[NCUC-DISCUSS] NCUC blog post by Farell Folly on ICANN59

[Renata Aquino Ribeiro]

Hi everyone

Blog post by Farell on his ICANN59 experience

Thanks Farell for your hard work on this and on the FAQ

Reminding everyone that Abu Dhabi call is open until the 15 Aug

Please share and mention

There's also an excerpt to give an idea of days as an NCUC community
member supported traveller just here for the mailing list in the end

Thanks also to Farzaneh and others who helped w/ inputs

Any suggestions or corrections just send a message

https://www.ncuc.org/2017/08/10/icann-59-report-ncuc-fellowship-experience-and-policy-development-processes/

ICANN 59: NCUC Fellowship Experience by Farell Folly

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his
head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”
Nelson Mandela


Attending ICANN 59 in Jo'Burg as part of the Noncommercial Users
Constituency (NCUC) fellowship program, further convinced me of the
validity of this citation of the legend of freedom in South Africa.
The experience did not only confirm a previous thought of mine that
ICANN is indeed a World of Everything: Business, NGOs & IGOs,
Technologies, Consumer Protection, Culture, Human Rights, Child
Protection and many more, but also that a better job can be done in
terms of outreach, inclusiveness and ownership through policy making.



    I.        INTRODUCTION

ICANN 59 was my second attendance of an ICANN meeting after ICANN 55
in Morocco. But the outcome of this year's policy meeting event was
way above expectations. Indeed, being a NCUC fellow and mentored by
Renata Aquino Ribeiro gave me the opportunity to gain an insightful
knowledge of general policy meeting framework and to also meet and
exchange fruitfully with many experienced people who are also the
focal points for various issues at ICANN and can guide you about how
to get engaged.


  II.        MEETINGS EXPERIENCE

Pre-ICANN 59: NCUC Outreach event at Braamfontein, Johannesburg

The outreach event organized by the NCUC on the 23rd and 24th of June
2017 was an excellent opportunity for newcomers to know more about the
constituency as well as a chance to interact with the local community
key players such as Internet Society, Gauteng Chapter and Association
for Progressive Communications. Members also took great advantage of
this unique opportunity to meet physically and exchange views of
various subject matters in a more comfortable environment.

During this event, I particularly appreciated the panel held in the
afternoon of June 24th to discuss about domain names, privacy, freedom
of expression and human rights. The panelists were composed of:

1)     Tim Smith, Pharmacy business executive, from the CIPA -
Canadian International Pharmacy Association. He presented  the use of
an online tool for searching medicines while defending the need for
changes in regulation in a “.pharmacy” domain name.

2)  Avri Doria made a presentation  on the new gTLDs (geographic and
territories names) subsequent procedures and their implications.

3)  Niels Ten Oever raised issues and questions associated with the
intersection of domain name governance and Human Rights in the
Internet.

4)  David Cake discussed about freedom of expression and trademarks

5) Stephanie Perrin closed the panelists list with discussions on data
privacy and its history within the ICANN

Regarding the use of .pharmacy domain name, there are many related
themes that are interesting to think about. The intervention of Tim
Smith of this new domain name really pointed out how we can leverage
domain names usage to save lives, protect children, defend human
rights and freedom of speech. However, when it comes to trademarks,
experience reveals that too much regulation can hinder innovation.


My work on FAQ for NCUC and the chance to present it to the group during ICANN

I presented my work on the NCUC FAQ at our Policy Session. Attendees
really appreciated this initiative and expressed their willingness to
contribute more. I announced that I would send out the link of the
document when it is edited by the Executive Committee so that we can
gather more comments and always improve and update it. It was also
noted that it is important to work in close collaboration with the
onboarding program team to avoid duplication of efforts.

III. THE POLICIES DISCUSSIONS


ICANN 59, among many other past conferences, was a policy forum. That
said, it was the place for many discussions regarding all ongoing
Policy Development Processes (PDP), including the Next-Generation gTLD
Registration Directory Service (RDS) PDP to replace WHOIS, the New
gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP, the Rights Protection Mechanisms in
all gTLD PDP; just to name a few.


