[ccnso-idncctld] Objection procedures and/or public comment

[Avri Doria <avri@xxxxxxx>]

Hi,

As I was discussing in today's meeting, I believe that ICANN and its  
Board will need to deal with the objections of the world wide  
community, including from other territories, whether the Fast Track  
process includes a process for doing this or not.  Even without a  
formal comment period before the Board makes its decisions, just the  
agenda announcement of a pending decision will be enough to prompt  
those who wish to comment to do so.  And if the decisions were made  
without a prior announcement (ie. under Any Other Business), the  
demands for reconsideration could be deafening and could throw ICANN  
into crisis.
The reason I personally recommend serious consideration of an  
objection procedure, or at least a formal public comment process, is  
that it allows for the comments to be received and evaluated against a  
set of criteria that have prior agreement from the community.    This  
would allow the Board to look at the final staff report, know due  
diligence had been observed in receiving and resolving community  
comments, and make its decisions on, more or less, objective  
criteria.  Without a pre-defined process and criteria, the Board is  
left dealing with each of the public comments on its own and by its  
own devices and ad-hoc processes.  What I am suggesting is that we  
need to create a controlled process for dealing with the tough  
questions that are beyond ICANN or its Board's purview but which need  
handling before an IDN ccTLD is inserted into the root.  Yes, this is  
a complexity on the Fast Track, but I think it is a complexity that  
must be handled if we expect a Fast Track to be supported by the ICANN  
community and approved by the board.
Chris made a good point about not putting  ICANN, and especially IANA,  
into the position of responding to and making recommendations on the  
validity of these public comments/objections.  He also asked a good  
question as to who could do this.  While I do not have a ready answer  
to this. I do assume that some external body, perhaps an appropriate  
IGO, a semi-IGO or perhaps even a new multi-stakeholder governance  
function established for just this purpose could be asked to provide  
this function.  What I believe we cannot do, is send the Board a Fast  
Track process that makes it operationally responsible for processing  
every objection/comment someone might send without any formal prior  
process. Without such a process, the  Board may, if there are any  
substantive issues raised by a party with some form of standing, have  
to postpone the approval based on it having a problematic (avoiding  
the use of 'controversial') nature.  Note: I do not pretend to  
understand how the Board handles problmatic issues.
I also want to reiterate, that I am _not_ making this comment in an  
effort to raise the white flag, though I do acknowledge the flag's  
existence.  Rather I believe I am making it because I believe it is a  
necessary component of a Fast Track that will allow the generally non  
contentious candidate IDN ccTLDs to get into the root as soon as the  
technical (e.g. IDNAbis) and operational (i.e., ICANN processes)  
conditions are ready.
thanks
a.