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All three WHOIS Task Forces have elected their chairmen: Jeff Neuman (registries) will chair TF1 (restricting access for marketing purposes); Jordyn Buchanan (registries) chairs TF2 (data elements displayed and collected), and Brian Darville (IPC) will chair TF3 (accuracy).

An open procedural question on all three task forces is whether task force members who participate as experts or liaisons (or in their capacity as nominating committee appointees on the council) will have voting rights on task forces. An opinion from the General Counsel is being expected on this.

ICANN staff has just sent an FAQ on the new registry services PDP to the GNSO Council. The document will be posted to the ICANN web site later today.

At its conference call tonight, the council is going to discuss what its next steps in this process will be. Draft terms of reference here.

On its telephone conference tonight, the GNSO council has decided to launch the policy-development process on designing the parameters for a process to be used by ICANN when approving certain requests for changes to registries (adopted with two registry representatives voting no and one abstaining; on the council); the council will deal with this issue as a "committee of the whole" (adopted with one registry representative abstaining). The council will use the terms of reference drafted by Bruce Tonkin, as amended on the call. The amendmends made on the call also included a rephrasing of the issue statement itself. The general sense continues to be that the procedure to be designed is to be applied in those situations in which ICANN has to give agreement to some change under the current contracts. This process is not about changing the scope of the obligations that are contained in the current contracts.

A procedural motion by the registries to defer the ultimate vote by two weeks, so the terms of reference could be refined to be acceptable to them, was rejected by the rest of the council.