RDS PDP

The use of Internet nowadays is raising too many challenges that
require close attention to user privacy and security. Therefore, and
as said above, an important question was raised earlier to determine
whether new requirements should be considered for the gTLD
registration directory services and if a new protocol is needed to
address those requirements.  This  was the starting point of the GNSO
Registration Directory Services (RDS) Policy Development Process (PDP)
in January 2016. Actually, I am active member of this WG PDP where I
always take the opportunity to raise concerns about users interests in
line with the NCUC priorities, and our work is divided into three
phases:

Phase 1: Policy - Requirements definition, to establish If and WHY a
Next-Gen RDS is needed

Phase 2: Policy - Functional Design, to detail What a Next-Gen RDS must do

Phase 3: Implementation guidance on How a Next-Gen RDS  should implement policy

During ICANN 59 we exposed a compiled list of possible requirements
and this policy forum was an opportunity to discuss with the community
to consider opinions from people outside the working group. Taking
into account feedbacks and suggestions from the ICANN 59 participants,
the Working Group will determine possible trade offs and continue its
works towards the next step. ICANN 60 will be the occasion for this
working group to release its first initial report by using rough
consensus on fundamental requirements  in five areas to answer the
main question: Is a new policy framework and a next-generation system
needed to address these requirements? The following areas will be
covered by the report:

Users and Purposes : Who should have access to gTLD registration data
and why (for what purposes)?

Registration : Data Elements What data should be collected, stored,
and disclosed?

Privacy : What steps are needed to protect data and privacy?

Gated Access : What steps should be taken to control data access for
each user/purpose?

Data Accuracy : What steps should be taken to improve data accuracy?


Rights Protections Mechanisms

Rights protection discussions were initiated in June 2014 by the GNSO
Council to consider whether existing curative rights protection
mechanisms should be modified, to address the needs of International
Governmental Organizations (IGOs) and International Non-Governmental
Organizations (INGOs) in order to protect their names and acronyms at
the second level in both existing and new gTLDs. Experienced members
of NCUC are holding leadership positions on those aspects and Ms Kathy
Kleiman is again an example of a great contributor from our
constituency. The Working Group dealing with Rights Protection
mechanisms has been tasked to consider whether the Uniform Dispute
Resolution Policy (UDRP) and Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) should be
amended to resolve the problems faced by IGOs and/or INGOs, and,
finally, to make some proposals. The WG is finalizing its initial
report and require some feedbacks from the users community.


New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP


The PDP on the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures initiated in December
2015 and chartered in January 2016, is intended to determine what, if
any changes need to be made to the existing policy recommendations
from the 2007 Final Report on the Introduction of New Generic
Top-Level Domains (TLD), such as:

Clarifying, amending, or overriding existing policy principles,
recommendations, and implementation guidance;

Developing new policy recommendations; and,

Supplementing or developing new implementation guidance


Taking into account that there is a great interest in this subject and
over 1,000 TLD delegations exist, reviewing the existing policies is a
big challenge, and ICANN 59 demonstrated once more that there are too
many divergences leading to too many proposals of methodologies to
consider. This makes it harder for the WG leadership team which
includes also another experienced member of the NCUC, Avri Doria.


Attending the policies discussions confirmed me that NCUC is playing a
big role in ICANN in order to implement good policies to ensure safe,
secure and fair Internet. Therefore, I will continue to volunteer,
work and contribute to the achievement of this priceless objective.



 IV.        CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATIONS

Overall, it was a good opportunity to attend this meeting as a
participant of NCUC fellowship. I encourage the Executive Committee to
continue this initiative as well as the outreach events which are an
unique occasions to increase awareness and bring in newcomers.
However, I noticed that the NCUC outreach event held in Johannesburg
could have a better attendance ratio  of non-NCUC members. Only few
people were not members of our constituency. I, therefore, suggest
that key performance indicators (KPI) are set up for the organization
of such events in the future so that we can have efficient means to
measure their successes. KPIs can range from the number of attendees,
ratio of local participants, ratio of non-NCUC members, ratio of
random internet users; to the number of newcomers who join the NCUC
following the event.

On a separate note, I would like to suggest that initiatives such as
NCUC onboarding program be broadcasted on the forum so that people can
be aware at early stage and contribute. For instance, this could
ensure that the FAQ and other related initiatives are conducted in
close collaboration with this program since the beginning to avoid
duplication of efforts and increase efficiency.

Last, but not least, a reminder:

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his
head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”

My opinion, following this famous phrase of the freedom legend in
South Africa – Nelson Madiba Mandela, is that NCUC and ICANN should
always seek to speak the users’ language with the aim of gathering
more people for a better (safe and fair) Internet for all.

