Re: [gnso-idng] rethinking IDN gTLDs

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chuck,

Coming from you, I think that will get the appropriate attention. 
Coming from Werner and Eric, to the KPMG guy, who clearly wanted to 
hear what he thought we should be saying, rather than what we were in 
fact saying, about the design of the evaluation process, had no 
discernible effect.
Clearly, ICANN entertained this notion last year with the "qualified 
operator" proposal, so that the applications brought by "pre-qualified 
operators" would not necessarily inflict repeated cost for whatever 
constitutes determining if {VGRS|NS|AF|CORE|COOP} are technically 
qualified to operate a registry where no substantive changes in the 
contract is assumed.
This problem cuts both ways. I've already described the benefit of 
disclosure of application inter-dependence, now consider the cost, the 
non-monetary cost, of non-discovery of inter-dependence.
Suppose Fly-by-Nite-Registry-Wannabie-LLC (FbNRW-LLC) submits an 
application for R1. Upon evaluation, FbNRW-LLC is just barely capable 
of operating R1. However, FbNRW-LLC has also submitted applications 
for R2, R3, ... all of which have the same evaluation results. Just 
barely qualified.
The only way the current process allows this information to be known, 
by anyone other than FbNRW-LLC, is when FbNRW-LLC fails to operate one 
or more, even all of R1 or R2 or R3 or ... When they don't meet their 
performance numbers.
OK, so there's an after-market in buying bad registry paper but what 
is the process win in this?
Now one place we didn't want to go was where Mike just suggested, the 
fee and cost recovery. This may just be a CORE thing, we're reconciled 
to the cost, so long as it results in evaluation for known criteria, 
contract to known terms, and delegation in known time. We're trying to 
persuade ICANN to improve the process using language they are capable 
of hearing. Nearly every Board member I spoke to at Sydney about Step 
by Step (a proposal to accept applications and process those for which 
no complicated evaluation was required, and no objections offered, 
while the complicated evaluation criteria is yet to be completed, and 
therefore unimplemented) had, as their first question "Are you trying 
to reduce fees?" And as hard as it was, the answer was "No. We're 
trying to reduce time."
Avri, I hope this answers part of your question.

Eric