2006 AGM Minutes
MINUTES of the Annual General Meeting of members of Canadian Internet Registration Authority held at the Delta Montreal Hotel, Montreal on June 12, 2006 at 1:00 p.m.
1. Call to Order and Approval of the Agenda: Clyde Beattie, the Chair of CIRA, called the meeting to order and acted as Chair of the meeting, and John Demco, Secretary of CIRA, acted as Secretary of the meeting.
The Chair declared that notice of this meeting had been duly given on May 12, 2006 to all CIRA members but due to technical difficulties, not all notices were given 30 days in advance. In light of section 17.03 of our by-laws which provides for such a situation, it has been confirmed by our legal counsel that these proceedings may proceed.
2. 2005 AGM Minutes: There being no corrections or additions to the minutes of the Annual General Meeting held on April 28, 2005, the Chair noted that the minutes stood as approved.
3. Special Members’ Meeting Minutes: There being no corrections or additions to the minutes of the Special Members’ Meeting held on February 1, 2006, the Chair noted that the minutes stood as approved.
4. Report of the Board of Directors: Clyde Beattie, CIRA’s Chair, delivered the report of CIRA’s Board of Directors. The Chair reported on the growth of the Registry in the past year and the dot-ca’s market share in Canada. Registrations passed the 500,000 mark this year, reaching 620,000 by December 31, 2005. The Chair also reported on the Registry operations and the technical infrastructure and noted that this year marked an excellent system performance with an uptime of close to 100%. On the subject of International Relations, the Chair reported that CIRA takes an active role and interest in international organizations related to Internet governance and management such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Council of European National Top Level Domain Names Registries (CENTR).
5. Report of the President: Bernard Turcotte, CIRA’s President and CEO, reported on the governance reforms which included modifications to the composition of the Board of Directors and Nomination Committee and the Election process. The first election under the new rules will be held in September 2006. The President and CEO also reported that a review of the Strategic Plan was in progress with a focus on the following projects: 1) simplified business model; 2) primary and backup sites, and zone secondaries; 3) roadmap for technical operations; 4) performance targets and reliability standards; 5) policy development process; 6) website accessibility; 7) new website requirements; 8) internationalized domain names; 9) ENUM; 10) IPV6; 11) VOIP; 12) project-based financial accounting and management; 13) risk management; 14) corporate governance; 15) Quality Management System; and 16) communications activities. The independent review of the CIRA Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (CDRP) and the implementation of an Appeals Process were delayed due to the Corporate Governance project and are now underway. The public consultation on Excess Funds is in progress and implementation is expected by the end of the 2006 calendar year. The new WHOIS project was also delayed due to the governance reforms. The public consultation on the implementation of the new WHOIS policy is expected to be completed by September 2006 and a final implementation by the end of March 2007.
6. Report of the Auditor: Debi Rosati, Chair of the Audit Committee, delivered the Auditor’s report for the fiscal years ending December 31, 2005 and March 31, 2006.
7. Report of the Treasurer (Financial Statements): The Chair of the Audit Committee, Debi Rosati, presented the financial statements for the fiscal years ending December 31, 2005, and March 31, 2006, copies of which were included in the AGM kit or it could be viewed on CIRA’s web site.
8. Appointment of Auditors: It was moved by Jeanne-Estelle Thébault, seconded by Gerald Ugrina, and motion carried, that Kriens~Larose LLP be appointed Auditors of CIRA, to hold office until the next Annual General Meeting or until their successors are duly appointed and that the Board of Directors be authorized to fix the remunerations of the Auditors.
9. Questions from Members:
QUESTION – Lloyd Lindsay
Domain – lloydlindsay.ca
My name is Lloyd Lindsay the domain name is lloydlindsay.ca and I just wanted some clarification as to the reasons behind the change in year end? I know it may have been mentioned before, I would just like some clarification?
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Hi, good technical question. As many companies, we start off meaning, you know we’ve got a lot of other things to worry about it and you keep it simple and you keep it to the calendar year. What that was creating because we have, we now have a full budget cycle whereby we have to prepare the information and go through the committees before bringing it to the board meant that if you worked it back from the December 31st date which is the calendar year end date was that we were trying to there was basically no choice given our election dates for new boards and introducing new board members. And the timing of working through committees, we were trying to do the budget in June and July and staff for some reason have some ideas that they want to take their families on vacation and it’s hard to get everyone glued together, so basically we tried to hold on as long as we could without doing this but it just didn’t make sense. With this new year end, it pushes the whole calendar forward three months. So, instead of trying to do this in June, July, August, we are doing all the prep work if you will in September, October, November which facilitates our job. That was really the only purpose behind it.
