ICANN 12


Dates:	10th - 14th March 2002
Location:	Accra, Ghana
Host:	Ghana
Website:	[1]
Historical Significance
This was the first ever ICANN Event held in Ghana

ICANN 12

ICANN 12 took place in Accra, Ghana. The ICANN Board had openly encouraged anybody, who was interested to come and take a seat at the meetings that were to follow over the four days, and the option was available for people who could not make it in person to the meetings, to watch and comment via the webcast and remote participation opportunities.

The event saw the Public Forums run throughout the course of the 13th March 2002 and the ICANN Board meeting on the 14th March. On the 11th March there was also a orientation workshop available for new attendees to the ICANN Meetings to attend. The Meetings that took place throughout the Event had Discussed various new subjects such as new TLD’s for Domains, and also Domain Name Deletion Procedures.

Meetings

ICANN Board meeting.◦Approval of MinutesAt Large/Public InvolvementICANN ReformApproval of Security Committee Charter.org Reassignment.pro Registry Agreement.info Country NamesEmerging RIRsMessage from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan

◦Status of Independent Review Implementation

ICANN Public Forum (all day). ◦President's ReportPreliminary Budget/Budget PrioritiesAt Large Study Report/Public InvolvementICANN Reform.org Reassignment.pro Registry AgreementNew TLD Evaluation Progress.info Country Names

◦Domain-Name Deletion Procedures

General assembly of the DNSO (08:30 to 11:00) ◦Waiting list and Deletes (jointly organized by GA, NC, ICANN)

◦.org separation and ALSC (organized by GA) Special presentation: "Higher-Layer Naming Systems: Keywords and Other Non-DNS Identifiers" (11:00 to 14.00)Names Council (15:00 to 18:00)

Governmental Advisory Committee (all day)

Orientation workshop for new attendees (08:00 to 09:30)DNSO Constituency meetings (throughout the day) ◦ccTLD Registries Constituency Business ConstituencygTLD Registries ConstituencyISP ConstituencyNon-Commercial ConstituencyRegistrars Constituency

Intellectual Property Constituency

African ccTLD workshop

Developments

While the WIPO was and is conducting its work on the issue of geographical and geopolitical terms in domain names as part of its ongoing WIPO-2 process, the GAC became concerned that the issue required more immediate attention with the registration of many geographical terms, including country names during the .INFO "sunrise" period. The appropriate use of such names is of concern to governments and other public authorities in the light of the risk of their speculative and abusive registration and use, particularly by registrants and resellers without any relationship with the country or place concerned. The focus by the governments on the .INFO TLD was due to the "special nature" of .INFO and the particular interest by governments to use it for official governmental websites for providing information in international fora.

The GAC Communiqué of 9 September 2001 states that an interim "ad hoc" measure should be taken by ICANN and the Registry to prevent avoidable conflicts in .INFO due to the "very special nature" of .INFO as it relates to names of countries and distinct economies, as recognized in international fora. Given Afilias' willingness to address the GAC's concerns, the GAC recommended reservation of country names contained on the ISO 3166 Part 1 list by the .INFO Registry, contemplating their future assignment "to the corresponding governments and public authorities, at their request, for use.

On 10 September 2001, the ICANN Board discussed the GAC recommendation. Several Board members expressed concern over the technical feasibility and practicality of responding through the reservation of specific domain names, while there was also the view that it was appropriate to take steps to temporarily prevent registration of country and distinct economy names in order to allow time for the community to discuss and consider whether any policy should be adopted on the issue