[ALAC] GNSO Liaison Report - Prague

[Alan Greenberg]

I am currently at the GNSO Wrap-Up session and will join the ALAC 
Wrap-up part-way through the meeting.

My Report
=========

I has been a busy but relatively calm meeting, at least compared to 
the last one.

In terms of immediate actions required, the proposed ALAC statement 
on the .com agreement is the only one.

The most interesting session was a review of a number of GNSO issues 
with ICANN staff. It was a "jaw-dropping" session in that there were 
a number of issues that most of us in the room found outrageous. The 
two main issues were:

- ICANN doing significant work related to the implementation of the 
Trademark Clearinghouse, including hiring a consultant to develop EPS 
(Extensible Provisioning Protocol - the mechanism used for 
communication the registries) extensions, all without any involvement 
of or communication with registries or registrars - the ones who are 
the experts in EPS and who will have to implement the results.

- The URS, one of the key protections that ICANN has been claiming to 
provide security to trademark holders, has been found to be 
un-implementable at the specified cost. Although the URS was 
developed by a GNSO body (with involvement of ALAC), but the only 
notification of this problem was that there was a line in the 
proposed budget that ICANN was providing funds to hold "summits" to 
attempt to resolve the issue, all without any explicit involvement of the GNSO.

- Digital Archery - well understood that the Board did not consult at all.

There has been considerable discussion on issues related to the Red 
Cross/Red Crystal/International Olympic Committee, Intergovernmental 
Organizations and the wider non-governmental international 
organizations (and charities in particular). There are multiple 
activities going on and this is an issue that will continue for some 
time. It is quite controversial within At-Large and I would strongly 
suggest more ALAC/At0Large involvement as the processes go forward. A 
statement on the open Preliminary Issue Report will be drafted over 
the next few days (AG, EL, HR).

I did not attend the bulk of the open GNSO session yesterday, as I 
was in the ALAC RoP meeting. I will review the records of the meeting 
and report on that on the agenda.

Alan