LLOYD LINDSAY
Thank you
QUESTION – François Touchette
Domain – foliodata.ca
My name is Francois Touchette – domain name foliodata.ca. First of all I would like to thank the Authority for being here in Montreal for getting out of Toronto and coming here to Montreal. This is a good thing. My question is for Mr. Turcotte. He is the Chairman of the Authority is it the President, and in his report he mentioned that they would be creating a subsidiary indeed on the website, the CIRA site, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, there was a survey, there was mention of creating a subsidiary for the surpluses and not paying income tax. Now I read in the strategic report that the President told us about, that there is for instance the whole issue of social responsibility for the authority. It appears to me that it would be a good idea to include within the strategic plan this consolidation, I’m talking here about social responsibility or accountability by providing training for youths, people who are interested in accessibility for the internet. So I think that within the strategic plan it would be a good idea for us to work on training, training youth, I’m talking for myself when I say youth of course or rather I am talking about people who are younger in age than I am. So I think the Authority ought to deal with this more at length. That is my issue or question, is this part of the goals that the Authority has and my question is for Mr. Turcotte.
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Thank you. Well first of all, we’re really in Ottawa as opposed to Toronto (laughter) I am sorry for that mistake. Well yes indeed, we are talking about creating a subsidiary and this is not exclusive of the social responsibility side of things, I mean I think the notion in creating the subsidiary is to come up with the mechanism that would be effective in terms of well fiscally speaking I must repeat that, and this was said earlier on that we are now defining the mechanics and seeing how projects can be administered; but we are not now at a point where we will be identifying these projects so we’ll be holding meetings such as this one and asking people to come up with ideas so that we see what we will be doing but first of all we need sound footing to see whether or not we can act and finally I would like to tell you that and this is not 100 percent in line with your question but is close to your question or what you are interested in, I think that we have moved along in studying a project for the internet day as we call it and this year it ought to be starting in the USA and this will move around and we will try and bring the actors around, facilitate education and try and concentrate our resources so that people start thinking about the internet, its so run of the mill now, you just plug into Videotron and don’t have to worry so it seems but things are more complicated, this entails a lot of dimensions so we are now looking at starting up an internet day project for Canada for this fall and we try and provide this kind of training and it would be in line with what you are suggesting I think I hope I have at least partly answered your question.
François Touchette
I have a second question but I will wait to ask it.
QUESTION – Maria York
About the privacy law or issues of the privacy – how much of the personal information is absolutely necessary for an owner of CIRA domain to have posted on the web – world wide internet like when people can go to search engines like Tucows and go to this information. For example currently my personal phone number must be there, my name must be there and I don’t feel very comfortable with this. I am a researcher. I manage, I try to build a small corporation from managing from my home office and I named the corporation for the purpose of protecting my personal information like me address, I can purchase an office number from UPS and I can do this but I cannot do this with CIRA. All of the information is on the internet right now and even when you cancel the domain the information stays on the internet, who is responsible for removing it because then once you cancel the domain you no longer have access to it.
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Thank you. I will answer just so we keep with the procedure – Could we have you name and domain name please?
Maria York – My domain name is Canadianworker.ca.
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
In effect part of the WHOIS changes we’re bringing forward is to address exactly what you are talking about. Currently the requirements for anyone holding a dot-ca are the same if you are an individual – yes you do have to provide your name, now the contact details are those of the administrative contact who you choose to name so it doesn’t necessarily have to be yourself. However, lets look forward the issue is that individuals such as yourself have the right to privacy under Canada’s new privacy legislation and the various versions of it in the provinces. The whole point of the WHOIS consultation which will be completed in September is to complete how we’re going to implement the changes to protect your privacy. In the new regime which should be in place by the end of this fiscal year, meaning March 31, 2007, if you register a domain name as an individual or as a small company that asks for the same kind of protection and are entitled to do so under the law, your personal contact information would not be displayed.
