[Gnso-newgtld-wg] June 14 call - "Objections"

Wed Jun 13 14:17:37 UTC 2018

Dear Working Group members,

My advance apologies for not being able to attend the June 14 call due to
other commitments. I would like to add the following when discussing section
1.8.1 of Dispute Proceedings (Objections).

Missing from the deliberations section on Community Objections (1.8.1, f,
page 12) is the issue I raised in WT3 that panelists must be properly
trained and managed to ensure they avoid delivering decisions that are based
on (or rely on) any assumptions about future contention resolution
proceedings and decisions.

The example that I provided was a Community Objection filed against .LGBT.
In this case, the panelist made a statement in his decision that assumes the
gay community would be awarded a gTLD of its own (ie. .GAY) and therefore he
believed that material detriment did not exist in letting .LGBT proceed.
This assumption has not yet come to fruition and therefore the material
detriment has not yet been eliminated. It was the panelists' job to
eliminate harm to a community, but instead he punted his responsibilities.

Panelist decision on .LGBT -
https://newgtlds.icann.org/sites/default/files/drsp/25nov13/determination-1-
1-868-8822-en.pdf (page 8)

23. ILGA has shown a likelihood of material detriment to the legitimate
interests of the gay community if there is no gTLD designed to serve the gay
community and to operate under appropriate principles that grant safety and
financial rewards for the gay community. ILGA has not proven that other
gTLDs with names that can also be targeted to the gay community are likely
to cause material detriment to the legitimate interests of the gay community
or a significant portion thereof. They can only cause a certain amount of
competition, and Afilias has convincingly argued that there is a legitimate
interest in targeting the gay community without belonging to it or without
belonging to the portion of it that supports the string .gay. A coexistence
of an "official" gTLD of the gay community and another "unofficial" gTLD is
no material detriment to the legitimate interests of the gay community. 

Concern about this shortcoming was raised with ICANN at the time and a
request was even submitted to ICANN to consider putting .LGBT put on hold
until all material detriment highlighted by the panelist was eliminated (ie.
the gay community being awarded .GAY as assumed by the panelist). ICANN
rejected the request and also made it clear that the decisions in Community
Objections have no mandatory bearing on other contention resolution
proceedings like CPE. 

Despite the panelist acknowledging the likelihood of material detriment to
the gay community in certain conditions of this particular Community
Objection, there was no procedure or accountability to ensure the conditions
were avoided once the decision was given to ICANN. 

I request that this issue be included in the deliberations section for full
transparency on the Objections topic. I am happy to take any questions on
this topic here on the list.

Much thanks

Jamie

Jamie Baxter

dotgay LLC

 <mailto:jamie at dotgay.com> jamie at dotgay.com

 <http://www.dotgay.com/> www.dotgay.com

A Certified LGBT Business Enterprise (LGBTBE)

Please join us on Facebook at  <http://www.facebook.dotgay.com/>
www.facebook.dotgay.com

and follow us at  <http://www.twitter.com/dotgay> www.twitter.com/dotgay

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/gnso-newgtld-wg/attachments/20180613/eac07b37/attachment.html>