At 04/09/2012 05:59 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
On 4 September 2012 17:29, Alan Greenberg <<mailto:alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca>alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca> wrote: Evan, we are certainly not bound by the politics or practices of the GNSO, and pointedly, that is why I suggested that a PDP might not always be necessary in the GNSO giving policy advice to the Board. But we are bound by the ICANN Bylaws, unless we are explicitly suggesting that they be changed. And currently the Bylaws do specify that the GNSO is the body that formulates and recommends GNSO Policy to the Board. The catch in this case is determining what is upper-case-P gTLD policy, and what is not. And we are making the case that with one exception, the initial implementation of the recommendations are NOT upper-case-P gTLD policy.
I hear you. But that's a level of detail one step down from the core message, which (AFAIK) is not yet agreed to.
We need full buy-in on the "what" (WHOIS fixing is an immediate priority) before dealing with "how" (many of the RT things can be done by staff without re-consulting the GNSO). If the Board is not in agreement that this is a priority to fix quickly, it will punt the recommendations to the GNSO, including the ones it doesn't need to.
Even agreeing that certain matters are pure implementation that can be done by staff is not assurance of anything, as we have seen through the current sad state of contractual compliance. So it is important that we get across as our main point -- as forcefully as possible -- that the status quo is unacceptable. How ICANN addresses that problem (assuming it agrees), while important, is secondary. What point is arguing details if we don't have buy-in on the principle?
Perhaps my cynicism (that the Board lacks our concern about the broken state of WHOIS implementation and enforcement) is unwarranted. I certainly hope so.
- Evan
We seem to be talking at cross-purposes. The original ALAC statement on the report said we want it all. Period. The statement the ALAC made last week said that again, and added that six of the Recs are really high priority (in our mind) and that there was no reason the Board could not act quickly (and without GNSO creating a line of policy). As a follow-up, it was suggested that we not just address the whether we believe that GNSO policy development is needed on the other 10. The document addresses that. The Board has little wriggle room on whether to address all of the Recs. In the next A&T review, they will be judged on it and they better have a rock-solid rationale for rejecting any of the Recs. What they do have is flexibility on how they are to address the Recs and our point is that for most of them, they need not and cannot shove them off on the GNSO before doing anything. I.E. No punting in most cases. Or at least, that is how I see it. The critical issue is that we (like many others) keep on talking about the strength of the multi-stakeholder model. Here we are advocating (for the most part) that the Board can ignore the bulk of the stakeholders and just act (presumably with a comment period first). So we need to make our case that the circumstances reasonably allow such direct action. Alan