Comment (rant) on the PDP

[Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>]

In commenting on the Names Policy Development Process
in 2002, ICANN's Evolution and Reform Committee
stated:  "Thus, what too often emerges is either
nothing or a lowest common denominator consensus (in
the form of very general principles), rather than
useful and productive advice for the Board."  Four
years later, this observation still remains valid. 
The current output of the GNSO, as reflected in the
GNSO Initial Report Introduction of New Generic
Top-Level Domains, offers nothing of value and serves
only to testify to the continued uselessness and
dysfunctionality of the GNSO.

As a participant in this process that organized a
month-long bottom-up discussion of the issues on the
General Assembly discussion list, I will state that I
remain disgusted by the absolute disregard for
community input exhibited by many of the narrow
self-serving stakeholder communities that populate the
GNSO.  Comments tendered to the Committee of the Whole
by informed contributing participants within the ICANN
community were never considered, evaluated or
commented upon ? they were totally ignored by
constituency representatives that couldn't be bothered
to read the material.

Commenting on a related set of submissions one
constituency representative has confirmed:  "None of
the 11 independent papers submitted to the GNSO
received any sort of actual consideration by this
working group, other than the polite presentations
made in D.C.  Being inconsistent with the advocacy of
the constituency group representatives, there was no
forum where these papers could be vigorously
advocated."  

The GNSO's policy development process is an
abomination.  Earlier, the ERC wrote:  "Those
policy-development bodies should be charged with
undertaking an appropriate process of collecting
community input, evaluating that input and developing
recommendations that are either consistent with that
input or clearly explain any inconsistencies."  There
has been no evaluation of community input; there has
been no discussion; there has been no analysis; there
has been nothing but token adherence to form (the
receipt of public comments).

The thoughtful and well-articulated public comments of
Werner Staub have not been taken into consideration
[http://forum.icann.org/lists/new-gtlds-pdp-comments/msg00030.html];
neither have any of the issues raised by Thomas
Lowenhaupt been considered
[http://forum.icann.org/lists/new-gtlds-pdp-comments/msg00036.html],
nor have any of the over 500 comments (including those
of Vint Cerf) submitted in the General Assembly
process been evaluated and discussed
[http://forum.icann.org/lists/new-gtlds-pdp-comments/msg00018.html].

Instead of deliberation, we have been treated to
nothing more than half-baked uninformed pontification
on the part of committee members.  We have no
empirical evidence to suggest that any constituency
members evaluated the scholarly research on auctions
provided to the task force, or any indications that
such members were competent to address this allocation
issue (and yet recommendations on this topic have
emerged).  Instead of informed commentary, the task
force has received regurgitated constituency position
papers that didn't even address the task force terms
of reference (compliments of the ISPs), and statements
from other constituencies bereft of any indication
that a broad constituency membership ever participated
in their formulation.

A review of the publicly archived constituency
discussion lists reveals that discussion on this PDP
was for the most part non-existent (at the most no
more than two or three brief comments in any
constituency on the topics at hand over a period of
nine full months), and when ICANN Staff put out their
Call for Information from Constituencies asking for
very specific input on technical criteria
[http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/tech-criteria-15mar06.htm]
there were, of course, absolutely no comments publicly
tendered by any constituency.

On the basis of contributions thus far, this Task
Force (and doubtless the GNSO itself in view of this
performance) should immediately be disbanded; the
ICANN-funded GNSO junket to Amsterdam should similarly
be cancelled as it would be a complete waste of human
and monetary resources to pursue this patently
fraudulent initiative ? whatever
lowest-common-denominator uninformed and
public-comment-disregarding consensus that emerges
will be of no value? 

lest we forget, it?s ICANN Staff (via negotiated
contract language) that actually formulates ICANN
policy, not the clueless floundering and
unrepresentative GNSO.



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com