- At-Large - lists.icann.org

Fwd: [IANA-issues] Fwd: TRANSITION - FOR US CITIZEN REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NCSG (Typo corrected version, with apology)
by Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond Sept. 9, 2016

Sept. 9, 2016

FYI -- this issue is of importance. The ICANN community has worked for a long time on this transition. The ALAC has ratified the plans for transition. Now it's time for the US Congress to pass it through, but Acts have been proposed at US Senate and Congress to block it. This message is for US citizens who are part of At-Large to let their representative know they oppose the Acts to block the transition. Of course, in your initiative, identify yourself as a member of the At-Large Community, the end users at ICANN. Kindest regards, Olivier -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: [IANA-issues] Fwd: TRANSITION - FOR US CITIZEN REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NCSG (Typo corrected version, with apology) Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2016 06:37:53 +0100 From: Seun Ojedeji <seun.ojedeji(a)gmail.com> To: iana-issues(a)atlarge-lists.icann.org Saw this on the NCSG list and thought might be relevant info here as well. US citizens here may also want to do the needful. Cheers! Sent from my LG G4 Kindly excuse brevity and typos ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Edward Morris" <egmorris1(a)toast.net <mailto:egmorris1@toast.net>> Date: 9 Sep 2016 2:15 a.m. Subject: TRANSITION - FOR US CITIZEN REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NCSG (Typo corrected version, with apology) To: <NCSG-DISCUSS(a)listserv.syr.edu <mailto:NCSG-DISCUSS@listserv.syr.edu>> Cc: Hello everybody, Next week is a crucial time in the life of the transition. The administration needs to notify Congress by September 15th of it's intention to proceed. Although a high priority issue for a few Congressmen in the so called House Freedom Caucus, the transition is something that has really flown under the radar for most Senators and Representatives. I'd like to tell everyone in the NCSG that the United States Congress cares about what you think. It does not. Individual Congresspersons, though, do care what their constituents think - that's where we need your help. American members of the NCSG, both institutions and individuals, it's time to let your elected representatives know what you think of the transition. The best way to do this is to call Washington and tell your Senator, Representative or their staff person what you want them to do regarding the elimination of US government stewardship of the internet through the IANA contract. Please today please call your Senator or Representative, or preferably both, today and tell them that: 1. You, or your organisation, are active members of the ICANN community representing noncommercial users, 2. You support the transition of the internet from the US government to the multi-stakeholder community (if you do), 3. (For Senators) You oppose S3034, the mis-named Protecting Internet Freedom Act, or 4. (For Representatives) You oppose HR 5329, the Securing America's Internet Domains Act of 2016, You can reach your Senator or Representative through the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121. If you do not know your representative you can obtain his or her identity here: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ <http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/> Expat Americans should contact the Senator and Representative of the district where you currently cast your remote ballot in elections (or where you last resided, if you do not currently vote in the United States). In addition, please call the Secretary of the Department of Congress Penny Pritzker at 202-482-2112 and: 1. Identify yourself, your affiliation and that you are an active member of the ICANN community representing noncommercial users and that 2. you support the transition (if you do) and expect the Department of Commerce to proceed as scheduled at the end of this month and not extend the current IANA contract or propose a new one. The time to talk is over: Americans. If you want he transition to occur the time to act is *today. Not Monday, today. *The way to act is by calling, not writing. The impact is much greater. Thank you for your consideration. Best, Ed Morris

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Weekly posting summary for at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org
by narten＠us.ibm.com Sept. 9, 2016

Sept. 9, 2016

Total of 20 messages in the last 7 days. script run at: Fri Sep 9 00:53:03 EDT 2016 Messages | Bytes | Who --------+------+--------+----------+------------------------ 20.00% | 4 | 23.60% | 87124 | evan at telly.org 10.00% | 2 | 12.51% | 46164 | roberto_gaetano at hotmail.com 10.00% | 2 | 12.32% | 45486 | carlton.samuels at gmail.com 10.00% | 2 | 7.30% | 26929 | garth.graham at telus.net 5.00% | 1 | 10.33% | 38127 | dharma.dailey at gmail.com 5.00% | 1 | 6.18% | 22811 | aidanoblia at gmail.com 5.00% | 1 | 5.10% | 18828 | staff at atlarge.icann.org 5.00% | 1 | 4.97% | 18346 | vanda at scartezini.org 5.00% | 1 | 4.19% | 15454 | cveraq at gmail.com 5.00% | 1 | 3.54% | 13079 | apisan at unam.mx 5.00% | 1 | 2.72% | 10037 | narten at us.ibm.com 5.00% | 1 | 2.48% | 9153 | johnl at iecc.com 5.00% | 1 | 2.39% | 8829 | karl at cavebear.com 5.00% | 1 | 2.38% | 8769 | bzs at theworld.com --------+------+--------+----------+------------------------ 100.00% | 20 |100.00% | 369136 | Total

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On a "consumer" agenda for ICANN
by Evan Leibovitch Sept. 6, 2016

Sept. 6, 2016

Hi all. On yesterday's briefing on the topic of ALAC's setting a "consumer" agenda I made a number of points which I felt were either not well received or well-understood. Having the opportunity to reflect I would like to try to express them here in a way I hope may be better accepted. - The issue of whether to call this a "consumer" effort or not appears contentious. My own view is that the term "consumer" is already used within ICANN and has a meaning understood as registrants and end-users. As At-Large has a bylaw mandate to address the interests of end-users, I personally believe that we will have our hands full just advancing end-users; there are other constituencies within ICANN expressly to represent the interests of registrants. - We are significantly constrained in what we can do in the area of compliance because there are so little end-user relevant facets upon which ICANN can act. The RAA limits what ICANN can enforce, and we already know that the main end-user-relevant component of the RAA -- Public Interest Commitments -- are weak and in many cases optional. There is some useful work to be done here -- notably in WHOIS accuracy -- but it is a fraction of all the possible end-user complaints end-users may have. - In the absence of broadly useful enforcement, we have the role of education; and it is here where the most can be done and most needs to be done. My main point is that ICANN's voluminous communications are focused on readers who are at least moderately sophisticated in the technical, economic and/or political components of the organization. ICANN does NOTHING of value for what I would call the unsophisticated audience -- people who don't know that (and why) ICANN has nothing to do with two-letter top-level domains. In the absence of such general-public-facing information, ICANN leaves itself unable to counter untruths and conspiracy theories that may be fact-free but are presented in a way anyone can understand, As an example of the level I am talking about, there is no dead-simple, fourth-grade language that explains - That ICANN does not control "the Internet", just its directory - That ICANN can't do ANYTHING help people with problems with two-letter TLDs (and won't easily help people figure that out) - What action to take -- and the limits of what ICANN can do -- if you are getting abuse from a domain - Who runs ICANN (hint: it's not the United Natiions) To write simply or do infographics about ICANN -- and I almost mean children's book levels, in a dozen or more languages -- takes a specific skill, one which volunteers should not be called upon to provide. If there is to be an advancement of a "consumer agenda" it must begin with an informed public. So far ICANN has spent all its communications resources speaking to those interested (and skilled) enough to want to buy, sell or regulate domains. But it has done little to inform the BILLIONS who likely will never in their lives have or need a domain of their own. In the absence of such straightforward information, demagogues and agenda-based media are able to create their own narratives without credible rebuttal. And the growth of such narratives -- without accessible answers -- is hurtful to our advocacy efforts and generally to the organization a s a whole. Cheers, -- Evan Leibovitch Geneva, CH Em: evan at telly dot org Sk: evanleibovitch Tw: el56

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Re: [At-Large] On a "consumer" agenda for ICANN
by Garth Graham Sept. 5, 2016

Sept. 5, 2016

> On Sep 2, 2016, at 5:05 PM, Karl Auerbach <karl(a)cavebear.com> wrote: > >> On 09/02/2016 11:12 AM, Garth Graham wrote: >> >> "Accountability is the responsibility to answer for how you got done what you committed to do." > > I sense you mean something a bit stronger than your words suggest. > > For instance, I read your formulation as allowing a decision maker to simply say "Yes, I did it". Yes, I slighted the description of the mechanisms for producing an impact or equity statement in the interests of not running on too long. The more open and reciprocal the process of analysis the better. But, in situations where the governing mind of the organization is revealed to be disguising its intentions, there is nothing stopping those most strongly impacted by the intended action from proposing their own. The answering, of course, is about measuring who actually benefitted and who actually paid against the scale of what was intended as the outcome, not merely that action occurred. It's a different lens for seeing the play of the political process of deciding. Often, decision makers actually do not want to be fully informed of the consequences of their actions in advance. In ICANN's case, the stand in for representing the benefits and/or costs to the individual Internet user of a decision would usually but not always be ALAC. > In other words I think something more than being required to give an "answer" is sufficient for true accountability. > > At a minimum "accountability" ought to mean that those to whom the duty of accountability is owed have the power and ability to "throw the bums out" (i.e. to replace the decision makers who failed to do their duty). > > It also means the power to force the undertaking of remedial actions such as reversing the ill decision and repairing any damage caused. I see that action on a failure to answer (to account) for the consequences of an action taken, falls outside the scope of accountability. What the equity statement would do is anticipate a bit more deeply the consequences of deciding and acting before the fact. It either modifies the equity of an intended action or highlights the fact that the beneficiaries of the intended action are quite a bit more narrow than the decision makers had revealed. Then when the answering does occur, it allows the statement of who would benefit and who would pay to stand as a scale of measurement of the truth of the answer. I'm nowhere near being a lawyer. I'll leave to those who are the legal framework that governs what happens when the governing mind of an organization is seen by the answering process to have failed in reaching its intentions or in meeting its responsibilities. But I feel the degree to which ICANN communities have focussed on punishment in analyzing the accountability parts of the transition to be a misdirection in addressing answering processes and kind of pathologically weird. > > In normal corporate structures (and ICANN *is* a corporation, or, now, two) that is done through periodic elections of the board of directors (with those to whom the duty of accountability having the power to vote), by derivative actions (of which ICANN's law firm has a terrible fear), and by normal actions against the corporation, its directors, and sometimes its officers for violations of fiduciary and other duties. > > There are other forms of accountability. For example, directors of IRS 501(c)(3) corporations (which includes ICANN) are subject to "intermediate sanctions" if there is an interaction between the corporation and a closely related party in which an undue benefit is conferred. Yes, those are somewhat vague terms, but there is nothing vague in the means in which that accountability is imposed: through a 200% excise tax (yes, a tax - which is often not covered by corporate insurance) directly imposed on the personal assets of the directors as well as on the corporation itself. > > --karl-- > > >

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Fraudulent notice
by Roberto Gaetano Sept. 5, 2016

Sept. 5, 2016

Alert - just in case I am not the only one to be targeted. I am receiving fraudulent notices of domain names expiration from "Domain Service info(a)avuk.net<mailto:info@avuk.net>". They point to a web site in the domain http://onbetternet.com/ for a fraudulent payment. Cheers, Roberto

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Re: [At-Large] On a "consumer" agenda for ICANN
by Garth Graham Sept. 2, 2016

