Re: [gnso-vi-feb10] refined version of Roberto's bullet-points -- pls review/comment within 24 hours

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 10/25/10 11:46 PM, Alan Greenberg wrote:
> At 25/10/2010 06:36 PM, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:
>
> > On 10/25/10 2:33 PM, Mike O'Connor wrote:
> >
> > > • Compliance is key (the working group spent a considerable amount
> > of time discussing the issue). Whatever the rules established for
> > the new TLDs, we need adequate leadership, processes and resources
> > in place to enforce them;
> >
> > Please note that we do not have consensus on this point.
> >
> > ....
> >
> > So I'd like to see "adequate leadership, processes and resources"
> > changed to "reasonable goals, adequate staffing, risk informed
> > processes and resources"
> Eric, I agree that it would be foolish to adopt rules that difficult
> or impossible to enforce, and that reasonable goals are desirable. But
> I am far too pragmatic to believe that we will do this. Whatever the
> rules and goals, we better prepare to have compliance deal with it. So
> I generally like the original statement. Except for the "adequate
> leadership" part. We want someone who got more than a C+ on leadership
> qualities!
What would not be useful is a hire who mistakes being loud and 
dogmatic for leadership. That was the last head of security hire.
Since the 2000 round, the art of responding to an ICANN RFP for new 
gTLDs has not gotten simpler, or less expensive as an authoring 
exercise -- I say that having written some of applications for 2000, 
for the .org redel, for the .net redel, for the 2003 round, that is, 
as an authority on the subject. Despite the utility of registries like 
.museum, and registries like .cat, the total cost of "compliance" with 
ICANN application formalism is now such that there can be no 
registries starting from a mere 2,000 euros and community desire.
I like and respect Stacy Burnette and Connie Brown in Compliance, but 
the possibility that the pursuit of "Vertical Integration" for some 
will lead to undifferentiated burdens for all in a corporate culture 
of escalating formalisms, all under some hotshot keen on making his or 
her mark on ICANN as a stepping stone in a career mostly outside of 
the industry, and likely to be as poorly informed as the economists 
we've been saddled with as "experts", is an avoidable outcome.
The nature of "compliance" for a .paris, in which the public 
administration of the City of Paris is an active policy participant, 
and operationally informed, and the registry operator is also 
exercising a registrar function for that name space, and/or others, is 
not identical with the nature of "compliance" for a .vegas (Las Vegas 
Nevada) in which the public administration has simply offered a 
"non-objection" statement and has selected an operator based upon 
revenue maximization expectations.
If we don't make plain there are shades of gray, it is possible that 
the one-size-fits-all mentality of some in ICANN leadership will 
create a "compliance" that is unlike what many of us imagine we mean.
Eric