[CPWG] Calif. AG mentions ALAC advice in note to ICANN re: PIR

Tue May 5 15:10:22 UTC 2020

Well, you did NOT misunderstand me Evan so I’ll take on your criticism. The only fear I’m mongering is the fear I feel.  Members of the community who have not gotten their way inside the ICANN processes have, with great frequency, gone to DC to get what they could not from a PDP or whatever.  The fact that a particular part of the community is displeased does not, in and of itself, represent a failure of the organization, nor an advancement of the “public interest.”  AGs are even MORE political than the politicians in DC because they crave the visibility necessary to run for the next office up.  I’ve seen it happen, tine an time again. All I’m saying is that the mere intervention of the AG doesn’t mean ANYTHING, except to identify where decisions are made about ICANN policy.

I too agree with your frustrations about ICANN and the public interest and have fought hard to improve that situation and will continue to do so. That said, NO DECISION HAD BEEN MADE here. We might rightly believe that the board would have made the wrong decision because they have made many wrong decisions but, as a matter of process, I would have preferred to have seen their unvarnished decision first. Yes, I have bathed in the Kool-Aid because I spent two years of my life working on this “poor mutation” of the multi-stakeholder model that is the Accountability Framework. We always envisioned that the AG would be the ultimate point of accountability and backstop for the community but did NOT envision  him intervening  before there was even a decision. ALL I’m saying is that even if the organization had a perfect reputation for upholding the public interest, the AG could easily have been convinced otherwise, prodded to weigh in and sent a letter written by a lobbyist. That’s all that happened. It wasn’t some careful study of ICANN’s history that led the AG to act. You give him FAR too much credit, that’s all.

I TOO am excited about the roll that the At-Large can play in reforming the organization and, as you know, I am in the trenches to make that happen. Even so, the At-Large community itself was not unified on the idea of blocking the sale but, instead, resolved to condition the sale. So, even here, our language was used to justify an outcome that even we were not sure we wanted.

I’m sorry if my language was dismissive. It was not meant to be and I appreciated nearly everything you said about the public interest and our need to be its proponent. The only notion  on which we disagree is whether the mere fact of the AGs intervention was, in and of itself, meaningful and what that meaning might be.  On THAT point, we continue to disagree but time will tell. In the meantime, we continue to fight the good fight.
Jonathan

From: CPWG <cpwg-bounces at icann.org> on behalf of Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org>
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2020 at 1:44 AM
To: Greg Shatan <greg at isoc-ny.org>
Cc: CPWG <cpwg at icann.org>
Subject: Re: [CPWG] Calif. AG mentions ALAC advice in note to ICANN re: PIR

I understand your response Greg, and I'm glad to know I'm not one of the bots. ;-)

I'm indeed being sensitive to dismissals of the public interest in this group, and on rereading your mail see where the miscommunications happened.

Agreed to wrt devolving. Looking forward to a constructive debate on how ALAC can rise to this significant task -- changing ICANN's core culture to integrate the public interest into its activities, so that others are not enticed to do the job in its absence.

- Evan

On Tue, 5 May 2020 at 03:55, Greg Shatan <greg at isoc-ny.org<mailto:greg at isoc-ny.org>> wrote:
Evan,

Before you wrote this latest thing, I was going to respond to your response to me and say that I actually agreed with nearly everything you said in that prior response. I’ll still say that.

Rather than responding to the personal attacks here,  I’ll just say that you grossly misunderstand my views if you think our views are so opposed. I’ll assume that your remarks here are are based on errors or failures to communicate.

With regard to the “bots” (your word not mine) comment that seemed to have inflamed you: I was referring specifically to the comments in opposition to the .org registry agreement that came from people sending prewritten comments through online forms or following scripts written for them by certain organizers of the opposition.  You are clearly not one of those “bots,”!but that doesn’t mean these people didn’t exist or weren’t manipulated.

