Just a quick message to let you know what's going on in Singapore on the
DNSO front.
A meeting was held on Tuesday, March 2nd among many of the parties active
in the DNSO process to review the two DNSO proposals and look for areas
of consensus. In the morning session, we reviewed many of our areas of
disagreement, and although we worked cooperatively, we seemed to make
little progress. Shortly before lunch, Dennis Jennings and Fay Howard,
representatives of CENTR, presented a document that listed the principles
they thought necessary to be embodied in the DNSO, and they discussed
whether the Paris proposal, the BMW proposal, or both met those
principles.
The group found this very helpful, and after the lunch break, we decided
to use the CENTR principles as a list of talking points to review our
areas of agreement and disagreement. Much to our surprise, as we worked
our way down the list we found consensus on virtually all of the CENTR
principles. As we discussed the principles one by one, we annotated the
CENTR document to include additional comments or to flag areas of
disagreement. At the end of the day, we agreed to submit this new
annotated document to the ICANN Board for consideration. It was not meant
to be a "new" proposal, but rather a road map to help the ICANN Board
understand where the two groups had shared beliefs. We also agreed that
rather than use our very limited time at the March 3rd public meeting (20
minutes to present and 30 minutes for questions) to present drafts that
the Board already had read, we would allow Dennis to present the
consensus document from the day before.
(A copy of the Annotated CENTR document is online at:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/singapore-0399/archive/DNSOdraft.html)
For those of you who listened via RealAudio, you know that there was some
discussion about whether the previous proposals had been withdrawn,
whether the process should be delayed for additional commentary, etc.
For those who didn't participate, a good summary of the discussion can be
found at:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/singapore-0399/archive/scribe.html
At the end of day, the ICANN Board seemed to believe that it had all of
the information that it needed to make a decision on the DNSO. Using the
two proposals, the Singapre-CENTR consensus document, the various
commentaries and letters of support, and e-mail traffic on this and other
lists, the Board appears inclined to make a decision tomorrow.
I do not believe that they will choose one proposal or another. Everyone
in the room seemed to assume that the Board would use the Singapre-CENTR
consensus document and the two submitted proposals to construct the new
DNSO. We should hear something from the Board by tomorrow afternoon.
I hope this is helpful. -- Bret
