Governmental
Advisory Committee – Communique
FRIDAY, 14
JULY 2000 - The Governmental
Advisory Committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
held its sixth meeting yesterday and today in Yokohama. The attending Committee members, representing
31 national governments, distinct economies as recognised in international
fora, and multinational governmental and treaty organisations, reflecting
representation from all of ICANN’s geographic regions, issued the following statement:
The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) has had
fruitful discussions around substantive issues relating to the usage of the
Internet across the worldwide community, ICANN activities, and the
administration of the country code top level domains:
A. With regard to ICANN’s funding and budget:
The governments, public authorities and organisations that comprise the
GAC support ICANN; it is recognised that ensuring that ICANN has a sufficient
level of funding is a crucial component of enabling it to complete the tasks
for which it was created. Accordingly, it is important that ICANN receive a
level of funding which will allow it to fulfil its responsibilities, including
consensus development and ensuring the reliable technical operation of the
domain name system.
It is noted that through its document “Principles for the Delegation and
Administration of Country Code Top Level Domains” (the GAC Principles), the GAC
has indicated its view that ccTLD administrators should contribute towards the
funding of ICANN in accordance with an equitable scale, based on ICANN’s total
funding requirements (including
reserves), developed by ICANN on the basis of consensus.
With regard to the contribution for the past fiscal year, the view of
the GAC is that ccTLDs should pay the prescribed contribution contained in
ICANN’s 1999-2000 Budget.
Recognising that situations may differ among various ccTLDs, the GAC
encourages ccTLDs to explore means appropriate to their particular
circumstances to ensure payment of
their contribution to ICANN within a reasonable time frame.
With respect to the future allocation of ICANN’s cost recover
obligations, the GAC recommends that ICANN develop and broadly communicate
procedures to ensure that consensus exists with respect to funding allocations.
Those procedures should spell out the obligation of all parties to participate
in opportunities such as notice and comment periods designed to determine
whether or not consensus is present.
As decisions within ICANN are based on consensus, the GAC encourages
ICANN’s Task Force on Funding, the ccTLD community and others to continue their
efforts to achieve consensus on the determination of:
1. the future appropriate share of ICANN’s budget
contributed to by all relevant participants; and
2.
the appropriate criteria and mechanism for calculating the amount of
each ccTLD’s annual contribution to the funding of ICANN.
The GAC encourages ICANN to
present the results of this work in time for its next round of meetings in
November 2000.
B. With regard to the addition of new top level domains
(TLDs):
That this is a very important area and the GAC wishes
to consider it further
C. With regard to the delegation and administration of
country code top level domains (ccTLDs):
The GAC has had constructive discussions with the ccTLD
Constituency of the DNSO. It is noted
that there are many areas of common ground between the GAC and the ccTLD
Constituency, however there are also a number of areas where further discussion
should be undertaken.
The GAC reconfirmed its support for the GAC Document
“Principles for the Delegation and Administration of Country Code Top Level
Domains”. The GAC noted in particular
that while governments and public authorities need not be involved in day to
day decision making, they exercise
ultimate public policy authority, representing the interests of the people for
which the ccTLD has been delegated.
In order to minimize prejudice (potential or
otherwise) ICANN should not enter into any contractual arrangements with ccTLD
administrators of ccTLDs for which redelegation requests are pending.
The GAC invites ICANN, as a first step, to write to
the relevant governments and public authorities to ascertain their views
concerning the current delegation for the ccTLDs that correspond to their
jurisdictions.
The GAC advises ICANN not to enter into contracts
with any ccTLD registries until they have received the relevant communication,
as referred to later in this Communique, from the relevant government or public
authority.
Thereafter, the GAC encourages that any future
contracts between ICANN and ccTLD administrators should reflect the
administrators’ commitment to be bound by the GAC Principles (as they are
implemented by the relevant government or public authority) and minimize the
liability of ICANN for implementing a redelegation according to these
principles.
With reference to the draft ccTLD Manager / ICANN
Status Quo Agreement, the GAC:
a)
notes that
unfortunately, given the short time period for comments in preparation for
Yokohama, the GAC has not had sufficient time to consider and comment on this
matter;
b)
notes that this is a
discussion document from the ICANN staff and that ICANN will not act on this
before full consultation; and
c)
considers that the
issues in this document need thorough discussion to take full account of the
view of governments and public authorities and they will be examined by the GAC
for consistency with the GAC Principles document, and notably the
communication-based regime proposed by the GAC
D. With regard
to the definition of ICANN’s Geographic Regions:
ICANN
should make reference to existing international norms for regional distribution
of countries.
The
GAC thanks the Japanese government, the Yokohama Host Committee, the Japan
Network Information Centre (JPNIC) and the sponsors for hosting its meeting.
The next face-to-face meeting of the GAC will be held
in November 2000 in Marina Del Rey to coincide with ICANN’s next round of
meetings.