President's Strategy Committee. Cairo, Egypt. 06 November 2008. >> Good afternoon, everyone. This session is "Improving Institutional Confidence" and please welcome our chairman, Peter Dengate Thrush. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Thanks very much. Thanks for -- did somebody forget to turn on my microphone? Please turn the microphone on. Is this on? Thank you for coming back from lunch. We're going to do a very much shortened presentation on the work of the President's Strategy Committee. We are amid consultation, so let's just go straight into it. Slide 2, please. This is the layout of the presentation today, the consultation topics that we have already discussed with you, a little bit about the input we're receiving from those consultations, particularly what we've heard from the community this week, and we've obviously just heard from the United States government a few moments ago, a time line for future studies, and then a little bit more detail on one of the particular topics, the internationalization one. Slide. Members of the President's Strategy Committee, I'm cochairing this with Paul Twomey. Members are Marilyn Cade, Raimundo Beca, Yrjo was there a moment ago, Jean-Jacques Subrenat. Yrjo where are you? And Pierre Dandjinou. Thanks. I can do it. What we've established in earlier reports is a series of issues of concern, and those are the ones on the right. So our major topics, as we try and build and increase institutional confidence in ICANN, is captured and of course that's prevention against capture, accountability, and that involves the kinds of discussions we've been having, to whom, about what, how often. Internationalization, how do we make ICANN a fully international organization? And by that, we mean able to respond to the international community and respond to international circumstances. We have the rather obvious point that the organization is financially -- it will fail and there needs to be reasonable confidence and robust administrative and management procedures such as auditing and so forth. Then there's the continuing focus on the crucial infrastructure resources, stability, security, and resilience of the unique identifiers. And we've extracted from the others something that we just wanted to highlight. It was there but we just want to make sure that people understand we are not talking about changing the fundamental character of the ICANN that we know and love, and we are obviously dedicated to maintaining the bottom-up consensus-based model of private sector leadership of the Internet. There is an extensive set of materials on the Web site at that address, and I'm not sure whether now would be a good time to go to that. There is the Web page. And if we scroll down to that section that shows -- is it worth having it -- no, there's a video clip of one of the many consultations that have occurred. That one, Raimundo Beca, I think, talking at the Montevideo one. And if you scroll down just a little bit hard to read on the screen here but if you go down, there are the details, extracts of missions, names -- can we scroll, please? Thank you. These are each of the consultations that have occurred around the world that the President's Strategy Committee has been involved in. Montevideo, Christchurch, Geneva, Washington, D.C., Dakar. So on that Web site, there are video and audio and transcripts of those sessions. All the consultation documents are being posted on the Web site in 11 different languages. And if we go back to the slide presentation, please. So there on the slide, on the right-hand side is a list of the presentations. And what are we now saying as a result? What are we hearing from those consultations? Well, one of them is that internationalization is essential, and we've heard that again this morning from Dr. Touré in a couple of forums. The international community finds it difficult to support an ICANN that is simply a U.S. organization. And not only that, the changing needs of the international community mean that a more -- a different organization -- or different characteristics need to be present in the organization that we build. Now, just another point to stress. We are not talking about giving up anything. We're not talking about abandoning anything. We're not talking about changing or cancelling or folding up the ICANN that we have. We are specifically talking about retaining the current U.S.-based entity. If nothing else, for the reason that it is a party to at least a thousand contracts, and simply shifting those would be really difficult. All of the good parts of that current model will be retained, but good as it is, there are aspects of the model that do not scale internationally, and present other problems, some of them cosmetic and some political. So we are talking about adding something to the existing model, to allow us to do more internationalization. The other thing that we're hearing is about participation. Participation is crucial. We cannot be industry-led or private sector-led unless we know where the private sector is leading us. We have to be consultative. We have to listen. And the other thing we're hearing is that -- and this is in relation to all of ICANN's activities -- that everybody wants more time for that consultation process. People want more time when the documents are published, so they can be translated into their own languages, so they can be taken away into the constituencies or governments or wherever they're being used and considered and put through the proper processes internally and then brought back. So that's the outreach and input we heard from those three, so Montevideo, Christchurch and Dakar. Coming to Geneva, the priorities were these: Concern about the role of the GAC and concern about the United States government's oversight role. And as you heard from Dr. Touré this morning, and as we've heard from him again over lunch, people, particularly governments, who are used to a governmental model for governing find it very difficult to accept governments in an advisory capacity. Now, our answer to that is that is the -- that is the way of the future and the ICANN multistakeholder model is, we think, the recommended model for this kind of institution. But we need to think that through, and obviously we want a strong and functioning and healthy participating GAC, and of course we are working on the role -- the particular role -- of the United States government. Again, from Geneva, the importance of broader participation. We must be hearing from all of the people who are involved in the process, and again we need to be careful about all the different kinds of capture that are available. We can be captured internally by a constituency or a corporation, or we could be captured by external forces -- governments or government, a coalition. And no surprise, more time for consultation. An extensive round of consultation in Washington, D.C. A very large attendance. And again, the lists and the transcripts of these are available, if you're at all interested in pursuing them. What we heard from this seminar was, first of all, concerns about the new gTLD process. This is going to impose strains on the organization. Also, concerns about the level of business user participation. At the time, you will remember we were restructuring -- or the GNSO was being restructured, and there were people who were concerned about the role of the continuing ability of business and private sector to contribute, as we require. Also concern about external capture by governments and uncertainty about this internationalization issue in so far as that we are recommending exploring what other kinds of legal presence, what kind of legal structure we may need to add on to the existing ICANN structure to meet international needs. Particularly from the law enforcement and intellectual property community, stressing the importance of compliance with contractual provisions and particularly with the WHOIS requirements. Also, a significant discussion about the board accountability mechanisms, and you will remember that in addition to the three existing mechanisms of accountability -- the ombudsman, reconsideration, and independent review -- the President's Strategy Committee had recommended two higher-level approaches. One -- the first was to ask the board to rethink some decision, and finally, what's been described as the nuclear option. If all