[bc-gnso] RE: ICANN CEO remarks on Strawman

Tue Jan 29 04:33:32 UTC 2013

I posted the link to that yesterday, Steve.

Along with the link to this one - which if it was testimony in a legal proceeding might be construed as an admission against interest ---

http://domainincite.com/11710-chehade-honestly-if-it-was-up-to-me-i-would-delay-the-whole-release-of-new-gtlds-by-at-least-a-year

Chehade: "Honestly, if it was up to me, I would delay the whole release of new gTLDs by at least a year..."<http://domainincite.com/11710-chehade-honestly-if-it-was-up-to-me-i-would-delay-the-whole-release-of-new-gtlds-by-at-least-a-year>
Kevin Murphy<http://domainincite.com/about>, January 25, 2013, 20:04:08 (UTC), Domain Policy<http://domainincite.com/category/domain-policy>
"...but I'm not going to."
CEO Fadi Chehade this afternoon delivered a blisteringly frank assessment of ICANN's new gTLD program, admitting that if it were up to him he would delay the whole thing by a year.
Speaking bluntly, mainly to registries and registrars, at a regional ICANN meeting in Amsterdam this afternoon, Chehade painted a stark picture of the challenge ICANN faces in meeting its deadlines.
It's worth quoting at length:
Honestly, if it was up to me, I would delay the whole release of new gTLDs by at least a year.
I'm being very candid with you. I know none of you want to hear this, and I'm not going to do this - let me repeat, I'm not going to do this - but you should know that a lot of the foundations that I would be comfortable with, as someone who has built businesses before, are just not yet there.
I'm being super-candid with you because many of you wrote me in the last three weeks to say: 'Be up-front with us, we're business-people, tell us the truth.' Well, the truth is that the people, processes and tools to enable a sector such as this are being built as the car is already running very fast.
We're putting enormous pressure on our team to not to slip by a day. I'm now managing them with Akram [Atallah, COO] down to days. Before I came it was by quarters, by months, and I say no - every day we slip we're delaying this industry from serving the market it's supposed to serve.
It's just a different mindset. And it's a difference set of, frankly, talents that we're bringing to the table. We have people who took six years to write the [new gTLD Applicant] Guidebook and we're asking engineers and software people and third-party vendors and hundreds of people to get that whole program running in six months.
When the number two at IBM called me, Erich Clementi, after we signed the deal with them to do the [Trademark Clearinghouse] he said "Are you nuts?". Literally, quote. He said: "Fadi you've built these systems for us before. You know it takes three times the amount of time it takes to write the specs to build reliable systems."
But that's the position we're in, guys. I'm being candid with you. I know all of I know all of you want me to have this thing up and running yesterday. I want it running the day before yesterday. But this is what we're facing. We're facing a difficult situation, we're working hard as we can, our people are at the edge. We have people who are working seven days a week now - it's never happened before - on the new gTLD program.
We're hiring as fast as we can. We're now taking away from Christine [Willett, new gTLD program manager] some of the work she had to do so she can communicate better with you.
We're doing a whole bunch of things so we can deliver this for you.
I don't mean to scare you, because I know many of your businesses rely on this, but the right people are now in place, we're building it as fast as we can but I want you to understand that this is tough, and I wish it were different. I wish you would all raise your hands and say: "You know what? Let's take a break and meet in a year".
I know you can't do that, I know I can't do that, and I know that the market can't wait for that.
We're going to do our best, and if in the process if we miss telling you something, if we move too fast on something before we share it with everybody as we normally should... give us a little bit of a break.
I don't want to delay this program, but under all circumstances my mind would tell me: stop.
Chehade's remarks come two weeks after new gTLD applicants gave new program manager Willett a good kicking during a webinar updating them on the program's progress, during which it was revealed that a key deadline had been missed<http://domainincite.com/11581-anger-as-icann-delays-key-new-gtlds-milestone> for at least the fourth or fifth time.
What else can we learn from his comments?
Well... here's my interpretation:
*         Put down the mic and back off, Kinderis<http://ariservices.com>. Yeah, that means you too, Fausett<http://uniregistry.com>, and you, Neuman<http://neustar.biz>.
*         It will be an absolute miracle if the Trademark Clearinghouse doesn't suffer from teething troubles.
*         Applicants are almost certainly going to see more delays of some form or another (always a safe prediction), and probably from the place they least expect it.

  *   The program wasn't ready when it was approved in May 2011 (as many people, including yours truly, said at the time and have continued to say since).
  *   It's probably not much fun working at ICANN right now, but at least the new boss knows what the hell he's doing.

Philip S. Corwin, Founding Principal
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From: owner-bc-gnso at icann.org [mailto:owner-bc-gnso at icann.org] On Behalf Of Steve DelBianco
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 4:41 PM
To: bc - GNSO list
Subject: [bc-gnso] ICANN CEO remarks on Strawman

This was reported in DomainIncite on 25-Jan-2013
http://domainincite.com/11732-industry-man-chehade-admits-strawman-mistake

Industry man Chehade admits strawman "mistake"<http://domainincite.com/11732-industry-man-chehade-admits-strawman-mistake>
Kevin Murphy<http://domainincite.com/about>, January 25, 2013, Domain Policy<http://domainincite.com/category/domain-policy>

ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade today admitted that he badly handled recent discussions about improving trademark protections in the new gTLD program, saying he made a "mistake".

The remarks came during his speech at a meeting of registries and registrars in Amsterdam this afternoon.

The address, which along with a Q&A lasted an hour, was remarkable for Chehade's passion and candor, and his apparently conscious decision to portray himself as an industry man<http://domainincite.com/11717-its-official-people-hate-the-domain-name-industry>.

But he arguably risked alienating the parts of the ICANN community that would certainly not define themselves as part of the "industry", such as the intellectual property community.

This was no more evident as when he discussed the controversial trademark protection "strawman" proposals.

"We're moving very fast at ICANN now," he said. "You almost have no idea how fast we're moving. We are opening so many new things and fixing so many things, that frankly should have been done for a long time at ICANN, that the speed at which we're moving is making me, and sometimes my team, make mistakes."

"I made one big mistake in the last few months," he said. "I didn't quite fully understand... this concept of 'trying to take a second bite at the apple', when I engaged with the Trademark Clearinghouse discussions."

That's a reference to meetings in Brussels and Los Angeles late last year, convened by Chehade at the request of the Intellectual Property Constituency and Business Constituency.

These meetings came up with the strawman proposals<http://domainincite.com/11064-straw-man-proposed-to-settle-trademark-deadlock-at-secretive-icann-meeting>, which would create (arguably) new rights protection mechanisms and bolster others in favor of trademark owners.

Registries, registrars and new gTLD applicants complained that the IPC/BC proposals had already been considered multiple times by ICANN and the community and discarded.

Apparently Chehade has now come around to their way of thinking, helped in part by Non-Commercial User Constituency member Maria Farrell's complaint about the strawman process<http://domainincite.com/11294-ombudsman-probing-secretive-trademark-clearinghouse-meetings>.

"I frankly didn't fully understand until I went through the process, and appreciated what people were actually trying to do," Chehade said. "So, okay, big learning experience for me... I take it, I move on and hopefully I won't make that mistake again."

What does this mean for the strawman? Well, it's not looking great.

While the proposals are still open for public comment, at some point ICANN is going to have to decide which bits it wants to adopt as "implementation" and which are more suited to policy development.

After today's comments, I'd expect Chehade to be less inclined to push for the former.

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