[council] Feb 28 deadline on IGO protections - draft letter

[Alan Greenberg]

Thomas, several points embedded below.

At 18/02/2013 08:46 AM, Thomas Rickert wrote:

>All,
>following last week's call, please find below the draft response to 
>the Board that I have been working on with Jonathan.
>
>Your comments / feedback is most welcome. Remember the deadline is 
>approaching rapidly, so we should receive your feedback by the end of the week.
>
>Kind regards,
>Thomas
>
>Dear Steve,
>
>At the 26 November 2012 meeting, the ICANN Board requested that the ICANN
>GNSO Council advise the Board by no later than 28 February 2013 if it is
>aware of any concerns, such as with the global public interest or the
>security or stability of the DNS, that the Board should take into account in
>making its decision about whether to include second level protections for
>certain IGO names and acronyms by inclusion on a Reserved Names List in
>section 2.2.1.2.3 of the Applicant Guidebook, applicable in all new gTLD
>registries approved in the first round of the New gTLD Program.
>
>With this letter, the GNSO Council would like to respond to that request.
>
>With respect to the temporary protections for the International Olympic
>Committee and the International Committee of the Red Cross / Red Crescent, a
>directly comparable request was made to the GNSO Council and the Board asked
>for a response by the end of January. In the light of the 20 December 2012
>GNSO Council decision on temporary protections, we understand that the Board
>deemed the question of concerns with the global public interest or the
>security or stability of the DNS sufficiently answered.  Although we note
>that the GNSO has not yet completed its PDP on potential protections for the
>organizations in question.

This last sentence does not seem to be complete.


>The GNSO Council believes that the question as to whether or not there are
>concerns  with respect the global public interest and security or stability
>of the DNS can only be properly and fully answered upon the completion of
>the thorough work associated with a PDP.

I think it fair, however, to say that although neither the Council 
nor the WG has explicitly considered security and stability issues, 
none have been raised.

(I add this because the corollary is that if any HAD been raised, we 
should be waving a red flag.)


>In this regard, please be aware that GNSO Working Group working on this
>issue (IGO / INGO WG) has deliberated on this specific point and concerns
>have been voiced that provisional protections for IGO names can be dealt
>with in the same way as the IOC / RCRC designations via the use of temporary
>protections.  Therefore the question of the presence or absence of such
>concerns could only be answered upon the conclusion of the PDP.

I'm not sure what this is saying.

"Concerns in WG about (provisional protections via temporary protections)."

Aren't provisional protections essentially the same as temporary ones?


>[Conclusion of the 14 February telco] - Minority positions have been
>advanced within the Working Group that the Public Interest may be harmed by
>temporary protections??
>
>Rest assured that the Working Group is working on this extremely complicated
>matter with the focus and urgency you would expect and that the GNSO Council
>is willing to provide a comprehensive update on the progress that has been
>made with this policy matter at the earliest convenience of the Board.

Alan