Maria York
Okay thank you. So, can I just ask, who is responsible for the removal of the personal information once you cancel your domain because you don’t want it – you no longer require it.
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Part of the issue is just the internet itself and all the logging engines. What happens is that places like Google, etc. when people go through them and make requests these sites will keep information it’s not CIRA that is keeping your information alive it’s these other sites because some people have looked up things in a variety of ways, these sites archive information and it is your responsibility as the individual to contact these various sites and they all have policies and mechanisms where you can actually request that they remove your information. It’s not quick but it does work, so, and if we can assist you in pointing you to the right places where you can find that information we will be glad to do so.
Maria York
Okay I just wanted to say thank you and my comment from the person who is not a internet expert it is very difficult for somebody who is trying to start a small business using the internet to navigate through the process if you cannot hire a person to do that for you so hopefully you can help to improve this for everybody to have greater access to the use of the domains.
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
That’s part of our job, thank you, thank you very much.
QUESTION – Claude Gélinas
Domain – job.ca
Good Morning my name is Claude Gélinas – job.ca. Using the TBR it seems that some Registrars are actually using the auction system once the domain has been won by the registry to award it to one of the Registrants being the one that has the highest auction. I just wanted to say that as a Registrant, I am uncomfortable with that technique, I would like to see some kind of way of contributing the names that is more democratic and somehow more reflective of the Canadian society where everyone has an equal chance to get their hands on such precious resources that is my comment and I thank you very much for being in Montreal. Thank you.
QUESTION – Vidal Arpin
Domain – arpin.ca
I am Arpin. I run arpin.ca. My question is regarding age. You currently require every member to be of the age of majority and to be of the age of majority to get a domain. Now this is ageism and it is discriminating against people who are below the age of majority and it is restricting many members from getting domain names. Are you trying to get rid of this or is this some legal loophole that you have this restriction?
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
I guess the real answer in that is two-fold. a) look at the lawyer – I think under the Canada Corporations Act if you are going to be a member of a corporation you have to be of age of majority so the government requires it on the first part – you don’t have to be a member to own a domain name – your second question is that we’re a contract based system. There is a set of responsibilities that you take on as a domain owner okay? Because you are going out there in the great wide world of internet and depending what you post, or not? Or how you post it or what you are doing with the domain name or which domain name you register, can bring in legal action relative to that and the simplest way of dealing with those things because of the responsibilities that are associated with it is to require that people be of age of majority. I mean its not like buying a pack of gum, you have a pack of gum, once you have bought it you either decide to chew it or throw it out. A domain name can actually depending on what you choose to try and do with it get you sued and it is our responsibility to try to the best of our ability to narrow who is behind the domain name and that they meet the requirement for being a user, so, yes maybe it is ageism in a way but it is ageism also to not allow people who are 4 years old to drive cars, I mean its unfortunate but we try and strike a good balance.
Arpin
Well you can own a dot-com domain name while being under the age of majority. That is still the same thing as an organization you are shielding yourself from this, anyway.
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Thank you
QUESTION – Clint Leung
Domain – freespiritgallery.ca
My name is Clint Leung – freespiritgallery.ca. Is there a marketing strategy in place to encourage Canadians to register more dot-ca domains as opposed to dot-com or other domains?
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Marketing 1A (laughter) Marketing is an interesting challenge when you are sitting next to the 800 pound gorilla that is dot-com just south of us. I would tell you that we look at that on a very regular basis and compare our stats and our growth. You saw some of the curves earlier on and we try various things on a regular basis because we are aware of it. One of our own personal objectives in there is that eventually we want to make sure that Canadians split their domain name registration between dot-com and dot-ca. So, we’re very encouraged with our growth and the way things are going, but let’s not forget dot-com is dot-com is dot-com is 40 million domain names, and it was there. So I think we’re doing very well; I’d like to do better. We keep trying new things with registrars and how we publish these things, but one of the first things that we’ve always said though, and I want to be very clear with that here, is that as opposed to dot-com, our first business is not to sell the most domain names. That’s not what we’re about. We’re a not for profit corporation, we’re here to make sure we do things right, we’re here to make sure we do things right for everyone. We’ve been mandated by Industry Canada to have a responsibility for stewardship of the dot-ca domain. We don’t get up in the morning and our first thing is “well how many of these damn things did we sell?” That’s not where we’re at. We want to make sure that they are popular and that they are a good option and they are competitive for Canadians, that’s important but it’s not important that we sell more than dot-com.
