Council colleagues: Over the weekend Milton Mueller posted a rather provocative blog at http://www.internetgovernance.org/2016/08/26/another-government-land-grab-in... , concerning the just-closed comment period on Proposed Measures for Letter/Letter Two-Character ASCII Labels to Avoid Confusion with Corresponding Country Codes (at https://www.icann.org/public-comments/proposed-measures-two-char-2016-07-08-...). It prompted me to review the filed comments, and I noted that the NCSG, IPC, and registry SG all came out against aspects of the staff proposal that concerns Prof. Mueller. While this item is not on our agenda for the September 1st call, I would hope that we can at least begin a preliminary discussion during the concluding AOB section. I would like to better understand the historic context for the current proposal. Beyond the specifics of the proposal, my more general concern is that ICANN may be moving to implement a general policy for gTLDs that originates from ICANN staff rather than a PDP, and that apparently there is not even GAC Consensus Advice to which the proposal is responding. Thanks and best regards, Philip Philip S. Corwin, Founding Principal Virtualaw LLC 1155 F Street, NW Suite 1050 Washington, DC 20004 202-559-8597/Direct 202-559-8750/Fax 202-255-6172/Cell Twitter: @VlawDC "Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey