Questions/Options for Protection of IOC/Red Cross Names at Top Level

[William Drake]

Hi

On Feb 3, 2012, at 8:36 PM, Mary.Wong at law.unh.edu wrote:

> The GNSO was placed in an awkward situation in this case - the RC/IOC request was made to the Board and a GAC letter requesting GNSO consideration was then also sent to the GNSO Council.

Which, I'm sorry to say, is part of a pattern we've repeatedly dealt with previously.  As a general matter it really don't help strengthen the "community decision making multistakholder model" if particular constituencies and/or their key members insist and taking their private interests directly to the board for special treatment rather than making the effort to work through the issues and persuade colleagues first within the SG and then second at the GNSO level.  And in this particular case, I guess there is no possibility of a consistent NCSG position, since the overwhelming majority of responses have been from NCUC members and in the negative, accompanied mostly non-engagement from NPOC.

In my case, this procedural stuff has drained away any sympathy I might have had for the argument that the RC is special due to treaties and good works.  Either we play by a consistent and transparent set of rules applicable to all or we don't.  And if we don't, and the board gets louder about our new need to appease GAC (or rather, a few leading governments in GAC, to whose statements the others merely have not objected), it's really not clear how the couple dozen intergovernmental organizations demanding special treatment based on RC and IOC will be handled.  The WG apparently isn't focusing on those yet since the Board hasn't asked, but one has to wonder whether if we institutionalized special treatment as a principle now the same GAC members aren't going to come back later and demand the same for the IMF, OECD, et al.  They are after all the prime movers and shakes in those bodies, and indeed may have brought the issue to the attention of the respective members and secretariats—no way to know.

> Therefore I don't see what's happening as necessarily pandering to the GAC but more as part of a broader strategy that the GNSO must come to grips with, as to how to deal with the GAC on an ongoing basis. One of the concerns involves how to maintain GNSO authority over gTLD policy issues without doing so in such a way that the GAC makes it a practice of doing a "run around" the GNSO and engaging directly with the Board - possibly in conflict with the GNSO's own policy recommendations. At the same time, rolling over and caving to every GAC request would be inappropriate.

I think the "end run" procedural point should be central to our intervention and should resonate with other SGs, who after all are complaining about CCWGs on precisely the same grounds (in that case, arguably incorrectly).
>  
> On this particular issue, I agree largely with Avri - special treatment of certain strings is against GNSO policy, but that given what's already happened, the Board's already decided on giving a certain level of protection to these two organizations in this application round so doing more at this stage would not only run counter to community-developed GNSO policy but set an unnecessary precedent for future multi-stakeholder dialogue.

Not just unnecessary, but distinctly unhelpful.

So returning to KK's original message, I am for  Option 1: Recommend no changes to Guidebook and reject GAC Proposal, with an objection on process and precedent grounds complimenting the substantive case.

I've not been counting, but this seems consistent with a clear majority of views expressed here to date.

On Feb 3, 2012, at 8:20 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

> If there is interest in joint NC / AtLarge pushback I'll certainly help advance the idea.

My guess is that NCUC would be willing to pursue this.  Anyone disagree?

On Feb 4, 2012, at 6:21 AM, Nicolas Adam wrote:

> It's baffling to me that the contracted party house would think that appeasing GAC will get them any kind of relief from GAC-backed LEA's demand (which, I would be inclined to think, should be among the issue-axis most important to them and most antogonistic with regard GAC).


Seems like a misevaluation to me.

Best,

Bill
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ncuc.org/pipermail/ncuc-discuss/attachments/20120204/6f61e3f8/attachment-0001.html>