As Roberto and others have pointed out, the auction money is unrelated to the new TLD application money, and it would be wrong for many reasons to turn it into a gift to the applicants.

Calculating the "costs" of the new gTLD program, is very similar to the telecom industry adding new services. Exactly what would be the costs for a particular new service? ...

ICANN has segregated the revenue and costs for the new gTLD program from other costs and expenses all along and breaks them out in their quarterly financial statements, which I presume you have read. You can argue about the details but the general numbers seem accurate. The most recent statement, from last September, says they had $125M left and expect to have $70M when it's over. , I expect give or take defending the inevitable lawsuits from unhappy applicants. There's a separate question of what to do with the extra application money. Personally, I find it hard to have a lot of sympathy for the dire conditions of speculators and marketers who applied, and I'd treat the extra the same way as the auction money, use it to support projects relevant to ICANN's charitable mission. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

I think I agree with Roberto, but doing what is asked requires a bottom-up overhaul of the community TLD criteria and evaluation process. Personally I am in favour of such a review, mainly because of the visible examples in which the community categorization did not serve its intended purpose last time. In examples of which I am aware (.gay, .nyc, .kids and .music) there were perfectly good community applications that were against well-monied commercial applicants. The process was supposed to allow the community applications preference. In all these cases (and probably others of which I'm not aware) the commercial applicant prevailed. The distinctions between commercial and public-service TLDs can be accomplished through appropriate change to the community applicant process. It is a less drastic measure than asking the application process to recognize a number of new categories. - Evan On 13 May 2017 at 17:51, Roberto Gaetano <roberto_gaetano@hotmail.com> wrote:

John,

...

There's a separate question of what to do with the extra application money. Personally, I find it hard to have a lot of sympathy for the dire conditions of speculators and marketers who applied, and I'd treat the extra the same way as the auction money, use it to support projects relevant to ICANN's charitable mission.

I agree, with one caveat. (disclaimer: I am the Chair of the Public Interest Registry, who has applied for 4 IDN TLDs)

I think that there are different categories of applications - brand promotion, geographic localisation, community interest, and so on. One set of applications was about IDNs, that I believe are part of the strategic objective to bring the Internet to everyone, including the ones who are using a different script. I am not claiming that in these cases money should be “refunded” to the applicants, but money could be used to offset the fixed fees that the registries have to pay anyway to ICANN regardless on whether the IDN TLD is making money or not. In simple words, I believe that ICANN should recognise that these TLDs are being developed for pursuing an overall objective - that was, incidentally, the reason why ICANN created the conditions for IDN TLDs. To request a fixed yearly fee even if there are few registrations in the case of TLDs that have been delegate pursuing an objective of widening the access to the Internet to people who would otherwise have been excluded does not seem to be fair. And, more importantly, will not be an incentive to registries to apply for more IDN TLDs in the next round, therefore vanishing the effort that we have done so far. Of course, I am speaking of the IDNs because I am aware of this situation, but the same reasoning might apply to some community TLDs. In short, to reply to John, full agreement about speculators, but there should be a way to distinguish between who acted for profit and who acted for providing a tool for the communities that have been underserved so far.

Cheers, Roberto

PS: in re-reading my text I realise that I might have gone off topic, because I am addressing the issue of application fees rather than auction - sorry _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large

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-- Evan Leibovitch Toronto, Canada Em: evan at telly dot org Sk: evanleibovitch Tw: el56

On 14 May 2017 at 17:27, <bzs@theworld.com> wrote:

That said I would agree that there is a tendency when running any ​ ​ business that "excess" cash tends to get allocated one way or another ​ ​ barring an iron-willed commitment otherwise which is not what I'd ​ ​ expect of an organization structured like ICANN.

​I don't know about that. I've been involved with some nonprofits that believe it imperative to, as possible, maintain a reserve fund to deal with unintended or unanticipated circumstances. The amount of this reserve may be capped by taxation authorities who don't want it too high, but having a substantial fund to guard against liability, especially in uncharted territory such as ICANN's, is certainly prudent. ​- Evan ​

On 13 May 2017 at 08:22, Kan Kaili <kankaili@gmail.com> wrote:

I may not disagree with your arguments. However, regarding calculating the "costs", that is only next to impossible.

