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Re: [Fwd: Re: [gnso-dow123] Note to council on Notice recommendation]

  • To: "Mansourkia, Magnolia (Maggie)" <maggie.mansourkia@xxxxxxx>
  • Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: [gnso-dow123] Note to council on Notice recommendation]
  • From: "Jordyn A. Buchanan" <jordyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 14:05:54 -0400

Hi Maggie:

Other than the vote required as part of the PDP, the method for making decisions within a Task Force are not defined in the Bylaws, so procedural issues are largely left up to our best judgement. As I hope everyone realizes, in most circumstances, I try to gain consensus of all or very nearly all participants in the task force, but on occasion it is also necessary to conduct some sort of vote to resolve an issue. In general, I would consider any issue that appears on the agenda of a Task Force call to be the reasonable subject for some sort of vote to help shape the direction of our work, unless participation on a particular call was exceedingly low for some reason. This is not directly relevant to the issue at hand, because we didn't conduct a vote but I'll leave it there as a general statement of principle.

This particular item was odd in two respects: first, it was not anticipated as an agenda item for the call, and (but?) second, it was necessary to discuss the item because it was the last call we would have before the Council is scheduled to vote on the proposal in question. As a result, those of us on the call had to struggle to deal with the issue in a reasonable manner during the limited time we had available. We did have representatives from each of the constituencies on the call, and while Niklas from the IPC and David Farris from the BC both expressed some reservations, I don't believe either requested that I not proceed with sending a communication to the Council on this topic.

I do agree that it came as a surprise to hear that the current proposal might serve as some sort of waiver, and I don't believe that there is widespread agreement that it actually does so. However, this is not an issue that we looked at in our initial discussions, and it does seem like an important topic to investigate further. As you suggest, before making a decision, it would be important to get a better sense of the legal opinions on the subject--on the call Marilyn suggested that we might seek some further legal feedback on the topic. However, conducting that inquiry is useless if the Council has already acted on the proposal. This is why it was deemed to be useful to request that the Council defers action on the proposal.

In the interest of addressing the various concerns raised on the mailing list, I would propose the following modified version of my original communication. We do need to send this out soon:

Dear Bruce:

In discussions of the Whois TF this week, a concern was raised that the current proposal relating to improving notice to registrants regarding the use of their contact details in the Whois system may be viewed as a waiver of registrants privacy rights. It was not the intent of the task force that the recommendation act as any sort of waiver, but this was not an issue that we considered during the work of the task force. There is no agreement in the task force that the current policy recommendations would constitute a waiver, however a number of the members of the task force do believe that this is an important issue and believe that it would be premature for the Council to adopt the policy recommendations without considering it. Although the Task Force did not have time to form an official position on this issue, in light of those concerns, I am writing to request that the Council either:

a) Refer the recommendation back to the Task Force for further consideration of this specific issue; alternatively, the Council may want to consider this specific issue itself, or

b) Delay adoption of this recommendation until such time as the full range of issues currently being considered by the task force have resulted in a broader set of recommendations that may render this issue moot.

Thanks,

Jordyn A. Buchanan
Chair, Whois TF

On Aug 11, 2005, at 1:02 PM, Mansourkia, Magnolia (Maggie) wrote:

Dear Colleagues-
Before getting into the substance of the issue here, I have a procedural
problem. Following the chain of emails, I have noticed a few instances
where people are referring to "agreements" made on Tuesday's call. I
would suggest that unless the full task force membership is on a call
and truly "agrees" to a certain decision, it is inappropriate to quickly
move toward a position that is coming as a complete surprise to some
members. I know that in the interest of time, decisions do get made on
calls, and not everyone can always be present to participate. That is
fine. However, something as important as tabling or taking back a
recommendation that has already been voted through in the task force,
should require more than one call, should be noticed well in advance so
that all members have opportunity for input and should be fully
explained because it is leaving at least one of us (me) completely
baffled.


Getting to what I believe the substantive issue is-
I don't see how highlighting terms that are already in existence can be
a waiver. If the issue is that registrants do not have opportunity to
negotiate the terms, our recommendation does not negatively impact that.
I can't remember the last time I negotiated my credit card terms, my
drivers' license terms or my ISP terms of use, for that matter.
However, bringing increased attention to a particular provision has no
impact on that.


What it does impact would be a registrant's argument that he was not
made aware of how his information would be used. Are we saying that it
would be a good thing to keep such confusion and ambiguity in the
agreements?   Are we saying that better clarity is equivalent to a
waiver?  (if so, in what jurisdiction would that be??)

My colleague, Greg Ruth, who was on the call indicated to me that task
force members in favor of taking back the recommendation were invoking
advice they'd received from legal experts. I guess I need to hear from
such experts b/c I've read through all the discussion and still don't
get it.


To the extent that we are going back to Council to revise any
recommendations that required a vote, it is the ISPCP position that such
revisions must receive the same discussion and full membership vote.


Regards,
Maggie


-----Original Message----- From: owner-gnso-dow123@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-gnso-dow123@xxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Milton Mueller Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2005 10:19 AM To: gnso-dow123@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx; gnso.secretariat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: [gnso-dow123] Note to council on Notice recommendation]

NCUC originally supported the Notice Recommendation and we would
absolutely support reconsideration.

Forwarded from Steve Metalitz who is unable to post while on vacation.

(2) Since the constituency Ross and Paul represent voted against the
recommendation origiinally, what is the basis for reconsideration?
Normally such a motion could only be brought by someone who had voted
yes originally



Dr. Milton Mueller
Syracuse University School of Information Studies
http://www.digital-convergence.org
http://www.internetgovernance.org







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