QUESTION – Lorenzo Tartamella
Domain – Marketing.ca
Hi Lorenzo Tartamella from Marketing.ca
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Good name.
Lorenzo Tartamella
Thank you. One question as you just mentioned about dot-com or competition, There are some rumors about dot-com, dot-ca and perhaps a .can. Would you know anything about that or perhaps clear anything that’s up in the air? Would CIRA have any plans for a .com.ca such as the US came up with com us in addition to their dot-us and so on? Thank you.
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
I can tell you that I haven’t discussed this and no one’s discussed it with me for well over two years. A few years ago we were looking at some of the standard extensions as second levels to dot-ca, dot-com, dot-org, dot-net and I just don’t see it personally.
QUESTION – Lionel Perez
Domain – corporationcentre.ca
My name is Lionel Perez – corporationcentre.ca. Well as an ongoing consultation with dot-ca Registrants, there is a process to consider doing certain activities outside of the current core activities. My question is although the process is ongoing and obviously I anticipate that you are waiting for the process to be completed to provide the conclusions, number 1 is why was this considered? I know there was an issue of having money left over? Number two is what are the initial considerations and number three why simply not reduce the fees to you know, not go outside of your core competencies? Thank you.
ANSWER – Clyde Beattie, Chair CIRA
I would like to respond from the Board’s standpoint, there hasn’t been any consideration given to any specific initiatives outside of our core mandate to this date and that is a ways off… Bernie did you want to respond to the gentleman?
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Yes, I think that one of the things that goes to the heart of the consideration and we certainly appreciate it because part of our mandate if you look at it; part of our mission is to operate in the most effective manner possible. But to do that when you look at it and it comes back to the question we had earlier, our competition is dot-com in the hearts and minds of Canadians and to a certain extent we can see there is certainly some discussion at various levels in the corporation that dropping the price significantly below dot-com will not necessarily be a good thing for the greater good of the Canadian groups, however, it doesn’t mean that the objective here is never to consider these things again for price drops. What we are trying to do I think is prepare ourselves in case there should be a reality that there are excess funds, but I think as Clyde has said, we’re pretty far off, we’re just trying to think ahead here.
QUESTION – François Touchette
Domain - foliodata.ca
My second question, the authority is concerned this is mentioned, we have a document about this, with the whole issue of safety/security and this is important for registering domain names. What I would like to know is you are now setting up a formidable databank and I would like to know what is happening with this data? For instance with archiving, we’ve just learned recently just to name a company, Iron Mountain, an American Company, and according to the American legislation, they had to make information available to the Government. So I would like to know what the Authority is doing with regard to this kind of archiving? Is this still Canadian, are they managed by an American company in the USA? I would like answers to that kind of question, thank you?
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Well in fact this is a daily concern with us here. Ever since the inception of our corporation we’ve had a number of offers when we set up CIRA, American service providers were offering us very good rates for setting up the registry, for managing it, but one of the first worries of the Board then was that all of the data would then be in the United States and American legislation would then prevail. So, this is one of the factors that were considered when we decided to do everything here under our own control. Now the second part to your question, CIRA is probably one of the Canadian companies, not the only one, but one of the Canadian companies that takes the issue of the management of private information seriously. We have our privacy officer if you will, we do come up with reports as to the information that we use, the way we use it and this means that we need a plan for the data that’s not used anymore and we want to collect only the information that is required for a specific functions. We want to manage this adequately and once we do not need it anymore we want to be able to get rid of it. So, for this latter aspect I can tell you that we are not now at the point that we would like to be but we are well aware that we have to go on working on this issue. There is no issue of the backup or safety copies – the rest of it is okay but we’re doing the rest of it pretty well, but in terms of backup files or we still need to keep some information and we must work on the process that would allow us to purge the information adequately once we do not need it anymore.
François Touchette
Are you telling me that you have no conservation or archiving plan right now for the active archives or inactive archives and so forth?
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
We do have a conservation plan but we are keeping everything, including in the backup copies, the problem is that legislation requires and this is the problem that everybody has to confront – if we are talking about these copies everything is being copied so you cannot backtrack, go back to the past and say this we do not want and that we do not want. I think this is a problem that the privacy commissioner has to confront. We try and do things in good faith and find solutions that will be rational to meet our needs. Thank you.
