[ALAC] ICANN Board resolutions from 8 Dec 2011

Evan Leibovitch evan at telly.org
Tue Dec 13 08:12:57 UTC 2011


Alan, you had my hopes up... for a few seconds. Until I read the whole
resolution.

The Board may have approved the fee reduction to $47K, but it explicitly
rejected the core JAS recommendation that the fee reduction be separated
from the ICANN fund.

The implications of this are:

   - There is a hard limit on how many applications may receive cost
   reductions, meaning that worthy and eligible applications may have to
   compete among themselves for funding and that some (many? we don't know)
   eligible applicants will not receive the reduction. Based on the current
   fund size a maximum of only 14 TLD applications can receive the reduced
   rate.

   - The fund that ICANN "set aside" for applicant support is designed to
   all funnel back into ICANN (some charity!) ... no assistance is available
   to help with non-ICANN expenses or capacity building

   - The bottom up core JAS community recommendations -- supporting fee
   reductions independent of the fixed pool (as endorsed in the joint
   statement by the ALAC and
GAC<http://www.icann.org/en/minutes/resolutions-08dec11-en.htm>,
   as well as endorsed by the NPOC and NCUC) were explicitly rejected *without
   rationale. *We have no idea who is pushing back against the
   public-interest community advice or why; what has been openly published
   about the JAS recommendations (of which I'm aware) has been in support or
   neutral.


So... the implicit rejection of a core component of the JAS recommendation
is now explicit.

I know we should be happy for even getting this far -- that ANY assistance
is offered -- but I am disgusted at the opaqueness of the debate. The
bottom up process, done as designed, has either been enthusiastically
endorsed (ALAC, GAC, NCUC, NPOC -- all the public-interest constituencies)
or passed without comment (the rest of GNSO). There has been no active
argument presented against the recommendations. We have tried to anticipate
objections in the JAS documentation yet have never been able to openly
confront and respond to the opposition. It's a small victory for At-Large
getting anything, but a major fail for ICANN's claims of
policy-by-consensus and transparency.

- Evan



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