I have no doubt of lawsuits being threatened and possibly pursued. But now that ICANN has the force of the California AG saying that it did the right thing, its defence should be pretty solid. It will be interesting to see who if any steps forward within the ICANN bubble to try to force an appeal. Arguably ICANN did this out of self-preservation rather than any considered support of the public interest, but I'll take it nonetheless. On Thu, 30 Apr 2020 at 23:13, Justine Chew <justine.chew@gmail.com> wrote:

Finally. Now let's see if ISOC will attempt to challenge this ICANN Board decision.

On Fri, 1 May 2020 at 11:06, Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org> wrote:

...

https://www.icann.org/news/blog/icann-board-withholds-consent-for-a-change-o... -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch or @el56 _______________________________________________ CPWG mailing list CPWG@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg

_______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.

_______________________________________________ CPWG mailing list CPWG@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg

_______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.

-- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch or @el56

ISOC is going to need a lot of healing. It was very divisive, and pitted senior management and the Board against Chapters and membership. And there's still the question of whether ISOC wants to divest of PIR (which was never the focus of the opposition), but next time in a transparent and accountable way. As for ICANN ... IMO the issue is more complex. To me this has been the most important -- and most positive -- thing ICANN has done for the public interest since I've been involved. I reject the slippery slope argument that ICANN's going along with the demand of its government overseer amounts to opening the door for ongoing micro-management by California. It should be reminded that this is the first time that the CA DOJ has intervened in ICANN's existence, it didn't even get involved when ICANN abandoned public voting for the Board. No matter where ICANN incorporates it will have a government overseer, so moving isn't the answer (unless it's to a laissez-faire location like Liberia or the Caymans). The system worked exactly as it was supposed to, but in doing so exposed a significant and long-time flaw in ICANN governance; it just doesn't consider the public interest in its decisions as much as it should. This problem is structural, deliberate, and not easy to fix; if ICANN is not to be accountable to governments, then to whom? Arguably ALAC has a significant role to play in whatever transformation is required to bring the public interest deep inside ICANN decision-making and indeed culture. - Evan On Thu, 30 Apr 2020 at 23:47, Bill Jouris via CPWG <cpwg@icann.org> wrote:

What will be most interesting will be to see what steps ISOC (and/or ICANN) takes to avoid getting into this type of mess in the future. Because whatever one's opinion on the attempted sale itself, or the final resolution, there's no real question that the process followed created an enormous ugly mess. And, I submit, an avoidable one.

Bill Jouris

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android <https://go.onelink.me/107872968?pid=InProduct&c=Global_Internal_YGrowth_Andr...>

On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 8:26 PM, Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org> wrote: _______________________________________________ CPWG mailing list CPWG@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg

_______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.

_______________________________________________ CPWG mailing list CPWG@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg

_______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.

-- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch or @el56

On Fri, 1 May 2020 at 02:41, Jonathan Zuck <JZuck@innovatorsnetwork.org> wrote:

My STRONG preference would have been for the board to approve the sale and have the empowered community object to it and see where it went. I wasn’t happy with the sale either and, even more so, saw it as a chance to get some strong DNS protections in one of the contracts, perhaps reform PICs, etc. etc. Having the AG intervene early like this will always cause the question to be asked, what if.

Suffice to say I'm quite happy it didn't turn out that way. The fundamentals of changing a viable nonprofit into a saddled-in-debt for-profit wasn't going to be fixed through PICs or other cosmetics, so that process would have failed miserably. And by the time the objection had run its course, the transaction would have been completed beyond the point of no return. It's a "what if" I'm really happy never came to pass. How about having an ICANN that makes the right decisions at the outset, rather than anticipating failure and designing a massively bureaucratic appeal system? The issue is, as Vittorio correctly identified, a fundamental flaw pre- AND post-transition. There is no built-in consideration (let alone protection) of the global public interest within ICANN governance. This problem is core to the character and culture of an ICANN that's designed to cater to the needs and wants of lobbyists and career insiders (hence the Orwellian named "empowered community"). Had ICANN maintained sufficient public-interest mechanisms in its decision-making, the AG would never have intervened. It was an extreme situation as it has never happened before in all the years ICANN has been a California corporation. The system worked. The CA-AG was alerted that ICANN was not acting according to its charter to serve the public interest, and it ordered ICANN to do so. The situation can be prevented from repeating, but first ICANN has to admit it has a massive problem of being unaccountable outside its bubble. If not to governments, then who? That's the challenge, and ALAC has a role to play should it be called upon. But the systemic mentality that (among other errors) enables ICANN to deny At-Large multiple Board seats has got to go. Perhaps it's time to go back to global elections for the ICANN Board, and to have a Nominating Committee that actually nominates (rather than selects). So long as ICANN denies the public interest in its decision-making, the interventions will (and should) occur. (And keep in mind that no matter where ICANN is, it will always have a government overseer. Arguably Switzerland is tougher on its nonprofits than California.) - Evan

