[vip] ICANN News Alert -- IDN Variant Issues Project: Draft Integrated Issues Report

[Dennis Jennings]

Patrick,

I honestly don't know enough about the public comments handling process 
to be able to respond intelligently.  It was not one (of the many) 
things that I looked at when I was on the Board, although I did flag it 
when I was on the Board's Public Participation Committee as something 
that I thought should be looked at, because it did seem to me to be very 
"Vogon" (1) style communication, and that it would benefit from an 
effective reach-out process whenever anything was published for public 
comment.

Perhaps we could have a chat off-line about this ?  I understood that 
work was being done to review the whole public comment process, but I 
have no idea where that has got to.

Dennis

(1) "There's been a sign on Alpha Centauri for the last millennium, why 
did you not read it ?!"

On 06/01/2012 10:46, Patrik Fältström wrote:
>
> On 6 jan 2012, at 11:05, Dennis Jennings wrote:
>
>> I know that many people, including yourself, feel strongly about many 
>> of the IDN Variant issues, and I very much appreciate your continuing 
>> support for the VIP Project.
>
> Dennis, this conclusion is correct, but let me because of this also 
> bring up another issue regarding a very big flaw in the way ICANN 
> handle public comments.
>
> The comments are to be submitted to a webpage, without any requirement 
> for feedback or *discussion* what so ever.
>
> This have during the years lead to people simply not submitting 
> comments, but instead repeatedly asking ICANN how to send in comments, 
> or claim that it was impossible to comment or participate.
>
> The lack of ability to *discuss* the various issues is something that 
> ICANN must start to take very serious.
>
> Just look at the gTLD process, or more specifically two examples I 
> would like to rise:
>
> 1. The JIG report that due to the lack of discussion was what I claim 
> "blocked". Specifically regarding one-character TLD. After about a 
> year or so delay, ICANN board did ask the ACs for comments, and yes, 
> SSAC is working on a response. If the responses from the ACs are 
> _very_different_ from the findings in the JIG report, what kind of 
> conclusions can then be drawn under the review of the AOC regarding 
> requirement of openness?
>
> 2. The discussions regarding confusability as part of the feedback 
> loop during the IDN ccTLD fast track resulted in a board resolution 
> that says more or less that it is ok to delegate confusingly similar 
> TLDs if it is to the same registry. That is a board resolution that 
> has been taken and as far as I know, none of the ACs where asked for 
> input. There is an interesting discussion going on whether one or more 
> of the ACs must point out that that decision by the board was most 
> certainly premature, and that the advice (that still could have been 
> ignored by the board of course) could have been to be more careful 
> from the ACs.
>
> I certainly hope that none of these two examples will lead to any 
> large problems, but I at the same time do not want to have this report 
> end up being one that for example SSAC must at least discuss 
> internally if we should do a detailed review of and come to our own 
> conclusions that we submit to the board -- and in the mean time we ask 
> the board to not draw any conclusions from it.
>
> I am just nervous how the participants of for example SSAC will react 
> when we will discuss this report.
>
> If they are ok with the process, we can move on, if not, we look at a 
> delay of a year or so.
>
>    Patrik
>

-- 
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Dr. Dennis Jennings, Managing Director, Knous Limited

	

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