ever things have failed, what about a mechanism for voting no confidence in the board and removing and replacing the board. And I think what we've been hearing in recent days is that it's difficult to imagine a process that that could be done simply, in such a way that it didn't, in fact, cause greater problems than it caused. So we are -- we are rethinking or thinking carefully about a mechanism where we have an essential international organization that's suddenly, even for a short time, loses its board. And again, more time for consultation. Here's how it's been running. We've had two major periods of public comment on our documents, from the 16th of June through to the 31st of July and then again from 19th of September until the 20th of October. I think we've identified these priorities from all of the consultations but here they are again: Capture, accountability, particularly by the board, internationalization, which may not mean more legal presences, importance of business user participation in ICANN, a goal of identifying additional sources of funding, and a conclusion which we've mentioned that the GAC should continue to be advisory, but participation be increased. Yet to come, consultation in Mauritius later on this month and further work at the Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad in December. And further consultations to follow in 2009. Now, as a result of an exercise undertaken apart from the President's Strategy Committee, this was a cross-ASO look at the work of the President's Strategy Committee and they reported back on that this morning. These are some of the things that we've heard just the last few days here in Cairo. The community wants more detail on this internationalization process and particularly wants to know more about the accountability mechanisms. They want to know about next steps, where do we go from here, and they want more time. And again, they want a very careful look at capture, to make sure we've considered, as much as we can, all the various elements of capture. On the right-hand side, the underlying themes about those, as you would expect: Accountability, the obvious point is that we derive our legitimacy from our accountability. Unless we are serving and reporting to the community who then accepts, then ICANN will fail. And accountability has to apply to all of the policy processes and in relation to all of the stakeholders. Now, these are a little bit repetitive because we've cut this down recently to make -- save time today. More details are required on this internationalization process. There seems to be general agreement in principle that we want a scalable structure that doesn't have the limitations of a California corporation registered not-for-profit. But obviously we need to be very careful about what it is we are proposing and what will its relationship be to the existing organization. Now, to address that, we are in the process of putting the final dedicates to a document entitled "Internationalization of ICANN: Meeting the needs of the global Internet community of the future." And this summarizes and is about to go to the board the issues that we've been discussing. Itemizing those things that at the moment cannot be done or can only be done badly by a California not-for-profit. And looking at the things that will make a difference to the international community if we were an international organization. And as soon as we can, we will release that to the wider community for discussion. I can say that the conclusion we've come to, from a great deal of legal analysis and a great -- and some -- and needs analysis, is that there are two countries that provide a new legal structure of an international not-for-profit. Now, it may come as a surprise to some of you to know that -- to think that that is not readily available but that seems to be the case. Most legal jurisdictions, if they deal with the concept of a not-for-profit corporation, don't allow an international one. But there are two countries which have a very favorable legal jurisdiction, deliberately designed to attract organizations such as ICANN. And we are recommending careful investigation of those two countries, or the law in those two countries, to see if we can build the additional entity to take care of these international obligations. Accountability? Well, as I've mentioned, this -- the idea of getting rid of the board, which has been growing up for about 18 months s not something that the President's Strategy Committee invented. It's come through from a number of other areas. But the President's Strategy Committee took it and put it into that context of what were to become the five accountability mechanisms. We are now seriously rethinking that. It seems to have -- it may have more difficulty with it than we thought, so we're working through the detail of that and what the alternatives are. Now, the other aspect that we've -- we're working on is the expert Advisory Groups. We have been talking in some of our documents about being helped in this by expert advisors. The current strategy is to put together individual expert Advisory Groups on each of these issues. As we strike issues in relation to accountability or internationalization, we will be looking at forming specialist groups to assist the PSC in preparing at that level. Next steps? We have produced a document which we call "From Design to Implementation." And that's been released and for discussion this week. What we are proposing to do is prepare a design document for public comment in January-February so that we can have serious discussions about it at the Mexico meeting in March. We are working on the issue of more time, but the reality is that our current agreement, it is the Joint Project Agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce expires on a particular date and there isn't anything we can do about that date and it will eventually arrive. Let me just interrupt to Pierre Dandjinou, the final member of the President's Strategy Committee. Welcome, Pierre, it's a pleasure to have you with us. Now, the obvious point about this is we need you to tell us that if we do these things, or if we are doing them, some of them may not be completed in time. The issue will be: Will this make -- will this provide the kind of confidence that the community requires in ICANN going past September of 2009? So we will be consulting and saying, "Are these the things that -- are these implementation steps the sort of things that will meet the issues?" We need to address all types of capture, internal and external, and we'll be inviting your comments as with everything else on the mechanisms to avoid and to -- to identify and then avoid and diminish the different kinds of capture. And here is the timetable that we've proposed. December -- well, in November, sorry, we'll be working on the timetable and the internationalizing ICANN paper. December, we will be working on the "From Design to Implementation," which is, as I say, the draft work plan with proposed deliverables for each outstanding issue. Between 19th and 23 of January, we'll be working on a draft design published for information for the board meeting in February. January and February, we'll be working on implementation materials, possible bylaw changes, some of the substantive detail that people are requesting, and publishing those for comment. So that by the time we get to the Mexico meeting, there will be a substantial amount of work for you to review. A draft design and implementation materials. And that will be accepted or rejected or changed or submitted, in any event, to the board meeting on the 5th of March. Jumping then slightly forward to the meeting following on the 21st of June, the meeting in the Asia-Pacific region, there will be a further progress report and of course by September, we'll publish the implementation report on improving institutional confidence. Now, I may have been over these, but just another reminder. The internationalization issues: Meeting the needs, strengthening the relationships with governments and NGOs, global advocacy and policy-making. Some parties will not engage because California law is foreign to them. Contractual issues. Some contracts are delayed by fear of entering into a contract with a California-based corporation. And many of you who live outside the United States will know the reluctance to engage with California