QUESTION - Normandeau Ylrick
Domain – dataquebec.ca
The situation with ICANN about the decision to go with VeriSign, I mean the decision has been taken, they have decided to give the contract and I see that in a lot of situations you are pulling from the organization. I am kind of trying to find out here what exactly it is that you are doing and what you are hoping that the American organization will do to change what it already decided. I mean it took a decision already and gave the contract already, so, what are you hoping to accomplish by those gestures you have been posing in regard to the VeriSign decision?
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
First a correction, our action was not about the VeriSign decision. ICANN’s free to decide who they can give contracts to all day long. We have no dispute with that if you read through our material. However, if we are going to part of a corporation, okay? That is a not for profit corporation, and that has responsibilities for handling things that are critical to us and you Canadians for how we handle the domain, we expect that company to meet its basic requirements. I will give you one example. Over the last four years, ICANN has only produced 42% of the meeting minutes it is required to under the law. We have issues with that! We don’t have issues with who ICANN is giving contracts to. It’s about process, it’s about respecting your members and doing what you are supposed to do. That’s the basis for our complaint.
Normandeau Ylrick
Okay, so, it had nothing to do with VeriSign?
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
No VeriSign, if you will, the indirect connection to VeriSign was that VeriSign was the ultimate demonstration of the lack of following of process and documenting. You try and find on the ICANN website, the meeting minutes of any of those board meetings which touched on VeriSign and you will not find them because they are not published.
Normandeau Ylrick
So your point is that as soon as you’ll get that information and those meeting minutes, you will resume action?
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Well I think we have made our list very clear, relative to transparency and accountability and following due process and we are waiting for ICANN to answer us and tell us how they are going to do that, because if you are going to manage something for the whole world, the least you can do is try and follow up to your own rules and regulations.
Normandeau Ylrick
Great, thank you very much.
QUESTION – Lorenzo Tartamella
Domain – Marketing.ca
Hi my name is Lorenzo Tartamella from Marketing.ca
I want to congratulate CIRA actually on the point it’s taken and the stand it’s taken with ICANN I have been following that somewhat. I want to come back to the question of privacy and that discussing privacy, I did call your support centre and asked a question and I would like to get a little bit of clarity on this. If I were to use a registrar who protects us, right now there are some mechanisms with Registrars that will protect us and our privacy. If I own a domain name and I don’t want someone to know that I own that domain name, and I want to basically remain anonymous legally I am saying. Obviously you know, there are ways of getting that information and I have no objection but for the rest of the public and say I don’t want anyone to know, is that legal or illegal right now for the Registrars to do what they are doing and could we get into trouble for using that service? CIRA was unable to answer that over a simple call, could you perhaps add a little bit of clarity to that so that I can proceed comfortably and say okay I want to use this Registrar, I know that my information is protected for whatever reason I wish to do so and get a little bit of comfort. Dot-coms have the same problem. I know it hasn’t been solved, I know that there are a number of issues there but would CIRA please perhaps add a little bit of light onto that. If I was to do that, would I get into trouble? Thank you.
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
The point is there are a variety of mechanisms out there that you can use to shield your identity, okay? The one caveat I will give you as a user is that if there is no track of you in the CIRA database as the domain name Registrant, there will be nothing we can do to help you if you come and see us six months, or two years down the line and say, hey this guy, I have some sort of contract and he sold my domain name to this other guy but it was really me, ya know, number 3677 Registrant, that was me! If we have no record of that, that’s the trade-off you are making. So will you get in trouble with us? It depends on the particular choice you are making and there’s a lot of choices out there so I don’t want to get into that but people use them and we don’t chase down people or do anything but I do want to provide you with that caveat, that, you know, shielding if that’s what’s most important for you – good – but understand you may be taking a chance because we do hear on a regular basis ya know, the most common problem with domain name registrations is “oh, my admin email address doesn’t work – oh my god what do I do now?” and the second one is some people went through some weird registration scheme and their name didn’t show up on the registration but they claim it’s theirs – well in those situations there’s not much we can do.
Lorenzo Tartamella
Is there anything in the provisions that are coming that are going to perhaps create more of a shield within the privacy?