​And that is at the heart of the issue. Just how much would you refund? ​ ​The devil is in the details. The GNSO policy was clearly about cost-recovery. and I would argue that the sunk costs specific to that round are reasonable to be recovered by the fees. And then we spend more time debating the amount of refund than we spent rolling out the next round... Also: the POTS analogy doesn't work, since we are not talking costs of physical infrastructure. We can accurately count the person-hours spent in designing the program, especially that which was expended on that round alone.​

From the above exmples, I believe you can already see the complexity of calculating the "real cost" of the new gTLD program. Simply said, I do not believe in any claims of the "real cost", becuase it does not exist at all.

​I am not sure that I follow the logic that asserting that "the real cost is complex to calculate" leads to conclusion of "the real cost does not exist at all".​ ​- Evan​

On 14 May 2017 at 07:48, Kan Kaili <kankaili@gmail.com> wrote:

First of all, I do not want to exclude other ways of spending the auction revenue, but only to use part of the funds for refund to applicants.

​We're mixing things in a way that isn't helpful. ICANN accounting has separated the gTLD program out, so there is already an understanding of what the fees in excess of expenses are. It is reasonable to advocate for a refund from that that amount. This email thread regards the disboursement of funds from auction proceeds, which is a completely separate source of funds and not at all related to the delivery of the gTLD expansion program. By its very nature it is above and beyond the official monies collected for administration of the expansion.​

However, for those applicants who applied for new gTLDs for REAL usages, ICANN clearly over-charged them. This is not ICANN's fault, but ICANN's original calculation of costs was too high without considering the auction revenue which happened beyond expectation. Thus, we OWE them a refund.

​OK. Who is the arbiter of "real" usages? ​

Therefore, as ICANN's original purpose of the new gTLD program was to facilitate usage of new domain names, refunding those who paid the hefty $175K for real usage of new gTLDs would only be natural. In addition, if ICANN's refund is proportional to the real usage of domain names but excluds those being parked, it could motivate registries/registrars to discourage domain parking in the future.

​An interesting notion. But the industry, which comprises more than half of ICANN's policy-making body and financially benefits from speculation, would aggressively resist any such attempt. Also keep in mind that since ICANN's source of income is domain sales, a reduction in speculative domains financially damages ICANN itself. So ICANN as an institution will also oppose any move to reduce domain speculation.​

Furthermore, it is already recognized that the new gTLD program also has its down-sides.

​It is recognized by some stakeholders. As I suggested above, the domain industry and ICANN itself will vigorously resist any acknowledgement that there is significant negative impact to gTLD expansion. Just look at the pushback you receive in the CCT-RT from ICANN staff.​

One of those is trademark holders are often forced to spend money to "defensively register" domain names in new gTLDs, with some of the costs substantial. Thus, using some of the auction revenue to subsidize those who suffered from this new gTLD program would also be reasonable.

​This is an interesting concept, but in practice absolutely impossible to implement. Such a subsidy might be interpreted as not only recognition of harm but also a recognition of liability.​ As such, ICANN's fairly paranoid legal staff would never let this idea get any traction. ​Cheers, - Evan​