Sept. 2, 2016

On Sep 2, 2016, at 2:27 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evan(a)telly.org> wrote: > On yesterday's briefing on the topic of ALAC's setting a "consumer" agenda I made a number of points which I felt were either not well received or well-understood. Having the opportunity to reflect I would like to try to express them here in a way I hope may be better accepted. While I do agree that Evan is raising an important issue, I don’t agree that it’s THE issue raised in Garth Breun’s draft on creating a consumer (i.e. user) agenda. He begins by noting that the Corporation shall operate for the benefit of the Internet community as a whole and therefore needs to describe how a particular policy change or project would affect the Internet user in advance of the decision. I felt that the meeting drifted off topic. In yesterday’s chat, I commented that the issue in the draft is accountability, not communication. I still feel that ICANN’s accountability can be used effectively as a link to ICANN’s acceptability to the ordinary Internet user. Yesterday wasn’t the first time I’ve raised this possibility. When ICANN first initiated a discussion on enhancing its own accountability in the absence of its historical contractual relationship to the U.S. Government, I contributed the following comment: “ICANN’s open processes of policy development and decision-making provide a basis for an important dimension of accountability that’s not usually recognized – ACCOUNTABILITY BEFORE THE FACT.“ Not unexpectedly, my comment evoked … nothing at all. Conventionally, being accountable is assumed to be about answering for actions after the fact. But the public comment processes that ICANN already follows allow its internal communities” to explore future organizational intentions and the impact questions of who benefits and who pays to a more intense degree than most organizations. Those conversations can be the basis of a formal explanation of intentions and their expected impact (of a equity statement described as such at the conclusion of policy formulation) before the fact. This provides a scale of measurement of successful achievement of results that emerges from within the issue or situation that provoked the suggested policy change, which can be applied after the fact of its implementation. To the degree that ICANN answers to its own internal communities, such a statement and measurement scale would represent a summary of (rough?] consensus and a standard to judge the consequences of running (i.e. implementing) the code(ification) of policy. It might also simplify the problem of explaining ICANN’s actions to a “global” public. During the ICANN50 meeting in London, June 21-26, 2014, sessions on accountability were being held all across ICANN’s constituencies. I attended several of them, including in particular ATLAS II’s Thematic Group 4: On ICANN Transparency and Accountability. Various people were pondering various parts of the elephant of accountability and describing what they thought it was.  As I listened to these expressions, it seemed to me that the balance of ICANN’s preoccupation with accountability tilts toward an inward focus. Given the reality that ICANN does assist in the coordination of a global resource, I sensed that the consensus about ICANN’s primary enemies being within is probably quite dangerous. At that point in the evolution of ICANN’s  own governance ecosystem, perhaps the need for internal trust was greater than the need for internal verification. Maybe that’s still true. In the ATLAS II Thematic Group 4: On ICANN Transparency and Accountability, the definition I pressed for was: "Accountability is the responsibility to answer for how you got done what you committed to do." I meant that definition to operate in the context of self-organizing complex adaptive systems, where there is no answering to external authority and outcomes cannot be predicted in advance. It’s more of an antiphonal call-and-response, like the Internet when the packet header asks, “Did you get that?” and the receiving server answers, “Yes, I did.” That’s a difficult context to convey in a roomful of strangers seeking consensus on a complex issue. In that definition, what you commit to do occurs before the fact. That's what I meant by pointing to accountability before the fact as a methodological component. Statements of impact, or intentions before the fact define the elements or scale of measurement after the fact. By being open and transparent, ICANN has a huge advantage in being accountable over organizations and institutions that are opaque. Its commitments are very readily visible now, and can be made more visible for the purpose of future answering. In that sense, accountability and transparency are rendered self referential, and the scales of measurement emerge organically out the issues and challenges themselves. When Thematic Group 4 concluded its sessions, nobody signaled that the real debate would then continue online among people more expert in ALAC’s processes than I am. There were subsequent objections to that definition related to the felt need for external control and punishment.  People objected that my definition,” doesn’t say what happens if you don’t meet the target. What makes the world comfortable that someone is looking over ICANN’s shoulder?” So, in online discussions in the Group 4 wiki that occurred after the face-to-face sessions and preempted them, the definition got changed to: The responsibility to explain and justify all decisions and actions in light of ICANN’s responsibility to act in the public interest. Clearly the second definition ignored the possibility of accountability before the fact as an operating principle. ICANN knows that to account is to answer. So it is asking itself the “big question.” In a “global” context, who receives ICANNs answers? But a moment’s reflection on the nature of the Internet Governance ecosystem as a complex adaptive system tells us there is not, and must not be, anyone or anything that “represents” the global context. To centralize control is to seek to stabilize the system by external means and, in complex adaptive systems, the only stable state is death. That big question about global answering blinds us to the fact that it’s the wrong question. What matters to the distribution of functions in a complex adaptive system is the “willing collaboration between.“ To fix ICANN’s status in concrete terms by reference to an external authority is to kill its capacity to evolve its functional role in the Internet governance ecosystem. In terms of ICANN’s role in the Internet Governance ecosystem, what is going to matter is the quality of the feedback loops that allow both ICANN and the ecosystem to self-correct their fit to the changing environment. I have tried to describe what those feedback loops might mean inside ICANN in several different ways and all of them seem to be at odds with the culture of ICANN. I provoke reactions like, “Too abstract, and too theoretical,” to be of use. Even in the case like the definition of accountability, where I thought I’d got something into the record, arcane practices of online debate stripped it away. Yes, those practices are transparent, but only if you knew they would occur and where they would surface. My thanks to Garth Bruen for, I think, providing me with one more chance to clarify the significance of accountability before the fact in addressing the critical impact question of who benefits and who pays in the context of the ordinary Internet user. GG

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Call for Comments: At-Large Community Policy Issues - Why End Users Should Care
by ICANN At-Large Staff Sept. 2, 2016

