Good afternoon :

Thankyou Jonathan, noted. I was not certain that there was going to be a CPWG call today until a few hours ago. Meanwhile I have been working on an, as yet incomplete, summary and commentary on the WT5 Initial Report. Difficult with 80+ pages. Challenging with your four bullets !

To respond to your points with a few highlights:

1. What’s at issue?
   
   1.1 Classic GNSO participants are not yet reconciled to the fact that the cross-community composition of WT5 has fundamentally moved the balance of the argument compared with 2007. Also, policy for new entrants cannot be determined by de facto incumbents.
   
   1.2 Over-reliance by GNSO and ICANN staff on the 'merits' of the 2007 and 2012 documents. Consequently WT5 has spent far too much time on tweaking the AGB conclusions and the ISO-3166 stuff and hardly any time on addressing policy for geo-names that were NOT included in that AGB.
   .
   1.3 There seems to have been an assumption in the AGB that geo-names that were not explicitly restricted, subject to conditions (i.e. most of the preliminary recommendations of WT5) would be free for unconditional third party applications, subject only to 'curative measures' and eventual voluntary PICs. It is impossible to maintain such a position in geo-political terms.
   
   1.4 It has been argued that 'non-geo' use of a geographical names should be free of authorisation by the relevant public authority. That is clearly not going to work either. The orincipal outcome of a non-geo use is to deprive the place concerned of its opportunity to use the domain for their purposes in the future. Some would call that cyber-colonialism.
   
   1.5 There is a gross anomaly in the AGB to the effect that Registries 'will respect the jurisdiction of their incorporation'. In geographical terms that means that countries and places could loose any influence over their Registry. We have been there with certain ccTLDs. It has taken years to clean up that situation.
   
   
   

2. What’s at stake for end users?
   
   2.1 Most end users, actual and potential are probably still blithely unaware of any interest in the matter. That may not last. Notably we have not begun to discuss IDN geo-names.
   
   2.2 ICANN's responsibilities should include keeping options open for the future for most of the world. In the last round, there was a distinct tendency to cybersquatt the (EN) dictionary. We have to prevent cybersquatting of the gazetteers in the next round.
   
   2.3 End users will respond to their geo-name TLDs by using them if they trust them, they are affordable and they are in their own languages.
   
   

3. Proposed at-large talking points
   
   3.1 At large active representation in WT5 has still been very low. Why?
   Granted, the GNSO method is extraordinarily inefficient from the volunteers' point of view.
   
   

   3.2 ccNSO participants tend to rest on their laurels, having successfully defended most of their interests in the ISO 3166 lists, but that is far from addressing all the geographical entities which are NOT included in ISO 3166-1. At Large needs to speak for the people who will be using their TLDs in the future.
   
   3.3 The cross-community structure needs to be extended and enhanced. There is so much 'baggage' from 2007 and 2012, with apparently little input from ALAC at the time, that there are mountains to climb before we reach a balanced position.
   
   In future, all PDPs should be cross-community. Since GNSO 'fields' each and all of their 'houses' and 'constituencies', then perhaps it is time for At Large to consciously field all of our RALOS and ALS, separately.
   
   

4. Discussion with the WT5 group
   
   4.1 The debate within WT5 has reached an impasse. The Initial Report recommends nothing of substance that could not have been said a year ago. All other issues are being referred to 'public consultation'. On the basis of an Initial Report that would be quite incomprehensible to most external readers.
   
   4.2 The PDP should take a break. No harm would be done by putting the whole geo-names issue on hold for a few months until some of the participants come to realize the political implications of what they say they wish to achieve.

CW/31 October, 2018