Rubens,

I will provide additional proposed text for 1.7.8 in the near future.

 

I was very disappointed to see that with respect to my recommended changes to 1.7.7 regarding the policy change in relation to Question 23 of the new gTLD application, your notes are essentially all  “change rejected”.    First I would like to comment that I have no personal stake in the outcome of the discussion as to whether or not new services known at the time of application must be disclosed in the new gTLD application.  The sole purpose of my comment in the Work Track and in relation to the draft Initial Report is to highlight an issue that deserves discussion and public comment.  By its clear language ( and despite the fact that new services could always be proposed later if developed later) Question 23 required the disclosure of all new proposed services (and any related Security and Stability concerns or issues) concurrent with the filing of the new gTLD application.

 

The Initial Report is supposed to accurately reflect discussions in the Work Track.  Please note Question 23 was very definitely discussed in the Work Track, but it does not even appear in the Initial Report  as an answer to how matters were handled in the 2012 round.  Your rejection of all my redline comments on this section pretends that these discussions did not go on.  In fact , they did go on and are well documented.  In other words, even if these are minority views in the Work Track, they should be documented in the Initial Report.  You may recall that you presented numerous slides on November 30 that were designated as “Rough Consensus” slides.   (These even included the word “Consensus” on practically every page.)  Later Leadership decided that nothing in the Working Group would be called a consensus at this point and no Consensus Call would be taken.   Yet you insist in a recent email that your “single model” presented in  San Juan represents the “consensus” and that all of the other discussion that went on in the Work Track is now irrelevant.   The requirements for an Initial Report are pasted below:

 

 

With your rejection of all my proposed changes on this issue, you have put me in the position as a “next step” in this process of having to appeal to the Leadership of the Working Group, in particular to Cheryl, who was Co-Leader of Work Track 4  who assured me on the calls that due account would be taken of comments made, and to Jeff, who assured me in his email to the Work Track 4 list on February 28 that the issues would be accurately captured by staff.  Either the Working Group is operating on the principle that Leadership manages the process so that all participants have the opportunity to contribute as is required by the GNSO Working Group Guidelines Paragraph 2.2.1 or it is not.  The purpose of an Initial Report is to solicit public comment on issues, not to frame issues such that an outcome desired by a “majority” of Subgroup participants is achieved.   This is especially important where no Consensus Call has been made since the opportunity to make a published Minority Statement has been bypassed even though the PDP manual says that an Initial Report should include a statement of Consensus levels.

 

Regarding the role of Leadership, reference is made to the applicable Working Group Guidelines  below: