[comments-review] Comments on content received by the task force

[Greg Burton <sidna@feedwriter.com>]

Comments on content received by the task force

This comment addresses the following paragraph:

"Comments received are annexed to this report, and include comments from
the Internet Service Provider Constituency, the Intellectual
Property Constituency, the gTLD Registry Constituency, the NCC AdCom,
the DNSO Review Working Group, and members of the Registrar
Constituency, the General Assembly and the Non-Commercial Constituency.
Additionally, several individuals involved in the DNSO process
submitted comments, and several articles addressing the DNSO process
provided additional input."
=============================

Constituency Contributions:

1 It continues to be troubling that only 2 of the 7 constituencies
submitted reports from their constituency as a whole. As Ms Swinehart
commented in Marina Del Rey, the entire process has been "like pulling
teeth". The ccTLD, business, non-commercial, and registrar constituencies
together represent the vast bulk of constituency members within the DNSO.
The failure of these constituencies to report as bodies may have significant
implications for the constituency structure of the DNSO. It should be noted
that the task force made every attempt it could to involve the
constituencies, and the failure of that attempt is not due to negligence or
lack of effort on the part of the review task force. This may indicate a
structural problem.

2. The ISPCP's comments, at
http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/council/Arc04/msg00486.html , are very
thorough. The report, however, does not discuss the process involved in
it's creation, and doesn't discuss how many members of the constituency
participated in producing it. Answers to these questions could be
helpful for understanding why this constituency was able to produce a report
while others were not, and how much weight the report should be given.

3. The gTLD constituency comments are a special case, in that Mr Cochetti's
involvement is in a constituency of one. His report is well thought out, and
I notice that substantial portions of it have been included in the Task Force
report, but his experience in producing it is not applicable to a
consideration of how most constituencies could or should operate when
presented with a task of this type. Mr Cochetti is of course on the Names
Council, and is a member of the task force.

4.The IPC report at 
http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/nc-review/Arc00/msg00107.html
does not pretend to be anything more than it is - comments
from two individuals, and a questionaire response from the American 
Intellectual
Property Law Association (AIPLA). Characterizing it as a report
"from a constituency" is troubling, because the report seems to reflect a
lack of constituency process rather than something the constituency adopted.

5. Thus it appears that of the six multi-member constituencies, only one
produced a report as a constituency, and that one contains no information
about the number of participants or the process used to produce it.

GA Contributions:
http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/nc-review/Arc00/msg00032.html
"This is a short summary of the recent debate in the GA.
I am reporting all contributions: please be aware that some point have only
be addressed by one or two individuals, and cannot be assumed to be the opinion
of a large part of the GA"

1. As nearly as I can tell, most of the participants in the GA discussion
are also in WG-Review, and GA members urged the creation of WG-Review.

AIM Report:
1. This is a personal report, addressing consultation issues. The author is
the current chair of the Names Council.

WG-Review Reports:
1.As noted in footnote 40 of the task force report, "Analysis of the posts from
1/1 thru 1/6 indicated that there were approx 1275 posts from 58 parties."
Currently, there have been over 2200 posts to WG-Review. Even if 90% of
those posts are off-topic (and I am not saying they are), the volume of
relevent material produced is substantial.

Conclusions:

1. The failure of the constituencies to respond as constituencies should be
noted in the body of the report and explored in more depth. The ISP
constituency should be contacted for information about their process, and
the number of participants.

2. WG-Review has the only record of substantial contribution from a relatively
large number of participants. It should be noted in the body of the report
that documented participation in the WG has far exceeded the total amount of
participation from all other sources combined.