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Preliminary Report | Special Meeting of the PTI Board | 11 October 2016

Formal Minutes are still to be approved by the PTI Board.

Note: This has not been approved by the PTI Board and does not constitute minutes but does provide a preliminary attempt setting forth the unapproved reporting of the resolutions from that meeting. Details on voting and abstentions will be provided in the Minutes, when approved at a future meeting.

NOTE ON ADDITIONAL INFORMATION INCLUDED WITHIN PRELIMINARY REPORT – ON RATIONALES – Where available, a draft Rationale for each of the Board’s actions is presented under the associated Resolution. A draft Rationale is not final until approved with the minutes of the Board meeting.

A Special Meeting of the PTI Board of Directors was held telephonically on 11 October 2016 at 11:00 UTC.

Elise Gerich, President of PTI, promptly called the meeting to order.

In addition to the President, the following Directors participated in all or part of the meeting: Akram Atallah, David Conrad, Lise Fuhr and Jonathan Robinson.

Secretary: Samantha Eisner (PTI Secretary).

The following Executives and Staff participated in all or part of the meeting: Susanna Bennett (Chief Operating Officer (ICANN)); Michelle Bright (Board Operations Content Manager (ICANN)); Xavier Calvez (Chief Financial Officer (ICANN)); John Jeffrey (General Counsel and Secretary (ICANN)); Melissa King (VP, Board Operations (ICANN)); Vincianne Koenigsfeld (Board Operations Content Manager (ICANN)); Becky Nash (PTI Treasurer); and Trang Nguyen (Senior Director, Strategic Programs (ICANN)).

This is a Preliminary Report of the Special Meeting of the PTI Board, which took place on 11 October 2016.

  1. Election of Chair
  2. PTI FY18 Budget
  3. AOB

  • Election of Chair

    Upon nomination by Lise Fuhr and moving by Akram Atallah, the PTI Board took the following action:

    RESOLVED (PTI.2016.10.11.01), Jonathan Robinson is elected as the Chair of the PTI Board of Directors.

    Four members of the PTI Board approved of Resolution PTI.2016.10.11.01. Jonathan Robinson abstained from the vote.

    Rationale for Resolution PTI.2016.10.11.01

    The resolution taken today is anticipated under the PTI Bylaws. This action was based upon Lise Fuhr’s nomination of Jonathan Robinson to serve as the PTI Board Chair. No other nominations were received.

    This action is not anticipated to have any impact on the security, stability or resiliency of the DNS. It will not impose any additional resource obligations.

  • PTI FY18 Budget

    The PTI Board received an update from staff on the modifications to the PTI FY18 Budget since the 28 September 2016 PTI Board meeting. The PTI Board provided some suggestions for clarification and context prior to public comment.

    The PTI Board then took the following action:

    RESOLVED (PTI.2016.10.11.02), the PTI Board directs the President or her designee to post the PTI Operating Plan and Budget for public comment, subject to making the agreed-upon modifications prior to posting.

    All members of the PTI Board approved of Resolution PTI.2016.10.11.02. The Resolution carried unanimously.

    Rationale for Resolution PTI.2016.10.11.02

    Under the PTI Bylaws, PTI must start its budget planning process well in advance of the fiscal year in order to allow for public comment and consideration before the PTI Budget is approved and incorporated into the ICANN Budget. Today’s resolution reflects PTI’s meeting of this advance planning requirement. Further consideration of both the PTI Budget and ICANN Budget for FY18 will continue as contemplated under the Bylaws and planning processes. In advance of the public comment posting, the PTI Board identified certain clarifications in the document, as well

    The PTI Board’s approval of the posting of this FY18 Budget for public comment helps ensure the continued operation of the IANA Functions in a secure, stable, and reliable manner post transition.

  • AOB

    The PTI Board had a short discussion on planning for future meetings, including the need for a calendar of meetings for 2017.

    The Chair called the meeting to a close.

Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."