RE: [gnso-consumercci-dt] Final Version - CTCCC Advice Leter

["Neuman, Jeff" <Jeff.Neuman@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Evan,

When you boil it down, you are measuring whether someone did or did not do 
something you never asked or required them to do in the first place.   The 
Guidebook was supposed to set forth all of the obligations of a registry 
operator.  It should only be modified through the consensus policy process, and 
not through this review process.  It is unfair to audit anyone or use that 
information to judge anyone on whether they did or not do something that was 
never required of them.

You also talk about the real world outside our bubble and I think that is 
helpful to discuss.  But do you honestly thing that the real world cares 
whether a .neustar has a page up on its main site its policies and 
restrictions.  Not at all.  They want to know who they are dealing with, how to 
contact them, about the products and services, etc.  The fact that they can or 
cannot get a domain registration in .neustar will never even cross the mind of 
the ordinary consumer in the real world.

I didn’t suggest the term understanding, but it is the best alternative we 
could come up with.  A .neustar should NOT have to disclose its potential 
benefits (as a TLD) or its policy restrictions on who can get a .neustar name.  
It makes no sense to do so in the real world.  A consumer would just know that 
it could not get a .neustar domain name.  No registrar would be offering 
it…neustar would not be advertising it….etc.  They would just understand that 
to be the case.

To impose a disclosure requirement, or audit whether the policies are disclosed 
(which in my mind is exactly the same thing), is not something that is in the 
Guidebook and does not reflect in the real world what a consumer really would 
care about in the Brand TLDs or even Brand Keyword TLDs.

Jeffrey J. Neuman
Neustar, Inc. / Vice President, Business Affairs


From: owner-gnso-consumercci-dt@xxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:owner-gnso-consumercci-dt@xxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Evan Leibovitch
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2012 4:13 PM
To: Steve DelBianco
Cc: gnso-consumercci-dt@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [gnso-consumercci-dt] Final Version - CTCCC Advice Leter

On 3 December 2012 14:06, Steve DelBianco 
<sdelbianco@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:sdelbianco@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:

But Evan, we did not eliminate measurements that would be potentially 
embarrassing.

Certainly, any metrics that would lay transparent the fact that closed TLDs 
play by different rules from open ones have been eliminated.

Contrary to Jeff's assertion, measuring (in a yes/no objective audit) whether 
certain information is relayed to the public does not constitute new regulation 
or requirements. It simply is intended to indicate the extent to which all TLDs 
have provided that information. That the provision of such information is not 
mandatory in some instances does not mean we ought to withhold measuring 
whether it's universally done. The public does not know the difference between 
open and closed TLDs; heck, it still doesn't understand that .com and .co are 
under completely different sets of rules even though they are marketed as 
equivalents.

The main point is this: Those inside the ICANN bubble are painfully aware of 
the regulatory and policy distinctions between g and cc, between closed and 
open, between community and standard, thick and thin, etc. The world outside 
this bubble does not know, and should not be expected to care. Measurements of 
PUBLIC attitudes ought not to discriminate between different kinds of TLDs, 
because the public itself does not. While other individuals are free to 
disagree, I'm not sure I can be any clearer about this PoV.


In this draft, we have separate metrics for registrants and for users, where we 
directly measure their "understanding" as a result of plain language disclosure 
or other ways that foster understanding of a TLD's restrictions, such as 
advertising, registrar websites, etc.


In previous lives I've run global skills certification programs; as such I am 
quite familiar with the massive psychometric gulf between measuring the 
existence of something and measuring understanding of it. You can measure 
awareness of facts with  multiple choice questions; to measure "understanding" 
takes essay questions or interviews (and highly skilled people to read and 
grade the answers). Not only is such measurement (at any useful level of 
quality) orders of magnitude more expensive than an audit, it is incredibly 
biased by the nature of the questions, the translations, size and location of 
the samples taken, and interpretations of the answers.

In other words.... while "measuring understanding" sounds full of good 
intentions, in reality it punts the related questions into oblivion, given the 
inevitable complexity and expense. Either it will never happen given the huge 
expense, or it will be done so poorly as to be subject to widespread ridicule. 
So I choose not to pretend that this is a viable alternative to the original.


In my view, that's not significantly different from the draft you had 
previously agreed to.


As I said in my previous email, the shift from auditing to measuring 
understanding -- just a few words -- is massive, and undermines the work taken 
to get us this far. It is an unworkable workaround, designed to avoid objective 
audits that industry refuses to do because it suspects the results might be 
embarrassing.


Help me understand your angst, Evan!

Did that help?

- Evan