ICANN68 Policy Forum: What To Expect

The ICANN68 meeting will be the second of three virtual meetings in 2020. The Policy Forum generally has a lighter schedule than the other two meetings of the year, as the intent behind this meeting is to progress policy work and allow unconflicted time for cross-community debate to advance understanding of opposing perspectives on thorny issues.

As with ICANN67, however, the virtual nature of the meeting brings technical and logistical challenges which reduce the number of sessions that can run concurrently, and impacts participation in a meeting operating on a different time zone to many of the usual participants.  A number of the constituency groups have chosen not to hold internal meetings, instead relying on their regular call schedules.  Even the PDPs, which are meant to be a key purpose of the Policy Forum, have significantly scaled-back activity.  SubPro and RPMs each only have one official meeting in the ICANN68 schedule, although both also have regular working group calls during the same week.  The EPDP does not meet at all, although again there will be a regular working group call outside of the meeting schedule. All this poses some challenge to anyone aiming to attend ICANN68 sessions in real time on a Malaysian time zone and to continue with their regular working group commitments. Of course, recordings of sessions will be available after the event.

Much of the discussion at ICANN68 seems likely to revolve around DNS abuse, particularly as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to a few other topics:

  • DNS Abuse
  • RPMs Review
  • Future New gTLD releases
  • PICs and the PICDRP: What’s the Right Path Forward
  • DNS and the Internet of Things: Opportunities, Risks and Challenges
  • Aligning Universal Acceptance and IDNs with the Multilingual Internet: End-user perspectives
  • IPC APAC Open House on the UDRP

Outlined below are a few key sessions to participate in, covering an array of topics:

DNS Abuse:

  •  At-Large Policy Session: DNS Abuse: COVID-19 and End-user Issues, Monday 22 June, 10:00-11:30 | Virtual Meeting Room
  • GAC DNS Abuse Mitigation (with PSWG) (1/2), Monday 22 June, 11:30-12:30 | Virtual Meeting Room
  •  Plenary Session: DNS Abuse and Malicious Registrations During COVID-19, Monday 22 June, 13:00-14:30 | Virtual Meeting Room
  •  GAC DNS Abuse Mitigation (with PSWG) (2/2), Tuesday 23 June, 16:30-17:30 | Virtual Meeting Room
  • At-Large Policy Session: DNS Abuse: Setting an Acceptable Threshold, Wednesday 24 June, 10:00-11:30 | Virtual Meeting Room

Right Protection Mechanisms:

Future New gTLDs:

Domains and IoT:
  • The DNS and the Internet of Things: Opportunities, Risks, and Challenges, Tuesday 23 June, 13:00-14:30 | Virtual Meeting Room

You also may wish to join our post-ICANN68 webinar on 7th July 2020. Register here.