ICANN 75

Dates:	17-22 September 2022 Annual General Meeting
Location:	Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Malaysia Time / UTC+8)
Venue:	Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre
Website:	https://75.schedule.icann.org/
Key Appointments
Tripti Sinha, Board Chair Danko Jevtovic, Vice-Chair Chris Chapman, Sajid Rahman, Christian Kaufmann, and Wes Hardaker joined the ICANN Board

ICANN 75 was the first hybrid Annual General Meeting and the second ICANN meeting to be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It took place from September 17 through 22, 2022. It drew 1,957 participants from 112 countries and territories, 1,165 of which were in person and 792 attended remotely. The number of in-person participants from each region included:

• Africa – 98 (8.4%)
• Asia, Australia, and Pacific Islands – 506 (43.4%)
• Europe – 201 (17.3%)
• Latin America and the Caribbean – 63 (5.4%)
• North America – 297 (25.5%)

Prep Week

The ICANN 75 Prep Week is running from September 6 through 8, 2022.

Presentations

• Contractual Compliance spoke about
  • its 2022 Registry Agreement audit
  • TempSpec-related registration data complaints
  • UDRP-related complaints
  • DNS Abuse-related complaints of which there were nearly 3500 from June 2021 through May 2022 and the number one hurdle in helping complainants is that they aren’t sending reports to registrars before contacting ICANN.
  • its outreach efforts
• The GNSO Policy Update entailed
  • PDP improvement tracker
  • Policy Development Process to Review the Transfer Policy, namely that the team is currently working on Phase 1b concerning the change of registrant and Phase 1a, whose report was published. It had 34 submissions in response and lots of useful feedback. Six recommendations need to be updated, six others may need review.
• The EPDP on Internationalized Domain Names has made significant headway. Its aims and methods seem to align with ccPDP4. The team has more than 40 questions to address in the charter, but the focus is currently on IDN string similarity and the String Confusion Objection process as well as breaking the EPDP into chunks. The idea is that the first part will concern TLDs and the second part will concern post-delegation and operational issues on the second level; the team is seeking risk assessment expertise from ICANN Organization.
• The Registration accuracy scoping team is a pre-PDP effort and is currently planning a survey for registrars
• The SSAD ODA small team said that ICANN would share its report on the SSAD Light proof of concept the week before ICANN 75.
• The DNS abuse small team is working on "Issue Buckets" to determine which approach works best for each type of abuse issue. It could be structuring voluntary agreements, engaging in ICANN Community outreach, or taking the PDP route.
• The Closed Generics Facilitation arrangement is underway and signifies a new type of process for ICANN.

Topics discussed in KL

SubPro

ICANN Org gave an update on its Sub Pro ODP, which has four phases:

1. Analysis: of outcomes of the final report, concerns, implementation, nearly 400 assumptions, and questions. This phase is complete
2. end-to-end process development: this phase is nearly complete
3. Implementation assessment and how it will impact ICANN org: this phase is underway
4. ODA drafting: this phase has begun; the ODA will be sent to the ICANN Board in December 2022.

Highlights from Q&A

1. Q: The application process will rely on new tools (nothing from 2012); how long will it take for them to be built? A: IT says the timeline for them will be ready for ODA
2. Q: How will changes to applications be made public? A: people will subscribe to an application to receive notifications of changes
3. Q: how about NTAG? A: will be important
4. Q: How firm is the timeline? A: pretty firm
5. Q: Are there any changes from 2012? A: The rules will be different, and there will be much more applicant support, communication, and awareness building. The RSP pre-approval program should streamline the application process.
6. Q: IDNs will be prioritized? A: yes, but only within their groups. See Rec 19.3 from SubPro final report on prioritization to understand the formula
7. Q: PICs? A: will be handled more or less the same way
8. Q: COI needed? A: yes for some, not for others
9. Q: Why is the pre-application period 18 months? A: So that there will be 12 months for applicant support and RSP preapproval, and results from those programs available at least 6 months ahead of the application period
10. Q: Will questions and concerns get to evaluation panels faster (clarifying questions)? A: yes, we learned a lot from 2012 about what is or isn’t possible; this will be handled in implementation, and there will be an appeal process

Whois Disclosure System

• ICANN Organization presented its ideas for a WHOIS Disclosure System

Transfer Policy Review PDP

• The Transfer Policy Review PDP Working Group discussed the Public Comment report concerning the Phase 1A Initial Report. They focused on the possibility of eliminating the Losing and Gaining Forms of Authorization (FOA) and replacing them with notifications to the Registered Name Holder and stronger security measures for the Transfer Authorization Code.

