RE: [ga] Last minute changes to Verisign agreements

["Joanna Lane" <jo-uk@rcn.com>]

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Names Council, Mr. Auerbach and Members of
the Board,

It is with great regret that members of the General assembly of DNSO have no
alternative but to inform you that any attempt by the BoD to approve or
agree the   .com Agreement with VeriSign in advance of proper consultation
with the DNSO Names Council, Constituencies and General assembly with
respect to the new revisions is hereby objected in full for procedural
reasons.

The General Assembly of the DNSO, including members of the Names Council and
all Constituencies, cannot either approve or reject the new revisions unless
all members have a reasonable opportunity to review details agreed
previously between Stuart Lynn and Stratton Scavlos directly on behalf of
ICANN and VeriSign respectively . Since these revisions were made available
less than 24 hours ago, any decision made by the Board of Directors to
proceed without referral to proper reference to stakeholders represented by
ICANN, would be made without the support of the General Assembly at this
time.

In the short time available of only a few hours since the latest revisions
were made public, comments have been aggregated from Members posting to the
GA ML under the thread "Last minute changes to VeriSign Agreements",
commencing 2001, April2, 01;45;17 GMT with
http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/ga/Arc06/msg01691.html. Please refer to the
mailing list for precise details of authors and the full context of comments
snipped below. The salient points are summarized as follows:-


1) ICANN is claiming changes have been made to the new agreement with the
clear intention of making the new contract more attractive, in which case,
these cannot be simply minor procedural changes.
2) Changes are being rushed through with no time for consideration or review
by the participate, community-based organizations set up for that purpose
3) VeriSign would rather have some DNSO support behind any Board decision to
go with option B in the face of all the comments supporting the "status quo"
or option A.
4) It could be argued that ICANN management, having stated publicly that no
changes were possible, should now want to agree to more time if that
undertaking is to be reversed.
5) That changes to the agreement are welcome, but it would be a terrible
policy example to agree to such changes with less than 24 hours to consider
and analyze them
6) That VeriSign and the DoC should agree to a 30 or 60 day extension to the
May 18 deadline to allow consideration of the new changes.
7) That while VeriSign said they would not agree to an extension previously,
they also said no changes would be considered.
8) That until this matter is resolved, Option A (status quo) is the safest
option.
9) That there are merits and benefits in both options, with the most recent
changes offering some benefits, particularly in the WHOIS area.
10) Alternative regularizes the contract, compared with other registries,
removes fee restrictions, now will add sanctions for misbehaviors, and so
on.
11) What are the contractual benefits of the existing contract that could
possibly make it preferable to the revised Alternative B?
12) If Verisign agreed to last minute changes then
as a corollary it should also agree IMO to a time extension so that
they can be considered fairly.
13) If Verisign do agree to a 30 day delay then I have a growing
confidence a win-win solution can be found.
14) it is a bit like a large, intractable company deciding that bad public
press is worth responding to.
15) Such a casual attitude towards the content of proposals suggests a lack
of
real concern about the content of ICANN's work and, by implication, a
disregard for the real work of administering names and addresses on the net.
16)  In fact on the
basis of their existing policy I believe it would be appropriate for
the NC Chair to personally urgently communicate to the Board that the
DNSO would like time to evaluate the latest set of proposals.
17)the fact concessions have
been made is absolutely no excuse to act in less than a professional
manner and require adequate analysis of decisions which have huge and
irreversible effects.
18)As it stood, the BoD could not approve the contract and maintain any
semblance of bottom up consensus, but by making a couple of relatively
minor changes at the last minute, they give the "appearance" of
accommodating the community's concerns, while still taking an action
that really is against that community's general consensus of what
should occur.
.
Sincerely,
Joanna Lane

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