[council] A comment on: GNSO Issues Report Proposed .COM Registry Agreement
Avri Doria
avri at acm.org
Sun Feb 5 21:40:11 UTC 2006
Hi,
I am sending this note because I am concerned that I will not be able
to join the council conference call during this discussion.
From the GNSO PDP .com Issue report
> 2. General Counsel's Opinion: The General Counsel’s opinion is that
> "the dot COM
> proposed agreement in relation to the various views that have been
> expressed by the
> constituencies" is not "properly within the scope of the ICANN
> policy process and within
> the scope of the GNSO."
>
>
While several of the specific issues in the contract are of interest
to me, especially the presumption of renewal, I think this meta issue
is the most important issue facing the council at the moment.
While it may be true the the negotiation of the contract, in and of
itself, is not within the GNSO council's purview, I think that the
relationship between the clauses in the contract and the PDP policies
already in place is indeed an issue that is relevant to the
council. I also thing that any precedent or frameworks for future
decsions a contract may make regarding future policy is relevant to
the GSNCO council.
I think that the council, as a council and as a body that represents
the views of constituencies, does have the repsonsiblity to review a
contract to determine:
- whether anything negotiated by the staff contradicts any of the
policies currently in existence.
- whether anything in the contract sets policy precedents or
frameworks that have not been reviewed and discussed.
And I believe that the council has the responsibility of reporting on
these determinations and that the board needs to consider these
determinations before the Board signs a contract. I do not agree
with the implication in the report (7.5, 8) that this duty belongs to
the General Counsel alone. I also am not certain that, as outlined
in (8) that the .com agreement does not set any policy precedents or
frameworks for future decisions.
This is not to argue that a PDP should be created in regard to a
specific contract, as a policy should be general and not specific to
one contract. But it does argue that creating a PDP relating to
contracts in general and how the affect they have on current and
future policies may be a reasonable action to take. If the policies
already in place do not call it out specifically, it is important
that the GSNO council have the authority to review any contract's
relation to the PDP policies and that the GNSO council should make
recommendations to the board before it makes any decisions on signing
a contract.
As I mentioned in the beginning of this note, I think the effort of
the GC, as I understand it, to remove from ICANN and the GNSO council
the responsibility for reviewing a contract's policy compliance and
implications is problematic and needs to be understood and resolved.
Apologies for not being able to participate in the discussion on Monday.
thanks
a.
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