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

[Evan Leibovitch]

On Fri, 8 May 2020 at 15:26, 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.
>

So the position could have been updated. I maintain that the wrong advice
was given even based on information available at the outset, and that
depending on bandaids like PICs to make the deal acceptable was always a
fool's game.

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.
>

Due diligence was reporting on the existing consensus outside the bobble.
That's not what you did, which trying to reconcile the overwhelming
consensus outside the bubble with the BS (and by Roberto's admission,
inferior) position invented inside the CPWG.

They were thousands, you were less than a dozen. Insisting that the massive
existing consensus negotiate with your fabricated and inferior position
would naturally produce a very understandable hostility.

I ALSO know, as you do, that the whole movement was begun by the domainers
> and carried their imprimatur for quite some time.
>

I can respond without hesitation that you are completely full of shit on
this one. As I have told you before. Asserting a falsehood multiple times
does not render it true.

Opposition was NOT begun by the domainers. I was there at the beginning
inside the ISOC mailing lists where there was horror expressed within
minutes of the deal being announced. The original outrage came from within
the ISOC community --  from Chapters and members and NTEN speaking for
nonprofit registrants -- long before the domainers got involved. Your
exposure to the opposition may have been constrained, because not every
opinion about domains surfaces as an article on CircleID. I have been as
much of an opponent of domain speculation as anyone in At-Large, and I have
no problem with domainers having common cause with the original opponents
(even though the price-increase fear was not among my own personal reasons
to object).

Your painting of the opposition to the sale -- including the EFF, Elizabeth
Warren,  NTEN and me -- as puppets of domainers is incorrect, personally
insulting, and may well be at the core of how ALAC blew this issue so
badly..

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.
>

I don't know the AG so I won't guess motives. I understand from the
contents of its intervention -- which is written -- that the AG was
intervening to assert the public interest. In the end it *did* at least
partially save the day, as the AG intervention was referenced in the
rationale of the ICANN decision to reject. You're welcome to speculate and
theorize, while I will work with what exists as real evidence.

I’m not sure I’ve said anything new and we might just be repeating things
> back to each other at this point.
>

No, not except for the assertion that I and other opponents of the deal
were merely being played by domainers. That was a cheap shot and not worthy
of reasoned debate. So it elicited the appropriate response.


> 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.
>

A bit late for that. I really don't think the public gives a damn about how
to do the gTLD expansion (beyond that doing it is a bad idea), EPDP
Addendums, or most of the other things currently consuming ALAC these days.
There are not many times at which ALAC is called upon on an issue that
brings ICANN into the public spotlight like this did, and it utterly failed.

- Evan
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