Procedural concerns with gtld-com.
There are concerns, on the ALAC and elsewhere, about both
substantial and procedural questions with respect to the new gTLD
committee's draft final report. Wendy has already elaborated on the
substantial concerns elsewhere; this message is focused on the
procedural side of our concerns.
Let me first note that the Council is to be commended for its aim to
broadly understand the issues at hand, by evaluating not just the
narrow question asked by the board, and giving an answer to this
question which seems backed by broad consensus, but by also
exploring surrounding policy areas. However, risks occur when this
exploration gets near to the realm of actual policy-making -- for
this, the policy-development process defined in the bylaws should
(many would say: must) be applied. This process in particular
guarantees the openness and transparency of the GNSO's
decision-making, by making both the issues and initial reports
available for public comment, to be submitted during two comment
periods of three weeks each. It is hard to overemphasize the
importance of this particular aspect of the new policy-development
process.
(No comment process has taken place during gtld-com's work. The
outreach independently undertaken by the ALAC itself cannot replace
a formal GNSO public comment period. While working hard on this,
the ALAC has not yet reached the excellence of the GNSO's outreach
mechanisms.)
I would respectfully suggest that the Council opt to transmit to the
Board only a brief answer to the question asked in resolution 2.151,
namely (in the words of the draft final report):
Expansion of the gTLD namespace should be a bottom-up
approach with names proposed by the interested parties to
ICANN. There is no support for a pre-determined list of new
names that putative registries would bid for. Expansion
should be demand-driven.
The remaining questions addressed in the new gTLD committee's report
should be subject to the formal policy-development process specified
in the bylaws. (Please note that this recommendation should not be
read as an Advisory Committee Initiation of a Policy-Development
Process, as described in Annex A, section 1.c of the new bylaws.)
Kind regards,
--
Thomas Roessler <roessler (at) does-not-exist.org>