[npoc-voice] IOC-RC - Portugal proposal at GAC meeting yesterday

[Alain Berranger <alain.berranger@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear NPOC Colleagues,

For those of you following this issue, you will have seen the NPOC
proposal. The NPOC proposal came out before the statement by Portugal rep
at GAC - Full transcript below.

The Portugal proposal actually is in the same direction as NPOC suggests in
both its points. I actually think that the "International Legal
Personality" filter suggested by NPOC will prove quite robust and
functional, if this avenue is pursued.

I'm going to see what we can compile about ILP without writing a thesis!
The opinion put forward by some that ILP is a vague notion is incorrect in
my limited view, but we need an easy read, credible and short way to
demonstrate that.

If any of the international law lawyers can help, let me know.

Alain
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[transcript in English of Portugal's intervention in the GAC/GNSO meeting
at ICANN43]

PORTUGAL: Thank you very much.

I will be speaking in Portuguese, if you don't mind using the translation
system.

In the first place, I would also like to thank the GNSO's work in terms of
the response to the GAC decision on this regard. That is why of the names
associated to the IOC and the Red Cross, actually there has been a lot of
contribution to move forward to the point -­‐-­‐ from the point we were at
at that point in time. It is also our opinion that the report is clear
enough and reasonable, and it's in a good direction to go forward in terms
of first-­‐ or second-­‐level protection of the names associated to these
two organizations.

The point I would like to bring forward for discussion is, however,
something of a different nature. This is associated to the way
organizations can voice their objections and how to identify them. We
understand that an organization that deals with public policy cannot
indicate the purpose of its own policies by pointing out the name of the
organizations the policy applies to, because this would be a discriminatory
approach. We understand that the right way to do it is to indicate the
characteristics of the organizations rules may apply to. We saw the U.S.
remark a few minutes ago that the documentation initially given by GAC made
reference to the baseline reasons to choose these two organizations. These
baseline reasons have the issue that they are not transferred to objective
application criteria, so additional effort is required to define them, but
it is still a baseline.

The document, however, is the one that we need to abide by, the Applicant
Guidebook that has not gathered any contribution as to the baseline
definition of these organizations. And the only thing it does talk about is
that these two organizations have positive discrimination because their
names are protected. And even when now, if now the world choose these two
organizations to make these requirements, which we doubt it is like that, I
don't think there are just these two worldwide, what can happen is that
anytime some other organization may come up that does meet the requirements
and so the scenario defined by the law should not be limited by the names
they have. I think this is critical not just for a question of principle,
not just principle and rules and regulations of an organization that a
public-­‐policy agency has to abide by, but also for practical reasons,
ICANN's liability of coming -­‐-­‐ anytime any entity may come up that it
meets these two requirements and that it has not been given the same
treatment, that is something we should be careful about. This is a present
risk. It is a current risk.

Portugal's opinion is not the GAC's opinion, but Portugal's opinion,
because it was not agreed as GAC's opinion, that these efforts should
pursue two directions. One, the efforts with a good result in the GNSO in
the sense of specifying technical conditions as to protecting the names of
the IOC and the Red Cross, and there is another effort that needs to be
pursued. That is how to define the characteristics and way objective
application criteria should be defined to say which universe is to apply
these rules. And that should not be the specific names of these two
organizations.

Thank you very much.

-- 
Alain Berranger, B.Eng, MBA
Member, Board of Directors, CECI,
http://www.ceci.ca<http://www.ceci.ca/en/about-ceci/team/board-of-directors/>
Executive-in-residence, Schulich School of Business, www.schulich.yorku.ca
Trustee, Global Knowledge Partnership Foundation, www.gkpfoundation.org
NA representative, Chasquinet Foundation, www.chasquinet.org
interim Membership Committee Chair, NPOC, NCSG, ICANN, http://npoc.org/
O:+1 514 484 7824; M:+1 514 704 7824
Skype: alain.berranger