Hello Bruce,

I'm writing w.r.t. Recommendation 6, pages 19, 20 and 27 of the 14-Dec-15-Board_Comments_to_CCWG[1][1].pdf.

First, I agree with the Board's observations (p19, para1) that the work has not progressed sufficient to allow non-placeholder text to be inserted into the Bylaws.

Second, I appreciate the expression of concern (p19 and 20) that placeholder text may be construed by third-parties as having meaning not intended by its authors.

Third, I wish to observe that to the best of my limited knowledge, no body of law is directly applicable to the "skitter core" (a term we owe to the intelligence and industrious activity of k.c. claffy and her co-workers at the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA)), which is where the global uniqueness of identifiers (names-to-addresses) is manifested -- something not contained by any one territorial jurisdiction, yet present in all (including .kr, which has AS131279, announcing 175.45.176.0/22).

This particular observation leads me to also observe that "the full scope of defined work on human rights should include consideration of impacts across all of ICANN's activities" is problematic. Whatever "human rights" may mean in the context of ICANN's core mission -- technical coordination of globally unique identifiers -- is the usual language -- it is unlikely that the same or even a comparable meaning exists for "human rights" within the contexts of the day to day operations of the offices in Los Angeles or Istanbul or Singapore, or the contexts of the Corporation and the Contracted Parties, etc., for which bodies of law exist.

With regard to the Board's proposal (page 20, C) I wish to remind you as the Board's liaison of the exchange of notes on the subject of availability of, and correctness of, resolution of globally unique identifiers to underlying resources, in the CCWG mailing list, in which the current chair of a standards body has opined that prior efforts by the Corporation, through its Board Chair and CEO could be described as merely effecting operational concerns, not asserting some general right of access to resources through the resolution of globally unique identifiers.

Finally, I wish to repeat the observation I shared at the Los Angeles face-to-face meeting of the CCWG, and many members of the Board -- that access to namespaces is within the direct control of the Corporation, and have been shown through the success of the .cat sponsored linguistic and cultural registry, the ccTLD IDN Fast Track program, and the expansion of the IDN Fast Track from ccTLDs to the 2014 new gTLD program, to have substantively advanced literacy and ease of use in (large populations) living languages. While not expressed as a "human right", the history of progressive support for namespaces and for identifiers in scripts other than the Latin script by the Corporation is a history of advancing a recognized human right.

Personally I'm not concerned if this work is undertaken in WS1 or WS2, as I'm confident of the Board's intention to incorporate some meaningful, and correct, statement concerning the core function of the Corporation and some human rights, such as the advancement of languages other than English among users of the resources associated with globally unique identifiers via the DNS.

Eric Brunner-Williams
Eugene, Oregon

On 12/14/15 2:49 AM, Bruce Tonkin wrote: