On 17/8/17 10:47 am, Jonathan Frost wrote:

This brings up a couple of philosophical questions that I hope aren’t too far afield, but are implicated by Paul’s comment.

What is the definition of consensus (is it unanimity or something less)?

Is consensus required for this PDP to make recommendations?

Would consensus be required for this PDP to recommend that Sunrise be maintained in the next round (or is consensus only required to recommend a change from the last round)?

I tend to agree with many here that Sunrise leaves a relatively light footprint (as opposed to claims), and are useful in the tapestry of RPMs, so I think Sunrise is a useful mechanism and should be maintained (and improved). But it’s not clear to me that we can shut down recommendations that are unlikely to reach consensus, when their opposite is also unlikely to meet consensus.

Since the new gTLD RPMs were not adopted as ICANN policy covering all gTLDs, there shouldn't be any automatic presumption that they will apply to future rounds in my view. It's this group's role to decide whether they should or not. If *not* making a decision means that we are, by default, deciding to extend the new RPMs to future rounds, then we haven't done our job. That would create a very bad incentive for people to gum up the process and avoid reaching consensus, just because by doing so they will get the outcome that they are looking for anyway. What kind of multi-stakeholderism is that?

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Jeremy Malcolm
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Electronic Frontier Foundation
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