ICANN Board Faces Pressure on Second gTLD Round Timeline, Jurisdiction Issue
The board faced pressure for ICANN to name a definitive date for the next round of the new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) program. Chairman Steve Crocker also resisted renewed suggestions that the organization move its place of incorporation from Los Angeles, a point of contention left over from the now-completed Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition, during Monday's forum at the ICANN 58 conference. The meeting in Copenhagen is to run through Thursday (see 1703100062).
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ICANN understands “quite well the importance of having a date [for the start of the next new gTLD round] and the number of things that are dependent upon it,” Crocker said. The underlying problem, he said, is that to have a date, ICANN must know all of the underlying contingencies that would affect the next round. “We’re still in the period of trying to understand all of those” contingencies, Crocker said. “Once we have that … we’ll be geared up and ready to say, ‘Yes, the target is the following date.' And we think we can lay the work in between now and then to make that happen. But we’re not there yet.”
Data collected on the initial gTLD round “is the hardest thing” for ICANN to fully interpret, Crocker said. “It’s like predicting the timing of the stock market.” ICANN must “wait for the work to be finished” by the policy development processes (PDPs) and other community stakeholders to see “whether they’re satisfied to start a new process,” board member Markus Kummer said. “It’s not a top-down decision.” Several PDPs are examining issues that could affect the next gTLD round, particularly the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP (see 1606280069 and 1611020057).
The nonprofit should “come up with an estimated timeline and put it out there as soon as you can, preferably" by the organization’s planned Oct. 28-Nov. 2 meeting in Abu Dhabi, Uniregistry counsel Bret Fausett said: “What that does is it gives people time to prepare. Don’t underestimate how important that is, especially if you want to get applications from people who aren’t” at the Copenhagen meeting. “I think we’re closer” to being ready to start the second gTLD round “than you think you are,” Fausett said. “I think that the universe of contingencies is known now and at least I would task the [ICANN] staff to coming back to the board and giving you what is left.” He noted an earlier stakeholder presentation that leads him to believe “everything will be in the hands of [ICANN] staff by 2019.”
Google Engineering Director Jordyn Buchanan pushed the board on the second gTLD round timeline, saying “there’s been conspicuously little evidence” that the organization’s staff has followed through on a 2012 board commitment to create a project plan for a second round. “I think we’re getting to the phase” where there's a “pretty good outline of the work plans” for the PDPs, so it “probably makes sense to figure out what that work plan” looks like, Buchanan said: “I’d like to start seeing evidence of it at some point by the time” of the Abu Dhabi meeting.
Crocker cautioned a Russian stakeholder not to expect ICANN to reconsider its decision to keep the organization incorporated in Los Angeles as a California nonprofit public benefit corporation. “I would not hold out any hope that we are going to change our location from a corporate point of view,” Crocker said: The decision to remain incorporated there during the switchover process “was very clear, and things are going to remain as they are.”
The jurisdiction issue “is not a fresh subject,” Crocker said. “It’s been discussed. It’s been discussed recently.” The Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability is currently examining the organization’s jurisdictional issues as part of its work on a second set of recommended changes to ICANN's accountability mechanisms. The working group punted the jurisdiction issue during its work on the first set of accountability recommendations amid concerns the issue could derail the IANA oversight handoff (see 1508040058). U.S. interests indicated they're wary of CCWG-Accountability’s renewed examination of ICANN’s jurisdiction because some are pushing the working group to partially explore moving ICANN's place of incorporation (see 1701030021).
The place of incorporation “is not a statement about how we serve the world,” Crocker said. “There are other aspects of jurisdiction” on which ICANN has “a definite flexibility” to use local laws in different parts of the world, he said. ICANN has only “a small amount of formal structures that are associated with” its incorporation under U.S. laws and post-transition no longer has a “contract with the U.S. government,” Crocker said.
The board separately voted Saturday to pass a slightly modified version of a circulated draft of the organization’s anti-harassment policy. ICANN moved to create the policy to supplement its existing standards of behavior after allegations of sexual harassment during the organization’s March 2016 meeting in Marrakech, Morocco (see 1603250060). Stakeholders urged ICANN in January to tweak the proposed policy but approved of its general direction (see 1701130063).