At the moment I am in the
middle of a research project in New Jersey, without much time. I can't go
through the document line-by-line to offer specific critiques, but if it's of
use I can offer a very general statement that can be considered representative
of my organization, Consumers Union (nine million consumers in the U.S. and
Canada, etc.) It's similar to what I said on a panel discussion about this topic
with Vittorio in San Juan, some of which I have been quoted saying by the trade
press (I can find the reference if you want it). This may not be useful at all,
oversimplistic and with inappropriate legalese, but if you want to quote it
in an appendix as being representative of a large body of consumers, please feel
free:
The current agreement contains little to no
provisions for accountability. ICANN in San Juan presented six options for
moving forward. Each of those options contained some means of addressing this
issue. The language of those options made clear ICANN appears to have no
authority to enforce contracts.
Therefore, on behalf of
consumers:
* The contents of any audits of registrar
conduct must be made public and this must be written into the contract.
Registrars who don't agree don't get accredited. ICANN said they were working on
this but it needs to be on paper and in contracts to prevent needless
lawsuits.
* ICANN needs to be accorded the authority
through the new agreements and contracts to be able to enforce contract
provisions. Termination of contracts, suspension of accreditization, and
monetary fines are possible remedies.
* Performance standards, i.e., a consumer
bill of rights, needs to be drafted to give consumers a means of measurement of
performance, and registrars a set of benchmarks to aspire to. These apparently
exist in some form but few know about them and fewer still pay attention to
them. A third party needs to be involved in drafting these guidelines and needs
to get input from the user community (not registrars, but registrants and
consumers) as to what their expectations are and what they believe is fair, and
from registrars as to what is practical.
* Registrars need to bear the cost of
compliance with guidelines generally agreed to by the registrar community, not
registrants or consumers.
John L ha scritto:
> If the current committee members are
overcommitted, I have some available
> time today and tomorrow to work on
it.
>
> Friendly threat: I'll edit it to include the exigous pile of
comments to
> date along with other changes that I think are
advisable.
I'm ok if you want to do it, or I can do it next week (but it
could be
too late), but that wouldn't solve my problem, which was that there
has
been no input to this policy discussion by any ALAC member yet,
and
while I worked until now on the assumption that what I was
doing
reflected the shared thinking of the Committee, I am not that sure
of
the assumption now, and wouldn't want to waste time.
Also, it can't
be past ALAC members like you and me doing the
substantial work forever. The
current officers and members should not be
afraid, and start taking over
policy work right
now.
Regards,
--
vb.
Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu
<--------
--------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/
<--------
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