-----Original Message----- It is important to realize the precedent that the bylaws process is setting for the rest of the implementation phase. If the bylaws do get approved by the Board at the end of this month, it will probably be the first legal document to get finalized in the implementation phase. The SLAs with the RIRs and the IETF have not yet been agreed by the parties; the IPR commitments are in the works; the RZMA contract has yet to be published; the PTI doesn’t exist nor does the ICANN-PTI contract. So if the precedent that gets set with the bylaws is that each of these document processes opens a new opportunity to add provisions or deviate from the consensus proposals, that strikes me as a rather dangerous precedent given that what we’ve all been driving toward is finalization of everything by mid-August. I do not believe there is either the time or the will to re-open the consensus positions as established in the proposals.
This is a very persuasive argument. --MM