corporations because of the risk and expense of litigation. And then there are a whole lot of relatively administrative matters around the human resource issue area. Hiring people, getting visas for them to travel in and out of their workplace, immigration issues, healthcare, location, taxation. Many of these things are seriously assisted by not being based in the United States but being based in a jurisdiction in -- working for and with a multinational -- an international not-for-profit. So with that, I throw the floor open to questions and hopefully answers from the President's Strategy Committee. Questions from the floor. Down the back there. Thanks. >>LESLEY COWLEY: Hi, Peter. Is this on? Yes, it is. Lesley Cowley from Nominet U.K. As you know, I kind of watch strategic plans and processes, so that's why I'm talking first. Firstly, I'd like to congratulate all of those involved. I do appreciate that there's been a huge amount of work and outreach in an incredibly short period. I have to say I'm a little bit confused about some of the timing, which I think I detected from your slides has slipped. I had hoped that the final transition action plan was going to be released after the end of the second comment period in October, so we could discuss it at this meeting. Have I missed it in the flurry of papers, or is this the design and implementation plan you're talking about releasing later on? Two final points. I still feel there's an overarching clear vision missing from this process somewhere. I'm not really sure whether that's expected to come out at the end as a sort of summary of the changes and mechanisms that we've put in place. And finally, I'd just like to make my point that I did at the start of this process. I kind of feel that time is running out on us and I'm sure you feel that too. The milestones, the community support and buy-in that we will need to develop over the next two meetings kind of feels an incredibly short time frame for us to be able to do that thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Lesley. Another one there. We're coming -- would somebody like to comment on the question about the documentation? We can come back to that. Stefano. >> (Speaker is off microphone). >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Just keep talking. >> Could you just make sure that microphone says "no. 1" on it, please, if -- thank you. >>STEFANO TRUMPY: Okay. Thank you. Oh. So I appreciated the document recently prepared by the program -- President's Strategy Committee, and I want to outline this point: That great discussion started in the community and in the GAC, you know, that we have been discussing extensively in the GAC, and we learned this morning with the presentation of Mr. Touré the point of view of the intergovernmental organization like it is in ITU, and our chairman answered to Mr. Touré concerning the weakness of the GAC inside ICANN that the ICANN model is different as a private-sector led, and this is something that should be, in any case, retained. And when talking about the different -- the five points that are described in the PSC end document, there are a number of points where ICANN should go ahead without waiting for any implementation plan. Talking about accountability, talking about capture is a good elaboration. The real very important things are two. In the internationalization, let's say, establishing a branch office in another region is not a great deal. We already have a few. But establishing a new legal base with an international status is really the big issue. And also, of course, changing the bylaws is also something relevant. And considering the factor of the implementing and what implementing, this maybe is not very clear to everybody. I would say that the very big issues have to be discussed and prepared as a proposal before the end of JPA, but all the other matters that are not so relevant should be conducted continuously. ICANN has to answer to the ten points of the JPA and there has to (inaudible) on that, so I think that if we discuss at length about the real policy issues in the -- until June, as the chairman told us, is a really important issue, because in the end, ICANN will be able to demonstrate that the world community, the multistakeholder community, actually discussed it at length and is able to subscribe, is able to support the position that is not at all top-down, let's say. So this is basically the end of my message from a single GAC representative. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Stefano. We have room for just a couple more. Yes? >>Y.J. PARK: Okay, Y.J. Park. I am an individual user. I would like to thank ICANN for making substantial efforts to listen to the different stakeholders and people from different regions on how to internationalize ICANN in the context of improving institutional confidence and strategic planning of ICANN. Despite ICANN's eagerness to reach out to many different communities, unfortunately it is still very rare to hear the proposals and opinions from the Asia community in general. Even though the number of Internet users from Asia are growing dramatically, there are other reasons very distinctively, too. We have to think about why, why can we not hear from them that much. One of the main reasons, I think, is because many users from Asia still have no idea of what ICANN is about. So I don't think like to make two comments on geographic regions in ICANN and how to internationalize ICANN in a capacity of Internet user from Asia. To improve the imbalance of representation especially of Asia, I would like to propose we should have more regions than five regions as we have today. As many people know in this room, as of today the five-region division between ICANN and U.N. is not identical. Moreover, the current regional division does not seem to reflect the ratio of the Internet uses in a balanced manner either. According to the current regional division, Asia alone has more than 4 billion Internet users. However, ICANN as of today is a capture by the countries in the Pacific region on the Asia-Pacific region category in many parts of the ICANN structures, including supporting organization chair, advisory committee chair and ICANN's secretary of staff. This is not healthy practice if ICANN really wants to consult with Asia community. In addition to do that, the PSC consultation meeting in Asia-Pacific region was held in Christchurch, New Zealand. Secondly, I would also like to echo what Young Eum said this morning. It is very disappointing to see few staff members from Asia even though the number of ICANN (inaudible) reached almost 100 people as of today. I urge ICANN to recruit more people from Asia as well as people from Pacific region when you recruit people from Asia-Pacific for the next round of hiring ICANN staff members. Second and lastly, in line with this (inaudible) ICANN's existence in ICANN's role in the underrepresented regions like Asia, I would like to ask ICANN to prioritize to host ICANN meetings in such underrepresented countries when ICANN plans next meetings in the future. Thank you for your attention. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. There were two in front of you, I think. And then we are going to have to close this down shortly and get back to new gTLD applicants talking about the price. >>STEVE DelBIANCO: Great, thank you. Steve DelBianco with NetChoice Coalition. I had one question and just a second request. The first question was, Peter, in your presentation, you mentioned two countries were under consideration for the potential internationalization. Can you name those countries for us? