ICANN 61 takes place from 10-15 March 2018 in San Juan, Puerto Rico

The ICANN 61 Public Meeting takes place from 10-15 March 2018 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

This six-day meeting will be focused on outreach, capacity building, and showcasing ICANN’s work to a broader global audience. This meeting is hosted by nic.pr.

One of the most interesting meetings to watch is the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) that also addresses the GDPR. The GAC agenda features a number of substantive topics including sessions on WHOIS compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), two-character codes as second level domains, international governmental organization and Red Cross/Red Crescent protections, .amazon, the New Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process (including Work Track 5), the Cross-Community Working Group on New gTLD Auction Proceeds, and community-based applications.

ICANN released the pre-ICANN 61 policy report and as expected it has a few GDPR related sessions. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has an enforcement date that is 25 May 2018.

Here are a couple of the GDPR related sessions and community meetings and more details:

ccNSO Members Meeting | Legal Session: The Practical Implementation of GDPR

On 14 April 2016, the European Union (EU) adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which takes effect on 25 May 2018. The GDPR applies to all companies, regardless of their location, processing and holding the personal data of citizens residing in the European Union. Therefore, both ccTLD managers located in the EU, and those located outside of the EU that allow registrations by European citizens, are to most likely be affected. The goal of this legal session is to inform and discuss how ccTLD managers in different regions will be affected and how they  intend to deal with the new policy, particularly in terms of WHOIS-related issues. More information is available here.

GDPR/RDS and New gTLDs

As the 25 May 2018 enforcement date for the GDPR approaches, the ICANN organization and community are working together to ensure compliance with this law while maintaining as much access to WHOIS as possible. At the end of 2018, the ICANN organization published three proposed models on collection of registration data and implementing registration directory services for community input. The community, including representatives of the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC), provided feedback assessing the viability of each of the models in January 2018. Discussions on GDPR/RDS will continue to determine variations or modifications to one of these models, as well as the path forward. During the first round of new gTLD applications, the ALAC provided a number of policy advice statements on the practical aspects of the implementation process. It helped create the Applicant Support Program (ASP) that provided cost reductions and technical and legal assistance to new gTLD applicants from underserved regions. The Applicant Guidebook assigned the ALAC a specific role to file objections against new gTLD applications that raise public interest concerns. The ALAC took on this role actively and engaged in the process. At-Large members involved in the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process Working Group reviewed the outcome of the first application round. During ICANN61, the ALAC is expected to announce the replacement of the co-leader of Work Track 5 of the GNSO New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP Working Group and engage in further discussions on the topic.