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

[Evan Leibovitch]

On Fri, 8 May 2020 at 05:17, Jonathan Zuck <JZuck at innovatorsnetwork.org>
wrote:

> The fact is there was no real consensus among the At-Large about the
> acquisition of PIR. There were essentially 4 proposals on the table:
>
>
>
>    1. Approve the sale
>    2. Approve the sale with conditions (which is what both the ALAC and
>    NCSG settled upon)
>    3. Deny the sale (essentially what happened)
>    4. Take .ORG away from PIR and move it to a new entity
>
>
As I said, you got that wrong. Totally wrong. You fully missed the core
issue which was not "will Ethos screw registrants" but "did ISOC violate
the letter and spirit of the terms under which ISOC was delegated .org in
the first place". And, as history has now shown, you (and ICANN) needed the
CA AG to save the day.


> There WAS a strong consensus, led primarily by Roberto Gaetano, NOT to let
> the sale go through without concessions so the group was motivated to
> identify the appropriate concessions and perhaps bake them into the .ORG
> contract so they would. Survive changes of ownership.
>
>
The issue was never about concessions. It was about stewardship of .org as
a registry that was just a little different from the others, and whether it
could be treated like as a chattel the way other domains are.

The consensus appears to be that if Ethos jumped through just a few more
hoops, made just a few more garbage PICs and a better advisory board, the
sale would have been OK.  That was not the view of ISOC chapters. It was
not the view of EFF. It was not the view of the American Red Cross or the
Girl Guides. It was not the view of the thousands of charities and
nonprofits that signed onto petitions. It is not the view of financial
analysts who discovered that the new registry would be saddled in debt and
inevitably forced to raise prices beyond the norm. It was not the view of
people who were around during the original delegation of the domain to
ISOC. It was not the view of a single .org registrants who expressed an
opinion. It was not the view of human rights organizations.

*But the CPWG and ALAC knew better than all of them!!*

You should be embarrassed to have led that dereliction of duty. ICANN does
not seek independent wisdom from ALAC, it is seeking a reflection of the
public mood. The voice on the street, if you would, distilled maybe but
without judgment or second-guessing. And if ALAC could get something so
important so massively wrong that ICANN's government oversight had to step
in to fix, it's impossible to have any confidence that it will get any of
the minor opinions right.

 Now we can argue that many in the At-Large had a relationship to ISOC
> which may have convoluted this discussion
>

Considering that the overwhelming consensus of ISOC Chapters and the
official stance of the ISOC Chapter Advisory Council was to oppose the
sale, clearly there were no signs of undue influence this way. Nobody is
arguing this so I wonder why you raise it.


> but there were also serious issues with the public comments that arrived
> in volume and form the primary indication of “public” dissatisfaction with
> the deal.
>

Such as? Did you do any due diligence and contact any of the commenters
before summarily deeming their opinions inferior to yours?

That you use quotes on the word public in the above context is -- I don't
have a better word for it -- disgusting. The height of dismissive elitism.

We also need to set aside the fact that while many in the At-Large work for
> non-profits, we are not the voice of non-profits at ICANN.
>

Let's be really clear here. In this role you are not the voice of anything.
ALAC's role is to CHANNEL what end-users want from ICANN and advise based
on that, not pull opinions from scratch out of your collective behinds. In
this extraordinary case, evidence of sentiment outside the bubble was
plentiful. Any outside research at all would have inevitably led to the
correct conclusion on this issue, instead you chose to ignore and
"denigrate" it.  This corporate oblivion to the real public sentiment is
clearly what drove the CA AG to intervene. So you could have foregone that
dreaded government intervention simply by ensuring that ICANN knew the
public mood rather than making one up.

While I was in ALAC the "who the hell are you to claim to speak for the
billions?" retort from the domain industry always bothered me. On
reflection I realize that it was a perfectly valid criticism and holds true
today as much -- maybe more -- than ever. ALAC lacks any credibility that
it listens to the outside world. It  guesses, based on its own biases and
framed by ICANN staff, and as such represents the view of no more than the
15 ALAC reps and a handful of other self-appointed "experts" -- present
company included. There is zero effort made to take the pulse of the public
mood on issues, a flaw that was exposed to the world this time.

Indeed ... *who the hell is ALAC to claim to speak for the billions*? That
question now needs to be asked from within At-Large too.

The original theory in At-Large's design was that ALSs were supposed to
offer a kind of broad-based audience that could be used to discuss issues
of import within a broader population and bring their opinions back,
through RALOs, to ALAC. Not billions, but much better than a few dozen and
guaranteed to be geographically diverse. For a ton of reasons well beyond
the scope of this thread, the ALS theory has proven a complete failure. It
can't work, ALAC never allocates the time and process to enable ALS
consultation to take place. And ALAC gets so involved with trivial and
irrelevant ICANN issues that could easily overwhelm broad grassroots
consultations.


> There were, of course, dissenters in the NCSG as well, such as Kathy
> Kleinman, who believed that PICs were inherently evil and a product of a
> top down decision making process under Fadi
>

For the record, and consistent since the day PICs were invented, I agree
with Kathy. So should ALAC.

Now Evan, you might think that means they are not “fit for “purpose”
> because of your belief in what represented the public interest but I find
> it difficult to believe that the At-Large is somehow corrupt and
> purposefully subverted that public interest.
>

Oh hell no. I'm not accusing anyone of corruption. Complacency, egotism and
maybe even cowardice, but not corruption.

- Evan
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