On the call the other day, Allan MacGillivray raised the issue of a mechanism to appeal IANA decisions. I believe that he was referring to the text in the CWG Proposal Section III "Proposed Post-Transition Oversight and Accountability", Paragraph 106, Sub-section 6 which reads:
Appeal mechanism. An appeal mechanism, for example in the form of an Independent Review Panel, for issues relating to the IANA functions. For example, direct customers with non-remediated issues or matters referred by ccNSO or GNSO after escalation by the CSC will have access to an Independent Review Panel. The appeal mechanism will not cover issues relating to ccTLD delegation and re-delegation, which mechanism is to be developed by the ccTLD community post-transition.
I made the case that there would be few and far-between cases of IANA decisions that could be appealed (with the perhaps sole example being a decision of IANA that a request from a registry should NOT be honoured). Perhaps I was correct, but that is rather moot. The CWG did specify that such an appeal mechanism should be provided, it is now an integral part of the ICG proposal, and admittedly their could be cases where an IANA decision was made and not altered despite CSC and other interventions. In my mind, although perhaps the IRP could be modified to address the need, that would take a lot of work for a situation that may never happen, and moreover, the IRP is a lengthy process not geared to the pace of IANA actions or the operational pace of the Internet. I would suggest that the Board Reconsideration Process would be a viable appeal mechanism in this case. It should be relatively easy to adjust the revised bylaws to allow reconsideration of a decision of an ICANN subsidiary or wholly controlled affiliate and to have the PIT bylaws allow for ICANN to advise that an IANA decision be modified (or whatever level of binding resolution we want). I would suggest that we recommend to the CCWG-Accountability to allow for a PTI appeal mechanism via the ICANN Board Reconsideration process. Alan