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

Fri May 8 19:49:23 UTC 2020

I would say that consensus was reached and acknowledged by the ALAC

For the January 2020 ALAC Advice on ISOC/PIR Issue
<https://community.icann.org/display/alacpolicydev/At-Large+Workspace%3A+ISOC+Sells+PIR>,
unanimously in favor: *15Y, 0N, 0A*

For the March 2020 ALAC submission to PIR public comment
<https://community.icann.org/display/alacpolicydev/At-Large+Workspace%3A+ALAC+Feedback+to+PIR+Public+Comment+Proceeding>,
unanimously in favor: *15Y, 0N, 0A*

*Maureen*

On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 9:26 AM Jonathan Zuck <JZuck at innovatorsnetwork.org>
wrote:

> Evan,
>
> I’m certainly trying to take this all on and, if the consensus we reached
> was somehow a product of my mismanagement, I’m certainly sorry. Part of the
> issue was that it seemed rushed with short deadlines for comments while
> information was still coming out. At the time, only one, or perhaps two,
> ISOC chapters had come out against the sale and all that about loans and
> such was not yet out either.
>
>
>
> As for due diligence, you know quite well that I DID contact several
> commenters/organizers to see how we might work together to achieve
> consensus and the vitriol began very early. I ALSO know, as you do, that
> the whole movement was begun by the domainers and carried their imprimatur
> for quite some time. There was a HUGE campaign to get non-profits involved
> but it didn’t start there. It began with Chicken Little emails about the
> end of the world, coming from the only community that REALLY has price
> sensitivity. In fact, you were one of the proponents of lifting the price
> caps when that issue came up because you hoped it might serve to limit
> speculation. I have ZERO intention to be elitist here. I confess, my radar
> was tuned in on the domainers’ role, perhaps for too long. We were in a
> time crunch,  with limited information,  most of the public comments had
> been form generated and our “leader” on this Roberto seemed to know a
> reasonable path forward.
>
>
>
> All that said, taking whatever responsibility I must bear, I still believe
> that you are being naïve to suggest that the AG made some careful study of
> any of this and felt compelled to save the day. Perhaps that’s just a
> narrative you are trying to establish to get people into a reform mindset
> (I agree with most of your suggestions about polling and trying to figure
> out what the informed public wants!) but we all know that he was lobbied
> and saw a political opportunity here and took it, something that also gives
> me pause, as you know.
>
>
>
> I’m not sure I’ve said anything new and we might just be repeating things
> back to each other at this point. Perhaps the best path forward is to
> explore ways to better reflect the will of end users and, for that, I’m
> 100% on board.
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
>
>
> *From: *Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org>
> *Date: *Friday, May 8, 2020 at 10:06 AM
> *To: *Jonathan Zuck <JZuck at innovatorsnetwork.org>
> *Cc: *David Mackey <mackey361 at gmail.com>, CPWG <cpwg at icann.org>
> *Subject: *Re: [CPWG] Calif. AG mentions ALAC advice in note to ICANN re:
> PIR
>
>
>
> 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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