Re: [ALAC] [ALAC-Announce] ALAC Vote on the Rec6 CWG Report
Hi there. As the Chair of ALAC's gTLD Working Group and the ALAC liaision to the cross-community group that created this report, I am generally OK with its conclusions and support its endorsement. However, I note that there has been no discussion of this in advance of the vote being called. Further, I am advising creation of a Minority Report in which At-Large is able to state our clear intentions in the many areas of the report that indicated divergence or incomplete consensus amongst the participants. There are a few issues that were important to us -- and endorsed by all ALAC participants -- that were opposed by other interests. I ask that any correspondence to the Board of ICANN staff that conveys the the endorsement of the report (providing, of course, that this vote succeeds) to be accompanied by an indication that ALAC is considering production of a minority report. I would further invite anyone interested in this to participate in the new-gTLD Working Group where I hope the drafting of such a report will take place for ALAC consideration, and any questions or concerns by ALAC members to be expressed openly. Having said that, I believe that this report is a very important step forward. It has successfully revisited a component of the new gTLD application process which At-Large generally found repugnant, and our views have been well represented within the new policy recommendations. It proposes to eliminate objections on Morality and Public Order to would be adjudicated by a subcontracted "Dispute Resolution Service Provider". It does allow for communities and governments to submit objections on strings that would be widely objectionable; however, such objections would have to be contrary to international law and treaties. And, instead of a third-party contracted process of morality judgement, all decisions on acceptability must be made directly by the Board which can only deny applications (based on string objections) with a super-majority vote. It also -- as first recommended long ago in the gTLD statement of the At-Large Summit -- calls for slight modifications of the Community Objection process and the role of the Independent Objector, to compensate for the elimination of elimination of "Morality and Public Order" objections while still enabling opposition to (very) widely-objected strings. This was quite the task, bringing together ALAC, GAC and GNSO in what I believe to be a first-ever-of-its-kind consultation. Its productivity and results exceeded my expectations, especially given an extremely compressed timeframe that required four hours per week of conference calls and sometimes more. ALAC was well represented and appears to be treated as a respected and nearly-equal partner at the table. It's a good precedent that, I hope, may encourage such forums to be used to bring sanity to ICANN's policy-making process going forward. - Evan On 21 September 2010 18:06, ICANN At-Large Staff <staff@atlarge.icann.org> wrote:
Dear All,
The Chair of the ALAC requested the Staff to start an online vote on the Rec6 CWG report. Please note that the vote will only remain open until Thursday, September 23rd at 2359 UTC. [...]
Haven't seen continuation of the discussion. Is the " role of the Independent Objector" still viable? What I heard is that it becomes obsolete. Hong On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 10:01 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org> wrote:
Hi there.
As the Chair of ALAC's gTLD Working Group and the ALAC liaision to the cross-community group that created this report, I am generally OK with its conclusions and support its endorsement. However, I note that there has been no discussion of this in advance of the vote being called.
Further, I am advising creation of a Minority Report in which At-Large is able to state our clear intentions in the many areas of the report that indicated divergence or incomplete consensus amongst the participants. There are a few issues that were important to us -- and endorsed by all ALAC participants -- that were opposed by other interests.
I ask that any correspondence to the Board of ICANN staff that conveys the the endorsement of the report (providing, of course, that this vote succeeds) to be accompanied by an indication that ALAC is considering production of a minority report. I would further invite anyone interested in this to participate in the new-gTLD Working Group where I hope the drafting of such a report will take place for ALAC consideration, and any questions or concerns by ALAC members to be expressed openly.
Having said that, I believe that this report is a very important step forward. It has successfully revisited a component of the new gTLD application process which At-Large generally found repugnant, and our views have been well represented within the new policy recommendations. It proposes to eliminate objections on Morality and Public Order to would be adjudicated by a subcontracted "Dispute Resolution Service Provider". It does allow for communities and governments to submit objections on strings that would be widely objectionable; however, such objections would have to be contrary to international law and treaties. And, instead of a third-party contracted process of morality judgement, all decisions on acceptability must be made directly by the Board which can only deny applications (based on string objections) with a super-majority vote.
It also -- as first recommended long ago in the gTLD statement of the At-Large Summit -- calls for slight modifications of the Community Objection process and the role of the Independent Objector, to compensate for the elimination of elimination of "Morality and Public Order" objections while still enabling opposition to (very) widely-objected strings.
This was quite the task, bringing together ALAC, GAC and GNSO in what I believe to be a first-ever-of-its-kind consultation. Its productivity and results exceeded my expectations, especially given an extremely compressed timeframe that required four hours per week of conference calls and sometimes more. ALAC was well represented and appears to be treated as a respected and nearly-equal partner at the table. It's a good precedent that, I hope, may encourage such forums to be used to bring sanity to ICANN's policy-making process going forward.
- Evan
On 21 September 2010 18:06, ICANN At-Large Staff <staff@atlarge.icann.org> wrote:
Dear All,
The Chair of the ALAC requested the Staff to start an online vote on the Rec6 CWG report. Please note that the vote will only remain open until Thursday, September 23rd at 2359 UTC. [...]
ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac
At-Large Online: http://www.atlarge.icann.org ALAC Working Wiki: http://st.icann.org/alac
-- Dr. Hong Xue Professor of Law Director of Institute for the Internet Policy & Law (IIPL) Beijing Normal University http://www.iipl.org.cn/ <http://iipl.org.cn/> 19 Xin Jie Kou Wai Street Beijing 100875 China
participants (2)
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Evan Leibovitch -
Hong Xue