[council] RAA amendment process

[Alan Greenberg]

I made an even stronger statement, that after listening to the Cairo 
briefing and a more recent ALAC briefing, it seems to me that the 
statements at that time were that GNSO approval was the short-cut 
around amendment-at-renewal. Specifically, this meeting was the first 
time that ICANN staff made reference to RAA section 5.4. Prior to 
that, the only person that had mentioned it (within my hearing) was 
Danny Younger, and the reply from staff seemed to be that this clause 
only applied to renewals (which we were not talking about). And I 
seem to remember both Tim Ruiz and Tim Cole both saying that we want 
to take quick action because of the issues raised by RegisterFly - 
perhaps I misunderstood.

I think that before the GNSO can take any further action, we need a 
clear primer from ICANN services and legal staff on how various 
aspects of the RAA can be amended:
- under what conditions/processes can the RAA be amended on renewal 
(specifically does ICANN have any rights to unilaterally make changes);
- under what conditions can the RAA be amended on the fly (within 
picket fence, outside, what voting thresholds for the GNSO/Board).
I am sure that there are other variants as well.

We need clarity on the rules of the game before we can decide on one 
or more paths.

Alan


At 13/01/2009 12:03 PM, Rosette, Kristina wrote:

>As for the amendment process, I did understand that it was not a
>Capital-C "Consensus Policy" within the picket fence.  I, however,
>thought that the entire point of going through the 2/3 majority vote
>process was to avoid the piecemeal amendment-upon-renewal process.  I
>haven't gone back to listen to the recording of our Thursday wrap up
>session in Cairo, but that's the understanding I had after that
>presentation by Kurt.
>
>K