RE: [soac-mapo] On "universal resolvability" and useful questions that emerged yesterday

[Milton L Mueller <mueller@xxxxxxx>]

Surely the answer to Bertrand's paradox, is that it is only a paradox at the 
theoretical level.
We now move into the area of the difference between a physicist (theoretical) 
and an engineer (pragmatic).

The public interest will best be served by maximising universal resolvability.
If that means 100 badly thought though TLD applicants fail a morality 
objection, the public loss is virtually zero.
There are millions more to chose from.

The TLD string is but one part of the innovation being offered. For any TLD 
innovation, there are multiple options for the string.
Lets be pragmatic.

Philip, your serene "pragmatic" approach achieves its practicality by assuming 
away all the hard problems. It posits that all the blocked or failed TLD 
applications are "badly thought out."

But this is obviously untrue. We have a real, live, well-thought-out 
application before us - .gay - and I have already determined that there's a 
government(s) who thinks it inconceivable that it would ever be accepted, and 
there are civil society and business groups who think it inconceivable that it 
would ever be denied. This is not theory, this is the _real_ practical problem 
we are faced with.

It is not helpful to say that "other strings are available." That string is the 
choice of the involved community and is obviously the one most likely to 
succeed for the targeted market. In most of the western world, the status and 
activity is completely legal.

One does not solve this problem, one does not even begin to approach an 
acceptable understanding of it, by starting from a faux principle of "universal 
resolvability" or "availability." The point is that if you block .gay you have 
made a desired and potentially very successful service "unavailable" and if you 
don't block it at the root there are governments who will block it or otherwise 
try to make it unavailable to their subjects. Either way, there is 
UNAVAILABILITY. Let's not minimize the difficulty of the issue here.

But there is one simple and pragmatic way to take a step forward. I propose 
that we abandon this alleged principle of universal availability as a criterion 
for string selection. It has no basis in the new gTLD policy, no basis in the 
ICANN articles of incorporation or bylaws, no basis in the core values. We 
promised we would not revisit the basic purpose and intent of Rec 6, or any 
other major principle or recommendation. We are talking about implementation. 
This alleged UA principle is an innovation that did not appear until the GAC 
statement.

Rec 6 is about eliminating applications that contain strings that clearly 
violate internationally accepted norms. Making a "who will block it" 
calculation, as I think Stephane pointed out, is outside our mandate.

--MM