Sorry, John, I am unable to follow the meaning of your insistence on specificity. But I do know clearly well that if we, or 'the community', agrees to the principle that if any comparable information request to the US or Indian government would elicit a legally mandated information disclosure, ICANN should also do it, then an appropriate information disclosure regime can easily be written out for ICANN. The draft can then be tested for this principle, and finalised, and adopted. (This will for instance mean that about 90 percent of ICANN's current non disclosure conditions will be thrown in the waste-paper bin where they belong).

If your insistence on specificity means that I should first present an entire draft of the information disclosure policy for ICANN, that I would consider appropriate, without the 'community' or the 'empowered WG' first discussing and agreeing to the higher level principles of it, I find it simply a way to foreclose the important discussion -- because such is quite impractical for anyone to do.

I have been involved in enough draftings of documents related to governance/ policies etc, and it is always first discussion and agreement on larger principles, followed by more specific drafting.

And so I repeat my specific question to you" Does this group share the expectation that at the end of the transition process, ICANN will adopt information disclosure policies of the same level as that of mature democracies today (I give the public information regimes of India and US as specific examples)? If not, why so?"

On Aug 21, 2016, at 8:25 AM, parminder <parminder@itforchange.net> wrote:

On Tuesday 16 August 2016 11:00 PM, John Curran wrote:

On Aug 16, 2016, at 1:22 PM, parminder <parminder@itforchange.net> wrote:

As I said, most democratic governments of the world have laws for access to public information. Take India's Right to Information Act for instance. Wikipedia information on it is here, and here is the actual text. The US also has very good laws in this regard, to which you can get easy access. Over 95 countries have some kind of freedom of information laws ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_information_laws_by_country ) and I think most of them have better transparency laws than what ICANN adheres to…

Please be specific.  ICANN already has a "Documentary Information Disclosure Policy”,

and to the extent you believe it needs to be changed, it would be good to hear how.

John, I have been as specific as I can.

Again, please cite the specific changes to ICANN’s practices that you believe this 

group should consider in its work.

I am not clear what is the 'community's' plan regarding this. Does this group share the expectation that at the end of the transition process, ICANN will adopt information disclosure policies of the same level as that of mature democracies today (I give the public information regimes of India and US as specific examples)? If not, why so?

John, it is your turn to be specific :) 

If you believe that changes ICANN’s information disclosure practices are necessary,

please specify the changes that you wish to see.  I do not have direct experience in

making use of ICANN’s information disclosure practices, nor am I recommending that

any changes be made, but you apparently are seeking that some changes be made 

without actually detailing what these changes should be. 

Thanks,

/John

Disclaimer: my views alone.