Hi, Evan, Thank you very much for your prompt reply and comments. First of all, I am glad that ICANN has kept seperate accounting for the new gTLD program, which is clearly a prudent way to handle it. However, if we look at all the income brought in by the program, it will also include the auction revenue, same as the USD $175K a piece for applicants. The only difference is, when there is high demand for a certain TLD, the price went higher due to the law of supply and demand. Thus, not considering this auction revenue was either a mistake at the first place, or not seeing the very nature of it, or both. Secondly, regarding domain parking, CCT-RT identified seven cases/reasons as the following (CCT-RT's Draft Report, page 33, see attached): • The domain name does not resolve. • The domain name resolves, but attempts to connect via HTTP return an error message. • HTTP connections are successful, but the result is a page that displays advertisements, offers the domain for sale or both. In a small number of cases, these pages may also be used as a vector to distribute malware. • The page that is returned is empty or otherwise indicates that the registrant is not providing any content. • The page that is returned is a template provided by the registry with no customization offered by the registrant. • The domain was registered by an affiliate of the registry operator and uses a standard template with no unique content. • The domain redirects to another domain in a different TLD. Furthermore, this Draft Report also states that "nTLDStats reports that, by one measure, about 63% of the domains in new gTLDs are currently parked" (same page as above). By any measure, most of these do not serve ICANN's original purpose of the new gTLD program. (The last case could be either a trademark holder's defensive registration, or merely to broaden its reach into new gTLDs.) Thus, this report's Recommendation #5 (with High priority) is to "Collect Parking Data". That is, "ICANN should regularly track the proportion of TLDs that are parked with sufficient granularity to identify trends on a regional and global basis" (page 50, same report). Thus, CCT-RT is recommending ICANN itself being the arbiter for "real usage". Thirdly, I fully agree with you that certain sections of ICANN, primarily from the registry/registrar side, may resist discouraging domain parking out of their own financial interests. However, ICANN, according to its mandate as defined by the Bylaws, is to protect the "public interest". As I understand it, this means foremost to protect the end-users' interest. Otherwise, ICANN will become a DNS industry association and advocator, no longer to be trusted by the public. Or even worse, to become a for-profit organization if ICANN first considers its own financial interests. Especially for us at At-Large, we are supposed to specifically represent the end-users' interests. After being with ALAC for about a year and half, especially from the experience at CCT-RT, my understanding is, the essence of ICANN's multi-stakeholder structure is to bring all parties representing different interests together and to negotiate in order to reach an agreement that can be acceptible by all. Thus, as end-user/consumers' interest often do not coincide with the industry's interest, our responsibility is to stand out and speak out. My personal view is, this case related to domain parking and speculation is exactly one of such cases that calls upon us for duty. Regarding ICANN's staff, both at ALAC and CCT-RT, my experience is that they all provide excellent service and assistance, while their personal opinions are fairly neutral when there happens to be disagreements. As to the "fairly paranoid legal staff" of ICANN, I do not have much experience so far. But I expect them to face the truth, including recognizing "significant negative impacts" of the new gTLD program, as well as recognition of harm and liability to trademark holders on defensive registrations. Having said all the above, I also agree with you that, using some of the auction revenue to provide refunds may encounter resistance from some parts within ICANN. However, I believe about all suggestions for allocating this fund will have a similar situation. So be it. This is why ICANN has us at At-Large and ALAC. Although there is no guarantee that we will win every fight in protecting end-users/consumers' interest, at least we have stood out and spoken out. Thank you again. Kaili ----- Original Message ----- From: Evan Leibovitch To: Kan Kaili Cc: ICANN At-Large list Sent: Monday, May 15, 2017 12:08 AM Subject: Re: [At-Large] Auction Proceeds - where we are and what you can help On 14 May 2017 at 07:48, Kan Kaili <kankaili@gmail.com> wrote: First of all, I do not want to exclude other ways of spending the auction revenue, but only to use part of the funds for refund to applicants. ​We're mixing things in a way that isn't helpful. ICANN accounting has separated the gTLD program out, so there is already an understanding of what the fees in excess of expenses are. It is reasonable to advocate for a refund from that that amount. This email thread regards the disboursement of funds from auction proceeds, which is a completely separate source of funds and not at all related to the delivery of the gTLD expansion program. By its very nature it is above and beyond the official monies collected for administration of the expansion.​ However, for those applicants who applied for new gTLDs for REAL usages, ICANN clearly over-charged them. This is not ICANN's fault, but ICANN's original calculation of costs was too high without considering the auction revenue which happened beyond expectation. Thus, we OWE them a refund. ​OK. Who is the arbiter of "real" usages? ​ Therefore, as ICANN's original purpose of the new gTLD program was to facilitate usage of new domain names, refunding those who paid the hefty $175K for real usage of new gTLDs would only be natural. In addition, if ICANN's refund is proportional to the real usage of domain names but excluds those being parked, it could motivate registries/registrars to discourage domain parking in the future. ​An interesting notion. But the industry, which comprises more than half of ICANN's policy-making body and financially benefits from speculation, would aggressively resist any such attempt. Also keep in mind that since ICANN's source of income is domain sales, a reduction in speculative domains financially damages ICANN itself. So ICANN as an institution will also oppose any move to reduce domain speculation.​ Furthermore, it is already recognized that the new gTLD program also has its down-sides. ​It is recognized by some stakeholders. As I suggested above, the domain industry and ICANN itself will vigorously resist any acknowledgement that there is significant negative impact to gTLD expansion. Just look at the pushback you receive in the CCT-RT from ICANN staff.​ One of those is trademark holders are often forced to spend money to "defensively register" domain names in new gTLDs, with some of the costs substantial. Thus, using some of the auction revenue to subsidize those who suffered from this new gTLD program would also be reasonable. ​This is an interesting concept, but in practice absolutely impossible to implement. Such a subsidy might be interpreted as not only recognition of harm but also a recognition of liability.​ As such, ICANN's fairly paranoid legal staff would never let this idea get any traction. ​Cheers, - Evan​

