At 08/01/2013 11:31 AM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

>On 2013-01-08 9:42 PM, "Carlton Samuels" 
><<mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com>carlton.samuels@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I share Alan's perspectives here.
>
>OK, I understand and am willing to concede the point to Alan. But 
>I'm unsure of one thing...
>
> > I think the Board well understand why the ALAC and others 
> advocate the distinctions we offer. But the nature of the politics 
> - and likely concerns re optics - have served to stiffen the 
> Board's resolve to stay the course.
>
>It was my takeaway that the optics of blending the IOC and RCRC 
>would be a net negative. The GAC internal politics might be sated 
>but the public would simply see ICANN being gamed (again) by special 
>interests.
>
>On the other hand, maybe this is as it should be... continuing to 
>feed my expectations that the TLD expansion will be a public debacle 
>and most of these hard-fought protections simply won't matter.
>
>- Evan

I have my own take on the IOC issue (specifically that the cost of 
defending domain names is a small part of its overall budgets, and 
not of great import in the larger scale of things). But I suspect 
that throughout the rest of the world, the position that the GAC has 
taken on the IOC may be an easier sell. So whether this will tarnish 
ICANN or not, I really don't know. If I would have to make a bet on 
it, I would say those in the know would acknowledge that this is a 
card that the GAC played well, and would be hard to defeat, but those 
out of the ICANN loop really won;t notice or care.

Whether the TLD expansion will be a debacle or not, remains to be 
seen.. My guess is that there will be some very successful ones, many 
that will survive if only because they are brand tlds, and many that 
will indeed be a debacle. But regardless, the only impact of any 
special protections will be a bit of saved money for those who get 
them IF they are really being preyed upon. And a bit of user 
protection to the extent that those sites have user interactions that 
were being intercepted. Since we are not talking about 
strings-contained-in protection, I think the latter will be a small 
part of it all.

Alan