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Well the new WHOIS if you are an individual will basically remove all your personal contact information.
Lorenzo Tartamella
Everything?
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Everything, so really what you will have is you will be registered with us, we will know you are the one, we will be subject to the usual provisions for disclosing the information by law but if we do so, we have to advise you that we did so and therefore we think we’ll meet your requirements.
Lorenzo Tartamella
Thank you very much
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
You are welcome.
QUESTION - Victor Yap
Domain – culdesac.ca
Hello my name is Victor Yap and I am from culdesac.ca. First off I would like to say that I am really proud of your process and of your continuing efforts on maintaining proper procedures, because that’s just fundamentally important and that’s great to know that you guys believe in that. On a technical sort of question that I’m kind of wondering but never got around to asking or figuring out or reading upon, is there any way to manage my DNS systems directly with CIRA or must that always be done through my Registrar?
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Well technically the way the system is set up is you have to do it through your Registrar. What I will note though, is that as the system was created and it has succeeded in resulting in Registrants having a variety of choices of Registrars. There are a number of Registrars that offer completely self-serve options; i.e. so if you have your domains with these types of Registrars, they will provide you with an interface that lets you manage it basically very efficiently and personally to the degree that you want.
Victor Yap
Okay thank you very much.
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
You’re welcome.
QUESTION – Max De Koven
Domain – logout.ca
My issue is that I can currently buy dot-com domains at about a thirty percent discount on the best price I can get on dot-ca’s. There is also the problem of GST on dot-ca domains which doesn’t exist on any of the other domains I am buying. You have excess revenue is it possible that you can look into this problem, for example just for starters, what do you charge as a registration fee at CIRA for each dot-ca domain?
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Our wholesale price is public it’s $8.50 Cdn okay? The GST thing, I’ll refer you to Mr. Harper (laughter) and for the price reductions versus the excess revenues, I will repeat we are no where near having excess revenues today and we’re no where near spending them and we continue to try and be as effective a Registry as we can and competitive in the pricing. Let’s make sure though that what you are comparing in pricing is Canadian dollars to Canadian dollars and you know, there are people who are basically out there selling the dot-ca product for close to cost, so I know there’s a number of sites that sell it for $10 Canadian, so, yes, we keep an eye on it. The other thing that you should note relative to pricing which has caused us to think a little bit is of course the ICANN/VeriSign agreement has those built in price increases, so you are not going to see the price of a dot-com coming down if this agreement gets implemented.
Max De Koven
Well there’s one dot-com Registrar that I am using for example, and this is not for bulk registrations, this is if you go in one by one and they are charging $5.95 US for it.
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Oh even if you went to Go Daddy last year they were giving away domain names depending on which ones for info, God, they were giving them for free. Some people have done some campaigns where you can register them for $1. There is all sorts of things that people do, yes. And you know, I think part of it is the volume, I mean when you’ve got a registry of the size of 40 million you can do all different types of things but I think what we do is try to keep it sane for everyone and more or less constant. Will we go, you know will we have Registrars offering .ca’s for 10 cents, I don’t know, they can if they want to for whatever reason, you know they’ve decided not to. I mean .us, dotster and all the other guys run promotions for .us domain names and provide things. I think it’s a question of marketing and a question of interest but you know it’s not the registry that’s providing a discount to these Registrars to offer these services. Let’s just be clear on that.
Max De Koven
Thank you
ANSWER – Clyde Beattie, Chair CIRA
I would just like to add that there hasn’t been any decision made by CIRA not to have any further price decreases so there may be additional decreases in CIRA registration prices before any excess revenue is ever, before we ever have to determine what to use excess revenue for.
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Just one more comment for the gentleman also is let’s not forget .com is currently a thin registry where the registry really doesn’t care who you are as long as they have got your money and they are going to keep your registration for how long. CIRA and .ca is a thick registry as I explained to the other gentleman. We’re there when you have an issue and you try and talk to VeriSign as your registry for a .com and let me know how long it takes for them to answer your phone call.
ANSWER – Clyde Beattie, Chair CIRA
Okay I have a couple of Directors who would like to comment on this question too. Jim Mercer first.
