Mike, It is the responsibility of the GNSO to develop policy, not negotiate contracts. A community wide negotiations process would be a very strange model and one that would be fraught with problems and likely totally unfeasible. Comment opportunities were provided as you indicate and that is as it should be, but the negotiations process needs to be between the contracting parties. At the same time, if there are issues in the RAA that seem worthy of policy development, we have procedures for that. If consensus policy is developed within the picket fence and approved by the Board, then registries and registrars are required to implement them. Therefore it seems to me that the proper approach would be for the GNSO to focus on specific policy issues rather than contract terms except for contract terms that involve already established consensus policy and for which compliance is in question. Chuck ________________________________ From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Mike Rodenbaugh Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2008 4:01 PM To: 'Council GNSO' Subject: [council] RAA Amendments discussion Hi all, I see 15 mins on tomorrow's agenda for this topic, and only a link to this letter from the US Government to the Chair of the ICANN Board. http://forum.icann.org/lists/raa-consultation/pdfXG2oUDNceq.pdf. I have no idea what our discussion was going to be about, and so I try to kick off a talk on the list. I appreciate the letter and hope we as a Council can respond by moving WHOIS studies forward at long last, and meanwhile (at minimum) formally object to the newly proposed RAA amendments wrt WHOIS proxy services. The entire RAA amendment "process" has not involved the GNSO. Instead there have been two very long rounds of bi-lateral negotiations between ICANN Staff and the Registrars Constituency. There was one round of public comment in between (though it is difficult to understand how public comments played any significant role in the second draft), and one just closed wrt the second draft. The RAA amendments involve many changes to existing gTLD policy as embodied in the existing, many-year old RAA. Public comments from several constituencies indicate substantial disagreement with many of the suggested amendments. The Council really should consider the proposed amendments formally and with the goal of consensus comments, and to record constituency and/or minority comments. Yet this may be far too late at this point, it is unclear what the "process" is and how GNSO might impact it, and some of the RAA amendments are unobjectionable and should be implemented immediately. Still, some of the suggested amendments are completely unacceptable. So we need to figure out a way to formally register those concerns and ensure they will be heard, while not unduly stalling the entire process. The only other option would be to request Issues Reports on various of the suggested amendments? Thanks, Mike