First of all, I am glad that ICANN has kept seperate accounting for the new gTLD program, which is clearly a prudent way to handle it. However, if we look at all the income brought in by the program, it will also include the auction revenue, same as the USD $175K a piece for applicants. The only difference is, when there is high demand for a certain TLD, the price went higher due to the law of supply and demand. Thus, not considering this auction revenue was either a mistake at the first place, or not seeing the very nature of it, or both.

The auction money really was a surprise. ICANN practically begged applicants to run private auctions or otherwise resolve conflicts outside of ICANN, which many but not all applicants did. It was in applicants' self interest to do so, since in the private auctions, the losers split the money, while in the ICANN auctions, the losers got nothing. I was astonished at the number and size of ICANN "last chance" auctions, and I was certainly not the only one. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

Sorry for seriously derailing this with examples of what really happens, so we do not set out expectations too high: On 2017-05-15 12:53 AM, Evan Leibovitch wrote: (snip)

Otherwise, ICANN will become a DNS industry association and advocator, no longer to be trusted by the public.

​Some would argue that this has already happened,

(snip) Count me in there, I argue this has happened. Why should we be trusting ICANN? The look at Copenhagen, Joint Meeting ICANN Board & At-Large, Tuesday, March 14, 2017 – 09:45 to 10:45 CET, with this coming from the ICANN Board:

The CCWG -- transition CCWG spent a huge amount of time looking at, discussing, and refining ICANN's mission. And making ICANN's mission clearer. And ICANN's mission is clearly limited to the DNS and to the names and numbers and protocol parameters. And so for me, users doesn't mean Internet users. Users means the users of what it is that we are in charge of. In other words, it means registrants or -- I'm not sure if the right term for numbers is registrants, but anyway, it means the people who use the names and numbers.

I believe that trying to represent the Internet users is far outside of ICANN's mission and scope because we do not, in fact, have -- we don't run the Internet. What we run is the domain names system and therefore, as I said for me, users are the users of the Domain Name System and the numbers and protocol parameters. Thanks.

(Unfortunately I only have a local copy of the document, not the link) Let's have a look at what Ken wrote: On 2017-05-13 04:55 PM, Ken Whitehurst wrote:

While Canada is a G7 country, its record when it comes to consumer representation is dismal, well by Canadian democratic standards. ;-) So there is a huge need for resources here to engage matters like Internet governance. Debates are raging here about many matters touched by Internet governance, from privacy to commercial security to cultural expression. Our organization will be addressing a standing committee of Canada's Parliament around Internet privacy and security issues this Tuesday. The consumer perspective does not get the well-rounded discussion here it deserves in all these matters because of the limited capacity of consumer associations, and by that I mean associations of "retail" consumers with an interest in the functioning of the Internet. This constituency is not well formed or heard. We have become involved in the ICANN process because we think Internet governance issues are at the nexus of an unfolding crisis of security and authentication breaches that threaten the trust of consumers in what has become one of the world's most important global institutions, the Internet. The resources created by the assignment of Internet identity must be used in some measure to increase understanding of Internet governance and to facilitate consumer representation and understanding, whether through associations or by individuals. But we believe associations will be the most capable and effective protagonists in this complex area on behalf of the heterogeneous consumer constituency that our organization seeks to represent. Canada is not the EU and it is not the US and it certainly is not China in terms of economic scale and ability to aggregate resources for this purpose, and it's people and civil society organizations have much in common with many other countries and their citizens around the world in requiring resources from the cash flows of the system of the Internet itself to participate in global Internet governance. So we think this should be on the table in any discussion of the dispersement of proceeds of income raised directly or indirectly from Internet users, as well as the need to increase the awareness of publics around the world about the processes of Internet governance. My apologies if I am not on point. But since Internet governance was raised as an objective of funding, I am responding to this additional point.

