Ok, it's been posted.... "Preliminary Report" of the recent ICANN meeting re .XXX

The Chairman introduced this item by noting that the ICM Registry had in recent days prior to this meeting supplied hundreds of additional pages of information in support of their proposal. This was in addition to the substantive amount of material already supplied. He noted that some of that materials had been made publicly available and some could not be posted given that names of individuals were involved in some of the documentation.

John Jeffrey confirmed that ICM has represented that the identities of people and entities obtained in pre-registrations and from their website form were not cleared for public posting.

The Chairman asked John to refresh the Board's recollection on the status of this matter and the process for decision-making. John read the Board's last resolution from the 12 February 2007 Meeting where staff was requested to do the following: a) post the revised version of the Appendix S to the proposed .XXX registry agreement to the ICANN website to seek additional public comment; and b) consult with ICM and provide further information to the Board about whether the sponsorship criteria has been met for the creation of a new proposed .XXX sTLD.

John further indicated that ICM had held two briefing sessions for the Board during the previous week on sponsorship issues and questions; and that in addition ICM had presented or re-presented a number of documents for the board to consider. John noted that these materials, in their redacted form has been posted on the ICANN website. John indicated that ICM has represented that the identities of people and entities obtained in pre-registration materials, and webmaster information obtained from their website form were not cleared for public posting.

John asked Kurt Pritz to summarize the public comment postings. Kurt Pritz advised that the most recent public comment periods on the changes to Appendix S had produced 946 comments against the establishment of the .XXX registry and that these fell into two categories: comments that considered the domain would see an increase in adult content on the Internet, and those contending that there was little support for the creation of the domain amongst the sponsoring community. Kurt noted that there had also been comments in favor and these were outlined in a memorandum to the Board from ICM which stated that the sponsoring community was a self identified group that works together to provide adult content on-line. A full summary of those comments was provided to the board for their review and consideration.

John referred the Board to the decision-making 'tree' outlined at the last meeting on the pending issues. He identified three issue areas: 1) Community Review Issues ? whether there had been sufficient community review and public comment on the application and agreement and the sufficiency of the proposed agreement; 2) Government Advisory Committee Public Policy Advice ? raising questions regarding: a) the status of advice from the Government Advisory Committee (GAC); b) a request for clarification of the letter from the GAC Chair and Chair-Elect; and c) whether additional public policy advice had been received or was expected following the GAC's Wellington Communique; and 3) A determination of of how ICM's proposed agreement, application and materials submitted measure up against the RFP requirements.

John noted in relation to community input that since the initial application on the proposed application and revised contract, there had been over 200,000 emails sent to ICANN and additionally over 1300 separate comments had been received in the public comment forums established by ICANN. Paul Twomey added that he had personally received many personal emails, mainly from the American Family Association, opposed to the creation of the domain. John confirmed that those emails were included in the overall count and that Staff had attempted to post all of them. John stressed that it was important that the ICANN Board take into account the unprecedented public comments regarding this matter relating to any decision that might be made on this topic.

Vint Cerf then raised an issue regarding whether the sponsorship criteria is met for the creation of a new .XXX sTLD, and noted that there had been an assertion by ICM that 76,000 pre- registrations indicated significant support for its creation. Vint noted that he could not tell whether those had been verified in any way. That is, whether there was a way of determining whether they were from webmasters in adult on-line industry or individuals. Kurt Pritz indicated that ICM had indicated that they had been verified and indicated that in addition to this 1217 webmasters from the adult entertainment industry had identified themselves as being in support of the sTLD. He said that each person so registering had to provide a url so it was possible to track that back to see if it represented an adult content site.

In relation to the GAC Communiqué in Wellington, the Chairman said that he still believed that the GAC was to provide advice on whether the proposal met the requirements of a sTLD. GAC Chairman and GAC Board Liaison, Sharil Tarmizi, said that he believed that it had been addressed.