ICANN 69

Event
Process	ICANN
Date	Oct. 13, 2020 – Oct. 22, 2020
Venue	Online
Organizer	EURALO
Websites	69.schedule.icann.org
← ICANN 68 ICANN 70 →

ICANN 69 was an Annual General Meeting (AGM) of ICANN, held from October 13–22, 2020 in an online-only format, after the originally planned in-person meeting in Hamburg, Germany was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the second ICANN Public Meeting to be fully planned and executed in a virtual format, following ICANN 68 earlier in 2020. The programme combined three "Community Days" (October 13–15) with the formal AGM week (October 19–22). The meeting was dominated by work on gTLD registration data (including EPDP Phase 2 follow-up and accuracy scoping), the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures and Rights Protection Mechanisms PDPs, ccTLD retirement and IDN ccTLD policy development, as well as cross-community discussions on DNS Abuse, Universal Acceptance, and implementation of review and accountability recommendations.

Registration Data, EPDP Follow-Up and Accuracy

EPDP Phase 2 and SSAD

By ICANN 69, the Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) on the Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data had delivered its Phase 2 Final Report on a System for Standardized Access/Disclosure (SSAD) and related topics (city field redaction, data retention) to the GNSO Council, which approved the report on 24 September 2020. The EPDP team itself did not meet during ICANN 69, but its recommendations and the future of SSAD were central to several sessions and bilateral meetings.

During Part 1 of its ICANN 69 meeting, the GNSO Council focused on "remaining outstanding items" from EPDP Phase 2, notably:

• whether and how to differentiate processing for legal vs. natural persons,

• the feasibility of unique, anonymized contacts, and

• registration data accuracy questions that had not been fully addressed in Phase 1 or Phase 2.

The Council agreed to:

• issue a call for volunteers from all EPDP Phase 2 participating groups to work on legal vs. natural persons and unique contact feasibility; and
• signal its intent to launch a separate scoping team on registration data accuracy, inviting SO/ACs to identify members with relevant expertise.

In its joint session with the ICANN Board, the GNSO Council discussed cost-benefit questions around SSAD recommendations and how Priority 2 EPDP items (those not directly tied to the Temporary Specification) should be handled procedurally, including possible use of an Operational Design Phase for complex implementation packages.

The GAC also treated access to registration data as a priority topic, devoting ICANN 69 plenary time to ongoing WHOIS/GDPR issues and EPDP follow-up, and placing registration data access and accuracy among the main themes in its Communiqué and minutes. While the GAC did not issue consensus advice to the Board at this meeting, it reiterated its interest in ensuring that future mechanisms for disclosure of non-public data would be effective and appropriately balanced with data protection requirements.

Registration Data Accuracy

The Registration Data Accuracy topic was explicitly identified as a follow-on area for GNSO work. At ICANN 69, the GNSO Council agreed that a future scoping team should:

• review existing ICANN policies and contractual provisions related to accuracy,
• examine the impact of GDPR and other data-protection regimes on current accuracy obligations, and
• consider feedback from the GAC and other advisory committees on accuracy-related risks and expectations.

The GAC, in turn, listed "data accuracy" and "legal vs. natural persons" among the items it expected to continue tracking and contributing to after ICANN 69, alongside broader registration and data-protection matters.

New gTLD Program: Subsequent Procedures

The New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process (SubPro PDP) entered its final phase in the run-up to ICANN 69. The working group’s draft Final Report had been out for Public Comment from August 20 to September 30, 2020, receiving more than 50 submissions from organizations, groups, and individuals.

At ICANN 69, SubPro held two working sessions focused on analyzing Public Comment input on:

• Applicant Support (design and targeting of financial assistance and pro bono support for applicants with demonstrated need), and
• Community Applications (rules and processes for Community Priority Evaluation and related appeals).

These ICANN 69 discussions concentrated on how far the draft recommendations responded to lessons from the 2012 round and Community Priority Evaluation experience, how to make the Applicant Support Program more usable and impactful, and how to address concerns raised in GAC and other community comments regarding predictability, auctions of last resort, and public interest commitments.

SubPro leadership informed community and GAC participants that, after ICANN 69, the group would continue reviewing input across the approximately 40 topics in its charter and aimed to finalize recommendations for delivery to the GNSO Council by the end of 2020, with a view to transmitting the Final Report to the Board in 2021.

The GAC used its ICANN 69 sessions and its Communiqué drafting process to revisit long-standing concerns regarding:

• safeguards for "sensitive" sectors (Category 1 issues),
• closed generics,
• the predictability framework for handling issues arising between rounds, and
• strengthening DNS Abuse mitigation expectations in future rounds.

GAC topic leads underlined the importance of maintaining strong language on the weight of GAC Consensus Advice in the Applicant Guidebook and encouraged continued engagement with the PDP leadership during the finalization of recommendations.

Rights Protection Mechanisms in gTLDs

The Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs) in All gTLDs PDP approached the end of its Phase 1 work. By early September 2020, the working group had completed treatment of Public Comment input on its Initial Report, as well as review of Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice Review Team (CCT-RT) recommendations related to RPMs.