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I'm not going to now until we've done the paper. >>STEVE DelBIANCO: All right. We'll see it when the paper comes out. Thank you. And with respect to internal and external capture, I have been a frequent contributor to the boards and also to the consultation that was held in Washington, D.C. I simply wanted to say that the lecture we heard today from the ITU secretary, I think, makes it clear that the risks of capture include the risks of external capture. If we continue to ignore it, to paraphrase Dr. Touré, we are keeping our head in the sand. We heard that the ITU wants the GAC to have a formal role on equal footing. I think that's a fair discussion to have. The Brazilian statement that we heard went further to say they were insisting on, quote, observance of GAC communiques by ICANN's board. I'm anxious to hear what the ITU thinks about that request. The Brazilian government went that far, and the ITU admitted that they don't allow voting by private sector members at the ITU. That's no vote for the private sector who built and maintained 80% of the Internet infrastructure. So the ITU secretary wants to transform ICANN into "we can" but when it comes to the private sector voting at ITU, it is "we can't." And I think when the ITU tells us to trust each other, they are really saying to put your trust in governments so you know what's good for you. I close by asking, please, add external capture to the IIC documents that you're working on and I do look forward to discussions of how we can work together to avoid external capture. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Steve. Just beside you, please. >>ZAHID JAMIL: Thanks. Zahid Jamil. Three points: One on capture, one on confidence, one on internationalization. First, it was interesting for me to hear what the Secretary-General said today. It is obvious to me that there is a possibility of external capture or a mixture of external-internal if the ITU was an observer and things of that nature. And I think everybody would understand what that would mean. It seemed like there was either a declaration of war or peace, and this is what people were talking about earlier. I thought if it was a declaration of peace, it was sort of on the terms of the ITU. What I would like to hear from ICANN is what is the strategy in this document that would try to ameliorate that, if possible. Second point on confidence, I think it is very important as part of corporate governance to have term limits on everything from GNSO council members and directors, et cetera. There was a point made earlier about the CEO. Having completely accepted the fact that excellent work has been done there, is there a concept of that in the works of our term limits? The last point is on internationalization. As a lawyer, I am concerned and I would like to find out what the structure is of this internationalization. I know we're waiting for a document, but just a few points. Is it going to be a subsidiary if it is an international entity which is completely independent? My concern is jurisdiction. And would that then -- is there a study done to, basically, look at the possibility of enforcement against, you know, things like contracts and the root file, the root itself? Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Just a quick answer on the suggestion about term limits for the CEO. I think that's completely misconceived and a complete mistaken understanding of either or both the current relationships and the normal relationships. The CEO is primarily a contractual position, not an elected position. The CEO is subject to a framework of performance and other evaluations which may need to be improved, whatever. The role as a board member is ex officio as a result of a contractual appointment. When you put those things together, a term limit on a contractual appointment is very difficult for me at least to follow. Fancy saying to your board, you had carefully done a worldwide CEO selection and found a CEO that was just right. But after some particular period, no matter how good they were, how wonderful they were working for the organization you had to fire them. So it doesn't make any legal sense, and it certainly doesn't make any practical sense. That's a personal reaction. Time for a couple more. Down the back there. Thanks. I think it is Jonathan, I assume, is it? >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: No. Thank you, peter. It is Eric Brunner-Williams. I want to follow up on the comments of Y.J. Park and the earlier speaker Young Eum. I'm not sure that regionalization is the only or the appropriate mechanism for us to choose. I'm, basically, repeating comments I made to this issue in the registrar constituency a few weeks ago, that we should be looking at things like the OECD membership of staff and the OECD membership of members of the council and board and we should looking for diversity there in terms of who comes from rich countries and who comes from poor countries, not simply who comes from what region. There are two motivations, at least, for this. The first one is we have very little to learn from North Americans, at least the well-connected North Americans. Since I drag around a VSAT a lot, I'm generally a poorly connected North American. But there are parts of North America that really aren't well represented. We also don't have a great deal to learn from Europeans that are well-connected as well. We do have something to learn from parts of the world that are not yet well-connected in terms of bandwidth, latency and link choice. The other economic part of this is in order for us in our self-interest as registrars or perhaps as registries or registry applicants, for this industry to grow, we really do need places where the penetration in the market is low to increase. And we're not going to get that unless we have more representation from areas where there actually is less network, which is, again, speaking to the OECD versus the non-OECD division of the board, the council -- the councils and the staff. So thank you very much for your time. I appreciate this is a hard job. I just suggest regions are not the only metric we should be using. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Eric. I will have to make that the last one down the back. Microphone number 2, I'm sorry. You can, of course, make submissions on the Web site. >> Yes. This is David Cheung speaking from Hong Kong. This is my first time to join the ICANN meeting and express some idea to my feeling in ICANN because as an applicant to be at the ICANN 2009 next year, we found the panels take some action and consider the low support. First, it is about how to manage the conflict of interest when some applicants have already organized ICANN meetings before. And when the board consider -- or the panel would consider the selection criteria about the sort of distance, travel time as a factor to be the winner of the ICANN because sometimes the cost seems to be a critical factor to be the winner of the ICANN meeting. So that's why I would like the board or chairman to consider that. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you for that. We are going to close that now. Thanks to the President's Strategy Committee for its continuing work and go back to the public forum we were having before. Not sure whether members of the board want to take their seats again. Members of the board are at the front here, feel free to come and go. Important thing is that you are here and you listen. I have a speaking list based on the order that was taken at the time. So you don't need to come up and stand again. I will just call you. If you can get to a microphone nearby. First on the list is Mickey Beyer-Clausen. Is Mickey Beyer-Clausen here? Can you make yourself known to a microphone bearer? After that will be Y.J. Park, unless Y.J. your point has already been made? >> I already spoke. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. I will take you off. Y.J., do you still want to speak? You made your point a moment ago. Vittorio. >> I would like to make a comment. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Vittorio? After Vittorio, it is William Tan? >> If you are in the room, would you please stand up so we can identify you with a microphone, as Peter calls your name. