My point was not whether to trust compliance. We are not yet at the stage where they have any responsibility with regard to complaints about PICs. At 05/10/2013 01:43 AM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

Yes, let's trust the compliance department to do something that is supportive of third parties and whistleblowers on PICs, just as well as it has supported whistleblowers and third-party complaints on WHOIS and related issues.

Pfffft.

To this day I don't know whether the systemic user-hostility of the compliance department is due to lack of will, lack of competence, lack of resources, or conspiratorial lack of mandate. The result is the same. This too is an issue about which we have frequently shouted into a black hole.

- Evan

On 5 October 2013 00:53, Alan Greenberg <<mailto:alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca>alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca> wrote: I have largely been absent from the debates of this last week or so, because I have been focusing either on ATRT work or in the moments when that was lighter, trying to catch up with other parts of my life that have been brushed aside recently. I have not had a chance to review the latest PICDRP document. But honestly, I don't think it will matter. The DRP is a dandy way for third parties who have been injured by PIC commitments not being followed. I am sure they have tweaked it a bit, and perhaps for the better.

But it is not the mechanism that I really care about. We have been assured twice now, by Fadi during ALAC-Board meetings that there will be a parallel process for ICANN to take action. He has reasonably said that ICANN does not have the resources to police the PICs and detect every failure. With that, I have no real problem. But he has also said that if and when ICANN is alerted to problems, they will take action. The term he used at the last meeting is that the detection would be "crowd-sourced". Compliance has said that if given the mandate, they would take action, but so far (when it was said, I think in Beijing or perhaps at one of the ATRT meeting in in LA), they have only been given the responsibility of enforcing DRP rulings.

Perhaps I have missed something, but I do not recall any public announcement of anything like what Fadi has described. If I am correct, then I strongly believe that THIS is what we need to make a strong statement about, but the details or even the concept of the PICDRP.

For the record, we said this six months ago - <https://community.icann.org/x/pJlwAg>https://community.icann.org/x/pJlwAg.

Alan

At 05/10/2013 12:21 AM, Evan Leibovitch wrote: On 3 October 2013 19:56, Rinalia Abdul Rahim <<mailto:rinalia.abdulrahim@gmail.com>rinalia.abdulrahim@gmail.com>wrote:

...

I'd say there are at least 3 deliverables in that intervention:

1. An ALAC statement on the overall sorry state of new gTLD program - let's draft one, I'm ready to work on it. Any other volunteers?

2. A Public Forum intervention on the same.

3. A discussion in Buenos Aires (if not at a MS roundtable, then at least at an ALAC policy discussion session).

I guess my main response to this is one of weariness.

So we make a statement on the sorry state of the expansion program. Heaven knows there is a MASSIVE list of errors, unintended consequences, implementations that don't follow the spirit of policy. Worst of all is continuation of a compliance atmosphere that treats complaints from the public as hostile confrontations to be rebuffed and minimized -- not by making the system better for end-users, but by making it harder to complain. The PICDRP is just the latest.

But what, right now, would a statement say? What would it ask for?

If it's just a matter of going on the record with our issues ... so what? Nobody's listening. The gTLD locomotive is running at top speed, generally pilotless, the brakes have been sabotaged, and the industry is just hoping it gets as far as the bank before it derails.

Dare we ask for a delay to deal with all these ugly public-interest issues? And have the rest of the ICANN community despise us ... while it ignores us?

A statement, a Forum speech and a round table are tactics; what is the objective? Let everyone know we're unhappy? Again?

They know. They don't care, at least not enough to act on what we recommend. Even Applicant Support would not have happened without GAC intervention, and even then the resulting program turned out to be wholly inaccessible.

Anyone remember this?

*We believe that "public benefit" declarations within TLD applications will

be of dubious benefit, and in any case subject to substantial modification (and difficulty of enforcement) post-delegation.*

That was part of a early 2011 submission from the ALAC that responded to both the GAC Scorecard on the gTLD program and the Board response to the Scorecard<<https://community.icann.org/display/alacdocs/ALAC+Statement+on+the+GAC+New+gTLD+Scorecard>https://community.icann.org/display/alacdocs/ALAC+Statement+on+the+GAC+New+gTLD+Scorecard>.

Little that we asked for came about; the trademark over-jealousness requested by the GAC to which we objected has snuck in anyway, yet our support of the GAC for more categories, and most of our other concerns (such as dot-brands not having been sufficiently thought out) went largely unheeded.

That was more than two years ago, when there was still an opportunity to nudge things if not steer them differently. Now opportunity for real change is smaller yet.

The lack of substantive change in the PICDRP reveals that the corporate mindset and cultural end-user hostility of ICANN hasn't really budged, the rules are still all stacked in favour of the domain industry and against public interest complaints. The problems are fundamental in the resolution process and beyond minor refinements; but once the gTLD staff has gone in a process -- no matter how loopy -- it rarely backtracks. Not for us, at least. Problems we saw in the early years are manifesting now in nasty ways. And while we sometimes get heard in some of the smaller details on putting out these fires, the big cultural problems of ICANN -- of industry entitlement and end-user hostility -- refuse to wane.

So what, exactly, do we want to tell the Board as Advice, or the rest of the community in a workshop or Forum comment? What outcome do we want?

I'll help write something, but I've lost the interest in penning One More Expression of Mildly Cloaked Disgust.

- Evan _______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list <mailto:ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org>ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac

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-- Evan Leibovitch Toronto Canada Em: evan at telly dot org Sk: evanleibovitch Tw: el56