-- Ken Whitehurst Executive Director Consumers Council of Canada

I agree totally with Ken. Instead we are seeing how consumers are mere sources to be used by registrants as candy for ICANN's mission. Never mind the harm done in this mission. I believe ICANN is consumer hostile a.t.m. I'd even go as far as to say that ICANN is hostile to registrants with good reason, rather seeing registrants as sources to exploit with defensive registration and when that fails as it invariably will, insist on UDRPs etc. ICANN for the rich jumps to mind. I can demonstrate how ICANN and the responsible registrar knew about serious issues surround registrations from the same malicious registrant mentioned here: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2016-1042 I quote from the findings:

In addition, the use of a domain name for a site that imitates a legitimate pharmaceutical site could pose a public health risk and therefore also may be indicative of bad faith

How much does that matter? Nothing. The same registrant is still serially spoofing pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, banks, lawyers - in fact every level of legit registrant class, from the USA to Japan, from Europe to Africa. All this with registration details that does not even pass the briefest of brief scrutiny, yet saw the registrar ignoring the issue, later ICANN Compliance stating [Ticket ~XFS-327-35074 - rbign.org ]:

Thank you for submitting a Abuse complaint concerning the registrar NameSilo, LLC. ICANN has reviewed and closed your complaint because:

- The registrar demonstrated that it took reasonable and prompt steps to investigate and respond appropriately to the report of abuse.

Please note that ICANN may accept the following as steps registrars took to investigate and respond to abuse reports:

- Contacting the registrant - Asking for and obtaining evidence or licenses - Providing hosting provider information to the complainant - Performing Whois verification - Performing transfer upon request of registrant - Suspending domain

In this case we still saw a spoof of the reserve Bank of India merrily active with totally bogus registration details active well ... AFTER ... ICANN considered this issue closed.

Registrant Name: mike Chris Registrant Organization: Registrant Street: no. 5 Benson St Registrant City: imc Registrant State/Province: imc Registrant Postal Code: 23454 Registrant Country: NG Registrant Phone: +234.08098708469 Registrant Phone Ext: Registrant Fax: Registrant Fax Ext: Registrant Email: mixingcreditb@yahoo.com <mailto:mixingcreditb@yahoo.com>

A complaint to the ICANN Ombudsman followed and met a silent death. Many repeats of similar mindless situations have convinced me that not only does ICANN Not really care about consumers, but that ICANN does not even care about their own legitimate registrants. What ICANN publishes is not what happens. ICANN Compliance's stance on above issues?

In this case, because the complaint is about inaccurate whois data, I would recommend filing a whois inaccuracy complaint rather than an abuse complaint. The relevant registrar is allowing patently fake registration details into the DNS system in volumes, yet ICANN is expecting an accuracy report must be filed for each and every domain? Obviously the cure is at the source, not extinguishing the result.

So in term of your proposal Ken, I have strong grounds to suspect your excellent proposal will not be considered. Until such a time as as there's a drastic shift in the ICANN Board's views and a willingness to only see the domain name system used legitimately, the consumer will always be at risk from much ICANN emanating. For ICANN the consumer does not count despite what you hear and read. Currently there is not public trust. Regards, Derek Smythe

Evan Thanks for your frank description of the phenomenon that ICANN is, and its new age governance model, which is basically a neoliberal capture. it is a governance model run by big business, and openly so. I think people here see it but dont do anything bec perhaps they think that the potential of damage by ICANN isnt that much, and then Internet debates are still framed by that gov/UN takeover threat, while the context today is hugely if not entirely changed. Read this piece in CirleID http://www.circleid.com/posts/20170420_usa_pharma_sector_extending_dysfuncti... to see how ICANN by allocating crucial digital name-posts to vested interests and big business (largely US based) can cause enormous damage that we have not even begun to think about, lost that we remain in petty issues that ICANN throws at us, and for which even it doesnt listen to us. In the above you will read how by inappropriately allocating a key sectoral gLTD to a small group of big business which is known to have geo-economic interests at variance with much of the world, and whose interests hit at crucial global health concerns, ICANN has made that group a de facto sector regulator -- in an area as socially crucial as health and pharmaceuticals! And it is not that people havent raised concerns about such possibilities. See this civil society statement <https://www.itforchange.net/sites/default/files/Jurisdiction%20of%20ICANN.pdf>of a few months back which raised exactly this prospect of .pharmacy's ownership being used for de facto pharma sector regulation by US's big pharma. This will also happen with automobile industry (.cars), and every .sector.... you name it! Would then the section of global civil society that was supposed to be protecting public interest wrt issues pertaining to ICANN not be called upon to account for how it let all this happen? Does such a prospect bother anyone here? parminder

