[ALAC] [At-Large] [Registrants-rights] That Revised PICDRP

Sat Oct 5 05:34:45 UTC 2013

While agreeing with Rinalia about the need for some form of intervention,
I also share Evan's analysis.

Over the past 2+ years, some of the more successful contributions of the ALAC have been either through a personal contact with the Board Chair (thanks to the personality of our Chair), or a letter from Chair to Chair. Other forms of intervention have at best been received graciously, but more usually in a perfunctory way (reply about the way in which EIU was selected). As Evan reminds us, formal Advice does now bring a response, but simply because Legal Counsel's Office considers it as an insurance against possible future trouble.

In the case under consideration, we may wish to consider combining several approaches:
- seek to create an issue-based (and therefore temporary) alliance with any segment of ICANN willing to defend the same idea (in this case, GAC + non-commercial + ccNSO?);
- a letter to the Board Chair, not just setting out the problem, but suggesting corrective measures. Ideally, such a letter would be signed by the Chairs of the temporary alliance.
- Going public in ICANN (Public Forum, roundtable if available) and outside (CircleID and other sites).

Jean-Jacques.

----- Mail original -----
De: "Evan Leibovitch" <evan at telly.org>
À: "Rinalia Abdul Rahim" <rinalia.abdulrahim at gmail.com>
Cc: "ALAC Working List" <alac at atlarge-lists.icann.org>
Envoyé: Samedi 5 Octobre 2013 12:21:13
Objet: Re: [ALAC] [At-Large] [Registrants-rights] That Revised PICDRP

On 3 October 2013 19:56, Rinalia Abdul Rahim
<rinalia.abdulrahim at gmail.com>wrote:

> I'd say there are at least 3 deliverables in that intervention:
>
> 1. An ALAC statement on the overall sorry state of new gTLD program -
> let's draft one, I'm ready to work on it. Any other volunteers?
>
> 2. A Public Forum intervention on the same.
>
> 3. A discussion in Buenos Aires (if not at a MS roundtable, then at
> least at an ALAC policy discussion session).

I guess my main response to this is one of weariness.

So we make a statement on the sorry state of the expansion program. Heaven
knows there is a MASSIVE list of errors, unintended consequences,
implementations that don't follow the spirit of policy. Worst of all is
continuation of a compliance atmosphere that treats complaints from the
public as hostile confrontations to be rebuffed and minimized -- not by
making the system better for end-users, but by making it harder to
complain. The PICDRP is just the latest.

But what, right now, would a statement say? What would it ask for?

If it's just a matter of going on the record with our issues ... so what?
Nobody's listening. The gTLD locomotive is running at top speed, generally
pilotless, the brakes have been sabotaged, and the industry is just hoping
it gets as far as the bank before it derails.

Dare we ask for a delay to deal with all these ugly public-interest issues?
And have the rest of the ICANN community despise us ... while it ignores us?

A statement, a Forum speech and a round table are tactics; what is the
objective? Let everyone know we're unhappy? Again?

They know. They don't care, at least not enough to act on what we
recommend. Even Applicant Support would not have happened without GAC
intervention, and even then the resulting program turned out to be wholly
inaccessible.

Anyone remember this?

*We believe that "public benefit" declarations within TLD applications will
be of dubious benefit, and in any case subject to substantial modification
(and difficulty of enforcement) post-delegation.*

That was part of a early 2011 submission from the ALAC that responded to
both the GAC Scorecard on the gTLD program and the Board response to the
Scorecard<https://community.icann.org/display/alacdocs/ALAC+Statement+on+the+GAC+New+gTLD+Scorecard>.
Little that we asked for came about; the trademark over-jealousness
requested by the GAC to which we objected has snuck in anyway, yet our
support of the GAC for more categories, and most of our other concerns
(such as dot-brands not having been sufficiently thought out) went largely
unheeded.

That was more than two years ago, when there was still an opportunity to
nudge things if not steer them differently. Now opportunity for real change
is smaller yet.

The lack of substantive change in the PICDRP reveals that the corporate
mindset and cultural end-user hostility of ICANN hasn't really budged, the
rules are still all stacked in favour of the domain industry and against
public interest complaints. The problems are fundamental in the resolution
process and beyond minor refinements; but once the gTLD staff has gone in a
process -- no matter how loopy -- it rarely backtracks. Not for us, at
least. Problems we saw in the early years are manifesting now in nasty
ways. And while we sometimes get heard in some of the smaller details on
putting out these fires, the big cultural problems of ICANN -- of industry
entitlement and end-user hostility -- refuse to wane.

So what, exactly, do we want to tell the Board as Advice, or the rest of
the community in a workshop or Forum comment? What outcome do we want?

I'll help write something, but I've lost the interest in penning One More
Expression of Mildly Cloaked Disgust.

- Evan
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