Follow me on twitter at @__f_f__ or visit my linkedin profile


Kealiboha!


Excerpt for mailing list only

Day 1: ICANN 59 1st meeting day

-  GNSO NCSG Outreach Meeting

-  GNSO Council Public Meeting

-  GNSO CCWG Meeting on new gTLDS subsequent procedures

During ICANN 59, every day started with both the GNSO NCSG Policy
briefing and the GNSO Outreach meeting in order to briefly discuss
the agenda of the day, interact with the community so as to gather
feedbacks and suggestions. This first day I attended the the GNSO NCSG
Policy Brief session, which was focused on outreach and strategy
discussions led by Rafik Dammak (GNSO Councillor) and Tapani Tarvainen
(Chair of NCSG).  This was followed by one of the GNSO Council
meetings which I attended in order to know more about the council, our
councillors, as well as all working groups and policies development in
progress. In the afternoon, I attended the GNSO cross community
working group meeting on new gTLDs subsequent procedures which gave
the opportunity to the community to express their thoughts regarding
the ongoing process and way forward for a successful procedure to
handle domain names related to geographic and territories names.

Day 2: ICANN 59 2nd meeting day

-  GNSO Policy Briefing

-  new gTLDS Subsequent Procedures PDP WG F2F Meeting

-  Meeting with Ed Morris

In the morning, I've attended a meeting set up by my mentor with one
of NCSG policy committee members, and this was an opportunity to
discuss the NCUC fundamentals, its history and how a newcomer can
easily find his/her way to contribute. It was an outstanding hour of
discussion which gave me the motivation to contribute more in the NCUC
and always make sure that my voice is heard.

Another important meeting I attended was new gTLDs Subsequent
Procedures PDP F2F. As far as the new gTLDs meeting is concerned, the
main outcome I noted is that the working group is recommending that
support for new gTLDs applicants should be more about coaching or
mentoring than financial. Therefore, if financial support needs to be
in place it could be awarded for the application fee or early
registration fees but focused on making the registry self-sufficient.
Attending this meeting helped me better understand discussions and
positions during the Cross Community Working Group meeting held the
day before regarding the same topic.

Day 3: ICANN 59 3rd meeting day

-  GNSO Outreach meeting

-  GNSO RDS PDP WG F2F meeting

-  Meeting with Avri Doria, Pierre Dandjinou

-  NPOC meeting

-  NCUC Policy meeting and presentation of the my work

After attending the GNSO outreach meeting, I immediately set up to
attend the GNSO RDS PDP WG F2F meeting as a member of the working
group. The main question of this PDP remains: Is a new policy
framework and a Next-Gen system needed to address new registration
data services requirements? More on this subject in the section
“Policies Discussions”, below.

One of the things that marked this day as an NCUC fellow was being
able to meet with both Avri Doria and Pierre Dandjinou, VP Africa
Stakeholder Engagement. Again it was a pleasure to meet with such
experienced people to learn more about their inspiring journey within
ICANN. The example of Pierre is interesting and needs to be shared
across Africa in order to increase participation from Internet users
on the Continent. The meeting with Avri Doria was set up by my
mentoring program at NCUC.

As a member of the Non-for-Profit Operational Concerns Constituency of
NCSG representing Africa 2.0 foundation (www.africa2point0.org), I,
consequently, took the advantage of my presence in Johannesburg to
attend the meeting scheduled for this constituency. During this
meeting I discovered the onboarding program designed to handle
newcomers more efficiently. Most of the discussions focused on how to
bring newcomers into the constituency and the use of the onboarding
materials was highlighted as an important tool. It was also good to
notice that both the NPOC and the NCUC are working together on these
onboarding processes. Another discussion was about the presentation of
the Consumer Trust Review Team and the consequences of its conclusions
for NPOC.


Day 4: ICANN 59 4th meeting day

ICANN 59 closed with the GNSO wrap up meeting, and the GNSO CCWG
meeting on the new gTLDs subsequent procedures. Apart from attending
those meetings to further my knowledge on such aspects, I also visited
other communities such as AFRALO and AFRICANN. Moreover, I roamed
around the ICANN booth in order to discuss with other fellows and
assist in explaining ICANN ecosystem to newcomers.