During ICANN 69, the RPMs PDP held two working sessions in which it:

• finished deliberations on its proposed Phase 1 final recommendations, including on the language and conduct of URS proceedings; and
• discussed refinements to the "Approved Launch Program" to support more predictable and fair use of Sunrise and Claims services in any future new gTLD round.

After ICANN 69, the group planned to finalize its draft Final Report and hold a consensus call on its 35 Phase 1 recommendations before transmitting them to the GNSO Council.

IDNs and Universal Acceptance

IDN Policy Work in ccNSO and GNSO

The ccNSO used ICANN 69 to advance ccPDP3 (Retirement of ccTLDs and associated Review Mechanisms) and ccPDP4 (De-selection and selection of IDN ccTLD strings). At its Council meeting on October 21, 2020, the ccNSO:

• consulted on work items for ccPDP4, including the design of sub-groups on confusing similarity, variant management and possible de-selection processes; and
• endorsed proceeding with ccPDP3 Phase 1 (Retirement) on a separate track from Phase 2 (Review Mechanisms), so that the retirement policy could advance without waiting for completion of the future review mechanism design.

The ccPDP4 working group had recently adopted its Rules of Engagement; nominations for chair and vice-chair were underway, and at least two dedicated sub-groups were envisaged to deal with confusing similarity and IDN variant management, with a potential third for de-selection of IDN ccTLDs.

In parallel, the GNSO Council used its ICANN 69 meeting to:

• launch a call for volunteers for a small team to draft an EPDP charter and scoping document for the GNSO's IDN Policy Track 2; and
• coordinate with the ccNSO Council in a joint session focusing on respective IDN work, including ccPDP4 and the GNSO's planned IDN tracks.

These discussions framed IDN policy as a joint ccTLD/gTLD concern where alignment between the two policy tracks and the Root Zone Label Generation Rules would be critical.

Universal Acceptance and EAI Readiness

Universal Acceptance (UA) was a visible thematic thread at ICANN 69. The Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) organized three UA-focused sessions:

• a community update on UA readiness, summarizing FY20 work by UASG working groups and local initiatives;
• a session on outreach strategies for UA, featuring updates from UA Ambassadors in China, Egypt and India and local initiatives in China, CIS-Eastern Europe, India and Thailand; and
• a working session on remediating UA issues, which identified specific technology gaps (such as webmail and mail server EAI readiness, and UA support in popular programming languages, libraries and command-line tools) and mapped possible remediation efforts.

The remediation session highlighted interventions such as:

• making widely-used libraries and frameworks UA-ready,
• encouraging governments to include UA readiness in procurement and digital inclusion programmes, and
• leveraging global forums (IGFs, UN processes, UNESCO) to mainstream UA as a prerequisite for multilingual access to the Internet.

Within the At-Large community, AFRALO’s joint AFRALO–AfrICANN session focused on the "Status, Impact and Recommendations for Universal Acceptance in Africa", with outcomes including follow-up with ICANN’s Global Stakeholder Engagement team for Africa and coordination with UA Ambassadors on local initiatives.

DNS Abuse

DNS Abuse was addressed across several parts of the ICANN 69 programme:

• The GNSO Council’s joint session with the SSAC examined current and planned work on DNS Abuse in both bodies, identified potential gaps, and discussed where further policy development or advisory work might be needed.

• The GNSO–GAC bilateral listed DNS Abuse mitigation alongside EPDP and SubPro as a key area for ongoing coordination.
• The At-Large community held a session titled “The At-Large Community and DNS Abuse: An Individual User Education Campaign”, resulting in plans for shared educational materials and a coordinated communications campaign across all five RALOs, to be led through the ALAC Outreach and Engagement Subcommittee.

The SSAC also reported that DNS Abuse and routing security had become recurring topics in its work programme, including in ongoing projects such as the Name Collision Analysis Project (NCAP) and its broader "Scan of Threats to Internet Naming and Addressing".

Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees

ccNSO

The ccNSO schedule at ICANN 69 included the ccNSO Members Meeting, the Strategic and Operational Planning Committee (SOPC), the Internet Governance Liaison Committee (IGLC), and the regular ccNSO Council meeting.

Key ccNSO Council items at ICANN 69 were:

• consultation on ccPDP4 work items for IDN ccTLD string (de)selection;
• response to the ICANN Public Meeting strategy survey;
• updates on the process to select community representatives for the Independent Review Process (IRP) Standing Panel;
• updates on 2021 ccNSO Council nominations and elections;
• review of implementation of Work Stream 2 (WS2) and ccNSO organizational review recommendations; and
• follow-up on ccNSO Council workshop outputs, including establishing an Outreach and Involvement Coordination Committee to develop and oversee the ccNSO outreach strategy.