I never said or implied that all opponents were bots. Clearly there were rational, well-informed and thoughtful  reasons to oppose this sale and to criticize the behavior of all the actors in this drama.  And there were rational, well-informed and thoughtful people expressing those views.  I always thought you were in this category— and I think it still, in spite of your “confession” that you were a mindless bot.

Frankly, the stupid, easily disproven, lurid and manipulative claims made by some factions made it harder to discuss the more nuanced but in many ways more fundamental problems in the deal and the process.

(Out of an excess of caution, Evan, I will explain that the “factions” referred to in the previous paragraph Absolutely and specifically does not refer to you.)

Let’s not let this devolve.

Greg

On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 1:08 AM Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org<mailto:evan at telly.org>> wrote:
On Mon, 4 May 2020 at 20:39, Jonathan Zuck <JZuck at innovatorsnetwork.org<mailto:JZuck at innovatorsnetwork.org>> wrote:
Setting substance aside, the idea that the involvement of the AG is some kind of an indication that the multi-stakeholder model wasn’t working is a bit of a stretch.

That's it. I've had enough. Now it's personal.

I just offered -- in far too much detail -- WHY the AG's intervention indicates a failure -- the many failures -- of ICANN to incorporate the public interest into its decision making.

And it was either blown off and/or dismissed as "a stretch".

Similarly, Greg dismisses the thousands of opponents of the Ethos sale as mindless, uneducated bots. I was one of those bots.

If I didn't know you guys and like and respect you personally I would have said some very bad words by now. But having calmed down, it has become crystal clear to me you guys -- and the mindset you bring to the debate -- are Part Of The Problem. You haven't just drunk the ICANN koolaid, you've bathed in it. Loyalty to this poor mutation of multistakeholderism -- that shuts out the most important stakeholder -- prevails. And if ALAC can't be the agent of change that ICANN needs to help it understand the needs of the world outside the bubble, nobody else will, at least internally. Enter the CA AG, and soon others.

I expect this level of dismissal and derision from GNSO constituencies who have always treated ALAC with the attitude of "so why are you still here?" But I don't expect it from within the only community explicitly charged with representing to ICANN those who are not part of the buyer-seller-consultant food chain. My how this place has changed from 2013. It's truly sad. Even sadder is that when the change does inevitably happen, you'll never see it coming because you were oblivious all along. At least I can say that I tried.
It's telling that all the positive response I've received to my comments yesterday were not posted here. Some came by private email, and some came on social media. Are they too intimidated to speak here, or have they just given up on being able to change ICANN from within? Don't know, don't care, same result.

I’ll be curious what those who were opposed to this deal do when the AG gets involved on the other side from them in the future. When the IPC shows up and lobbies the AG to protect CA companies from GDPR , or. To get the AG involved in better copyright protection by registrars, or something similar it could get dicey. We’ll see.

Bring it on. And it will be brought on, if the wilful oblivion continues.  Your ongoing fearmongering continues to not advance your case; California's approach to privacy is almost lock-step with the GDPR<https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/californias-new-privacy-law-its-almost-gdpr-in-us-a-11149>.  I could easily counter-fearmonger if pressed, but it's a tactic of desperation. What I do know is that the AG *might* make bad decisions, but ICANN already *has*, so the quality of decisions can't get much worse.
In any case, even should I disagree with the AG's involvement in the future, I right now have infinitely more trust in its ability to weigh various interests than I have in ICANN's. I am not alone, And without trust or treaty, what is ICANN?

- Evan

_______________________________________________
CPWG mailing list
CPWG at icann.org<mailto:CPWG at icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg

_______________________________________________
By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
--
***********************************
Greg Shatan
President, ISOC-NY
“The Internet is for Everyone”
_______________________________________________
CPWG mailing list
CPWG at icann.org<mailto:CPWG at icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cpwg

_______________________________________________
By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.

--
Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch or @el56
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/cpwg/attachments/20200505/c8d35a04/attachment-0001.html>