[CPWG] About Single Subject Meetings

[Jonathan Zuck]

I actually agree completely. What I’m been pushing since I joined the CPWG is a “unique end user perspective.”  Because obviously you can make the case that EVERYTHING, at least indirectly, impacts end users but I’ve always thought it best to think of our inputs as amicus briefs whereby we are offering a perspective that would otherwise not be in play.

From: CPWG <cpwg-bounces at icann.org> on behalf of Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org>
Date: Sunday, May 24, 2020 at 5:29 AM
To: Holly Raiche <h.raiche at internode.on.net>
Cc: CPWG <cpwg at icann.org>
Subject: Re: [CPWG] About Single Subject Meetings

I'm not in much of a position to comment because my attendance record on calls is not good. They tend to happen when I'm doing day-job things, and I much prefer to participate through written media where I can participate on my own time, and take the time to put out (what I hope appear as) cogent thoughts may actually take some time to develop and express. The environment of a real-time call is not conductive to that. Frankly, Jonathan, I'm not sure there are too many more efficiencies to be extracted from calls in their corrent form.

Christopher's proposal IMO is reasonable but not possible the way things are being done now. They *would* be possible if a monthly CPWG call -- held a few days before each ALAC meeting -- was limited to decision-making through consensus assessment on what would be the WG's position(s) to take to ALAC. In advance of each call the discussion would take place on Slack/ Loomio/ whatever using channels for each topic where the possible options are developed..

That there's too much for a single monthly call is not the result of inefficiency. It's the product of chasing too many things. As long as I've been involved in these processes I've been dismayed at the perceived need to comment on so many GNSO and other comment solicitations that really ought to be either too detailed or not relevant enough for our consideration.

When forcing ourselves to look at every issue thrust at us through the lens of the non-registrant end user (registrants already have their voice elsewhere in ICANN), the landscape of relevant issues shrinks dramatically. Why should we care about:

  *   Who administers auction proceeds: we may have something high-level to say about how proceeds should be spent, but does the end users really give a damn who runs it?
  *   Further gTLD rounds: Rather than actually take a position on whether having more rounds is actually better for end-users at at a high-level, we get way too deep into legalese of the Applicant Guidebook. We should be limiting ourselves to issues that affect end users such as stability, abuse and confusion and leave the industry fight over the rest of it.
  *   Community evaluation and applicant support. I once was very heavily involved in both, but on reflection see that these are very much issues for would-be registries and not end-users. Our interest is indirect at best. The applicants are wannabe registry operators who ultimately want to sell domains. It's of marginal interest to end users whether specialized TLDs exist or not because we're not buying domains, just linking to them. The public already knows that domains don't always exact-mactch to the names of the registrants so why are we chasing issues of interest to registries?
Sure, there's are those among us to whom industry issues such as community TLDs are a big deal. But they're a big deal to registries and registrants and maybe registrars, not end users. There are other ICANN constituencies that exist to advance positions from the PoV of registrants, both commercial and noncommercial, advocates are welcome to use those paths.

My main point is that if we're overloaded because we're chasing too many issues, they fault is one of judgment not efficiency. There should be a very severe triage going on for every public comment, event demand of our time that comes by. We spend too much time running after public comment periods rather than choosing for ourselves what issues matter and being proactive. This problem has existed for a long time, the solution has always been in plain sight. Be more detailed and thoughtful about fewer things, and stick to issues that directly impact end users. Every single issue that comes our way should be answered with "I'm an end user who doesn't buy domains. How does this impact me?"

Heidi, ICANN does ALAC a massive disservice -- indeed it prevents out execution of our mandate -- by measuring success based on volume of statements. Whether or not that's the case now, it certainly was in the past. In this respect ALAC needs to be a little more GAC-like by choosing fewer things to talk about but having more and weightier things to say about those that we choose to address. We will ALWAYS be overloaded beyond capacity until this is done, and using new tech tools will not solve THAT problem.

- Evan

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