ANSWER – Jim Mercer, Director CIRA
Yes I would just like to point out that at the Board level when we talk about price increases or decreases that the opinions are quite varied. My opinion is that I see no point in lowering the wholesale cost of a domain, as far as I’m concerned that’s a detriment to the average or normal user of .ca and it’s only really beneficial to those that want to register 2 or 3 or 5,000 domains. Every time we lower the price of domains at the wholesale level what we’re doing is more enabling the industry of domaining which is a valid industry but I see that the growth of the domaining industry as being detrimental to the service to the average Canadian out there. Right now a domain at retail level costs somewhere between 1 and 2 Dollars a month. For a small business or a large business to register their presence on the internet with a dot-ca domain that is not a hideous amount of money and dropping that cost to .75 per month or .50 per month is really not I don’t think critical to the growth of business or personal use of internet in Canada, however, if we drop the cost of a domain down to .50 a month, it does make it easier for some of these people whose businesses are wrapped around gathering as much dot-ca real estate as possible and holding it tightly to their chest, it makes their business a lot easier. So that’s just my opinion and just let you know at the Board level when these discretions of increasing or decreasing the price of domains, it’s not a fait accompli, the Board is not stocked with the corporate interests. There are other people up here that are interested in keeping dot-ca domains open for Canadians.
ANSWER – Clyde Beattie, Chair CIRA
Thanks Jim. Ron Kawchuk do you have a comment?
ANSWER – Ron Kawchuk, Director CIRA
I guess that there are different opinions certainly and I certainly believe as a not-for-profit it makes this difficult to have large profits and I think we really do have to keep the cost of domain names down. I wanted to observe that a $10 Canadian and a $5.95 American are essentially the same price especially when you consider the US dollar is dropped by 30% or 40% over the last 3 or 4 years so, essentially we are at par but you know there are things going on in the world regarding the value of different currencies that are changing price. Certainly keeping the price for a dot-ca down, or doing something creative with pricing in terms of long term pricing might make some sense too.
ANSWER – Clyde Beattie, Chair CIRA
I’d like to make this my last comment on this pricing issue and it is that it should be remembered that just because we reduce the price to Registrars on domains doesn’t mean that the cost savings are going to get passed on to Registrants, so, effectively there is an argument that goes that all we are going to do by reducing the pricing is sort of increase the margins to the Registrars. We are not going to benefit registrations at all or Registrants at all.
QUESTION - Lorenzo Tartamella
Domain – Marketing.ca
Just a comment, understanding business I think the wholesale price is fantastic and in the course of a running a business and the costs of operating CIRA, I can see very clearly that I wouldn’t be surprised if you had to bring it up and I would support it. You may not agree but that’s understanding business. That’s from a business perspective. On to a question and a comment that was brought up and again to touch on something that domainers are involved in, being in the business of domain names. Again I have asked this one question maybe if you can put a little bit of clarity into this and I am going to ask it, other domainers, you know some people are afraid here to ask that very question, is, I have a domain name, I now flash it on my screen and it says ”for sale”, now is that illegal? Is it illegal for me to buy and sell domains? When I have called in with that question a few times because we often get questions and you know people send us a nice letters from counsels, you know which are great but would CIRA put a little bit of light on this. We don’t own the domain name, I understand the whole chronology and the whole legal aspect behind it. It has been very clearly explained to me but it is it illegal or am I going to get into trouble. I don’t post for sale because I don’t want to get it into trouble but can we do that? Am I allowed to do that? Will CIRA come to me tomorrow and say hey you are in the domain name business you are not allowed to be in the domain name business. Are we allowed? Thank you.
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
As a Registrant you are the person who decides what you want to do with your domain name. We are fine with that and we stick away from the term ownership. Those things may be evolving in time as you know, domain names but they are still a relatively new thing. You know, I’ve got my legal counsel in front of me and you know I am not allowed to use the word ownership and we tell everyone you are not allowed to because you don’t own it, okay! But as a Registrant you are the Registrant for that domain name and if you want to post for sale on it then that’s your thing. There are however a number of restrictions about warehousing that touch upon Registrars and that’s a different story okay? So, if you are just a Registrant, there is no limit as to the number of domain names a properly qualified Registrant can have and there is no restriction as to you either buying them from another Registrant or selling them to another Registrant that is qualified. There are some issues about someone registering a domain name for someone else’s use. There that’s a little grey depending on what you are doing. But the selling question I am fairly comfortable on. I can tell you that’s fine.
