[gnso-vi-feb10] Re: Feedback: Amended Statement on Exceptions for Vertical Integration Group

[Avri Doria <avri@xxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I thank you for the nice words on our joint effort.

[Note re On/Off Topic ; while  I compliment you for avoiding the On/Off topic 
Conundrum by changing the subject line and including reference to the message 
inside the body of the message.  However since I cannot really tell where On 
Topic ends and Off Topic begins, I must warn readers that my answer may be 
somewhat Off Topic.  so if they are really pressed for time and canot tolerate 
things that may be Off Topic, perhaps they should skip the rest of the message]

I think there are a lot of examples missing from the list.   There are 
certainly things I would like to have included in the exceptions list (e.g. 
SRSU - but what does that really mean).  But this list was supposed to be just 
a set of examples, and hopefully was one that most would not disagree with at 
least as a minimal possible set of examples to give a clue as to what sorts of 
things one might find in such an exceptions list.

I think we have a whole effort in front of us, assuming this exception doc gets 
some level of consensus/near consensus, in building a full exceptions list and 
setting the support level for the various entires of the list.

I look forward to conversations on how to define the various exceptions and the 
constraints that would need to be applied to them if they were to be accepted 
as excceptions.  

In terms of your list:

- Bring social benefits:  this is a hard one since i expect most everyone will 
define their TLD as bringing a social benefit of some sort.  But I have also 
noted that we have a large divergence in our definitions of social benefit and 
some things others consider a social benefit I may consider a social detriment. 
and vice versa.                             

- special treatment for non-profit:  In the Joint ALAC.GNSO WG on Support for 
New GTLD Applicants we have found that the struct separation of the TLD issue 
into the non profit/for profit baskets may not make complete sense if the goal 
is to support the public interest in developing regions.  While this seems 
fairly clear when discussing application in the Northern Developed regions, in 
challenged regions it becomes a little less clear.

- Multistakeholder governance of the TLD:  being an advocate of 
multistakeholderism who will often engage in a vigorous and relentless campaign 
for the multistakeholder principle, I find the inclusion of this very 
appealing.  But I question whether that is a characteristic of an applicant or 
a constraint one places on an applicant.  Also in the full definition of 
multistakeholder goverance, government is usually included and I am not sure 
that this would necessarily be reasonable in the case of VI in new GLTDs.  So 
some sort of modified notion would need to discussed and the the reelvance of 
the constraint would also need to be discussed to see if there was consensus on 
it.

a.

On 11 Jul 2010, at 11:45, Constantine Giorgio Roussos wrote:

> Hello Avri,
> 
> Excellent work on the working group for Vertical Integration. I would like to 
> thank you for your most recent message:
> 
> http://forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-vi-feb10/msg02504.html
> 
> I think you are spot on for the exceptions and would like to add some more 
> points.
> 
> I think some initiatives and new entrants who are newcomers, have innovative 
> business models need to be given the opportunity to create social benefits 
> and bring competition in both the domain and their respective industries e.g 
> music.
> 
> I would like to add some exceptions that:
> 
>       • Bring social benefits and are in the public interest (for .music the 
> public interest is the music community and the music community's public 
> interest is music fans).
>       • Special treatment to non-profits or organizations that work in the 
> best interests of their constituents by not auctioning out all the sought out 
> premium domain names and using them to benefit registrants. For example, the 
> band "Beatles" would have beatles.music and would have their 
> content/products/services in rock.music (genre), liverpool.music (city), 
> British.music (geography), English.music (language) and so on. All premium 
> domains will be used by all .music registrants for their best benefit to be 
> discovered and for social benefits and to cut down search costs by using 
> direct navigation
>       • Neutral multi-stakeholder governance with fair representation
> 
> I have been pushing all these points for a long time and would love for the 
> technology that I have been building for the last 6 years to be used for the 
> best benefit of the music community as well as to be given the opportunity to 
> make the ICANN launch a successful. I think we should be pressing for 
> introducing social benefits and helping new entrants have a chance against 
> the monopolies/status quo. I would love to be given the chance to show how a 
> TLD can compete, not just in the domain space, but the music space and 
> discovery space where companies such as Apple and Google have dominance (like 
> Verisign/Afilias/Goadaddy have in the domain business).
> 
> Great work,
> 
> Constantine Roussos
> .music
> www.music.us