----- Original Message ----- *From:* Evan Leibovitch <mailto:evan@telly.org> *To:* Kan Kaili <mailto:kankaili@gmail.com> *Cc:* ICANN At-Large list <mailto:at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> *Sent:* Monday, May 15, 2017 6:53 AM *Subject:* Re: [At-Large] Auction Proceeds - where we are and what you can help

On 14 May 2017 at 16:55, Kan Kaili <kankaili@gmail.com <mailto:kankaili@gmail.com>>wrote:

I fully agree with you that certain sections of ICANN, primarily from the registry/registrar side, may resist discouraging domain parking out of their own financial interests. However, ICANN, according to its mandate as defined by the Bylaws, is to protect the "public interest". As I understand it, this means foremost to protect the end-users' interest.

​Your perception is a minority view. While ICANN may be considered to be acting in the public service as an organization, the role and voice of the end-user is expressly stated (and limited) in the ICANN bylaws. ​Only a single member of the entire ICANN Board is chosen by representatives of the end-user viewpoint; even a Board review that recommended two Board spots was cut back down.

Furthermore, ICANN stands back while the vested interests constantly assail the legitimacy of ALAC. The At-Large Review is a perfect recent example, with the reviewers commenting at length on perceptions by other communities (who want to silence us) at the expense of the intrinsic value of having anyone speaking for the end-user interests.

When I was NARALO chair we were trolled frequently by people from the domain industry imploring "aren't I part of the public too?" And any time you go to an ALAC session with the term "public interest" in the title, no matter what the original intent the meeting devolves into an hour-long talk-fest without outcome agonizing about "what is the public interest?".

Welcome to ICANN, where the vested interests have an effective game plan to keep any potential obstacles divisive and ineffective.

Otherwise, ICANN will become a DNS industry association and advocator, no longer to be trusted by the public.

​Some would argue that this has already happened, and that​ At-Large is a mainly cosmetic appendage that ICANN indulges to give it an outward appearance of public input. It funds competent and well-meaning staff for At-Large, and (within strict and arbitrary limits) funds its outreach and capacity-building dreams. But when it comes time for At-Large to actually affect ICANN's grand direction the wins are minor.

​At the first At-Large Summit in Mexico City, our final report said that the gTLD expansion was "unacceptable" in its proposed state at the time. Very little had changed when the program finally rolled out, and I remind that the position has never officially been rescinded. I highly doubt that the Summit report was even read by the President and Board Chair to whom it was presented.

There have been a number of changes at senior management, all in turn publicly telling At-Large how important we are. Yet I invite you to find concrete evidence of our actual big-picture influence.

​Everyone should ask themselves: we may have tweaked some things and have produced plenty of volume -- but *how has ICANN better, in its management of domain names, because of At-Large*?​

​At our best we have helped with course corrections which can be seen more as damage control than forward-thinking. We ha​ve produced white papers and policy statements that were painstakingly developed yet received not a word of official reply (let alone action!) beyond gratitude for the effort.

​Yes, I'm cynical. I have some right to be, I've helped develop some of the advice, endorsed by ALAC, which has been ignored. I've witnessed a lot of the insults, dismissals and rejections first-hand. I stay involved in the hope that my successors will have better luck than I. But based on current activity, such as the inevitable march towards new gTLD rounds despite the problems with the last round, the challenges remain as much as ever.​ And the At-Large Review, if all of it is implemented, will make the situation even worse.