QUESTION – Max De Koven
Domain – logout.ca
I sat down too quickly before if you would permit me one more comment. From a planning standpoint it might be interesting for you, by the way my name is Max De Koven logout for the internet people. From a planning standpoint it might be interesting for you to check what percent of your revenue is coming from people who own more than five domain names. It might help you plan forward.
ANSWER – Clyde Beattie, Chair CIRA
Thank you
QUESTION - Laurence Carrière
Domain – plhydra.qc.ca
I have a number of little comments to make. We are at the end of the meeting so I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to make some comments. The first one is that I have attended these meetings over the web and they have worked very very well and I congratulate you for that because it allowed me to attend many meetings without them necessarily being in Montreal although I am very happy that you’ve come to Montreal. One comment with respect to the vote earlier, I am surprised that you did not ask for the against votes, it was considered that a majority had considered in favour but in the procedure, since we have be transparent and we’re following the rules of procedure, I think it would be a good idea to allow people who would like to vote against to express their views before you declare a unanimous approval. This would be a simple appropriate and rapid procedure to follow. Another comment I would like to make is that I would like to give support to the young man who stood up earlier with his request for the sites available to the under eighteen’s. I liked the business about the cars but you know something, that doesn’t really work – it doesn’t hold water because you have to be 16 to own a car. Also, the younger generation who is under 18, is the generation that is going to be buying the future domain names, so perhaps as the Canadian Authority and someone with impact on Canadian policies, you could spell out the information more clearly on your website so that even if you don’t change your rules at least people of his age have a clear idea of what are the legal possibilities out there and what your procedures are and I would just like to support his position which seemed in my view entirely logical.
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
Well I can’t make any promises with respect to changing the rules concerning discrimination upon an age basis but when it comes to spelling out the rules very clearly and posting them clearly we have no problem with that and we’re always open to suggestions so I am taking your suggestion as one such suggestion that we are prepared to receive.
QUESTION – Simon Sarrasin
Domain – saz.ca
My name is Simon Sarrasin - saz.ca. I have a question that deals with content. You control the content that one finds on the website – does CIRA do any kind of control for that?
ANSWER – Bernard Turcotte, President CIRA
No. Thank you.
QUESTION – Shady Kanfi
Domain - Shady.ca
I heard before that we’re no where near having excess revenue though I note that there is extra operating revenue about half a million this year and over a million last year and the cash has gone up by about the same amount. I am wondering after we take care of all those prudent things of funds for pre-registration, the restricted assets, at what point will that be excess revenue and at what point do we stop collecting cash.
ANSWER – Clyde Beattie, Chair CIRA
I will let our treasurer Debi Rosati answer your question.
ANSWER – Debi Rosati, Treasurer CIRA
Good I get to answer a question I feel quite comfortable with. Anyway, good question, we had this discussion in our last Audit Committee with the Auditor there. Based on the change in our policy to go to a 12 month operating expense to have that, we are probably 12-18 months away from at least putting enough surplus into those reserves and then secondly we also have to review another consideration is our capital reserves and given our business is on domain registry and robustness and scalability and making sure we have state of the equipment, that’s something else we will have to take into consideration beyond whatever other surpluses we have, so, we are probably a good 12-18 months away as a minimum.
QUESTION – Shady Khanfi
Domain – Shady.ca
Do you have a sense of how much cash your target is to have in the bank before it’s enough?
ANSWER – Debi Rosati, Treasurer CIRA
Well, I think when it comes to reserves we have these allocations, so, right now it is showing 10 million dollars in excess but if you take out what our reserves are and what our operating capital is, like I said we’re still a good 12-18 months if you do the math, you need to see that it’s going to be somewhere in the 11-12 million dollar range sort of..
Shady Khanfi
Thank you very much
ANSWER – Debi Rosati, Treasurer
Okay thank you.
CLYDE BEATTIE, Chair CIRA
Okay thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. It doesn’t look like we have any other questions, so I wish to thank you very much for joining us today and it’s time to adjourn the official portion of the meeting. Did we do a motion to conclude the meeting. We did that right? We haven’t done that and we need to do that, so could I have a motion to adjourn, conclude this meeting.
10. Adjournment: At 2:35 p.m. it was moved by Claude Gélinas, seconded by Mark Shainblum, carried, that the meeting be concluded.