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: William Tan. Thank you. Welcome back. Grab a microphone and go. >>WILLIAM TAN: Hi. My name is William Tan. I am speaking in my individual capacity as a long-time evangelist of IDNs. I feel very encouraged by ICANN in its efforts to actually infuse IDN into the root server in its efforts as seen in the ccTLD fast-track program as well as the new gTLD round. However, I would like to point out two points -- two deficiencies in the IDN implementation plan in both programs. Specifically, let me speak actually in the capacity of a Chinese-speaking Asian cat lover living in Malaysia. I would like to use that as an example that I would like to see dot cat in Chinese being applied for as a TLD. And I'm not speaking about any string contention with the dot Catalonia, dot cat having any problems at all. I'm just saying "cat" in Chinese is a single-character Chinese word as a Han character. There is a fairly strict requirement as I've seen in the new gTLD guidebook that says that there is -- that any string being applied for needs to be at least three characters in any language or script. I think -- I do understand the rationale for having that policy, that it being quite a blanket policy I feel. I would like to urge the relevant committees working on IDN working groups to actually reconsider that and make an exception at least for the Chinese-speaking community. Next, I'd like to also make a point about -- well, I know I can speak for the Chinese-speaking community that there is a lot of talk about applying the ICANN guidelines for the implementation of IDNs in both the fast-track program as well as the new gTLD guidebook. However, that guideline is really -- primarily it was created for IDNs at the second level. Now it is very clear in either of the programs how that is going to be applied on the root level. I mean, if you look at it -- if you want to apply the IDN ICANN guidelines at the root level, you really should be taking into account bundling policies and variants and so on. We have seen string contentions being addressed in the new gTLD guidebook. It's not quite the same as the ICANN IDN guidelines because the ICANN IDN guidelines actually talks about obeying the relevant variant tables. In particular, I am talking about the Chinese variants which is kind of well-known that it's kind of unusable for a Chinese string to be applied for in one single -- only for certain variant but not the other variant. So the -- I would like to actually just say that -- okay. That actually applies to both -- >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I don't want to cut you down, but you really need to come to the point. Can you make a couple points? We have a long list and only 30 minutes to get through. >>WILLIAM TAN: There were two points, basically. The first point being the three-character restriction. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Got that, yes. Second point? >>WILLIAM TAN: Second point being the gTLD application needs to address the fact that Chinese applications probably requires more than just one string and there is no mechanism in which how you can apply for two strings at one time that are variants of each other. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay, thank you. Have we found Vittorio yet? Has Vittorio Bertola come back? If not, let's move on to Werner Staub. Werner, I see you're there. After Werner will be Steve DelBianco unless you feel you have done yours and after Steve will be Jordyn Buchanan. Right now, it's Werner Staub. >>WERNER STAUB: I make this comment in personal capacity. You have heard me a number of times urge that we go fast or faster with respect to the rounds or the rounds we have in front of us with the new gTLDs. But now I am going to say something to be perceived to be the opposite. I am actually concerned that we are causing a stampede. A stampede is a situation when those run, at least many of them, who do not actually like to run. They don't want to but they just have to. And this is caused, I believe, because without realizing what we were doing, we have opened the TLD space criterion to participants who've never been there. As a matter of fact, there has never been any TLD that was just intended to be for single registrant's use. Up to now, every TLD has been for people to register principally other than the operator of the registry. And now I see a growing number of projects that people talk about, and there is actually a real fever that's developing -- you are probably going to see more about that in Mexico -- of people who say, "Look, we have to apply for a common name." One of them I heard employees of Deloitte saying that they want Deloitte -- dot Deloitte as a TLD. Not only do they want that but they want to encourage their customers to apply for their respective brand names. This is a totally new situation because whoever has access to the nobility, to the image of being on a TLD, of course, can differentiate itself from the others who do not have access. However, there is not space for everybody. There is not even space for everybody who has a brand. The only thing we can do, if you look at that, is remember how the thing was created and remember what Jon Postel said. He wrote it. It is in his Internet standard. He said, "Right and ownership are not the appropriate considerations. Responsibility to the community is the appropriate consideration." I don't think we should forget that. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay, thank you. I have been informed that Vittorio has left. They will be making submissions in writing. Has Jordyn Buchanan come back? After Jordyn will be Cheryl Preston. >>JORDYN BUCHANAN: I'm Jordyn Buchanan, and I represent absolutely no one except for myself. Those of you that have seen me here at the mic before are probably familiar with the fact that I have -- I have long thought that new TLDs are a great idea. I'm very excited to see the progress on new TLDs and I hope the process will move forward very quickly. Hope the process will move forward more in line with the schedule we saw in Paris than the schedule we've been talking about here, as others have echoed. Listening to the comments today, though, I think that while it is very important for ICANN to provide competition in the gTLD space, I think that can only be accomplished with a robust and flexible introduction of new gTLDs and new business models. It is not ICANN's role to simply create a money-making spigot for everyone that wants to show up and start a new registry. The bottom line here is that I think ICANN's job is to ensure that the framework allows for registry profits, but it certainly is not ICANN's job to ensure that there are registry profits. So I think a lot of discussion about costs should be taken in the context of making sure that there will be some successful operators, but it is not necessary that we make everyone be successful in that context. At the same time, I think it is really important that we recognize there are different types of models, some of which aren't geared towards making money at all. Those are also incredibly valuable. So as many people around the room has told us today, the current fee structure is probably not conducive to working with very small communities that may still be perfectly valid in the gTLD space, things like dot gal, strike me as good examples of that since we already have the successful launch of dot cat. This extensive preamble brings me to my main point, which is a one-year pause, probably longer than one year that is imagined in the current application materials after the round, I think, is problematic. In fact, the very fact that we continue to work through the gTLD process in a series of fairly and frequent rounds forces people to want to get everything done perfectly and right now. And, in fact, this is probably contributing to the stampede that Werner just referred to because everyone feels like they need to get their application in now and get it done. It also forces everyone to want to make sure that the whole framework is perfect for all TLDs on this round. Without this notion of fairly and frequent rounds, and this notion of a pause, it would be perfectly reasonable, I think, to use the existing gTLD guidebook almost completely intact with this existing price point to start the process, yet a reasonable number of TLDs out. And in the meantime, figure out how to work through more flexible models and more flexible pricing schemes for other TLD applicants that could hopefully apply very shortly thereafter. So I don't want to entangle my employer at all, but I happen to work for a company that has the philosophy of launching early and iterating. And I think it has worked very well in the Internet space. I hope that ICANN will contemplate using a model like that in order to make this a truly successful process as opposed to trying to get everything right the first time because I don't think we can do that. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Sounds like a gTLD fast track to match the ccTLD fast track. Cheryl? And following you, Annette. >>CHERYL PRESTON: Hello, I'm Cheryl Preston, I represent CP80.org and Brigham Young University. I want to thank the board and the staff for the tremendous amount of time and effort and resources that they put to restructuring the generic names supporting organization, particularly the new users house and particularly within that the stakeholder group for noncommercial users. It creates an opportunity for user interests to be heard, including those of families, children, consumers, victims of cybercrime. But the restructure will only matter if new constituencies, new groups, new academics, researchers and individuals come forward and help shoulder the work. So the question of additional participation is essential to the ultimate success of the restructuring. In fact, I think it is a question of institutional confidence at this point, the lack of representation for some of those groups in the GNSO. So I would like to encourage the ICANN board to support and fund an outreach effort to reach these groups. And I plea for all of you who are here to encourage individuals and groups from your countries, especially developing countries who have expertise in Internet users and consumer matters to join or form a new constituency in the noncommercial stakeholders group. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Cheryl. At the microphone is going to be Annette. Could I just warn Dan Frechtling and Andrew Mack that you're next. >>ANNETTE MUEHLBERG: My name is Annette Muehlberg. I am a member of the At-Large Advisory Committee speaking in my own capacity. Three issues I would like to address. One is the introduction of new gTLDs and the time it is taking. There are rounds and rounds of new starts, and I'm really wondering how long it will really take until we get the new gTLDs ready. People are there. There are some initiatives around. We already know -- have been knowing for years now, and I'm really wondering if there is a possibility to go, for example, like for city TLDs, to make it possible that they start faster. I'm living in Berlin, so I'm speaking here really in my own personal -- on my experience as someone who lives in Berlin and the success of dot de is also a disadvantage for the users sometimes because you have to squeeze in your new domains in this still-existing room which is left. And it would be really nice if we had some new domains free. Second is the running of the TLDs. It costs a lot of money. 75,000 every year is a lot of money and this is only after the application fee of 185. I think there should be a difference made between noncommercial and commercial TLDs. In the end, all this will be on the back of end users that have to pay those domains. Third is the dispute resolution. I'm wondering if we are talking about (audio cutting out) -- this is terrible -- questions of morality and other issues, if the Chamber of Commerce is really the right place to do so. I was told that the chamber of commerce, yes, it is not really linked to it, it is a separate place, but I'm wondering if an allocation of dispute resolution wouldn't be better even, for example, at the European court of human rights. So that's just one question here. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Annette. Dan Frechtling. Is Dan there? If Dan is not available, can we move to Andrew Mack. Andrew behind you. >>ANDREW MACK: Hi, I am Andrew Mack and I am here speaking in my own personal capacity, like everyone else apparently. I have two points. I'll make them as quickly as I can and as clearly as I can. The first is, I wanted to go back and echo the comments of the gentleman from Egypt who was speaking in Arabic earlier today. I think what he's saying about introducing the gTLDs, at least the common ones in the IDN space and the cc's at the same time -- excuse me, sorry, more slowly. I believe that his comment about introducing the gTLDs, the common ones, and the cc's in the IDN space at the same time is very, very important and very, very valid. I think we just need to have a little bit of pity for the poor small business people who would have to -- who would have to go and do all this registering and that would be very difficult. The second thing is, I really would like to applaud all the efforts that ICANN is making to do outreach. I was at the event in Washington. I think it was a great event. A lot of stuff going on. And I think that ICANN should be pleased at the amount of interest and passion and participation that we're seeing. It strikes me that there's a lot more demand for the public comment period than there is supply, and that it's almost always the first thing to get cut. I know that you're trying to build institutional confidence, and I'm not trying to be negative here. I'm trying to provide you with some really positive feedback. You're getting a response to this desire for participation by prioritizing the public comments section of the ICANN meetings, I think you'd be sending the right kind of signal to the audience. If I just look around, there are many fewer people that were here before lunch. I'd like everybody in the community to be able to hear all the comments that the rest of the community is saying. Thanks. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I'm not quite sure what you mean by "prioritizing." >>ANDREW MACK: I'll be -- then let me be very specific. When the -- >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Well, just answer the question. >>ANDREW MACK: Sure. Prioritizing means not moving it around in the schedule. Prioritizing means not having the speech go long and have the public comment pieces be cut, not having it be a difficult thing for people to do their -- to make their public comments. That's all. So, you know, if -- if we have a time that's set in the schedule, let's stick to that time. If it's not enough time, let's make a larger amount of time. The impression that I get is that in earlier ICANNs, there was more time allocated for public comment than what was originally going to be the 45 minutes and I appreciate that you kept it open. I really do. But, you know, it shouldn't be a concession on your part and it shouldn't be something that we -- that people like -- who is it -- Mike had to ask for earlier in the session. That's all. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Okay. [Applause] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Kang Soo Song. Is Kang Soo Song still here? >>DR. SIR, JAE-CHUL: This is Dr. Sir, Jae-Chul from Seoul Korea. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: It's not your turn. You're on my list but you're further down the list -- >>DR. SIR, JAE-CHUL: Yeah, I'm here on behalf of Dr. Song. He is here instead of me. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I'm sorry. Can you say that again? >>DR. SIR, JAE-CHUL: Yeah. Kang Soo Song is my man so I can present for him. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Ah, yes. Go ahead. >>DR. SIR, JAE-CHUL: Yes. Thank you. I am Dr. Sir, Jae-Chul from the NIDA, the registry of the dot kr, Korea. First, I'd like to congratulations. ICANN's 10th anniversary and commend the work of the ICANN board and ICANN staff. Also, I'd like to ask ICANN to continue to support the core value of transparency and regional diversity, especially with regard to the selection of the venue for each meeting. As one of the applicants for the ICANN meeting in Asia-Pacific next year, I'd like to ask ICANN to uphold the principle of often and transparent procedure when selecting ICANN hosts. Many people in this room may remember that the professor (saying name), one of the pioneers of the Internet, has been responsible for the promotion of original diversity and initial ICANN meeting have been held in Singapore is first meeting and Yokahama and Shanghai also. This summer Korea impressed the participants of the OECD ministerial meeting in Seoul, and so we would like the chance to someday provide a similar experience to everyone at ICANN. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Dr. Sir, Jae-Chul. Iratxe Esnaola Arribilloga. Ah, there you are. Thanks. >>IRATXE ESNAOLA ARRIBILLOGA: Hello. I'm Iratxe Esnaola Arribilloga. And I represent dot eus, a TLD for the Basque language culture community, and I would like to make two brief comments. First, that for a small community like the one I represent, the total fee, the pre and post total fee is too expensive including ICANN meetings all over the world, and second, that each delay and the long period between rounds makes that fee more and more expensive. We as small communities are ready to answer all the questions of a potential final application guidebook, and thus we would like -- we will thank you if you open the first round as soon as possible. Thank you for listening. