RE: [soac-mapo] Third "draft recommendation" (individual government objections)

["Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well said Evan.

Chuck

> -----Original Message-----
> From: evanleibovitch@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:evanleibovitch@xxxxxxxxx] On
> Behalf Of Evan Leibovitch
> Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 1:49 AM
> To: Gomes, Chuck
> Cc: Milton L Mueller; soac-mapo
> Subject: Re: [soac-mapo] Third "draft recommendation" (individual
> government objections)
> 
> An objection by a sovereign government can be one of many things, and
> these functions are not mutually exclusive:
> 
> 1) A public declaration that an application is undesirable and the use
> of the proposed string is counter to the domestic public interest;
> 
> 2) A request to the applicant to reconsider/amend/withdraw (possibly
> escalating from "request" to "demand" if the applicant is a resident
> of -- or does business in -- that country)
> 
> 3) A public warning that the country may block the string if approved
> 
> 4) A request to ICANN to block the application from succeeding
> 
> 
> Of these, only #4 requires intervention by ICANN in the application
> process. Indeed, if the objection is based on politics (ie, to appease
> an angry population), the real intent of the objection may be nothing
> more than to fulfil #1.
> 
> The mere provision of an objection process that allows national (or
> even regional) complaints to be fully aired and "on the record" --
> with the tacit acknowledgement that the complaint is insufficiently
> grounded to cause ICANN to block it globally -- may serve a valuable
> purpose. This is even so for objections that have no chance (and maybe
> no intention) of resulting in a blockage of the application.
> 
> - Evan