[ga] A reply to Sims on .org

["Milton Mueller" <mueller@syr.edu>]

Certain aspects of Joe Sims' account of the .org process
need to be discussed more fully. As former Chair of the Task 
Force on .org, I just want to set the record straight about a 
few things. 

Sims:

>There was lots of work put into this issue by volunteers, but in trying to
>ensure that the appropriate poitical compromises were made between the
>various interests represented, the working group lost sight of the #1 goal
>of everything ICANN does -- the continued stable operation of the DNS.

MM:
Actually, we didn't lose sight of that at all. We took that as a
parameter. The DNSO Task Force set out to answer, very concretely
and specifically, the questions that were put to it in the Board 
resolution that was passed down to it. The Board resolution DID
ask us, "should the registry be delegated to a for-profit or non-profit 
registry, or either?" It DID NOT ask, "should the registrations of 3 
million domain names continue to function effectively?" That would
have beena rather silly question, of course, because anyone 
would answer it "yes."  

The Board asked us whether it should be sponsored or unsponsored,
what kinds of policies the domain should have, and so on. Those
are the questions the DNSO TF answered. 

One thing that Mr. Sims seems to have forgotten is that it
was ICANN staff, specifically himself and Touton, the ones
who negotiated the deal with Verisign, who were assuming,
back in May and June of 2001, that .org MUST be delegated
to a non-profit registry operator. And in fact, I was arguing with
them rather strenuously that this was a policy decision to be
made by the DNSO, not by them. This is documented in the 
Names Council archives. 

Sims:
>There are 3 million registrants in .org, and their continued well-being --
>their right to be certain that their registrations will continue to
>effectively function under a new registry operator -- is and must be the
>principal criteria of any redelegation.  Once that goal is ensured, then we
>can think about other things, 

This is of course correct. But since no one disagrees with this,
why are you saying it? The issue is not WHETHER this should
happen, but which policies and selection criteria will best ASSURE 
that it will happen. Some time between last year and the 
Accra meeting, Joe seems to have changed his mind about
this. Because if he had believed back then that commercial 
registries should not be excluded from application, then I assume
that the Board resolution passed down to the DNSO would 
not have asked us to decide whether the new delegee should
be for-profit, non-profit, or either. If you already thought you knew
the answer to that question then, why did you ask the DNSO
to rule on it?

>although it is hard for me to imagine that it
>would ever be appropriate to charge registrants significantly more than
>cost for the purpose of creating a fund to subsidize someone's idea of a
>good cause.

This is another distortion or misunderstanding that has become
prevalent among the Board. The DNSO proposal did not require 
the new registry to subsidize anything. It said that applicants could 
PROPOSE using surplus funds in certain ways but it did not require 
them to, and it also tried to define limits on such subsidies in order to 
discourage just the kind of wasteful spending that Sims must have in 
mind. In effect, we were flagging the issue and leaving it to the Board to 
exercise its own good judgement in that regard. If the Board thought 
that proposals without any such subsidies were better, they were free 
to select them under the DNSO policy.

> What the Board said in Accra is:  "Continued stable operation
>of .org is the primary decisional criteria for selecting a new registry
>operator."  

I disagree. In my interpretation, what the Board said in Accra 
is: "we lack the discipline and professionalism to keep abreast 
of our own bottom up processes. We don't remember what 
we asked the DNSO to do 8 months ago. We didn't follow the
development of the policy and don't understand the rationale. 
So we'll just make things up as we go along, mostly in response 
to political pressure from certain interested parties."

> In doing so, the Board (whose responsibility to to act in the
>best interests of the entire ICANN community, including in particular those
>registrants that do not otherwise participate in ICANN but nevertheless are
>affected by its actions) simply applied the ICANN mission parameters to
>this particular issue.  You will notice that the RFP documents otherwise
>reflect much of the recommended approach and language.

Yes, the last statement is true. I think it's mainly because a 
few of the more conscientious Board and staff members 
realized, after all the objections you received for seeming to 
toss out the DNSO recommendations, including from people
such as Mike Roberts, that ICANN's own credibility and legitimacy
was at stake. You can't ask people to participate in 
extended policy making processes and then casually discard
the results. 

I don't think the .org process can be considered a failure yet,
but the hiccup in Accra certainly indicated that there are 
problems in ICANN's procedures. 

It's important to understand what those problems are, because 
ICANN's "reform" process seems to be predicated on the notion 
that bottom up has failed so the top must be strengthened and
insulated. But maybe that isn't a correct diagnosis. Maybe
the top is already too insulated, and it needs, if not more
"bottom up" at least more accountability and awareness.

--MM

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