The SOPC’s ICANN 69 session with ICANN org's Finance and Human Resources functions covered:

• the reorganization of ICANN org's Finance function,
• treatment of new gTLD auction proceeds (distribution vs reserves),
• the FY22 ICANN budget, and
• anticipated budget evolution under COVID-19 conditions.

The IGLC session addressed “digital sovereignty” as one of eight priority Internet governance topics identified by the committee (including cybersecurity, capacity building, digital divide, IDNs, local content, regulation, ccTLD roles in IGF processes, and technical aspects of ccTLD operation).

GNSO

The GNSO organized 29 sessions at ICANN 69, including PDP working group meetings, stakeholder/constituency sessions, the GNSO Council meeting, and multiple bilaterals with other bodies.

At its October 21, 2020 Council meeting, the GNSO:

• agreed next steps on WHOIS Conflicts Procedure implementation;
• initiated work on an IDN EPDP charter and scoping document (Policy Track 2);
• defined follow-up on EPDP Phase 2 residual issues (legal vs. natural, anonymized contacts, accuracy);
• confirmed the Recommendations Report to the Board regarding adoption of EPDP Phase 2 recommendations 1–22; and
• appointed a GNSO liaison to the GAC.

The Council’s wrap-up session reviewed lessons from the virtual AGM format, upcoming work as tracked in the Program Management Tool and Action Decision Radar, and tasked its Standing Selection Committee to identify GNSO member(s) for the IRP Standing Panel selection committee.

Bilateral sessions included:

• GNSO–Board: multistakeholder model effectiveness, SSAD cost/benefit, and EPDP implementation questions;
• GNSO–GAC: EPDP Phase 2 including potential Phase 2A, IGO-related RPM work, SubPro, and DNS Abuse;
• GNSO–ccNSO: coordination on IDN policy work, budgeting issues, and Empowered Community mechanisms; and
• GNSO–SSAC: DNS Abuse, EPDP follow-up, SAC113 on private-use TLDs, SubPro, and feedback loops for SSAC advice.

ALAC and RALOs

The At-Large community structured its 16 ICANN 69 sessions into three tracks: policy, outreach and engagement, and operations.

On the policy side, notable sessions included:

• a session on ICANN’s role in emerging cybercrime frameworks, asking whether national/international cybercrime laws can effectively support DNS Abuse mitigation and how ICANN can contribute to these discussions;
• "Coordinating the Internet Unique Identifiers and the Interests of the Internet User", with a keynote by former ICANN Board Chair Steve Crocker and discussion of how user interests intersect with coordination of the unique identifiers system;
• joint ALAC–NCSG discussions on "ICANN and Human Rights – A Way Forward", focusing on implementation of WS2 human-rights-related recommendations and the Human Rights Impact Assessment tool; and
• EG-IG discussions on digital platforms and regulation, examining how broader platform regulation debates might affect ICANN and the DNS environment.

At-Large outreach and engagement sessions included:

• a first-of-its-kind session on At-Large Structures (ALSes) and engagement during the pandemic,
• work by the Outreach and Engagement Subcommittee (OE-SC) on leveraging virtual platforms for policy outreach,
• the AFRALO–AfrICANN session on Universal Acceptance in Africa, and
• EURALO roundtables on European perspectives on ICANN and Internet governance.

On operations, At-Large leadership began organizing community priorities across the large set of pending recommendations from WS2, CCT-RT, SSR2 and RPMs, and initiated an At-Large Operations, Finance and Budget Working Group (OFB-WG) to coordinate At-Large input into ICANN planning processes.

European Regional At-Large Organization

Annual General Meeting

Generic Top-level Domain

Expedited Policy Development Process

Policy Development Process

Country code top-level domain. Determined by "ISO 3166-1: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 1: Country codes".

Internationalized Domain Name

Generic Names Supporting Organization. Develops and recommends to the Board substantive policies relating to generic top-level domains and other responsibilities set forth in the Bylaws (ICANN Bylaws).

Governmental Advisory Committee. Considers and provides advice on the activities of ICANN as they relate to concerns of governments, particularly matters where there may be an interaction between ICANN's policies and various laws and international agreements or where they may affect public policy issues (ICANN Bylaws).

General Data Protection Regulation

Policy Development Process

Generic Top-level Domain

Uniform Rapid Suspension System

Internationalized Domain Name

Country Code Names Supporting Organization. Develops and recommends to the Board global policies relating to country-code top-level domains (ICANN Bylaws).

Country code top-level domain. Determined by "ISO 3166-1: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 1: Country codes".

Universal Acceptance Steering Group

The African Regional At-Large Organization

Security and Stability Advisory Committee. Advises the ICANN community and Board on matters relating to the security and integrity of the Internet's naming and address allocation systems (ICANN Bylaws).

At-Large Advisory Committee. Considers and provides advice on the activities of ICANN related to the interests of individual Internet users (ICANN Bylaws). Not to be confused with the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group.

Independent Review Process

Internet Governance Forum

Top-Level Domain

Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group. Represents the full range of non-commercial entities of the Internet (ICANN Bylaws). Not to be confused with the At-Large Advisory Committee.