Re: [wg-review] 3.Constituencies - RTF Report

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2001 at 07:28:16PM -0500, Joanna Lane wrote:
> 1/30/01 1:13:54 PM, Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> wrote:
> >
> > >Here you express one of the most pernicious misconceptions about ICANN.
> > >ICANN is NOT A GOVERNMENT.  If you persist in trying to think of it in
> > >those terms you are doomed to disappointment, and your comments are
> > >meaningless.
> 
> Kent,
> It must be very frustrating for you to have to repeat this same statement
> constantly, but the problem is, interested persons are aware of the Public
> Interest Group's

PIGs.  OK, if you say so.

> letter to the DoC of Jan 16th, and it's becoming
> increasingly  difficult to believe that ICANN has not overstepped the
> boundary by its actions. These are very serious concerns and I have no doubt
> you will agree the writers of this document are not so easily dismissed:-

Not at all.  The concerns are not serious, and I think they are easily 
dealt with.

> <snip>
> "By severely limiting the domain space and by making decisions based on
> criteria which appear to go well beyond technical issues, it can be
> reasonably argued that ICANN and/or the Department of Commerce is making
> content and viewpoint based decisions regarding the value of new gTLDs.

1) The limit on the number of new TLDs was clearly stated by WG-C --
6-10 new TLDs, with a mix of restricted and unrestricted TLDs, with the
intent of fostering variety so that information could be gathered.  The
ICANN board followed the dictates of WG-C to the letter.  That is,
contrary to the claim made in the PIGs letter, ICANN clearly followed an
excruciatingly long and drawn out process in setting that limit. 

2) People got lost in the theater of the board meeting, but in fact, the
selections all met the objective business and technical criteria 
developed by the evaluation team.  The evaluation team gave various 
rankings of different aspects of different proposals; the board was 
ultimately responsible for weighing those aspects; they had to make some 
kind of decision; they did.

> In
> its current form this decision making process would appear to violate basic
> Constitutional precepts."

ICANN is not a government, remember? Froomkin has a bunch of clever
theories, but the fact is that the GAO did examine ICANN's bases, said
they were OK, and ICANN is operating under that umbrella.

> <snip>
> "As to the ICANN Board's actual decision-making process, two things are
> evident. First, this was not a standard-making process. At no time in its
> deliberations did the ICANN Board ever consider any technical standards
> issue.

Nonsense -- it completely ignores the fact that there was a year of
elaborate process that preceeded this selection, and that the 
evaluation team extensively analyzed each and every proposal.

> The sole questions were those of allocation: which social policies to
> further by providing a gTLD, which applicants were worthy to manage those
> gTLDs, which business plans impressed the Board as best-financed, and which
> names struck the Board as most attractive. "

Sure -- after you have winnowed through all the objective criteria, you 
are left with things that are much more difficult to evaluate.  The 
board could simply have tossed coins, but then they would have been 
criticized for abdicating their decision-making responsibility.

In point of fact, standards-making activities frequently get down to 
matters of aesthetics and matters of subjective experience -- how many 
bits should you leave for future expansion of a protocol, anyway?

> By the way, I don't have an up to date proposal from you regarding possible
> reform of the DNSO, and in particular, the Constituencies. I'd be most
> grateful if you would clarify your position on reform to post to the website
> alongside others for review by this WG.

Check the Task Force report -- it refers to my comments. 

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain
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