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[wg-review] Document: Procedure to Establish Consensus


Dear Members:

 

I share the view of some that ICANN made a critical mistake in allowing for the representation of interest groups by way of the establishment of the Domain Name Supporting Organization constituencies, and within this context feel an obligation to articulate my dissenting point of view relative to that which now appears to be the Review Working Group’s polled consensus position regarding the establishment of an Independent Domain Name Holders Constituency; it is my position that these formal constituencies should be decommissioned and folded into the General Assembly membership, thereby allowing for the consequent bottoms-up formation of alliances that would, of necessity, fluidly coalesce and shift with the emergence of new issues that call for consensus-based policy directives.

 

The arguments presented thus far in favor of the creation of a new constituency have not, in my humble opinion, been sufficiently compelling to warrant support (as they have failed to demonstrate a clear and overriding need for such an organization).  ICANN, by way of its Public Forums, Working Groups, General Assembly, and ample mechanisms for public comment, provides venues for dialogue that are nominally adequate to convey the positions of all interested parties; a new constituency is not needed merely to express a new set of opinions.  In recent months the public has used these vehicles to express their outrage on issues such as:

 

§        domain name hoarding and domain name sales on the part of Registrars

§        the lack of a Registrars uniform expired domain name policy

§        unauthorized automatic renewals of domain names by Registrars

§        the release of Bulk WHOIS data by Registrars to third-party marketing groups

§        inadequacies of the Uniform Dispute Resolution Procedure

§        the failure of Registrars to prevent fraudulent domain name registrations

§        pre-registration schemes by Registrars

§        lethargy on the part of Registrars with regard to disconnecting spammers

 

As the above issues generally reflect a public perception that ICANN needs to amend its contractual policies with Registrars and Registries rather than allowing for decentralized and unregulated decision-making, this Review Working Group was obligated to focus its efforts on defining the procedures needed to establish that which constitutes actionable consensus… it was, in fact, our mandate.  Knowing that ICANN maintains contracts that require registries and registrars to agree to both present and future consensus policies and to implement those policies via Terms of Service Contracts with registrants, it is undeniably of the utmost importance to draft a document that outlines a “Procedure to Establish Consensus”.

 

I refer the members of this group to the following document http://www.domainnotes.com/news/article/0,,5281_473381_6,00.html

as well as to the position paper submitted by register.com, which documents some of the flaws in our current approach.

 

The creation of such a document will serve the goals of transparency, accountability and outreach.  I ask all members to voice their opinions on this topic.

 

Best wishes,

Danny Younger

 



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