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. Jonathan Zuck, it's your turn again. >>JONATHAN ZUCK: Hello. Hi. I'm Jonathan Zuck from the association for competitive -- competitive technology. And I guess I'm -- I may be, in all these discussions about institutional confidence, becoming the metrics guy and I wanted to say in the workshop on Monday I was very excited that Peter's slides featured metrics fairly highly, so thank you. I think that it's a very important issue in terms of building institutional confidence to have real measures of success and failure. I noted with interest, in the consultant's review of the board a couple of interesting points. One was that the board ought to be compensated and with that I wholeheartedly agree. You obviously put in an awful lot of work and I think it's important for the board to get compensation for the work that they do here. The second point that I noticed in that report was that there needed to be more objective measurements of the success of the staff and the president of ICANN, and I think that that needs to be pursued vigorously as well. It was unanimous among the board that they didn't have a handle on what the performance of the president and the staff was, and I think that that's not a sign of an organization that's being managed well by the board and there needs to be some objective metrics there. In addition to that, metrics surrounding the success and failure of ICANN in terms of things like contract compliance, et cetera, I think can provide real objective measures for how ICANN is doing and provide real measures for success or failure at an effort at institutional confidence. I think that there's a tendency to substitute programs for metrics, and I think that's very dangerous. I think the reality is that the insertion of metrics into the plan is no substitute for setting goals and accomplishing them, and while Paul mentioned there being no confidence nirvana on Monday, I think actually having some sort of objective standard for what you're trying to reach and implications for not reaching it is essential. I began my career as a software developer and there's a really famous expression in software development and that is that measuring the progress of writing a program by the number of lines of code you've written is similar to measuring the progress of building a plane by how much it weighs. And we need to make sure that that isn't the process that we're falling into, and instead are really building some objective measures, both for the performance of ICANN, its staff, its president, et cetera, and also some measures for confidence of the community and that that should be the horse in front of the cart. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you for your support of the work that -- or recognition, rather, of the work that the board does. I can confirm that all of the board puts in a huge amount of work into all of these projects. Lento Yip is next. And after Lento, Antonio Harris. If Lento Yip is here, if not -- there you go. And after Antonio, Yassin El Shazly. Right. Lento. >>LENTO YIP: Hello. I'm from Hong Kong and I'm speaking on behalf of myself. This is the first time I'm at ICANN meetings and I think I had wrong idea about ICANN. Although I have been in this domain name business for like some six years. I thought ICANN was sort of a -- well, a change organization and that why -- how come this organization decides on everything? But after this participation in the meetings, I think I got the right idea. I'm glad to see a lot of people from different countries debating, fighting, and through a process come up with ideas and decisions and I think that was a good thing. So I'm glad I'm here. But I have two things that I want to say. At the ICANN meeting, I took like 24 hours to come here and that was pretty costly to me and I hope that ICANN meetings can be held everywhere, and I think it is being held everywhere and it rotates among continents and I hope maybe we can take into consideration of like the proximity to different populations, so that we can have more participants joining this very meaningful meeting. That's for one. And another thing is that I echo one of the audience before, saying that geography shouldn't be a decision factor. I think geography shouldn't be a decision factor. Population should be. So that I hope as a Chinese, I hope that there will be more of opportunity for different ethnic groups to be involved in like the board, the management, the councils or other things like that. Although I understand this is not the choice by the people because maybe there is some mechanism to select the board, the councils but I hope that there will be measures implemented to encourage a better mix of participants from all over the world. But overall, I think this is a very meaningful meeting. Thank you. And thank you from Hong Kong. [Applause] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Lento. I'm glad you're here, too, and let me just explain that we do rotate the meetings from continent to continent. In fact, from geographic region to geographic region. The last meeting last year was in North America and this year we've moved from Asia, we were in New Delhi and then we came to Paris, which is Europe and here we are in Africa. Our next meeting is in Latin America and then the cycle starts again so yes, we do rotate the meetings around from region to region. And just a small note. We don't talk about what we do here as fighting but we prefer a robust exchange of respectful views but thank you for your contribution. That's excellent. [Laughter] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Tony Harris. Welcome. >>TONY HARRIS: Yes. This is -- my name is Tony Harris. I'm speaking for the -- as executive director of the Latin American Federation of the Internet and (saying name). I would just like to refer briefly to the draft RFP for new gTLDs, and perhaps repeat a couple of concepts which we spoke about in the GNSO forum and meeting. Basically I'd like to thank staff for this very interesting document and very well-presented, although quite long, and say -- simply say that I think the -- on the one hand, the registration -- the annual registry fee at $75,000 seems a trifle high, perhaps for some nonprofit applicants, and perhaps there could be consideration for having the first two years on rollout of a new TLD, instead of applying a minimum, you should -- you could allow them to pay a percentage, as is one of the two alternatives, and apply the minimum fee, if it has to be applied, as from the third year. It might seem a little fairer to a new entrant. The second point would be I think Ron Andruff made a very strong point when he said that if you don't do this, obviously the registry-registrar commercial model would have to -- would probably end up transferring this cost to the end registrant, which may not be the most convenient solution. And finally, I would urge all those involved in try and keep this process on track and resolving to opening the application window as soon as possible. There are many entities and companies that are in line waiting for quite some time now, and there doesn't seem to be much reason to delay this much further. Thank you very much. