[CPWG] PIR sale…

[Evan Leibovitch]

I like Jacob personally and in fact he's responsible for my getting
involved in ALAC more than a decade ago,

Having said that, his CircleID piece was uncalled-for, unhelpful, and
needlessly antagonistic.

In particular, the personalizing of the issue by calling out Maureen by
name is a pressure tactic that I for one do not appreciate. It may be
common in conventional political wrestling, but it's counter-productive
here. Maureen, like Jonathan, are chairs of committees. They have the
unenviable task of herding these diverse dens of cats but do not control
their direction or speak for them without consensus. They may be thought
leaders, but we have an abundance of those.

There are multiple flaws with the article's call to action. For one, the
characterization of ALAC as ICANN's "consumer organization" is wholly
misplaced. Internet end users are not, by definition, consumers (ie,
purchasers) of domains -- registrants are. We've been around the block many
times about the subtle but sometimes very real distinction between the
interests of end users and those of non-profit registrants (a community
explicitly defined within ICANN's family -- NPOC). End-users are not even
part of ICANN's food chain, and issues such as incremental domain pricing
that matter greatly to registrants matter nearly nil to end-users.
Misunderstanding that distinction, and publicly belittling ALAC for staying
to its focus, won't win any friends. And, if as claimed, nobody is against
the opposition to the sale, why is our additional support even needed?

Oh ... and to top it all off ... invoking Godwin's Law
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law> both hurts the argument and
smacks of desperation.

>From the end-user PoV there are certainly ALAC-relevant issues related to
trust and abuse related to the .ORG regime change. I personally care that
most of the world's nonprofits are opposed, for I care about their
well-being more than I care about PIR's. The question of whether .ORG is a
special case that deserves a custodian rather than ICANN's usual definition
of registry-as-commodity-lessee is a valid one, but the end-user scope here
is narrow.

I highly support Roberto's approach that I have read here and would like to
help move that forward. And while I have been generally supportive of
Jacob's position I am not at all in sync with the chosen pressure tactics.
Being shamed and insulted at CircleID is something ALAC endures so often,
that using the platform to pressure ALAC action comes across as both
ignorant and ineffective. Readers who are aware of how little sway ALAC has
within ICANN may even have a chuckle. Dive-bombing into this committee and
making demands without taking any effort to understand its complex
political dynamics is not an effective tactic -- either for Jacob, Nat or
anyone else.

- Evan


On Tue, 7 Jan 2020 at 16:23, lists at christopherwilkinson.eu <
lists at christopherwilkinson.eu> wrote:

> Hilyard Has a Historic Chance to Activate ICANN At-Large
> <http://www.circleid.com/posts/20200105_hilyard_has_a_historic_chance_to_activate_icann_at_large/>
>
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