On Fri, 1 May 2020 at 04:04, Dave Kissoondoyal <dave@kmpglobal.com> wrote:

Dear Jonathan,

If ICANN would have approved the sale and because of empowered community pressure would review its decision, ICANN would be at huge risks of lawsuits

Hi Dave, ICANN was probably going to get sued regardless of how it decided, that's how this world works :-P But now if it gets sued by Ethos and/or is the subject of IRP complaints, ICANN has the backing of the California government which has asserted definitively that it had the authority (and indeed the obligation) to reject. That will be really hard to overcome in a legal process. Hey Jonathan... maybe someone in the "empowered community" launches an objection to the rejection and we'll get to see your pretty process in action after all. It would be interesting to see who is openly prepared to represent raw greed within ICANN, usually it's hidden. I just can't see Ethos accepting the decision and sulking away quietly, unless it really knows it'd just be throwing more money down the drain. We can hope. - Evan

First of all, I owe an apology. When the PIR sale news first came to public attention, I did not think that ICANN would have rejected the change of control, at the most it would have asked to implement some safeguards. Of course, I did not think that in the end the decision would have been taken under the pressure of the CA-AG. So, I fully agree with Vittorio. May I also add that the current regime might have loosened the ties with the US politics, in the sense that political pressure to determine ICANN’s decisions is a bit more difficult, but the influence naturally exerted by the fact of ICANN is under US jurisdiction is still there. This said, I believe that we have to be extremely careful not to put the cart before the oxen - that means not to start discussions over jurisdiction before saving solved the self-governance issues. The current model, or rather its implementation, is crippled. I am still convinced that the global-equal-multi-stakeholder model is the best option, but I have to recognize that the current implementation of multi-stakeholderism is neither global nor equal. As a matter of fact, the simple mention of global equal multi-stakeholder has disappeared from ICANN’s literature, and only survives in the name of the band. But this is not the only problem that the internet user community has. I may be wrong, but I do believe that this rejection has not buried forever the intention of ISOC of divesting itself from the dependency of its financial sources by the domain names market. To say it bluntly, the recent events have made clear that ISOC is no longer the appropriate representative of the internet users interests as related to the domain name industry, because it has proven to be able to take decisions that are maybe in the best interest of some parts of the community, but surely not in the best interest of the .org registrants and users. This, in my opinion, calls for an action by the people and organizations affected by the .org policies and behaviour. We are in a situation for PIR that is similar to what has been for ICANN the “IANA transition”. My reasoning is as follows: if we can no longer trust ISOC to be acting as .org steward in the best interest of its stakeholders, what do we need to put in place so that these two things happen: 1. for the time being decisions are taken in the best interest of the .org community (e.g. price cap, etc.) 2. for the future, in a possible change of control, how can these interests be preserved and survive a change of ownership Although now the issue is not urgent, because no imminent irreversible event is about to happen, it remains nevertheless important. I personally believe that we need to address it now that we have the necessary time to think and avoid having to act once again under emergency situation: the question is not “if” we will have to face a PIR sale proposal, but “when”. And it might not be that far away, I fear. From my experience as PIR Board Director - and Chair for a couple of years - I can bring these two points as a reflection. First, in the recent years the profile of the ISOC-chosen Director has changed. In spite of explicit requests the two outgoing Directors who had direct expertise with non profits, and a strong sensibility to the related matters, have been replaced by Directors with a different profile. I don’t know the situation inside ISOC, and it is probably outside the scope of this mailing list, but from the outside it seems that the choices with respect to PIR ar driven more by the IETF soul than the Chapters soul. The second aspect is the Advisory Council. When I become Chair the AC was only having a formal yearly meeting, most of the PIR Board was not even aware of the existence of it, let alone the discussions that were taking place. Even after the attempts of involving more communication between AC and Board, the formalisation of a seat for ALAC, some innovative ideas by Jay Daley to revitalise the collaboration, the Council remained by and large toothless. Anyway, in short, the basic question is how the interests of the .org community can be meaningfully represented and have a reasonable weight in the decisions that will affect them. If our (ALAC) document has been referenced even by the CA-AG, it might not have been so badly done - so it might be a starting point for proposing a discussion on .org governance. Cheers, Roberto On 01.05.2020, at 08:20, Vittorio Bertola via CPWG <cpwg@icann.org<mailto:cpwg@icann.org>> wrote: Il 2020-05-01 05:05 Evan Leibovitch ha scritto: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/icann-board-withholds-consent-for-a-change-o... I think ICANN did the less bad thing it could do, and in the overall this is the best choice for all of us who own a .org. At the same time, this really casts shadows over the credibility of the IANA Transition, and ICANN will have to think at how to better insulate itself from any direct governmental control. Starting from twenty years ago, a range of solutions has been proposed, from moving to classic neutral countries (e.g. Switzerland) to establishing a U.N.-style host country agreement with the U.S. I'm sure that many countries will raise this issue again. Ciao, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu<http://bertola.eu> <-------- --------> now blogging & more at http://bertola.eu/ <-------- _______________________________________________ CPWG mailing list CPWG@icann.org<mailto:CPWG@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.

