Letter on GNSO Process for New gTLDs

["Bret Fausett" <fausett@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Members of the ALAC,

Below is a draft letter that I intend to send to Dr. Paul Twomey and the
members of the ICANN Board later this week. I would appreciate your review
of the draft and any comments/criticisms you'd care to make. I also intend
to post a draft on my weblog and solicit signatories to the letter, and I
hope that you, either as a committee or in your individual capacities, will
endorse the analysis and recommendation below. Thank you for your
consideration.

       Bret Fausett

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Dear Dr. Twomey and Members of the ICANN Board:

    This letter, from concerned members of the ICANN Community, is written
to address what we believe is a significant breach of process for the
development of policy affecting the gTLD namespace. We wish to raise our
concerns now, rather than at the completion of the GNSO process currently
underway, so that the Board can set the policy process on the proper track
and establish important precedent for future policy development under
ICANN's new Bylaws.

    As you know, new bylaws for the post-reform ICANN became effective on 15
December 2002, at the conclusion of the Board's 2003 Annual Meeting in
Amsterdam (See, Board Resolutions 02.116 and 02.147). Hallmarks of the
reformed ICANN were to be new, defined processes and mandatory public
comment periods for policy development within the Generic Domain Names
Organization ("GNSO"). Specifically, the GNSO Policy Development Process
("Annex A" to the Bylaws, hereafter "PDP") requires at least two public
comment periods, one twenty-day period at the beginning of the process (PDP,
Section 6) and one twenty-day period near the end of the process following
the posting of an initial report (PDP, Section 9a).

    At the same meeting at which the Board passed these new bylaws, it also
passed Resolution 02.151 which asked "the GNSO to provide a recommendation
by such time as shall be mutually agreed by the President and the Chair of
the GNSO Names Council on whether to structure the evolution of the generic
top level namespace and, if so, how to do so." It's hard to imagine a more
fundamental issue of public policy that the GNSO might be asked to address
than whether and how to structure the gTLD namespace, yet the GNSO Council
has declined to follow the new PDP for its work. By the GNSO Council Chair's
own assessment, "there is no documented standard process we are following."
(See, Message from Bruce Tonkin to the gTLD Committee Mailing List, 15 April
2003, at http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/gtld-com/Arc00/msg00017.html). Not
only is the GNSO Council following an ad hoc process to address this
important public policy question, but it also has failed to provide any
public comment period in the five months since this issue was referred to
it.

    If the first policy issue of significance addressed by the GNSO under
the rules of a reformed ICANN is handled under an ad hoc process without the
Bylaws' prescribed public comment periods, ICANN will lose, perhaps forever,
the opportunity to rebuild public trust in its decision-making processes. As
a consequence, we ask the ICANN Board to initiate the Policy Development
Process with regard to the important public policy issue submitted to the
GNSO in Resolution 02.151 and instruct the Council to begin its
deliberations anew following the processes detailed in the Bylaws.

Thank you for your consideration.

Very truly yours,

Bret A. Fausett

Joined by the Undersigned:

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