I must admit that these slides made me feel particularly
uneasy about the whole process of subsequent procedures. Without
prejudice, here we have the Chair of the working group, main driver
of the working group moving forward, ex-Neustar and currently
working for Valideus, a company that stands to capitalise
significantly in the creation of brand TLDs, pushing a calendar that
is suggested by his ex-firm, favouring his current firm. I cannot
stop seeing a flashing sign telling me "conflict of interest" here.
Welcome to ICANN's model of multi-stakeholderism, where such behaviour is a feature not a bug. Here there is no such thing as conflict of interest affecting outcomes so long as the participants declare. That flashing sign has been in our collective faces since day one.
The ICANN design encourages vested-interests to drive policy with the power to compel the Board to accept their results, with the groups which exist to represent the public interest on the sidelines as toothless advisory groups. Only ICANN's dependence on governmental non-interference has it even listening to the GAC, where it relies on the GAC's need for unanimity to keep it from intervening in truly meaningful ways. The ALAC and SSAC don't even have that.
It should be no surprise to long-timers that this "inmates running the asylum" mode of operation leads to ever-increasing industry capture, especially when ICANN-the-institution is financially dependent on said industry.
At ICANN Studienkreis and elsewhere, Cherine Chalaby has been asking
the community about the need for a fast next round, and the majority
of people around the table, whether end users, businesses,
registrars and established registries said they were not eager for
an immediate next round.
We've heard this tune many times before. ICANN makes a pretence of asking for public input, then does what industry wants anyway. (After all, the industry is part of the public, right?) The levers of ICANN power are not being moved at Studienkreis or even in public view.
If ALAC is going to be solicited and ignored as usual, it ought to at least make some principled stands that demonstrate the shallowness of the consultation.
If there is no public good to be derived from new rounds of gTLDs, but instead a threat of more confusion and potential for user abuse that outweighs the fake claims of competition, SAY SO.
If ICANN is proceeding in its path without sufficient research into the needs of the future or the consequences of past actions, SAY SO.
(Or does ALAC risk jeopardizing travel/Summit/outreach/whatever funding should it say what truly needs to be said?)
Personally I remain against any namespace expansion until proper cause for new gTLDs (outside of "ICANN needs more domain sales") can be demonstrated. So I am loathe to engage in ALAC's typical bikeshedding, micro-policy advice that detracts from the necessary simple high-level commentary. However, if ALAC insists on continuing the path of fine tuning (and thus tacitly endorsing) broken ICANN policy, I offer the following comment based on my own experience:
Before talking about the need to prioritize Community TLDs, have a very clear idea what this means. We know that the industry does not have the same view of "community" as do public-interest advocates. So you could get the prioritization you want and still not be further ahead in actually achieving any desired outcomes. This is not a theoretical problem, we have already lived it once through the Applicant Support debacle.