Dear Parminder, On 30/01/2014 04:27, parminder wrote:
But did not all the good bottom up participatory processes of ICANN, conducted over several years, did nothing to prevent the name of 'Amazon' to be almost taken by a private company as its private property, till those bad governments intervened and saved it.
The ALAC had a very comprehensive process to file objections, along with all safeguards to make sure that the objections were really bottom up and supported by the majority of our member ALSes. Furthermore, it was all completely transparent. I invite you to read through the wealth of information on: https://community.icann.org/x/w7-bAQ The string you mention was indeed flagged by some of our members and therefore evaluated along many criteria and the community was asked for comments/support. As it happened, it ended up not being on the list of strings that the ALAC objected to. I am not judging whether this was right or not. There are many varying views in our community from people who believe the ALAC should have filed a lot more objections (including for the string you mention) and others who believe that the ALAC should have not filed any objections at all. All views were considered and the whole decisional process was bottom-up, starting from the ALSes to the RALOs, to the Objections Committee and finally to the ALAC. That's an incredible demonstration of operational bottom-up democracy in action. So please do not throw the baby out with the bathwater! Eventually the ALAC filed objections to 3 applications for the .HEALTH string. A follow-up Team built the objections bearing in mind the grounds for objection and process were probably quite restrictive but they did the best they could do. The result came back from the International Chamber of Commerce a week ago. It was a disappointment for many in the community. Others supported the rejection. Again, this variety of views shows a healthy democratic ecosystem. As for the process and the basis on which the examiner rejected the ALAC objections, many things can be argued to counter the result or support it. Seth Reiss who leads the objection follow-up Team provided a very interesting explanation in his announcement of the result and I invite you to read it, including the whole thread that followed after that. Announcement: http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/alac-announce/2014q1/001444.html Thread: http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large/2014q1/009931.html At the moment, it would be a waste of time for the ALAC to file an appeal -- under the current conditions (defined in the applicant guidebook and in the ICANN bylaws) the ALAC would have a next to nil chance to win an appeal, both on form and content. However, during the last ALAC monthly call earlier this week, (all details on: https://community.icann.org/x/RwCuAg ) I encouraged the ALAC to take a full part in the evaluation process of Round 1 of the new gTLD process which I believe will be implemented before a decision is made on whether a second round of new gTLD applications is started (or not?). There are plenty of inadequacies which our community will be able to point out. Kind regards, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond ALAC Chair