Sept. 2, 2016

Dear All, In consultation with the ALAC Leadership Team, Heidi Ullrich, Senior Director for At-Large and Ariel Liang, Policy Analyst supporting At-Large, have developed the draft document entitled At-Large Community Policy Issues - Why End Users Should Care<https://community.icann.org/x/jwusAw>. The document aims to provide an overview of key policy issues that the At-Large Community has been working on within ICANN, with a focus on why each issue is relevant or of concern to end users. The latest version of the document (version 5.0), as well as previous draft versions, can be found in its wiki workspace here: https://community.icann.org/x/jwusAw. All At-Large members are welcome to comment on version 5.0. Please take a moment to review this draft and if you have input, please submit it in the wiki workspace using the comment function by 09 September 2016 at 23:59 UTC. You will need to log in to the wiki to use the comment function. If you don’t have a login or have other issue using the wiki, kindly contact staff(a)atlarge.icann.org<mailto:staff@atlarge.icann.org>. Heidi Ullrich, Silvia Vivanco, Ariel Liang, Gisella Gruber, Nathalie Peregrine, Terri Agnew and Yeşim Nazlar ICANN Policy Staff in support of the At-Large Community E-mail: staff(a)atlarge.icann.org<mailto:staff@atlarge.icann.org> Website: atlarge.icann.org<https://atlarge.icann.org/> Facebook: facebook.com/icann<https://www.facebook.com/icannatlarge>atlarge<https://www.facebook.com/icannatlarge> Twitter: @<https://twitter.com/ICANNAtLarge>ICANNAtLarge<https://twitter.com/ICANNAtLarge>

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Weekly posting summary for at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org
by narten＠us.ibm.com Sept. 2, 2016

Sept. 2, 2016

Total of 4 messages in the last 7 days. script run at: Fri Sep 2 00:53:03 EDT 2016 Messages | Bytes | Who --------+------+--------+----------+------------------------ 50.00% | 2 | 60.51% | 34522 | staff at atlarge.icann.org 25.00% | 1 | 22.11% | 12615 | salanieta.tamanikaiwaimaro at gmail.com 25.00% | 1 | 17.38% | 9914 | narten at us.ibm.com --------+------+--------+----------+------------------------ 100.00% | 4 |100.00% | 57051 | Total

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Trademark Post Delegation Dispute Resolution Procedure Survey
by ICANN At-Large Staff Aug. 31, 2016

Aug. 31, 2016

Dear All, The GNSO Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms (‘RPMs’) PDP Working Group has prepared a survey<https://s.zoomerang.com/r/CL3MJLL> to understand how the Trademark Post Delegation Dispute Resolution Process (‘TM-PDDRP) works. The survey specifically seeks information about whether there may have been a “substantial pattern or practice” of infringing behavior at the second level by new gTLD registry operators. The Working Group welcomes input from the At-Large Community. To complete the survey, please click here: https://s.zoomerang.com/r/CL3MJLL. The working group would like to receive input by 15 September 2016. For more information about this GNSO PDP Working Group: https://community.icann.org/x/wCWAAw. If you have any question or comment about the survey, please contact the Working Group support staff David Tait david.tait(a)icann.org<mailto:david.tait@icann.org>. Heidi Ullrich, Silvia Vivanco, Ariel Liang, Gisella Gruber, Nathalie Peregrine, Terri Agnew and Yeşim Nazlar ICANN Policy Staff in support of the At-Large Community E-mail: staff(a)atlarge.icann.org<mailto:staff@atlarge.icann.org> Website: atlarge.icann.org<https://atlarge.icann.org/> Facebook: facebook.com/icann<https://www.facebook.com/icannatlarge>atlarge<https://www.facebook.com/icannatlarge> Twitter: @<https://twitter.com/ICANNAtLarge>ICANNAtLarge<https://twitter.com/ICANNAtLarge>

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African Internet Peering Forum 2016 [Livestream]
by Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro Aug. 30, 2016

Aug. 30, 2016

Dear All, The African Internet Peering Forum is live and you can catch it on Livestream: livestream.com/internetsociety/afpif2016 There are over 22 IXPs from all over the African region and terrestrial fibre, sub-cable, manufacturers and CDNs and more here. Today = peering tutorials. Agenda is here: https://www.internetsociety.org/afpif-2016/sessions Apologies for the Cross Posting. Kind Regards, -- *Salanieta Tamanikaiwaimaro aka Sala T* *P. O. Box 17862* *Suva* *Republic of Fiji* *Cell: +679 7656770; * *Home: +679 3362003* *Twitter: @SalanietaT* *"You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honour." Aristotle*

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