Temporary reservation blocks or moratoria

[Avri Doria <avri@xxxxxxxx>]

Re: 
http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/ioc-rcrc-recommendations-28sep12-en.htm

It is often said that there is nothing so permanent as a temporary solution.  A 
decision in favor of Recommendation 2 creates temporary policy that may well 
become permanent policy.  This is not a good thing to do at this time.

Whether it is a moratorium as suggested by the Board or a temporary reservation 
as recommended by the GNSO IOC/RC Drafting Team, it becomes the base on which 
all other negotiations rest.   That is, it is impossible, once the Board puts 
in place a moratorium, by whatever name, to imagine that any of those included 
in this moratorium would ever take less.  That, by its very nature, limits the 
PDP with explicit Board fiat, and endangers the bottom-up process.

At this point any such moratorium would also be problematic in that it did not 
consider the position of IGOs as requested by the Board, or UN system 
organizations and other service/fund-raising NGOs as raised by various 
participants.  

The current proposal considers only two of those requesting these special 
protections.  Both RCRC and the IOC claim to have sui generis reasons to 
support their claims to this special consideration, yet they also argue that 
they have a reason in common that excludes all others.  This problematic set of 
contradictory claims remains to be proven.  It is only within a PDP that all of 
the requests can be properly studied, understood and acted upon by the 
community.  To make policy before the PDP is to guess at policy without proper 
foundation or process.

There is also no reason for this rush to policy.  The PDP will start soon.  
While I beleive the PDP can be done in time* to have a recommendation before 
the first new gTLDs are delegated, if the PDP does not succeed against this 
timing, there will be enough time for a Board temporary solution.  The Board is 
certainly empowered to make such temporary policy.  But it would be better if 
the Board did so based on the work that had been done by that date by the PDP 
rather than work done out-of-band under the conditions of an undefined process.

In terms of the current Drafting Team recommendation, I support the NCSG call 
for dropping Recommendations 2 and 3b and for proceeding with Recommendation 1 
with full alacrity.  I suggest the Board delay any action on RCRC/IOC and IGO 
names  until it has GNSO PDP based recommendations or until it is required by 
exigent circumstances such as readiness for the root by one of the new gTLD 
applicants.

I also recommend that the various new gTLD applicants decide in the interim on 
the policies regarding these names that they are willing to adopt voluntarily.  
If those reaching delegation have voluntarily accepted the request by the RCRC, 
the IOC and the others looking for special protection, then the Board's need to 
act before the PDP completes is relieved.

Thank you 

Avri Doria

* This belief is based on the fact that the minimum time for a PDP is 6.5 
months and recent experience with the IRTP-C PDP that covered three complex 
chartered issues in a year.