Steve, The response is generally quite good. My only comment is in the area of unilateral change by the ICANN Board. While most businesses would prefer (refuse?) to sign a commercial contract where the other party has universal control of terms, these agreements can be considered as an agreement with the public. ICANN operates in the public interest. That interest should take precedence over the interest of any, or all contracted parties. If it doesn't, and I argue it hasn't for far to long at ICANN, the public can be and has been poorly served. Contracted parties are not coerced to sign contracts, the choose to do so. They are equally free to exit an agreement if the terms required by the public prove unacceptable. I realize this is a significant change from the policies and practices of the past here at ICANN. However, as any organization matures, so should its practices. It's time for ICANN to make a significant shift and recognize that it has an obligation to the public and for those that provide services on support of the DNS to recognize the obligations they have as well. I look forward to role discussion on this. Bill On Mar 15, 2013, at 6:00 PM, "Steve DelBianco" <sdelbianco@netchoice.org<mailto:sdelbianco@netchoice.org>> wrote: Attached is a draft comment from the BC regarding ICANN's call for comments on New gTLD Registry Agreement (<http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/closed-generic-05feb13-en.htm>link<http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/base-agreement-05feb13-en.htm>). This comment period closes 20-Mar. As discussed on our member call this week, this draft does not propose any changes to previous BC positions. Instead, the attached comment applies prior BC positions to 4 aspects of the proposed new registry agreement: Specification 11: Public Interest Commitments Base Agreement Article 4: Transition of Registry upon termination of Agreement Base Agreement Article 7: Amendments to the Registry Agreement Specification 5: Reserving Country and Territory Names at the Second Level These comments are based upon prior positions adopted by the BC in accordance with its charter. Three BC position documents are cited here: Implementation Improvements request to ICANN Board of Directors and CEO, Feb-2012 (link<http://www.bizconst.org/Positions-Statements/BC%20request%20for%20implementa...>) BC Comments on New gTLD Applicant Guidebook – April 2011 Discussion Draft, May-2011 (link<http://www.bizconst.org/Positions-Statements/BC+on+Final+App+Guidebook+May+2...>) BC Position on Process for Amendments to new gTLD Registry Agreements, Apr-2010 (link<http://www.bizconst.org/Positions-Statements/BC_on_TLD_contract_amendments.p...>) We are taking comments on this draft until midnight 19-Mar and plan to submit on 20-Mar. In my view, there is no requirement for formal voting since the BC is not taking any new positions in this draft. However, if 10% of BC membership proposes written changes to the prior positions expressed here, we'll hold a call to consider changing the BC position. Any vote to change would require a majority vote of BC members. (see Charter section 7.3) -- Steve DelBianco Executive Director NetChoice http://www.NetChoice.org and http://blog.netchoice.org +1.202.420.7482 <BC Comment on new gTLD Registry Agreement [v1].docx>

Attached is a the final comment from the BC regarding ICANN's call for comments on New gTLD Registry Agreement (<http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/closed-generic-05feb13-en.htm>link<http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/base-agreement-05feb13-en.htm>). This comment period closes today, 20-Mar. As discussed on our member call last week , this comment does not propose any changes to previous BC positions. Instead, the comment applies prior BC positions to the proposed new Ry agreement. After circulating to members on 15-Mar, I received comments and made these edits: Marilyn Cade offered several comments. First, I added BC mission statement on page 1 (citing the Charter). In the section on Ry Agreement amendments by ICANN, Marilyn suggested amending the 2010 position repeated on page 5, changing wording and deleting several sentences. There was no other Member support for amending our prior position, and I did not feel it was right to selectively omit previous and relevant positions. However, I did change the concluding sentence of this section to reflect the tone that Marilyn suggested: "…and therefore has concerns with the amendment process as proposed in Section 7.6(c). " Elisa Cooper noted her support. Chris Chaplow noted support and suggested emphasizing our "request" for regional names exception/centralized process. I changed the first sentence under this section. Chris suggested asking for 2 and 3-letter country codes, but this is part of reserved status and not subject to the release mechanism in Specification 5. No change. Chris noted that we called these "regional" instead of territory since that was the vocabulary at the time of that BC comment (2011). No change. John Berard noted his support Angie Graves noted her agreement. Bill Smith noted support, except for the section on Ry Agreement amendments by ICANN. Bill reiterated his view that the current process does not allow public interest to take precedence over contracted parties. He suggested that contract parties are "free to exit an agreement of the new terms required by the public prove unacceptable". Lacking significant member concurrence with Bill's changes I did not alter the comment based on prior positions. Bill noted that he looks forward to future discussions in the BC where we might change our position on unilaterally amending contracts. The FINAL BC comment is attached, and I will post to ICANN today. -- Steve