[At-Large] [ALAC] ICANN staff repudiates community call for change on Morality & Public Order

[Thomas Narten]

Hi Evan.

evan at telly.org (Evan Leibovitch) writes:

> In the latest version of the new gTLD Applicant Guidebook, ICANN staff has
> essentially screwed its community.

One very important clarification. I believe your issue is not with
staff, but with the board.  Blaming (and venting at) staff, especially
when they are not at fault does not help anyone and makes it that much
harder for ICANN as a community to get work done. 

> Despite broad agreement reached across members of the GAC, GNSO and At-Large
> on issues related to Morality and Public Order -- and a report that was
> unanimously endorsed by ALAC -- ICANN staff have explicitly rejected all of
> our basic requests. Literally, only the most cosmetic -- changing the name
> from "Morality and Public Order" to "Limited Public Interest" -- approach
> was taken.

Well, I was going to point you to the board response to this, so you
could understand our reasoning, but I can't find public
documentation. :-(

The board resolution at
http://www.icann.org/en/minutes/resolutions-25sep10-en.htm#2.9 is
where the board recorded its decision, but there isn't a lot of detail
there. But I can assure you that the board discussed a number of
individual points in detail.

The details at
http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/explanatory-memo-morality-public-order-12nov10-en.pdf,
give some of the rational, but are not written in a way that
necessarily makes clear where the board weighed in and to what degree,

I would suggest that before folk spend too many cycles responding to
this in a formal manner, they would request that ICANN (board/staff)
provide clarification (if it is needed) as to why the WG
recommendations were not made. And, actually, wouldn't it be more
appropriate to raise those questions first within the WG and have them
do the followup? Presumably they aren't happy either, and that seem
the natural place from which to raise any objections...

Discussions would be most productive if they could be focused on the
individual recommendations and why or why they were not accepted. And
if the above rational doesn't provide that info, by all means ask for
it.

Thomas