[governance] First Draft of Statement on US Commerce Department/GAC chair intervention

[Adam Peake]

Milton, don't see why GAC's request was against 
any defined procedure. But perhaps I 
misunderstand the bylaws.  Please explain.

It's irritating, it indicates problems with the 
process, but where does it say GAC can't make a 
request of this kind? It wasn't totally 
unexpected, still a surprise, but as some 
governments in Luxembourg made strong concerns 
known, more (those who obviously hadn't followed 
any of the ICANN process) made very strong 
complaints during WGIG discussion, it wasn't out 
of the blue.

When was the agenda of the August 16 board 
meeting announced? i.e. when would governments 
have known that a board decision on xxx was 
imminent?  Veni, can you tell us.

I don't see GAC and NTIA acting in concert.  US 
may have been one govt to ask GAC to ask for a 
delay, but there are very strong indications they 
were not the only ones.

For the rest, all been said by Izumi, Ian, Bill, Veni, Ewan...

This is a very important issue. But at the moment 
I'd rather wait and see what happens between now 
and September 15 and at the meeting on September 
15 than try to produce any hard hitting 
statement.  We don't know enough.

I wouldn't be unhappy to see a statement warning 
ICANN of our concerns, set things up for a 
statement should our fears be realized. And 
criticizing NTIA for what I think was unfair an 
inappropriate pressure, particularly when quoting 
a bunch of from letters from one of the 
administration's basest political lobbies.

Thanks,

Adam




At 7:16 PM -0400 8/18/05, Milton Mueller wrote:
>Avri:
>Thank you for engaging in discussion and for not trying to foreclose
>it.
>I answer your questions below.
>
>>>>  Avri Doria <avri at acm.org> 08/18/05 5:43 PM >>>
>>The indication is that this is against the rules.
>
>The GAC/DoC intervention did not follow defined procedures for offering
>policy advice. You could call that a break in the rules.
>
>But the more important point is that it represents an arbitrary and
>politically motivated deviation from what ICANN said its process would
>be. ICANN laid out its TLD RFP, application and approval process in
>October 2003. Everybody planned according to those procedures. Now it's
>throwing them aside. That's bad. .net was another example (see below) -
>apparently you understood the significance of that case.
>
>ICANN probably has the legal authority to not move forward with
>finalization of the contract, but you can definitely expect a lawsuit
>from ICM Registry if they turn them down on reconsideration, and at the
>point there will be a long and interesting dialogue about what rules
>were broken or not.
>
>>Also if I understand correctly, and i admit i might not, 
>>they are not specifically asking for the decision to be rescinded 
>>just for time before negotiating the contract.  Now, i can see how 
>>this might amount to the essentially the same thing, but not 
>>necessarily.
>
>I think you understand that correctly. And I am saying, for civil
>society to remain silent during that period is really, really
>incomprehensible. We have to make known our concerns.
>
>>While i understand the issue when seen from the perspective of undue
>
>>influence, I know that i generally value flexibilty, and was very 
>>happy, e.g., when the ICANN Board and Verisign indicated willingness
>
>>to renegotiate elements of a signed contract.  and I know that I want
>
>>the board to be subject to a lot a review before they sign any
>contract.
>
>Actually you are reinforcing our point.
>
>The reason the VeriSign contract had to be revisited was that ICANN
>very definitely broke its own procedure by not posting the changed
>contract to permit public comment. In other words, it denied the
>community the opportunity to express it views on the changes in the .net
>contract by revising its procedures on the fly. Not to mention the other
>procedural parade of horribles documented by the Register and others
>regarding how the .net process seemed deliberately skewed to favor
>VeriSign.
>
>Now if ICANN had somehow DENIED the GAC an opportunity to participate
>in the sTLD approvals by being shifty then I would definitely be on the
>side of GAC in this dispute. But in this case the opposite is happening.
>GAC wants to suspend the rules because it doesn't like the result and
>didn't bother to get engaged when it could.,
>
>>In other words I do worry about sending a self-conflicting message: 
>>we like it when you reconsider decisions aexcept for when we don't.
>
>I hope you can see now that there is no inconsistency. The revolt
>against the VeriSign .net contract was a revolt against shifting
>procedures that make it impossible for people to know what the rules are
>and how to participate. It is the same issue here.
>
>
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