[ALAC] Fwd: NCSG Appeal of ICANN Secrecy Claim Over Information Shaping ICANN Staff Policy Decision to Create New Rights for Trademark Holders in DNS

[Alan Greenberg]

At 09/09/2013 05:44 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
>Is there any interest in supporting this -- or at least understanding the
>issues better?
>
>This could be seen as a significan A&T issue. Regardless of one's view of
>the merits of the trandmark claims mechanism, the lack of transparency in
>developing this serious implementation issue is potentially a serious point
>of concern.
>
>- Evan

I have not gone over the request or response in any detail, but on 
the surface, the response may be pretty close to being in line with 
the policy. Perhaps more subject to the issue of A&T is whether the 
terms of the DIDP as quoted in the response (and in the policy at 
http://www.icann.org/en/about/transparency/didp) are reasonable, and 
if it is reasonable to expect staff to quote WHICH reason is used in 
each denial.

Even just using the exclusions of "if disclosed [...] likely to 
compromise [...] ICANN's deliberative process by inhibiting the 
candid exchange of ideas and communications..." and "Information 
requests that are [...] overly burdensome...", you cover a pretty 
large swath of internal documents. And lots of room for judgement calls.

I can sympathize with all of those rationales, but at the same time, 
have to ask if the end-result is what was intended when this policy 
was put in place; or perhaps more to the point, what the community 
THOUGHT this policy was all about when it was put in place.

Alan