[CWG-Stewardship] My concerns with the draft proposal and an alternative option

[Malcolm Hutty]

On 30/11/2014 23:21, Martin Boyle wrote:
> Malcolm, Chuck,
> 
> I think I'm with what Chuck is saying.
> 
> It has always worried me that people try to use IANA to solve
> problems where IANA has no power or authority.  This is where I have
> problems - otherwise of no concern to me! - with linking to the gTLD
> policy and contracting process.  That element - and the way the ICANN
> Board listens to the GNSO policy process or re-writes contract
> conditions or enforcement approaches - is, in my mind, firmly in
> stream 1 and nothing to do with the IANA oversight transition.  (Of
> course, as I said in Frankfurt, I am an outsider to this part of the
> namespace, so I'm ok with being put right.)
> 
> But to make myself perfectly clear, I see a massive problem with
> using the IANA function to re-assess that which has been assessed in
> the approvals or enforcement function in ICANN, given the contractual
> relationship between the gTLDs and ICANN.  Put another way, this
> would be for IANA to turn down a delegation that has met the
> assessment proposal (litigation risks, to say the least), or to
> refuse a revocation request by ICANN because of failure to meet
> contract conditions (if IANA is no longer run in IANA, why wouldn't
> ICANN sue?).  Such authority to playing the maverick could have
> serious consequences for ccTLDs and national decisions and
> authority.
> 

[snip one paragraph]

> 
> For me the red-line is that IANA operations should not introduce new
> policies or conditions on the grounds that it fits more nicely with a
> particular model or that the policy was lacking.
> 
> Hope this helps to clarify where I'm coming from.

Martin,

I agree with all the above, very much so.

Here is the paragraph I removed:

> What I was trying to say was, where we have particular concerns for
> the transition that would more properly belong to stream 1 - be that
> telling them that there needs to be mechanisms to ensure that the
> integrity of the gTLD policy processes and implementation are
> assured, whatever - we flag this to them for attention.

I am content that proposals for dealing with those other matters be
developed in Stream 1, but I think they should then be incorporated in
the report of this CCWG. My main reasons are contained in a very long
message in reply to Alan that will follow this reply.

I would add this in response to you: by incorporating those
recommendations in this CCWG's report we will have the opportunity to
align them precisely to avoid the possibility they would be misconstrued
as providing an opportunity to contest policy decisions through
IANA-appeals processes, as we both would wish to avoid.


> Cheers,
> 
> Martin
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: Gomes, Chuck
> [mailto:cgomes at verisign.com] Sent: 30 November 2014 22:39 To: Malcolm
> Hutty; Martin Boyle; Phil Corwin; Olivier Crepin-Leblond;
> cwg-stewardship at icann.org Subject: RE: [CWG-Stewardship] My concerns
> with the draft proposal and an alternative option
> 
> Malcolm,
> 
> I of course cannot speak for Martin nor am I trying to, but let me
> say that I think I have the same concerns as you regarding ICANN
> Accountability and I think we need to continue to ensure that the
> connection to what we are doing in the IANA CWG connects with overall
> ICANN accountability.  I think our end product must ensure that or we
> will have ignored one the most unified points that the community has
> communicated.  That said though, I don't how the PRT can enforce that
> as you suggest.  But we can write our proposal in such a way that it
> will ultimately require that.  We don't need to do that for this
> version though.
> 
> Chuck
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org
> [mailto:cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Malcolm
> Hutty Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2014 4:23 PM To: Martin Boyle; Phil
> Corwin; Olivier Crepin-Leblond; cwg-stewardship at icann.org Subject:
> Re: [CWG-Stewardship] My concerns with the draft proposal and an
> alternative option
> 
> On 30/11/2014 19:51, Martin Boyle wrote:
>> As for the link to ICANN accountability:  with what we've got from
>>  Frankfurt, I think we have a reasonable idea of what we need from
>>  stream 1.  We cannot tell stream 1 what answer we want, but we can
>>  tell it what issue(s) we need them to consider.  Again, if we seek
>> to engineer the whole piece, we risk simply missing the deadline
>> and trespassing on the responsibilities of others.
> 
> Martin,
> 
> This paragraph opened my eyes to a possible misunderstanding on my
> part of your position.
> 
> As you know, I think that resolving some (not all, but some critical)
> ICANN accountability issues is essential to a successful NTIA
> transition. After Frankfurt, I had begun to lose confidence that
> CCWG-Stewardship shared this view.
> 
> This was very disheartening to me. I have no objection to leaving
> ICANN accountability issues to be developed by CCWG-Accountability,
> so long as the essential Workstream 1 issues make it into the final
> ICG proposal to NTIA. But since CCWG-Accountability doesn't report to
> the ICG but the ICANN Board, I think it is incumbent on this working
> group to pick up on their output, and to ensure that ICG hears their
> output as part of the "naming community's proposal". Hence my request
> for some placeholder text in this proposal that CCWG-Accountability
> can fill out.
> 
> Seeing that there is no such placeholder text now, and having had
> several of my approaches to try to achieve such text rejected in
> Frankfurt, I had begun to think that the rest of this group wanted to
> exclude anything relating to ICANN's policy-making role from the
> ultimate transition proposal. That worried me greatly.
> 
> Your paragraph above gives me new hope that we can have a meeting of
> minds, so please let me check that I have understood you correctly. 
> When you say "what we need from workstream 1", do you indeed mean
> that the proposal from the names community, that goes to ICG, and
> ultimately to NTIA, must include such proposals for ICANN
> accountability as CCWG-Accountability decide are an essential
> precondition for NTIA transition?
> 
> Or to put it another way, if CCWG-Accountability decide that ICANN
> must be contractually bound to certain commitments to ensure that
> gTLD policy remains transparent, community-based bottom policy (and
> so forth), are you open to the possibility of having those
> commitments written into the requirements that the PRT is to enforce
> on ICANN, alongside the requirements for the IANA functions that this
> CCWG has defined?
> 
> Kind Regards,
> 
> Malcolm.
> 

-- 
            Malcolm Hutty | tel: +44 20 7645 3523
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