonetheless, the final bylaws revision adopted by the Board still weakens
user representation. While five directors will be elected this fall, the
remaining four seats will remain closed for another two years (until the
Annual Meeting of 2002). Thus, user representation will be constrained at
5 of 19 seats, rather than 9 of 19 as envisioned in the bylaws.

The near-unanimity of Board members in their support for measures to weaken
At Large representation was striking. Of nineteen directors only one, Vint
Cerf, questioned the reduction. All other directors were either silent or
spoke in favor of the proposal to reduce elected representatives.
 
Rules for electing At Large directors also changed. The Board lowered the
threshold for candidate nominations from 10% to 2%. In light of the
possibility that a very large number of individuals might receive
nominations, the Board capped the number of nominees at not more than seven
per region."

end of quote from Cyber Federalist.


In conclusion, it seems to me that the ICANN Board has become slightly more
responsive to stakeholder representatives'input than it has been in the past.
Several individual board members appear to have come around to start addressing
the "democracy deficit".
This is also mirrored in the attitude of the Names Council, that ,top-down fashion,
still takes its cues from the Board (that itself still appears to be "staff"(=Joe
Sims)-driven) rather than advising the Board "bottom-up".
   
From my own perspective, the NC Task Force that will draw up the advice for
the Board with regards to the admission of a New DNSO constituency will be the
touchstone for this new spirit of "balance".
Private remarks by a key Board member sitting on the Review Committee appear
to warrant some optimism.
But I'm not holding my breath.


Joop Teernstra LL.M