By Nick Patience
The final open session of the meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in Berlin yesterday was not dominated by discussion of any one subject. However, discussion of the report from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on the management of the domain name system took up a fair amount of the time. It was the only chance those present will have to express their opinions in person to the board about something that has become quite a contentious topic.
The US government’s white paper, published in June 1998 recommended that WIPO be approached to undertake a study into intellectual property and trademark issues and how they affect the development of the domain name system (06/08/98). The final version of the report was published at the start of this month, following on from the draft, which came out in November 1998.
Francis Gurry of WIPO outlined the report’s findings and ICANN staffer Molly Shaffer Van Houweling told the open meeting that ICANN had received many comments on the WIPO proposals, ranging from positive through negative, as well as equivocal, as might be expected. The report’s core findings covered areas such as best practices for registrars, dispute resolution and famous name exclusions.
Interestingly, Becky Burr of the US Department of Commerce told the meeting that an additional report by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, which was also suggested in the white paper will be prepared. She says funding and participants will be announced within the next few weeks, adding that it will not duplicate WIPO’s work.
In simple terms, those at the meeting representing the intellectual property and trademark holder interests, advocated adoption of the WIPO findings with immediate effect, while others advised the ICANN board to tread carefully and seek further public comment, pointing out that there has only been three weeks since the publication of the report. However, ICANN president Mike Roberts assured the Berlin meeting that the board has no intention of adopting the report in its entirety and wanted comments from the meeting on its core findings. Earlier Roberts had told those presenting a large petition to the meeting that asked the board to take more time over this report, that those signatories should have submitted substantive comments rather than the petition, so it’s difficult to judge which way the board will go at its meeting today.
The comments then moved on to the current state of the 60-day testbed phase for competitive registrars, with some complaining that they were hamstrung by rigid non-disclosure agreements with Network Solutions Inc so they could not tell the meeting the true level of progress, or lack thereof (see separate story).
NSI complained that it has to protect its IP, but Roberts said the board will look at an open interface specification when it comes to considering the addition of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). The issue of the new registrars is related to the WIPO report because the registrars are currently working out some sort of dispute resolution mechanism.
The rest of the afternoon was taken up with going over the progress made in forming constituencies, with the question of the possibility of adding an eighth constituency representing individual domain name holders cropping up again. ICANN chair Esther Dyson asked for a show of hands as to whether those in the room wanted such a constituency under the present conditions. The result was an equivocal one-third, one-third, one-third split, which Dyson said was actually better because it will enable the board to make up its own mind, slightly tongue-in- cheek. She said that overall there was no clear consensus over the addition of such a constituency, so it does not seem likely this time round.
On other topics, ICANN has hired an executive recruitment firm to find a successor to Mike Roberts as president, assuring the meeting that unlike regular recruitment. This one will be conducted in the open.
