Re: [soac-newgtldapsup-wg] Q&A - RyC and JAS WG - PLEASE REVIEW by Friday May 20

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Elaine,

I was off-grid after reading your reminder (which pre-dates my 
participation in the JAS, so it was more of a "minder" than a 
"re-minder"), so I thought about it but didn't write a response.
Now I'm back to where there are wires ...

The approach you outline assumes no change in the fee itself, only in 
the points in time at which portions of it fall due.
As Michele Neylon pointed out, the schedule itself is advantageous to 
applicants generally, something ICANN staff has attempted to create 
through their refund schedule for withdrawals at similar points in time.
However, for an application which meets the JAS eligibility criteria, 
that is, which is made by a community, or ... (our several criteria)
        o does the cost of string contention bring any benefit to the applicant?

The SWORD algorithm creates, out of all the strings submitted, zero or 
more classes of two or more strings that "are in contention".
While the applicant qualification tests currently under consideration 
by the Working Group do not specifically attempt to determine if any 
community application meets the criteria which is dispositive, 14 of 
16 in the past several versions of the DAG, and I'll check with Olaf 
Nordling (ICANN Staff) just to be sure this hasn't changed, it is my 
understanding that an application meeting the eligibility admissions 
criteria is likely to meet the current string-contention dispositive 
criteria in the current DAG, or the still someone nebulous but 
possibly better dispositive criteria the GAC is in the process of 
proposing.
I don't for a moment assume you or anyone personally agrees, but 
suppose for this moment that JAS applicants are more likely to prevail 
over the general applicants in string contention, because of the 
application of the JAS eligibility criteria.
Are the JAS qualified applicants "benefited" by the cost of the SWORD 
algorithm?
I think not. To pick an example we all know, the Comoros Islands 
registry operator is happy with "cm". She or he is indifferent that 
Verisign was awarded "com", as no substantive confusion exists in the 
Comoros Island name space users population with "com". Conversely, 
Verisign would like all strings "confusingly similar" to "com" to be 
barred by the string contention process outcome, an auction to the 
right to operate the unique string in the SWORD-defined set of strings 
that contain "com" which is added to the IANA root.
A prospective users of a community or ... (our several criteria) 
applicant are unlikely to be confused by other strings that are just 
"close" in the SWORD algorithmic computational sense to the string 
that user community chose. Like the .cm name space users, they are not 
likely to be confused by the existence of a .com name space.
This is a long way of offering the claim that applicants qualified for 
support under the guidelines we have been entertaining for the past 
year are benefited less than the general applicant by the cost of 
string contention -- SWORD development costs and the cost of the 
actual evaluation.
My point being that I'm glad you brought up the staggered payment 
schedule, I simply think that the JAS should be pushing ICANN staff to 
look at the value the JAS-qualified applicants receive at each step of 
the application process, when setting the base cost to the applicant 
to progress to that step in the application process, and before the 
Board makes whatever choices it makes to reduce, or not reduce, the 
fee to advance its business and geo-political diversity goals.

Eric