[ga] Registry NewTLD Evaluation Reports - 9 months and still no sign of them
Title: Help There is *still* no sign of the Registry Evaluation Reports required from
Afilias and others under Appendix U of the ICANN-Registry Agreement.
This was meant to be a central piece of data in the NewTLDs Evaluation process, informing all constituencies of the problems that may be faced by registries in the introduction of any further TLDs, and giving Afilias an opportunity to account for itself, in relation to the .info roll-out, which was far from satisfactory. This key data, mandatory under the terms of the Agreement, has never surfaced. Most of it was meant to be available for publication 9 months ago... none of it has been seen. Stuart Lynn and Vint Cerf were asked about this last May, and again in the autumn, when they claimed that ICANN staff hadn't had time to put it up on the Internet yet. It's now February 2003, and it <b>still</b> hasn't materialized. ICANN makes claims about involving all parties in the discussion process leading up to decisions. In the case of the NewTLDs, Stuart Lynn seems ready to make decisions on further NewTLDs, but no constituency has been able to study and draw lessons from the Registries' NewTLD Evaluation Reports. Where are they? Why are they still unavailable? How long does it take to FTP pages onto the ICANN website? The ICANN Board seems to me to be a law unto itself, following or ignoring contract elements at will. You only have to look at the *substance* of the NewTLD fiascos, and the way ICANN Agreements were flouted without penalty, to feel very concerned about the integrity of the processes which ICANN claims to develop for the public good and the fair distribution of the DNS. It is now over 265 days since I wrote to ICANN's Chief Registrar Liaison Officer about concerns I had about the abuse of ICANN's processes. 265 days, and repeated posting of some serious issues both at ICANNWatch, here on the GA list, and on ICANN's own public forums. But Dan Halloran has never had the courtesy (or openness?) to answer my questions <b>or even acknowledge receipt of my mail</b>. Sadly, I am left thinking that ICANN does not want to engage in real consultation and dialogue. It has its own agenda, and it uses its powers to push through that agenda, without accountability, without responsiveness, without due acknowledgement of the constraints and detail of its contracts. I do not believe it takes 9 months to put documents on a webpage for people
to see.
And I believe the representatives of all constituencies have a right to
see these significant documents.
Richard Henderson
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