Dublin

Minutes of the Meeting of the GeoTLD Registries Interest Group

18 October 2015 at ICANN 54 in Dublin, Room Liffey B 12:15 to 16:15

10 Members (representing 16 geo gTLD’s) & 5 Observers observers (representing a further 5 geo gTLD’s) present:

Members present
Afnic	.paris
City of Amsterdam	.amsterdam
dotBerlin GmbH & Co.KG	.berlin
DNS Belgium vzw	.brussels, .vlaanderen
Dot London Domain Limited	.london
Hamburg Top Level Domain	.hamburg
Neustar (Australia)	.melbourne, .sydney
Net Cologne GmbH	.koeln, .cologne
punkt wien GmbH	.wien
ZA Central Registry	.africa, .capetown, .joburg, .durban
Observers present
Minds + Machines Group Limited	.budapest, .miami, .nrw, .bayern
OFCOM	.swiss
Domain Name Services (Pty) Ltd.	.africa, .capetown, .joburg, .durban
TLDBOX	–
Symantec (joined during meeting)	–

More participants representing GeoTLDs and service providers have been present at the meeting but not at the voting section.

 

Agenda

1. Participants welcome and participant’s introduction

The group’s spokesman Dirk Krischenowski welcomed the participants of the meeting and handed out voting cards to the 10 members present. The agenda was not amended. It was noted that the meeting will be recorded, transcribed and transmitted live via Adobe Connect. Personnel support was provided by Sue Schueler and Cherie Stubbs on behalf of the RySG.

2. Charter & Fees discussion and approval

The spokesman appreciated the resonance on the membership & observer call. 14 organizations signed up as members and 6 organizations as observer. The interim Executive Committee (interim ExCom with Dirk, Johannes, Neil and Peter) will verify if other than the 63 ICANN designated GeoTLDs (those who qualified as “Geo” according to the Applicant Guidebook) may be eligible to become member and reach out to them.

Regarding the Charter it was noted that GeoTLDs may have different options to join the GeoTLD Registries Interest Group:

• Join as a member or an observer
• Join as a Registry that is contracted by ICANN or as an organization that has the authority to represent and act on behalf of a Registry. The group largely agreed that it trust members to have “authority” and that mechanisms are in place to remove the membership status if “authority” is not given.
• Join as a Registry of a single GeoTLD or as representative of a Registry of a single GeoTLD
• Join as a representative for multiple GeoTLD Registries
• Join as a representative for a Registry of multiple GeoTLDs
• Join for multiple memberships with the same Registry but different GeoTLDs

Individuals or sole proprietors are not allowed to become a member or observer, only organizations may.

As the membership fee is currently calculated on the number of GeoTLDs represented the member may decide to become only member with the GeoTLD that has the lowest registration numbers.

After intense discussion the group unanimously approved with 10 votes (= 2/3 of members) the full charter and a proposed amendment concerning the eligibility of members. The full and amended charter is attached.

The members agreed on the presented slides on the common understand of the goals and value proposition. It was noted that the future ExCom needs to define deliverables.

The members continued their discussions on future membership fees and a budget for 2016. In order to facilitate a consensus in the near future, a tiered membership fee model was presented to the members. Although there is no unanimity on the proposed fee structure there was general support for such a model. The proposed model will be further fine-tuned and is expected to be finalized by the (yet to be elected) ExCom. It will then be proposed to the members for formal adoption. Once the membership fees have been defined, a detailed working budget will be established and presented to the members.

The members largely agreed on the presented roadmap for the next months with the notion that the final approval of the budget and fee structure may be directed to ICANN 55 in Marrakesh, while the nominations and elections for officers/ExCom will take place before end of 2015.

3. Launch and operational experience

All members and other GeoTLDs present gave an update on registration numbers, renewal rates, premium domain name sales, marketing and topics of interest for the group.

4. Special topics

Egbert Wolf (.amsterdam) presented the latest insights into the debate on privacy, data protection and whois provisions in the Registry Agreement and national and European legislation.

Ronald Schwärtzler (.wien) shared his findings in the relation of premium domain names sales with provisions in the Registry Agreement and EPP issues with registrars.

Peter Vergote (.brussels, .vlaanderen) mentioned the latest update on Universal Acceptance.

Dirk Krischenowski (.berlin) discussed the proposal to comment ICANN’s latest economic study, no decision was taken on this.