RE: [ga] Letter to board.

["Roberto Gaetano" <ga_chair@hotmail.com>]

Joanna, William,

>
>WXW wrote:-
>We must be careful to avoid such obvious pitfalls in our individual
>dealings,or do harm to the real legitimacy of the GA and its processes
>that we are trying to build.
>
>William,
>What is doing more harm to the real legitimacy of the GA and the processes
>we are trying to build is last minute revisions to irrevocable ICANN
>contracts that we were told could not be revised. This warrants a clear
>message of objection to be sent to the decision makers in a timely fashion.
>The letter does not claim to represent your views, only those whose posts
>are quoted, so I fail to see your objection to it. Neither does it claim 
>any
>form of consensus. How could it in such a short time-frame. Everybody knows
>that.

I appreciate that the letter Joanna has sent was not intended to be a show 
of consensus of the GA, and as such could not have effect on the legitimacy 
of the GA, but let me make a couple of considerations on the issue.

IMHO, to rush a position of the GA in few hours would have been 
counterproductive. I agree with William when he stated (in a different post) 
that "one does not answer illegitimate process with illegitimate process" 
(please note that I make questions of principle, I am not judging the 
legitimacy of the actions).
I am not referring to Joanna's letter, which she stated as a personal 
opinion that everybody had the chance to show support or not, but to the 
discussion afterwards on whether the GA should rush a vote on it in few 
hours, violating its own procedures.
Once we state the principle that we can violate our own procedures, we don't 
know where we end to.

On the matter, which is the BoD decision on the VeriSign contract, the 
situation should have been pretty obvious. Summarizing:
- the NC had a split vote on the subject, specifically showing that some 
constituencies, like f.i. the ccTLDs, already bought in the new regime;
- by addressing some of the concerns of the constituencies that were on the 
borderline, they could have won the support (or at least the non-opposition) 
of more NC reps.
By putting on the table a new proposal, they have put the ICANN BoD in a 
very awkward situation. Besides the fact that there was some kind of 
inclination by the Board to make this step anyhow, there was an objective 
risk by ICANN in rejecting the offer, the possibility, that was not unlikely 
at all, that the NC could have changed majority in voting on the new 
comparison Option"A" vs. Option"B+". Wouldn't the Board have looked silly if 
they did reject a proposal that had fair chances to be approved by the NC, 
even if with a narrow majority vote?
The Board could have voted for Option"A" only if there had been a deep 
convincement of the correctness of the policy of the separation between 
Registrar and Registry, which this Board does not have.

I am as upset as most of the people that have hoped to conclude this story 
in a different way, but in putting in place some doubtful initiative we 
would have lost credibility without, IMHO, having increased the chances to 
win.

I would like to close by joining Jefsey in thanking Amadeu, Andy and Karl 
for their vote.

Regards
Roberto


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