[ALAC] ICANN and measurement of "consumer trust" -- yeah, right

Rinalia Abdul Rahim rinalia.abdulrahim at gmail.com
Tue Dec 18 18:10:15 UTC 2012


Evan.

You've articulated your concerns very clearly.  The basis of your
objections is sound.  You have my support.

Best regards,

Rinalia

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 1:45 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org> wrote:

> GNSO's Consumer Choice, Trust, and Competition Working
> Group<http://gnso.icann.org/en/group-activities/consumer-trust-wg.htm>,
> on which I have sat since its inception, was an ill-conceived 2010
> direction from the Board to identify metrics that could be used to
> demonstrate that the new gTLD program provides benefit to registrants and
> end-users.
>
> (Of course, in any sane organization such measurement would have been done
> *before* actually determining need for gTLD expansion, but I digress...)
>
> So this working group was tasked with developing metrics that would --
> after the fact -- serve to demonstrate that ICANN has justified in going
> through the expansion. This working group has finished its final
> report<
> http://gnso.icann.org/en/issues/cctc/cctc-final-advice-letter-05dec12-en.pdf
> >,
> and will be submitting it to the GNSO council soon.
>
> If endorsement of the report comes to ALAC for consideration as-is, I will
> oppose its endorsement and I ask for other ALAC members to join me in its
> rejection.
>
> To be sure, there are some possibly-useful metrics for registrants proposed
> -- such as whether trademark takedown claims will be higher with new gTLDs
> than with the existing ones. But it is already noted that some of these
> metrics will be difficult or expensive to implement, and may either be
> unsupported or actively impeded by registrars if not required in the RAA.
>
> The biggest metric from and end-user point of view -- a survey of whether
> end users around the world will encounter less cybersquatting, confusion,
> park sites, malware, etc -- is crammed into a single item (1.4), with a
> proposed "picked from thin air" budget of $100,000, and acknowledgement
> that even the creation of the survey's questions will be challenging.
>
> More important, though, is what is missing from the recommendations.
>
> Much like ICANN exists in its own bubble shielded from the world, there are
> no metrics that go outside the scope of the TLD expansion itself. Nothing
> is proposed to determine whether people are even preferring domain names to
> get to Internet content over alternatives such as search engines, QR codes,
> domain-name-shorterning services or social media portals and shortcuts(*).
> That is -- IMO one of the most important metrics -- whether the gTLD
> expansion is turning people away from the DNS itself, towards friendlier
> and less confusing ways for end-users to reach their Internet destinations.
>
> I have been presenting this issue to the WG from day one. It was deemed out
> of scope. Though wording of mine indicating the need for greater scope was
> put in the report's preamble, it is highly unlikely that ICANN will act
> upon anything not called for in this report.
>
> Still, I was willing to support the recommendations as being better than
> nothing. In October a "final"
> statement<
> http://forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-consumercci-dt/bin58KclzeJuJ.bin>,
> that had the consensus support of the working group, was produced and
> prepared for the GNSO. (The link has a "bin" extension but opens as an
> msword document).
>
> At that point, a member the registry constituency -- who had not been part
> of the consensus, or for that matter ever participated in the working group
> up to that moment -- demanded that significant parts of the metrics be
> dropped.
>
> The metrics to be dropped eliminated "closed" TLDs from many important
> measurements. They elimininated, for one thing, the masurement of whether
> "closed" TLDs are providing easy-to-find information of how to report
> abuse, or how domains in that TLD are allocated.
>
> After more than a year of hard-fought consensus, during a call which I was
> unable to attend, these demands caused changes to many specific metrics
> that now renders them useless. What were once objective audits (2.1 and
> 2.2) are now undefined "measurements of understanding", a process that is
> difficult, expensive, and trivially ease to deliberately misinterpret. I
> don't believe that measuring public attitudes should distinguish between
> "closed" and "open" TLDs whose domains are all publicly accessible. If a
> domain in a new TLD is the source of malware, spam or any kind of end-user
> confusion, does it matter to the end user whether that domain is open or
> closed?
>
> Anyway, what is now being presented to the GNSO is a "new" final report
> that incorporates these demands. My protests about both the content changes
> and their last-minute inclusion have been met with personal attack and
> threats that the Registry SG would scuttle approval of the Report unless it
> incorporated their demands. So much for consensus. The registries have a
> vote at GNSO and we don't. The report includes a letter I send in August in
> its appendix, but refuses to note any minority dissent to the last-minute
> changes to its "final" report.
>
> One might be tempted to say, "having some metrics is better than having no
> metrics", especially having invested substantial personal capital in
> creating them. But I suggest otherwise -- that the newly-created biases in
> the questions, along with the changes from audits to uselessly subjective
> measurements, will lead to results that will be embarassing to ICANN while
> demonstrating nothing after much needless expense -- in other words, worse
> than if nothing is done. In its non-consensus revised report, the WG
> has pacified the domain industry's refusal to measure things whose results
> would be embarrassing, at the expense of ICANN's own credibility to measure
> itself.
>
> There are two other At-Large members on this WG who did not support my
> objections -- Cheryl and Olivier can certainly speak for themselves why
> not. So perhaps the accusations were correct, and I stand alone in my
> assertion -- that these metrics in their current form are just a PR stunt
> so that ICANN can justify its TLD expansion after-the-fact. In any case, I
> ask you to consider the issue and understand why I refuse to endorse it.
>
> The main saving grace of all this is that, in the scheme of things, it's
> not very important. If ICANN botches how it measures its success, others
> (with non-ICANN-positive biases) will be happy to step in to fill the
> void.It's not even policy (which makes me wonder why the Board gave this to
> the GNSO in the first place).
>
> If anyone is interested in working with me on an alternative ALAC statement
>  on how ICANN can demonstrate the improvement of consumer trust in its
> actions, please let me know. Otherwise, I'll explain my objection, vote
> appropriately if endorsement comes to a vote, and move on.
>
> - Evan
>
> (*) yes, QR codes and shortening services still require the DNS, but they
> don't need a TLD expansion either, as they could work with obscure or
> third-level domains in existing TLDs.
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