IDNs

• The working group for the Expedited Policy Development Process for Internationalized Domain Names discussed its progress, namely that it will break the process into "chunks." The WG will publish the Initial Report in two parts. Part 1 will cover charter questions and recommendations about TLD variant management and part 2 will concern charter questions and recommendations about second-level variant management. The team also reviewed a strawman process flow of the New gTLD Program to analyze the feasibility of a stand-alone round for existing gTLD registries to apply for variants and/or activating variants between application rounds.
• James Caulfield of ICANN Org's Risk Management discussed issues around introducing TLD variant labels and the need for a common understanding and an agreed mechanism to quantify the risks, in terms of likelihood (occurrence) and severity (seriousness of the consequences). He recommended considering the String Similarity Review as a way to understand the proportionality of the proposed Hybrid Model in addressing the risks associated with failure modes. Issues could include denial of service if a user attempts to visit example.X, reading it as being the same as example.Y, and after typing the address (example.X), the connection does not work as example.X is not registered. There could be a misconnection if a user attempts to visit example.X, reading it as being the same as example.Y. After clicking on example.Y, the user arrives at a site controlled by a registrant different from http://example.X, or a misconnection due to variants blocked to avoid string similarity.

Registration Data Accuracy

• The gTLD Registration Data Accuracy Scoping Team discussed options for implementing two recommendations on current enforcement and reporting and measurement of accuracy. The team also began deliberating on performing a registrar survey for reporting on the status of the accuracy of their domains to inform work on reporting effectiveness, impact, and improvements.
• The CPH and CSG membership session thanked the leaving chair for his heroic effort and discussed looking for a new Accuracy chair who can facilitate rather than being a subject matter expert

DNS Abuse

• The DNS Abuse Small Team discussed its outputs with the GNSO Council
• The CPH gave a presentation on DNS Abuse Outreach
• The ccNSO's standing committee on DNS Abuse met
• The IPC held a closed working session on DNS Abuse
• CPH & CSG advanced toward developing narrowly focused messaging on alignment on DNS abuse at the contractual level to be sent to ICANN org so that not every abuse ticket would be rechecked but to address systemic problems with abuse. The focus will be on maliciously registered. IPC wants to avoid expanding or changing the legal language about DNS abuse definition and is happy to keep the working definition (spec 11 3B of the RA. The goal is to close the gap in the contract because right now there’s no requirement to take action to mitigate abuse.

Universal Acceptance

• ALAC held a session for At-Large members and the ICANN community to review results and discuss the next steps from a survey the ALAC conducted with funding from an Additional Budget Request (ABR) in Fiscal Year 2022. ALAC engaged a professional survey organization to conduct a survey on a topic of interest to Internet end users and it decided to focus on IDNs and Universal Acceptance among Indian end users in the Hindi language.
• UASG met with the GNSO Council to figure out how to make UA readiness take hold more quickly around the world
• There was a cross-community session focused on how to drive local change toward UA adoption
• ccNSO held a UA session and created a small team of ccNSO councilors to develop a roadmap for Universal Acceptance among ccTLDs
• There was a session dedicated to planning for UA day

Internet Fragmentation

There was a plenary on Internet Fragmentation that paid special attention to the impact of legislative developments. Bruna Martins dos Santos, Pari Esfandiari, John Crain, Ram Mohan, James Bladel, Paul Wilson, Farzaneh Badii, and Nigel Hickson led the conversation. In a poll asking, “Is the Internet currently fragmented," 53% of those attending the plenary responded yes.

• Crain said internet fragmentation refers to the move away from understood and agreed-upon protocol norms and standards
• Mohan said it is like turning the internet into islands without bridges, increasing the likelihood of critical infrastructure failure and degradation of the user experience.
• Wilson emphasized the interruption of data flow at the local level
• Bladel focused on fragmentation prevents companies from reaching their customers

During the Plenary on Geopolitical, Legislative, and Regulatory Developments, ICANN's Government Engagement department discussed governments and IGOs' attempts to address political and social challenges with technological solutions, potentially resulting in negative unintended consequences on the Internet and ICANN’s activities and multistakeholder model of governance; some governments are especially worried about capture (unilateral decision-making and favoring vested interests).

Holistic Review

The ccNSO established a ccNSO Council drafting team to provide feedback on the draft Terms of Reference for the Holistic Review

NomCom Composition

ccNSO decided to seek legal clarification on Section 8.8. of the ICANN Bylaws, which dictates that no person who serves on the Nominating Committee is eligible for nomination to any position on the Board or any other ICANN body that the Nominating Committee is responsible for filling, until the conclusion of that person's service on the Nominating Committee.

RPMs PDP

The policy status report concerning UDRP, as part of Phase 2 of the PDP Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs was presented during the GNSO Council meeting.