[NA-Discuss] Susan Crawford Op-ed on new gTLDs

Avri Doria avri at ella.com
Mon Jan 9 17:00:45 UTC 2012


On 9 Jan 2012, at 10:37, Garth Bruen at Knujon.com wrote:

> The idea that the U.S. Gov't 
> wants to and could stop IDNs is unrealistic and not what I've seen in the 
> debates so far, it's a misleading opener.

Well if they succeeded in derailing the program, it would have derailed the IDN program as well.  They did not make and excpetions, or even recognition, of other countries and their needs.  Typical for the US, perhaps, but significant nonetheless.

> I also take issue with her assertion that "ICANN operates by consensus" when 
> ALACs advice is ignored.
> 

First the consensus is rough consensus as defined by the procedures.  If anyone expects that nothing will happen without their approval, they are misunderstanding what ICANN Consensus means.  And yes, I wish she had use a modifier on consensus so that people would not be led into the expectation of Full Consensus.

And second I object to the great myth that is being created that ICANN ALWAYS ignored ALAC advice.  Like any absolute, it only takes a single counterexample to make the sentence appear to be untrue.  And I think a lot can be said that the JAS/ASP program is a huge counter-example.  Without ALAC and others pushing on it, nothing would be happening on this front.  And while 14 applications supported is definitely short of what we would all like to see, even this would never have happened without ALAC's advice and perseverance.  I am also sure that other examples can be found.  I know for a fact that the GNSO has listened to the liaison advice that it gets from people like Alan and Brett. 

Now if you want to say Registrars never ever  listened to ALAC and ICANN never listens to anyone on the subject of Registrar behavior or to ALAC on the issues on enforcement, you may be on safer ground, I don't know as I have not followed the ALAC-Regsitrar-ICANN interaction on this particular topic.

I think we need to be much more specific in our use of absolute statements like: they never listen to us.

avri






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