[At-Large] Traditional Cultural Expressions #ICANN #WIPO

[Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond]

Dear Parminder,

On 30/01/2014 04:27, parminder wrote:
> But did not all the good bottom up participatory processes of ICANN,
> conducted over several years, did nothing to prevent the name of
> 'Amazon' to be almost taken by a private company as its private
> property, till those bad governments intervened and saved it.

The ALAC had a very comprehensive process to file objections, along with
all safeguards to make sure that the objections were really bottom up
and supported by the majority of our member ALSes. Furthermore, it was
all completely transparent.
I invite you to read through the wealth of information on:
https://community.icann.org/x/w7-bAQ

The string you mention was indeed flagged by some of our members and
therefore evaluated along many criteria and the community was asked for
comments/support. As it happened, it ended up not being on the list of
strings that the ALAC objected to. I am not judging whether this was
right or not. There are many varying views in our community from people
who believe the ALAC should have filed a lot more objections (including
for the string you mention) and others who believe that the ALAC should
have not filed any objections at all. All views were considered and the
whole decisional process was bottom-up, starting from the ALSes to the
RALOs, to the Objections Committee and finally to the ALAC. That's an
incredible demonstration of operational bottom-up democracy in action.
So please do not throw the baby out with the bathwater!

Eventually the ALAC filed objections to 3 applications for the .HEALTH
string. A follow-up Team built the objections bearing in mind the
grounds for objection and process were probably quite restrictive but
they did the best they could do. The result came back from the
International Chamber of Commerce a week ago. It was a disappointment
for many in the community. Others supported the rejection. Again, this
variety of views shows a healthy democratic ecosystem. As for the
process and the basis on which the examiner rejected the ALAC
objections, many things can be argued to counter the result or support
it. Seth Reiss who leads the objection follow-up Team provided a very
interesting explanation in his announcement of the result and I invite
you to read it, including the whole thread that followed after that.
Announcement:
http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/alac-announce/2014q1/001444.html
Thread: http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large/2014q1/009931.html

At the moment, it would be a waste of time for the ALAC to file an
appeal -- under the current conditions (defined in the applicant
guidebook and in the ICANN bylaws) the ALAC would have a next to nil
chance to win an appeal, both on form and content. However, during the
last ALAC monthly call earlier this week, (all details on:
https://community.icann.org/x/RwCuAg ) I encouraged the ALAC to take a
full part in the evaluation process of Round 1 of the new gTLD process
which I believe will be implemented before a decision is made on whether
a second round of new gTLD applications is started (or not?).  There are
plenty of inadequacies which our community will be able to point out.

Kind regards,

Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
ALAC Chair