See embedded. Alan At 04/11/2014 02:11 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

On 4 November 2014 11:42, Alan Greenberg <<mailto:alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca>alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca> wrote:

I put the substance of what the GAC is asking for related to the Red Cross in a VERY different category from their advice that the topic should not be subject to a policy development process.

​The point is, the GNSO has already ​

​had its PDP on the issue, and when given the opportunity did not endorse the necessary protection for the Red Cross. Its report, finished late last year, was full of contradictory positions and different levels of consensus, mixing in the Red Cross protections with those of groups that were far less in need of protection (ie, the International Olympic Committee).

And clearly, having done this PDP already, there is an insufficient level of enforcement of Red Cross (and associated org) names at the current time.

As these names are not usually protected by trademarks but in many cases by explicit national laws and international conventions, the usual ICANN remedies such as the Trademark Clearinghouse may not be appropriate.

If a PDP has already been done, what are the options? Another PDP be initiated for many of the same issues, will take more years to complete, years during which countless fraudulent and misleading names will be registered with no ICANN-endorsed limit or remedy.

AG: The recommendation related to the RCRC have not yet been addressed by the Board. There is a provision in the PDP to re-convene a PDP WG to consider explicit changes should the GNSO Council choose. Essentially, the Council needs to provide potential recommendations and the PDP WG will agree or disagree. *IF* the GNSO decides to go that route (and there is great opposition, particularly from the NCSG who opposed most all of the added protections with the exception of NGOs), and IF the WG agrees with the new Recs, it is a done deal and will not take very long. If either of those fails, we are back where we started. In my opinion, the reason that the 189 country names were not protected was not a philosophical reason, but that the RC dropped the ball. These names had been mentioned very early on, but then were omitted from the documents when the PDP was convened and most of the way through it. They were resuscitated very near the end of the process, and were viewed by many as the RC getting largely what they had been asking for so far, so they decided to up the ante. For this, and one other reason (the registries had hammered out an agreement about what they were going to support, and they were just to tired of the whole thing to re-open to consider these names (my wording, not theirs)), this protection was not granted.

​

What evidence exists that raising the issue again as a PDP would achieve a different result from what has already happened? ​ ​ ​<https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins133991.html>Is such an approach even rational?​ And even if a better result DOES come out of ​revisiting ​ the process, two or three years from now ​ and burning hundreds more person-hours of volunteer time​ , how much ​irreversible ​ damage to the public good and public trust will have happened by th ​en​ ?​

​- Evan​