On 09 May 2010, at 16:48, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Longtime advocate and NARALO member John Levine has written a concise and elequent piece<http://www.circleid.com/posts/20100508_the_real_issue_about_icann_and_xxx/>on the real problems behind ICANN's handling of .XXX. I don't think I've read anything that I could more recommend to someone working within ICANN's policy process.
Thank you, Evan. I think all of us in the ALAC agree that ICANN has to follow its own processes. This is John's main point. Which is why, in the discussion, the ALAC also agreed not to talk about the content. That would only have contributed to blur the statement with something that is irrelevant to ICANN. Rather, we insisted on the need to respect the process and take into consideration the decision of the IRP.
In the context of this I must express my utter disgust at the way ALAC has let down its community on this issue.
NARALO took a strong position in favour of accepting the application for .XXX, but ALAC rejected that for its own and left the NARALO statement dangling as an appendix
Indeed, the minority statement from NARALO was included as an appendix, as were others. You could of course say the ALAC let down one *part* of its community by not adopting the NARALO statement as its own. Personal opinions of ALAC members may vary. For the record, my personal one was more along the lines of the NARALO statement. See http://forum.icann.org/lists/icm-options-report/msg00523.html and also featured on the ICM blog: http://www.icmregistry.com/blog/?p=10. However, the ALAC statement was an aggregate position of ALL its community. In the end, we ALAC have to find a language that every ALAC member can defend as a part of the group. This is called a compromise. We have had that in the past, and I do expect there will be others in the future. We need to speak as one voice. I personally feel that exposing our disagreements in public is counter-productive, and has largely contributed to the ALAC's lack of credibility in the past. This is not the present and future image we want to show. Patrick