[gnso-vi-feb10] Areas of complete and irreconcilable disagreement

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Colleagues,

Alan asked a question at the beginning of Monday's call which drew an
interesting response.

The question was, given the absence of any advocacy position of record
for a cross ownership threshold less than the nominal 15% figure,
could the group come to consensus on that figure?

Responding immediately in the negative were (my notes):

* Avri Doria
* Jeff Neuman
* Jeff Eckhaus
* Volker Greimann

At that point the conversation was cut off and replaced by a topic of
more importance to the co-chair. Subsequently, in the chat and mail,
these were joined by several of the CAM, JNJN, and 4Registrar
proponents, as well as Sivasubramanian, who sent in yet another
proposed policy statement.

So what are the elements upon which no agreement is possible? The
specific cap is obviously one area of non-agreement, there are likely
to be others.

Off list, Volker and I, and possibly our respective co-adopters, can
not agree on the choice of means to address the issue that motivated
Staff and Board, gaming. One tool is anticipatory, or prejudicial, the
other, permissive, or judicial, depending on the point of view of the
respective policy advocates.

A third choice of means draws upon a completely different framework
and appeals to competition authorities to make determinations of
proposed combines, without reference to gaming.

Exceptions are another area of non-agreement, but is this "merely" a
disagreement about numbers, or predicate conditions, or are the
disagreements as fundamental as the disagreements over the rationals
for the limits on cross-ownership?

I suspect that each policy advocate has one or several illuminating
questions that she or he would like to see addressed in an effort to
discover what agreement is possible.

As this conversation could not be carried out on call-time, nor in
polls, if it is to be carried out it must be carried out on the
mailing list, or privately, and thoughtfully.

What are the questions worth asking? The question I left Volker with
was how can the Board, and Staff, be convinced that their choice of
tools, structural separation and a single, unilaterally modifiable
contract, are sufficiently less effective than something else? If I am
convinced of Volker's correctness, how does that convince the Board as
an abstract collective, or the members of Staff we've known for years,
along with their concerns, that they've grabbed the wrong set of tools
to achieve their policy goals?

Eric