Big Room Inc. Comment

[Jacob Malthouse <jacob@xxxxxxxxxx>]

We appreciate ICANN and the GNSO’s interest in conducting comprehensive
reviews on the New gTLD Program. However, we do not believe such reviews
can properly consider a number of contention resolution aspects of the
program until remaining contention sets from the current round have been
resolved.

Community Priority Evaluation (CPE) and Community Objection language in the
report appears to suggest that community based contention resolution was
problematic, as indicated by accountability mechanisms associated with it.
However, the use of accountability mechanisms says nothing about community
based contention resolution, since those mechanisms are routinely invoked
where contention is not resolved either privately or by ICANN auction.

In May 2009 ICANN and the Internet Community committed that they would not
begin a new round until this round was resolved:

“The comments suggested that a subsequent round should not be launched
until all contention situations have been resolved. The proposed position
is to adopt this suggestion and make this a clear requirement." - p. 186,
and:

"In view of the risk of complications with lingering unresolved contention
situations when a subsequent round starts, a comment proposes as one option
that a subsequent round cannot be launched until all contention situations
are resolved. The proposed position is to agree with that view and require
that a round be fully concluded regarding contention resolution before a
subsequent round can be launched. This requirement also emphasizes the need
for timely resolution of contention situations." - p. 189

While these statements do not preclude ICANN and/or the GNSO from
conducting reviews, they clearly identify both the “need for timely
resolution of contention sets” and the “risk of complications associated
with lingering unresolved contention sets”

If ICANN and the GNSO want to undertake a review of community based
contention resolution aspects of the new gTLD program based on complete
information, then they should first prioritise concluding the current round
in an efficient manner, so that lessons learned from the current round can
be effectively considered.

Ref:
https://archive.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/agv2-analysis-public-comments-31may09-en.pdf