Re: [gnso-vi-feb10] Composition of Working Group Members

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Antony,

Let us assume that "interest of registrants" refers to the 93M or so
registrations, by no more than 93M registrants.

A somewhat larger number of persons invoke stub resolvers through
browsers, mailers, ftp, ssh, ... on the order of a billion, or an
order of magnitude more.

The interests of the first group may not include the interests of the
second.

If we set the arms of our Way Back Machine (c) to 2004, there were no
registrants of .cat, nor any resolvers of .cat, yet at least 40,000
people would, in the space of the next four years, register .cat names.

This suggests that there are future registrants, who's interests are
not contained in the interests of current registrants, as in 2004, the
number of then-current registrants who wanted a .cat namespace was, in
theory larger than zero, in practice very close to zero.

So, I'm unconvinced of the equivalences of "interest of registrants"
and "public interest". Also, if the substitution of terms was so self
evident, then Peter and Janis might have so observed when I reminded
them that Bertrand and Jeff (if memory serves) could not agree what
"public interest" means at some prior meeting (the first where we had
the colored sheets to show agree/disagree during a discussion fora).

To pick an awkward example of one construction of "public interest",
when I did remind Peter and Janis of the absence of a single common
agreed meaning, Peter pointed first to the interest of domainers ...
an interest not shared by all registrants, nor likely to be in many
definitions of "the public interest".

As to the issue of duplication of the Board's function, ironically
that is exactly what we are charged to do. For what ever reason, ergot
poisoning, bad liquor, sleeping sickness, ... the Board pulled some
very random and incoherent policy fragment out of thin air and invited
the GNSO to fix it or live with it.

Now one can claim that all frameworks but one are incorrect, Milton
managed to do that yesterday making the "pure consumer perspective"
claim. Or you could making the "interest of registrants" claim.
Personally I think things are more complex than that, that Competition
Policy informs the Vertical Integration issue, and that there is quite
a lot of spill-over from the Single Registrant scenario that
(mis)informs the Vertical Integration discussion.

Eric


On 4/1/10 2:50 PM, Antony Van Couvering wrote:
> It is easier if you use the words, "interest of registrants" instead of 
> "public interest," and in any case the two are very similar if not identical. 
>  
> 
> ICANN has to act in the public interest, but that's the Board's lookout.   If 
> we look at what's in the registrant's interest, I think we're focusing where 
> we should for this Working Group.  What we come up with is not final, the 
> Board has to give its say-so, and I think we shouldn't duplicate their 
> function.   
> 
> 
> On Apr 1, 2010, at 6:06 AM, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:
> 
>>
>> On 4/1/10 5:44 AM, Richard Tindal wrote:
>>> my reading of the AoC is that ICANN needs to act in the public interest.
>>> As long as this WG focuses on the public interest, as opposed to
>>> specific stakeholder interests, I don't think it matters who is on the WG.
>>
>> Agree. With caveats, as usual.
>>
>> However, we can't point to something (yet) that we agree is the
>> unambiguous definition of "public interest". And, this is a GNSO
>> activity, what ICANN does, or doesn't do, with what it gets, or does
>> not get, from the Council of a SO, is up to ICANN, which could vote to
>> make goat cheese chocolate.
>>
>> The point of GNSO reform was to move policy making from the
>> representational framework to something not necessarily
>> representational. The Council itself, as a representational body,
>> retains that property, whether it is "corrective" or "dysfunctional"
>> may depend on the difference of policy recommended without reference
>> to representation and representational policy preferences.
>>
>> Given that the present contractual limitations are stakeholder
>> specific, and CRAI/Staff policy proposal which introduced VI and SR
>> are also same stakeholder specific, and the Board's policy proposal is
>> also same stakeholder specific, it is intellectually daunting to
>> approach the PDP with some other goals.
>>
>> Eric
> 
> 
> 
>