Wolfgang That’s not entirely true. The blog post explicitly references the AG letter: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/icann-board-withholds-consent-for-a-change-o... Regards Michele -- Mr Michele Neylon Blacknight Solutions Hosting, Colocation & Domains https://www.blacknight.com https://blacknight.blog / http://ceo.hosting/ Intl. +353 (0) 59 9183072 Direct Dial: +353 (0)59 9183090 ------------------------------- Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd, Unit 12A,Barrowside Business Park, Sleaty Road, Graiguecullen, Carlow, R93 X265,Ireland Company No.: 370845 From: CPWG <cpwg-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Wolfgang Kleinwächter <wolfgang@kleinwaechter.info> Reply to: Wolfgang Kleinwächter <wolfgang@kleinwaechter.info> Date: Friday 1 May 2020 at 11:48 To: Vittorio Bertola <vb@bertola.eu>, Vittorio Bertola via CPWG <cpwg@icann.org>, Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org> Subject: Re: [CPWG] Sale of .ORG REJECTED 1+ to Vittorio. The issue of "jurisdiction" will come back soon. And all options will be on the table again. If Ethos & Co. will go to court, we will have the situation, that a Californian Court will claim that it has the final decision making power over ICANN. As Jonathan has argued in his CircleID article, this would trigger the re-opening of a discussion on "ICANN oversight". The IANA transition ended US government oversight over ICANN and gave all the oversight powers to the "empowered community". If now a Californian court tops the empowered community (regardless if the court decision is "yes" or "no"), governments will come back and asking the question, why the final word over the management of a global public ressouce is in the hands of a US based Californian Court. And the whole "multistakeholder model" and the concept of the "empowered community" will be questioned again. In justifying its decision yesterday, the Board was wise enough to refer to the "30 letters of stakeholders". It did not mentioned explicitly the letter of the Californian GA. This sends a clear message to the broader public, that the Board sees its decision as an outcome of a broad based bottom up multistakehoder process and not as a "yes Sir" with a regard to one "big letter". But I am afraid that this is not the end of the story. Probably this is the start of a new beginning. Wolfgang Vittorio Bertola via CPWG <cpwg@icann.org> hat am 1. Mai 2020 um 08:20 geschrieben: Il 2020-05-01 05:05 Evan Leibovitch ha scritto: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/icann-board-withholds-consent-for-a-change-o... I think ICANN did the less bad thing it could do, and in the overall this is the best choice for all of us who own a .org. At the same time, this really casts shadows over the credibility of the IANA Transition, and ICANN will have to think at how to better insulate itself from any direct governmental control. Starting from twenty years ago, a range of solutions has been proposed, from moving to classic neutral countries (e.g. Switzerland) to establishing a U.N.-style host country agreement with the U.S. I'm sure that many countries will raise this issue again. Ciao, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> now blogging & more at http://bertola.eu/ <-------- _______________________________________________ CPWG mailing list CPWG@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.