[governance] Towards Singapore

[Lee W McKnight]

Hi,


Like Bill I enjoyed your write-up Wolfgang; but like Bill  agree that splitting the gTLD applicant group at this point is probably bad politics, especially if the areas of disagreement - are being labelled as the work of the devil.  (Wolfgang, you must have missed the memo, the world didn't end yesterday ; )

But seriously from a slight distance the - natural - tensions between the  ICANN Board and the GAC are not quite  as apocalyptic as you make it sound: it means the system is working.

Seriously, not so long ago many government reps hanging at GAC were wondering what was the point of them attending the meetings at all. Ah for the good old days when the GAC was bored.

The ICANN Board - the same one (with new members) embarrassed by having Karl Rove and the porn industry push them around a few year ago (now that was an odd couple/coalition) - are not just bowing and scraping before governments and are insisting on their independent authority. Which was the plan all along.

Like I said if the system is working, with all its faults, tension should be high when things of consequence are being debated. And when it's all done everyone will go have a beer or wine, and live to fight another day.

On the other hand, if there was clear and transparent process for contentious gTLDs to go through, while others pass through the system unchallenged at a faster pace, that would be fine.

But until the rules are settled there for all, then - the rules aren't settled.

Ultimately though the ICANN Board (and staff) which dragged their heels for years in getting a gTLD process set up can only blame themselves, since if the rules were worked through say five or 10 years ago, the argument that you don;t need governments to lead the way on rule-making here would be far stronger.  

Still, while great theater I doubt the gTLD issue will unravel ICANN.   

Lee





________________________________________
From: governance at lists.cpsr.org [governance at lists.cpsr.org] On Behalf Of William Drake [william.drake at uzh.ch]
Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2011 9:41 AM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang"
Subject: Re: [governance] Towards Singapore

Hi Wolfgang

On May 22, 2011, at 10:26 AM, Kleinwächter, Wolfgang wrote:

> FYI
>
> http://news.dot-nxt.com/2011/05/18/high-noon-in-singapore

Thanks for the pointer, a nice read.  And I enjoyed the blissful pic of you, looks like an ad for some good earphones :-)

I was going to ask something on his site, but since Kieren requires everything but a blood sample to register and respond to blog posts, I'll do it here.  Re: your suggestion,

<If consensus cannot be reached quickly on the scorecard issues, one approach could be to cut the package into two parts and move forward at different speeds on two levels.  The final version of the “Draft Applicant Guidebook” (DAG) could be adopted “in principle” while at the same time the five to seven remaining paragraphs, where the devil feeds the fire, could be put temporarily into so-called “brackets”.  ICANN would not move from, DAG 5.0 to DAG 6.0 but to DAG 5.1. Based on such a basic agreement one could do two things at once: start the process with all those strings which are not touched by the devil’s paragraphs and do not have the potential to create any type of controversy (this could be a group of about 50+ new gTLDs) and move forward with this 1st basket of uncontroversial applications in Singapore and, at the same time, continue negotiations among the involved parties to remove the brackets from the devils paragraphs as quick as possible, hopefully until the 42nd meeting in Dakar, October 2011 which would than open the door for applications which would go into a 2nd basket.>

I have to wonder whether this is necessarily a good idea from a negotiation standpoint.  Separating out the "devil’s paragraphs" would alter the incentives structures and could complicate the search for compromises on those issues.  Inter alia, there'd be no scope for leveraging tactical issue-linkages or using the prospect of being responsible for sinking the whole deal to incent reluctant parties to gulp hard and say ok.  This is part of why the WTO always does its huge multi-issue trade rounds as "single undertakings" in which all regime elements and national schedules must be finalized by the same deadline (although there are some specific factors making that increasingly problematic in trade).  One also wonders about the consequences, including from FoE and competitive standpoints, of categorizing some gTLDs as noncontroversial and therefore privileged to go first while others that offend some government's or trademark holder's tender sensibilities languish waiting for a successful resolution that very might not happen by Dakar, or beyond.

Bottom line, there can be pluses and minuses to decomposing a complex deal in order to urgently reach agreement on a subset of issues.  These might merit some assessment and weighing...

Best,

Bill







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