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Tony. Just a quick response. Yes, these are drafts and we are looking for that kind of suggestion that you've made in relation to financing. I'm personally committed to a flexible financing approach, if they can be found. Clearly, the -- perhaps the most important requirement here, though, is certainty. People have to know in advance what they're getting themselves in for. But, yes, if we can do flexible financing to meet applicant needs and conditions, we will. And last on my speaking list, Yassin. >>YASSIN EL SHAZLY: Hello. Yassin El Shazly. I am ICANN fellow and this is my second ICANN meeting, so I'm the last one, I guess, who is going to speak, and my remarks I guess may not be as much as valuable as those that have been made. A couple quick remarks regarding the ICC document and the new gTLDs draft. Firstly, we all know that ICANN, it's California nonprofit organization, so it must comply with the U.S. law. And we have this also overseas security act that prevents ICANN to trade with states who are listed in the list of terrorists made by the U.S. government, so as a legal condition -- I know, I am aware that there is nothing special about ICANN. It's like any other entity's legal body in the U.S. that should comply with the U.S. law, so regarding independence, how we can get over this obligation. It's a legal obligation and I know that it's not -- I have been following this. We have briefings, so I have been told that it is not a legal condition, it does not exist in the JPA. Also, it has never existed in the memorandum of understanding but it's a legal obligation, so how we can get over it in order to enforce independence. On the same note, should we think about the transfer of property of the root zones, since we talk about independence? So property, legally speaking, should we talk about transfer of property? And my last remark concerning the new gTLDs, regarding the objection of public order and morality. Module 3. We have this freedom of speech exception regarding that we should -- that the granting of new gTLDs should respect Article 19 and 20 of the pact of the U.N. civil and political rights, but regarding the center, the settlement centers who have been proposed to settle this -- such kind of objection of conflicts regarding the public order and morality objections, all the centers are based in Europe. We have the WIPO, we have the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, we have the international dispute settlement in London. And we all know that the freedom of expression, it's a very controversial human rights issue, and there is a lot of cultures specifically, and I think that one of the most important values of the community of ICANN -- this is my second meeting -- it's cultural diversity. We come from different horizons, from different regions, from commercial and noncommercial, so this is the very most important value. I would like that I would -- I would like to cast my voice that cultural diversity should be considered regarding -- regarding the settlements of public order and morality objections, especially freedom of speech. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. And thank you for coming to ICANN through the fellowship program. We appreciate that, and it's not for me to comment on the value of anybody's things, but your views are certainly very welcome. Thank you for coming and thank you for giving them. That's the last on my speaking list, so I've had a request from Jean-Jacques to make a couple of comments in reply, to we'll come to Jean-Jacques and then if there are no further comments from the floor, we'll close the session and move into the next one. Jean-Jacques. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you. As several questions were put during this public forum session on several aspects of internationalization of ICANN, I thought I'd give a joint reply or some comments, both to your questions and those of the previous session, which were in the PSC presentation. So I'd like to take up three points very quickly. First, the model. Are we talking about an intergovernmental model which should be the model for ICANN or is it the one we are trying to develop? As someone who has been involved in international affairs, I would say that the attraction, perhaps the value for the future of the ICANN model, is precisely that its kingpin is not intergovernmental. It includes government advice, but it is not based mainly or solely on governments. My second point is, what do you mean, what do we mean by "internationalization"? What came out very clearly from this discussion, I found, Peter, was two things. We have been concentrating, perhaps very much, on the external aspect of internationalization, such as additional legal presence, conflict resolution by seeking advice from bodies. It has just been pointed out that all those which seem to be envisaged are in Europe. But at the same time, we have to do more in a sort of internal internationalization of ICANN. Positions on staff, leadership, et cetera. I think the message has gone across very clearly. My third point is about the IIC itself, the documents proposed by the President's Strategy Committee. Two points there. The timing. I think that it came clearly through from your remarks that there is some concern that we may be lagging a bit behind our initial thinking, which was to have something really ready, quite a bit before, actually, the termination or the possible termination of the JPA in September 2009. But to conclude on this point, I would revert to what Peter said in his presentation during the PSC session, and that is that we have all sorts of considerations such as public comment periods, we have to take on board all the comments made, and for that reason I think we are sticking, at least for the time being, to the timetable that Peter had presented to you on the screen. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Jean-Jacques. So I'm going to close the public forum and thank you all very much for your attendance and thank you also for putting up the rather disjointed nature for that. The reason for that is simply the number of you that came on this issue. The last public forums that we've had have not been as extensive and perhaps we shouldn't have predicted this one would be as large. And the other thing is we did have only today to take advantage of the international guests and the compromise was hearing them, and I think we got that right. We are about to go now, just for those of you who are first-time attendees, we're about to have a coffee break and then the board is going to go into a workshop, which has sometimes gone on till 10:00, 11:00, midnight or later, and as the board tries to gap you will with all of the issues and all of the input that it's been fed in this coming week. It's our chance to try and distill that into some kind of sort of action plans, and I assure you there's lots of that robust exchange of respectful views that I mentioned earlier characterizing that discussion. And of course the other thing we're doing is doing our homework for tomorrow's board meeting. There will be a formal board meeting with points of order and motions and eventually resolutions adopted. That's here. That starts at 8:30 and you're very welcome to attend. At that stage, it's the board only, so we will not be taking comments from the floor. But you're very welcome to attend. After that, this afternoon, to finish the day, please come back at 2:00 for a GNSO Council wrap-up session. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Thank you. >> Ladies and gentlemen, before you leave, I'd like to introduce the Director-General of the Mexico Internet session Enrique Bustamante. [Applause] >>ENRIQUE BUSTAMANTE: Thank you very much. Thank you for giving us this opportunity and we all understand that we have had enough speeches during the last sessions, so we propose to provide you a break by playing a video on what to expect on the next session in Mexico City. Before we play the video, I just want to thank the whole ICANN community, especially, of course, the board, for giving us the chance, the opportunity, to host the next ICANN meeting on March 2009, and I would like also -- I want to recognize all the effort and great work that the local host in Cairo, Egypt, they have made. Congratulations on that. That gave us also a very good challenge for the next meeting. And finally, I just want to -- I really hope to see you -- to see all of you in the next meeting in Mexico City. I just want to thank all the ICANN staff and Pablo Hinojosa, Nick.mx and ISOC Mexico, Alejandro Pisanty, to work very hard and push to get this job done. Thank you very much. Hope to see you all in Mexico City. And please do me when you are a favor. Whenever you are packing your belongings and put it in your suitcase, please bring a very big smile and have lots of fun for joining us. Thank you very much. Can you help me on the video? Thank you. >>STEVE GOLDSTEIN: (Speaker is off microphone). >>ENRIQUE BUSTAMANTE: Exactly. We are not forgetting the green T-shirts of the national Mexican team. [Video playing] >> (non-English word or phrase) 2009, March. Buenas Dias! Thank you all for coming to our ICANN meeting.