Re: [gnso-dow123] Attached! Preliminary tf Report Purpose Whois and Whois con...

[Ross Rader <ross@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Marilyn Cade wrote:

> At present, the Council has not established guidelines for making subjective
> decisions about what to summarize, or what to omit from summarization. The
> operating assumption today is that all contributions should be summarized. 


To be clear, this is an assumption that I do not share. To the extent 
that the report fairly represents the sum total of the facts presented 
by the general public and the constituencies, there is no reason to 
summarize each and every comment. We all understand that there are some 
stakeholders that like certain aspects of the various proposals and 
others that dislike various aspects of certain proposals.

The public comment period is not a voting mechanism. We are not 
attempting to democratically elect one proposition over another.

The sole purpose of the constituency and public comment processes are to 
ensure that the totality of views is brought forth in order that the 
Task Force can make recommendations based on those views and to ensure 
that the Council and Board can make informed decisions.

Hearing from 150 independent software developers that they "like" the 
Verisign settlement is useless. Hearing from 150 IP interests that they 
"like" formulation #2 is equally useless. Hearing from one of them *why* 
they like the proposal or how it could be improved, or why alternatives 
are preferable is worth its weight in gold. I exaggerate to make a 
point, but the point remains - those comments that do not add to the 
substance of the policy making process are a waste of everyone's time. I 
see no reason why duplicative submissions need to be summarized one by 
one in order for the Task Force reports to maintain their credibility.


> We ask that the policy staff undertake the completion of the summary of the
> rest of the public comments, and provide a time line for when the work can
> be completed.  

I don't see a need for this and don't support this request. Perhaps if 
the ISP/IPC/BC community have a need for this, they could undertake 
their own summary rather than further delaying important progress in 
this matter. In the meantime, we already have the public comment archive 
and a well-founded, fact-based summary of views in our existing report. 
As I've requested in another message, if the document doesn't include a 
comprehensive summary of the sum of the views presented, then we should 
provide our support staff with specifics so that we can move ahead as 
quickly as possible. Barring any objections pertaining to those 
specifics, we should move forward as quickly as possible.

-ross