Notes from the Capetown NCUC meeting

[Milton Mueller]

The NCUC had a lively and productive set of meetings in Capetown
December 2. We had direct  meetings with ICANN CEO Paul Twomey, Vice
President for Policy Development Support Paul  Verhoef, Board member
Michael Palage, and the newly appointed Ombudsman Frank Fowlie. We  also
held an important joint meeting with the At Large leadership which
proposed new forms  of cooperation.

At its business meeting in the morning, the constituency tried to
identify key issues and  priorities for the next year. It was agreed
that the most important issue to focus on will  be ICANN supervision and
accountability. This includes the U.S. Department of Commerce's  attempt
to cut ICANN loose from its supervision MoU in 2006, but also the
WSIS/WGIG  processes, which may set up alternative arrangements for
legitimizing and supervising  ICANN. NCUC Chair Milton Mueller
emphasized that the constituency needs to have clearly  defined and well
thought-out positions on this problem.

As an action item, the group agreed to make a submission to the WGIG on
process and policy  regarding ICANN. This process will be used to
develop and publicize a position. There was  some discussion as to
whether this should be a joint submisson with the At Large Advisory
Committee (see discussion of joint ALAC-NCUC meeting below).

The meeting spent some time discussing and updating WHOIS policy. A
GNSO Task Force  developed two recommendations that will be sent out for
public comment. One would require  "conspicuous notice" to domain name
registrants of the data privacy implications of the  WHOIS. (See
http://gnso.icann.org/issues/whois-privacy/whois-notification-30nov04.pdf)
The  second defines a procedure for reconciling conflicts between
national privacy laws and the  WHOIS data display reqwuirements of the
ICANN accreditation contract. (See
http://gnso.icann.org/issues/whois-privacy/whois-tf-conflict-30nov04.pdf)
The second TF  recommendation ran into two forms of trouble. First, the
registrars, whose representatives  on the task force agreed to the
procedure and in fact were defining forces in it, proved  to be unable
to unify around it due to rather petty competitive concerns. More
disturbingly, perhaps, was that ICANN's staff registered objections to
it. Apparently the  ICANN General Counsel and/or staff, who were present
on the conference calls developing  the procedure, failed to listen to
what was going on and now finds themselves "surprised."  Worse, the
General Counsel, and Verhoef, rather than taking the propsoal under
advisement  and issuing a purely legal opinion, has expressed opinions
about the merit of the policy,  claiming that it could be "gamed" by
registrars - an opinion which is plainly false, and  which suggests that
they have not carefully read the proposal.

The constituency did not get the results of its election from ICANNN
staff yet, but since  all offices were uncontested it was assumed that
Robin Gross will be the new GNSO Council  representative and that the
new Executive committee will look like this:

Chair: Milton Mueller
North America: Frannie Wellings
Europe: Iliya Nickelt
Africa: Olivier Nzepa
Latin America: Caroline Chaves
Asia-Pacific: Norbert Klein

Frannie Wellings pointed out that the NCUC needs to improve its web
site. More current  information must be maintained, and if possible a
redesign conducted. The Chair promised  to initiate a redesign but noted
that regular updates are time-consuming and he lacks the  support to do
it many times. Robin Gross agreed to supply regular updates on GNSO
Council  meetings.

The constituency will recruit new members at the Africa Electronic
Privacy and Public  Voice Symposium on December 6 in Capetown.

A further message with accounts of our discussions with Verhoef, Twomey
and Fowlie will follow.

This report is my own and has not been reviewed by other participants.
Others who attended are welcome to add or correct these comments.

--MM