​- Evan​

_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large

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Aligned with you Evan. I guess majority of us are involved in Internet Governance as well as ICANN. Vanda Scartezini Polo Consultores Associados Av. Paulista 1159, cj 1004 01311-200- Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil Land Line: +55 11 3266.6253 Mobile: + 55 11 98181.1464 Sorry for any typos. HAPPY 2017! From: <at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org> on behalf of Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org> Date: Tuesday, May 16, 2017 at 11:57 AM To: parminder <parminder@itforchange.net> Cc: 'At-Large Worldwide' <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Subject: Re: [At-Large] Auction Proceeds - where we are and what you can help On 15 May 2017 at 04:21, parminder <parminder@itforchange.net<mailto:parminder@itforchange.net>> wrote: I think people here see it but dont do anything bec perhaps they think that the potential of damage by ICANN isnt that much, ​Not sure that I agree with that. Most of the people I know who are involved seem very well aware of the major role that ICANN could play in the evolution of Internet governance. But over the years At-Large has been cowed into not ruffling the party line too much for fear of being deemed antisocial and cut off from resources. For the longest time the issue was in-person participation; for many years every ICANN meeting would feature a closed session at which ALAC leadership would essentially beg for the ability to even be physically at the table. To this day most of the domain industry sees ICANN's paying for At-Large leadership to attend its meetings as a needless act of charity. As a result, there was long an implicit fear of our being too independent in thought, lest we be deemed antisocial and unworthy of the charity. ​Then there was the first ALAC Review​ that recommended two Board seats elected by At-Large. For many years, while that was going on we dared not anger the industry capture lest we be judged unfit and the Board seats denied. I guess even so we weren't sufficiently subservient, because we only got one of the two seats requested by the Review. ​Now the travel funding and Board seat issues are stable, so the nexus has shifted to the funding of outreach and capacity-building fantasies.​ Much effort is spent assailing our lack of diversity and outreach, comfortably forgetting that once all these voices are brought together and trained, they still don't have much to say and when they do it falls on deaf ears. Meanwhile, there continues an implicit rule to not stray too far from orthodoxy, we don't want to irritate the power brokers to the point that we get shunned. So ... we get to participate in the new gTLD development process, but don't DARE entertain the notion of demanding that ICANN refrain from new rounds until it assesses the damage done by the last one. We might upset them! http://www.circleid.com/posts/20170420_usa_pharma_sector_extending_dysfuncti... to see how ICANN by allocating crucial digital name-posts to vested interests and big business (largely US based) can cause enormous damage that we have not even begun to think about, lost that we remain in petty issues that ICANN throws at us, and for which even it doesnt listen to us. At-Large fought for Public Interest Commitments that were permanent, enforceable and had community input. We had no allies and many opponents and the effort died silently. But I disagree that the situation is as bad as you suggest, because ultimately there just isn't enough trust in domains for the public to confer upon them any role as as regulators, gatekeepers, or even curators. I think you actually overstate the importance of ICANN, and even to a point play the industry's game. The .cars domain has no reason to earn public trust as a general destination. Neither does any TLD that is a word from the dictionary (or atlas, for that matter). We learned long ago that cars.com<http://cars.com/> (or cars.anything) was not a trustworthy starting place for a search, but owned by a single destination. That car.com<http://car.com/> and cars.com<http://cars.com/> go to different private destinations​ furthers the confusion. The elevation of the string "cars" to a TLD merely continues the trend. But the good news is that, in this respect, there is competition. Typing "cars" into Google offers up cars.com<http://cars.com>, but it also provides names of auto dealers in my neighborhood, a definition of the automobile, and other stuff. Type "cars" into Facebook or Reddit and get discussion groups. The utility of typing a generic word into a search engine is generally far greater than going to that-word.<http://that-word.com>anything. (​Ironically, .pharmacy was painted as one of the "good" non-brand gTLDs because it's one of the few to have any curation at all.​) Sure, that means that Google (and Microsoft, Facebook etc) are the curators and gatekeepers and are hardly altruistic. But at least they have served a function that attracts people voluntarily and that registries, by and large, have abdicated. All that's left is to hasten public awareness that gTLDs are generally not trusted category managers, and move on from that. ​So far ICANN has resisted any notion that "memorable domain names"​ are in competition for public trust with search engines, social media pages etc. Awareness of competition might spur registries into better service to registrants and better consideration of end users. But whether the domain industry acknowledges the alternatives or not, end-users do. What this means for ICANN's long term I don't know. But the Internet is great at working around obstacles, and a publicly-useless network of "memorable" domain names can also be (and is being) circumvented. Would then the section of global civil society that was supposed to be protecting public interest wrt issues pertaining to ICANN not be called upon to account for how it let all this happen? Does such a prospect bother anyone here? ​Feel free to ask the civil society component of the GNSO, where it was when we were fighting the lonely battle for strong Public Interest Commitments by registries. Maybe you'll get a better answer than I. From my perspective the deck has been stacked against the public interest at ICANN ever since it changed public election to the Board to an elitist, industry serving NomCom. - Evan