Just a short report on the Monterrey meeting:
First of all, this is all theoretical at this point -- ICANN has to
approve the application, and there are a number of things that could
change between now and then.
The model that is emerging is of a DNSO that is not a separate
organization from ICANN, but instead is something like a special
interest group or subcommittee of ICANN. While the matter wasn't
discussed heavily, there was fairly broad consensus that the DNSO
should not separately incorporate. Indeed, there is a cogent
interpretation of the ICANN bylaws that mandates that the DNSO not
be separate.
A further consensus item was that the DNSO does not of itself provide
significant funding to ICANN. One has to be very careful to explain
this, however, because it is easy to misinterpret statements in this
area: It is obvious that since the DNSO is not a separate legal
entity it cannot of itself invoice other parties -- all funds
collected in the name of the DNSO will in fact, of course, be paid to
ICANN. However, the funds that are billed as membership fees in the
DNSO will be earmarked to cover the expenses of running the DNSO,
and not used to provide support to ICANN for maintaining the root
servers, or other ICANN provided services. Instead, it is imagined
that registries and possibly registrars will have a direct contract
with ICANN (probably a standard contract), and that funds collected
from those sources will be used to support most of the services of
ICANN.
A further corollary of the "not a separate organization" model is
that members of the DNSO *are* members of ICANN. Whether they are
the same as the hypothetical At Large membership of ICANN or not is
unknown.
Membership in the DNSO is open to any legally constituted
organization or *natural* person (some form of authentication will
be required). The basic yearly membership fee is imagined to be in
the range of $10-$100 US.
The DNSO starts out with 6 sub-groups called "constituencies". They
are: Registries; Registrars; Infrastructure and connectivity
providers; General organizations; Trademark Interests; and the At
Large constituency. Any entity not in one of the other
constituencies is automatically a member of the At Large
constituency. There are no further requirements for being a member
of the At Large constituency; the other constituencies, however, are
free within limits to define their own membership rules, and
possibly additional fees.
The "Names Council" is a executive body of the DNSO with certain as
yet not well defined powers. The NC currently is defined to have 21
members.
Each constituency, including the At Large, nominates individuals to
serve as their representatives on the Names Council, in the
following proportions:
Registries: 6; Registries: 3; Infrastructure: 3; General Org: 3; TM:
3; At Large: 3. The fact that the registries managed to force
double the number of representatives was purely a function of the
fact that the registries were by far the single largest constituency
represented at MTY -- in my opinion registries should not have
privileged status, and I hope this is rectified.
There is a complicated set of voting rules that guarantee the
allocations above, and also ensure balanced regional representation.
I mentioned that the attendance at the meeting was terribly one-sided
-- this problem was recognized by all, even the registry
representatives, and a great deal must be done to get more people
involved.
This means you. Please, join the discuss@dnso.org mailing list.
Read the documents on the dnso.org web site -- the meeting notes and
other documents should be published within a couple of days. Please
read the meeting notes carefully -- though they are cryptic, they
reveal a great deal of the sometimes spirited interplay, and will
give a lot of insight into what kind of thinking is going on.
Thanks
Kent
-- Kent Crispin, PAB Chair "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
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