[CPWG] REMINDER / Meeting invitation: At-Large Consolidated Policy Working Group (CPWG) Call on Wednesday, 08 July 2020 at 13:00 UTC

Fri Jul 10 06:36:34 UTC 2020

Dear Evan,

I hear your concern. So there are two issues at hand:
Should ALAC try to stop a next round? And will it be effective in doing so? That’s a very valid question and obviously should be asked and answered here. But t is entirely separate from the question whether city (geo) applicants deserve a CPE booster.

But in regard to the question whether a community applicant for a city (we have to decide whether “city” or “geo” – I assume that 90% of geos will be cities in the next round) should get a bonus in CPE or not:

You mention the .amazon case. How does that impact the community priority application angle? If amazon had applied as community priority applicant then their CPE would have been immediately destroyed by the objections of the Amazon countries. 

You make the argument: “I've personally developed a severe case of "TLD ennui". WHO CARES how it all rolls out (from a public interest PoV)”

I hear you very well. But if you read my prior message; there are people out who really do include the community and make a HUGE difference in the rollout (my posting from yesterday). That’s what a community priority application is about: You rally the community behind you – instead of simply “buy” a TLD. You might not be aware - but the result of WT5 is (and I fought like a lion against it – to no avail) that ANYBODY may apply for ANY (non-capital) city name WITHOUT the need for a “letter of non-objection” from the city Government! YOU DO NOT NEED A LETTER OF NON-OBJECTON FROM THE CITY ANYMORE (under certain circumstances). How do you achieve that: all you have to do is NOT explicitly mentioning in the application that the TLD would be “primarily used for purposes connected with the city name”. So you apply for “.frankfurt” or “.dallas” or “.shanghai” (24 Million people – 70% of countries are smaller): and you could take one of the standard “Donuts” application templates: They do not mention ANYTHING what the TLD is about. Then you do NOT need a letter of non-objection: you simply get handed over the TLD. I know: It sounds gross. But it’s the result of a very powerful “brand lobby” that has gained grip of the GNSO new gTLD process and wants to enable their brand clients that have lent their brand name from geos (and there are so many; not just amazon or patagonia).

So by empowering community priority applicants you are actually empowering the city community: they won’t provide all the necessary support letters without wanting to be included in the roll-out policies. 

PUS: If someone applies as community priority application for a city name: they are FORCED to designate it as “city application” – hence need the letter of non-objection. 

If you want to empower the at Large Community then any measure that forces applicants to designate their application as “city application” would help A LOT!

Thanks,

Alexander

From: CPWG [mailto:cpwg-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Evan Leibovitch
Sent: Donnerstag, 9. Juli 2020 19:38
To: Tijani BEN JEMAA <tijani.benjemaa at topnet.tn>
Cc: lac-discuss-en <lac-discuss-en at atlarge-lists.icann.org>; CPWG <cpwg at icann.org>; atlasiiiparticipants at icann.org
Subject: Re: [CPWG] REMINDER / Meeting invitation: At-Large Consolidated Policy Working Group (CPWG) Call on Wednesday, 08 July 2020 at 13:00 UTC

Hi Christopher,

As Tijani said, I think everyone had their eye on what happened with .amazon when  crafting this approach. However, I agree with your PoV and in fact believe that the utterly bogus "community" case for the .amazon TLD actually bolsters your case.

Having said that, I've personally developed a severe case of "TLD ennui". WHO CARES how it all rolls out (from a public interest PoV) until it comes time to hunt down abuse.

Past experience has shown that TLDs are an utterly miserable and inefficient way to bring a community together, especially in light of all the great alternatives that exist. One could easily make the case that Reddit alone can serve community-building and public accountability better than any registry. Since from the start TLDs are pay-to-play affairs they must -- even the community ones -- contribute to inequity of access to an extent not shared by other platforms. At-Large's experience with new TLDs, even supposedly-noble ones, indicate that they are without exception driven by some combination of vanity and greed.

I'm very disappointed that neither ALAC nor anyone else in the ICANN bubble -- not the GAC nor the civil society rump of the GNSO -- tried to make even a feeble public-interest case against a new round.  Back when I was more-deeply involved in ALAC I tried to muster support for the case against any more TLD delegations until the consequences of the last round could be properly (and independently) analyzed. The effort failed miserably, and led to my pulling away. Everyone treats a new round as a simply inevitable, whether or not anyone outside the domain cartel really wants it. Whenever I hear the term "subpro" I have to smile to myself because I read that as an abbreviation for "less-than-professional", which indeed I believe to be the case for that group when it comes to consideration of public interest.

The inevitable march to new rounds, whether they are needed or not, offers a stark reminder of the utter isolation of ICANN's bubble (including ALAC) from the outside world. The intervention of the California AG on .ORG should have been a wake up call to this isolation, but it appears to have blown over. So it's back to business as usual ... until the next time the AG steps in. Jonathan was right that the AG intervention in .ORG was a dangerous precedent, but ... dangerous to who?

We now know that there are limits to the world's tolerance of ICANN's perversion of multi-stakeholderism. How soon until the next time these limits are tested?

Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada

@evanleibovitch / @el56

On Thu, 9 Jul 2020 at 04:47, Tijani BEN JEMAA <tijani.benjemaa at topnet.tn <mailto:tijani.benjemaa at topnet.tn> > wrote:

Hi Alan,

So, that's it: you want us to ask the addition of the geo-name nature of the string applied for as a criterion for the CPE to decide whether the application is Community one or not.

In my opinion, it's absolutely irrelevent. Any geo-name could be applied for by a commercial entity, a government or a community. The fact that it is a geo-name shouldn't give more credit to the applicat even if it is a community. Any application is not more community one when it is for the geo-name string.

Tijani

Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca <mailto:alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca> > a écrit :

Many geoname TLDs delegated in the last round were in fact community applications (although I don't know if any went through the CPE since that only happens if they are contested.

The question here is that IF you are applying for a geoname, and IF you are applying as a community TLD, then should you get extra points under the CPE because it is a geoname (that is, it improves your chances of satisfying the CPE and thus winning over some other applicant.

I am not sure we have a strong case for getting this approved, nor am I sure it is even worth the effort to try, but I see it as a good thing if we could.

Alan

At 2020-07-08 11:50 AM, Tijani BEN JEMAA wrote:

Dear Jonathan and all,

Following up on our discussion today during the CPWG call about the geo-names, I would like to explain why I donâ€™t think that geo-names should be incorporated into the CPWG evaluation.
In fact, the CPE role is to evaluate whether the application is a community application or not (this is what Alan explained and what I agreed on). So how it might be incorporated? as a criterion to decide if the application is a community application? Shall we request that if the application is for a geo-name string, the CPE should consider it as a community application?
The CPE evaluates if the applicant represents a community and if the application serves that community whatever the string applied for is (geo-name, language name, culture name, etc.).

Tijani

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