The At-Large Summit (ATLAS) is a gathering of the representatives of individual Internet users participating in ICANN. There have been three ATLASes.
Overview
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Goals; Obstacles; Achievements
Background
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ATLAS I was the first-ever gathering of the representatives of individual Internet users participating in ICANN. Organized as part of ICANN 34 in Mexico City, ATLAS I featured two general sessions for all participants as well as thematic sessions and workshops on issues led by At-Large community members.[1]
Five Working Groups were formed to draft and finalize a Summit Declaration to the ICANN Board.[2] The subjects for the working groups were chosen via a survey of the entire At-Large Community between December 2008 and January 2009. The summit participants were assigned to the working group that they selected as of most interest to them, and then the groups were balanced regionally and according to language needs. All five working groups began working together in February 2009 in advance of the Summit and met twice during the summit to finalize their statements.
The five topics were: 1) at-large engagement, 2) the future of ICANN, 3) New gTLDs including IDNs, 4) security issues within ICANN's mandate, and 4) transparency and accountability. The general sentiment was that 1) participation was poor; 2) the future of ICANN depended on safeguarding against capture, which was defined as unilateral decision-making and favoring vested interests; 3) there were unnecessary barriers to entry for a broad variety of gTLD applicants; 4) DNS security needed to be stricter; and 5) ICANN needs to be more transparent for Internet users who want to participate and needs to balance operator/business interest with ALAC/GAC. [3]
At-Large Engagement
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Issue |
Recommendations
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IDN POLICY |
- Fund a timely public information campaign in collaboration with ALSes in the next budget
- ICANN should consult ALSes to reach communities and end-users
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GNSO |
- Cultivate specialists on GNSO issues in At-Large Community
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LOCAL LEVEL |
- A face-to-face At-Large meeting in each region every year to identify and discuss issues
- Gather community input in advance, using local radio or SMS
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ICANN MEETINGS |
- Professional remote participation systems (telephonic, chat interface, video streaming), especially for vision- and hearing-impaired users
- Provide opportunities for regional groups to meet on the horizontal level to feed back into the international level
- PDP must consider regional differences in views comprehensively
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GLOBAL OUTREACH |
- Differentiated approaches to manage and implement ICANN activities
- ALAC must engage early in SO PDP to reflect end-users
- ALAC and the Fellowship committee should collaborate to enhance outreach
- ALSes need support in providing local users’ feedback (information, sensitization, training seminars on ICANN issues on radio, TV)
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TRANSLATION |
- Continue to apply the multilingualism best practices of other international organizations
- ALSes should be actively involved in translation
- RALOs should help identify the documents to be translated
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TRAVEL SUPPORT |
- At-Large participants need full travel support to ICANN meetings, including visa costs
- Start the travel process earlier and local hosts should help with visas
- Meeting planners should consider affordability as a criterion
- Deliver per diem remuneration in a timely manner
- Avoid accommodating volunteer ALAC members and ALS representatives in remote, low-quality hotels
- All members should receive travel expense support for regional meetings
- Amend the Rules and Procedures for Travel Support to comply with the 2008 ALAC Statement to the ICANN Board
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Transparency and Accountability
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Issue |
Recommendations
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Transparency |
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Timing of Major Documents |
- State How staff deals with input from constituencies on documents for the Board
- Schedule for documents and Executive Summaries to allow time for discussion
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Finance |
- Develop a budget for each ICANN entity (including At-Large) and make it public
- Define the responsibilities for executing these budgets
- periodic public evaluation of budgetary execution
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Budget |
- Create budgetary allocation for expenditure by ALAC and its constituent RALOs
- Account for expenditures made by ALAC and its constituent members
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Accounting for Public Input |
- Appropriately annotate substantive ICANN documents under consultation to indicate the origin of support or dissent for specific proposals
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Contractual Compliance and Process |
- Document the life cycle of compliance procedures, requirements, metrics, follow-up, enforcement and appeals
- Make available for public review what is required of the contracting parties, including the timeline for compliance, related correspondence and statistics
- Periodically audit and improve goals to help this effort with the result of allocating additional resources should ICANN staff be unable to cope with the resultant high volume of complaints
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ICANN's Public Service Role |
- Annually orient one ICANN meeting towards issues relating to non-commercial, commercial, and individual users
- Open up the periodic ICANN regional meetings to participants concerned with the public interest from the region concerned
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Conflicts of Interest |
- Review and update conflict-of-interest policies as they apply to Supporting Organizations, Advisory Committees, and other relevant entities
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Accountability |
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Joint Project Agreement |
- balance operator/business interest and ALAC/GAC
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Addressing ALAC Advice |
- the Board must react formally to advice from ALAC and enter into formal consultations to discuss any disagreements
- the Board must explain why it rejects ALAC's advice when it does
- the composition of the Board should represent Civil Society as represented by the At Large Community
- the ICANN Board should include two voting Directors nominated by the At Large Community
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Other Working Group Topics
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Issue |
Recommendations
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Future of ICANN |
- Accessible open public forums for all meetings # expand and enforce multi-stakeholder model
- Stakeholder education and explanation on all aspects of ICANN
- Multiple languages
- Simplify documents
- More time for outreach and community feedback
- Protocol for reporting and investigating (attempted) capture # regular performance reviews, risk analyses, complaint investigations
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Barriers to new GTLDs & IDNs |
- Further categorization
- Fee schedule based on current, actual cost-recovery
- Rounds of gTLD applications, with a fixed deadline, subject to the string contention dispute mechanisms
- ICANN should not engage in any trademark protection and should recognize non-trademark traditional knowledge rights of Indigenous Peoples
- Entirely abolish objections on Morality and Public Order # At-Large can be the Independent Objector
- Applicants' legal status shouldn't disqualify them
- Required technical understanding # parties should choose their Dispute Resolution Service Providers
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DNS Security |
- Study impact of DNSSEC on installed base
- The root should be signed in a way that provides integrity and is globally accepted.# modify contracts to allow registrants to deploy DNSSEC conveniently
- Stricter registration process to minimize fraudulent/criminal registrations
- Implement proposals from 2005 Hijacking report
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ATLAS II
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ATLAS II was held in London in conjunction with ICANN 50. The summit brought together representatives from At-Large Structures to debate ICANN policies, share information, and experience an ICANN meeting. The attendees represented Internet end-users, and many had never experienced an ICANN meeting before. The goal of the meeting was to reach consensus and draft reports on five issues.[4]
Working Groups
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the Future of Multistakeholderism
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the Globalization of ICANN
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Global Internet: the User Perspective
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ICANN Transparency and Accountability
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ATLAS III
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References
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