[council] Proposed amendment to BCUC motion

[Ross Rader]

Mike Rodenbaugh wrote:
> What else do the Registrars not like in their contracts?  Maybe you
> could propose a PDP to examine them for awhile, obstruct and obfuscate
> the process so that there is no consensus as to continued viability of
> those provisions, and so argue that they too should be removed.  If you
> are successful with this on WHOIS, what will be next?

Mike - I believe the record is extremely clear on where the obfuscation 
and obstruction has come from. At each turn, your and your "Big Company" 
brethren, in the guises of the IPC, ISPC and BC have thwarted every 
attempt at progress, and even in situations where there has been clear 
majority support for proposals at the council level, the registries, 
NCUC  and registrars have taken the time to try and bring your views 
into the fold. This last round of work was specifically designed to 
enlist your support and instead your community ran the process into the 
ground with excessively unreasonable and selfish demands resulting in an 
unimplementable mess. The failure here belongs to you and your 
constituency, not mine and there are literally hundreds of citations on 
the record to support this.

> So the answer then ought to be to work and discuss further to try to
> reach consensus.  The WG found consensus on several fundamental points,
> even as to a general OPoC policy that was not supported by 3
> Constituencies.  The WG also several factual points of contention that,
> if resolved, could lead to consensus policy.  We should not throw away
> all the work that has gone into this, and decide on a radical solution
> that has never previously been proposed or discussed.

The WG found one thing, and one thing only - that those parties that 
require access to protect their commercial interests tend to agree with 
one another on how they should receive access - although even that 
seemed to break down at the end of the WG when the banks and other 
sectoral participants withdrew their support for the report.

In other words, the working group did not find consensus on anything, 
despite the best efforts of many to dress the pig up.

> 
> The existing contractual provisions are certainly not 'unsupported' and
> obviously were the product of consensus among not only the contracting
> parties but also the rest of the community.  Everyone or at least
> 'almost everyone' should agree on any change to that status quo,
> including of course any proposal to eliminate it.

The existing contractual provisions aren't supported by policy. Whether 
these clauses are preserved or eliminated is a matter that will solely 
be decided by the contracted parties, although I am sure that ICANN will 
in some way consult with its stakeholders similar to how it has in past 
contract negotiations. Nonetheless, my proposal is simply that the GNSO 
recognizes that there is no consensus in this area, and until there is, 
relieve contract parties from Whois obligations for which there is no 
broad consensus support or pre-existing consensus policy.

After 7 years of study, I think its time we move beyond the notion that 
there will be consensus on the question of whois. If I'm right with this 
assessment, then council needs to seriously consider the investment it 
is making in this area. And, by extension, if there is no basis for 
consensus in this area, then we need to start thinking about sunsetting 
those provisions that were initially enacted to support legacy practices 
while consensus policy was being created.

-- 
Regards,

Ross Rader
Director, Retail Services
Tucows Inc.

http://www.domaindirect.com
t. 416.538.5492