Sam, Your question touches on one we're dealing with here in New York City right now. The situation... The Landrush for .nyc ended at 11 AM this past Friday. On Saturday afternoon one of the organizations with which I am involved received notice from the registrar (GoDaddy) that more than one applicant had requested the MentalHealth.nyc domain name. And that we'd soon be informed by SnapNames about an auction that will be held "on behalf of the registry." (Auction revenue here goes 60% to registry and 40% to city government.) In this situation we are advocating for transparency of the type ICANN offered for 2012 New TLDs, believing that there are benefits to having the various applicants connect and discuss the use of the domain name. In the instance of MentalHealth.nyc, perhaps a collaborative effort would ensue, or if another party has a superior plan, we'd be prepared to drop out of the auction. Currently a blind auction is planned: We have no idea who we might be bidding against. Our organization is a 50 + year old not-for-profit serving a small section of the city. Perhaps the others applicants do similar work. In the context of [Gnso-newtld-dg] we see awareness about the impact of transparency in this situation being part of an Informed Consent regiment. There's a second Informed Consent aspect to this. In the current situation there is the possibility that the MentalHealth.nyc name could be sought by a comedy club, or maybe to market a magic elixir of some sort. And while both of these might qualify as beneficial to mental health, from a city administration perspective, the more traditional health use of the name would seem more appropriate. For this reason, we'd like to see the Informed Consent provisions include multistakeholder engagement in selecting public interest name set-asides. Our situation differs in important ways from the one you raised. If there are four not-for-profits seeking MentalHealth.nyc, I believe the last resort should be an applicant auction with revenue staying "in the community." But in the instance you cite (ICANN applicant auctions), I tend to agree with using auction funds for the public interest. I realize there's a seeming conflict in these views, with an explanation left for another post. Best, Tom Lowenhaupt Connecting.nyc Inc. P.S. I've attached a City-TLD Landrush Models graphic which depicts different approaches to the landrush process. On 10/6/2014 10:03 AM, Sam Lanfranco wrote:
As a development economist with a particular concern for "underserved regions" I have a question about a possible link between ICANN funding for underserved regions and the practice, in the past gTLD round, of Private Auctions. In simple terms ICANN hands over a valuable property to a pre-screened group to engage in a win-win auction where the winner wins the gTLD, at a price, and the losers win by sharing in the proceeds of the Auction. ICANN received nothing from the process.
I am most familiar with this process when the asset in question is some part of an inheritance, and where the beneficiaries use this process to decide who within the family gets the asset and others share in the proceeds. It also occurs when an asset is donated to a charity auction, where the proceeds are for a good cause. The ICANN private auctions look an awful lot like the reverse. A not-for-profit turns over a valuable asset to a private auction for private gain. I don't know about the rules governing ICANN's not-for-profit status but in a public company this would verge on board failure of fiduciary responsibility, and there would be hell to pay.
Is there not some way that a new round of gTLD can re-jig the private auction process so that it feeds funding to efforts to support underserved regions, and be less like an asset hand off that could raise issues of fiduciary responsibility? This should certainly precede a suggestion that ICANN, or others, go hat-in-hand to other possible funding sources to assist underserved regions. . Charity (and maybe integrity) begins at home.
Sam Lanfranco, Policy Committee Chair NPOC
-- ------------------------------------------------ "It is a disgrace to be rich and honoured in an unjust state" -Confucius ------------------------------------------------ Dr Sam Lanfranco (Prof Emeritus & Senior Scholar) Econ, York U., Toronto, Ontario, CANADA - M3J 1P3 email:Lanfran@Yorku.ca Skype: slanfranco blog:http://samlanfranco.blogspot.com Phone: +1 613-476-0429 cell: +1 416-816-2852
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