[Gnso-newgtld-wg] A few additions to yesterday's post re a different approach to public interest closed generic strings.

[Alexander Schubert]

Dear Jeff,

 

You wrote:

 

All of that said, here is my proposal:  We keep the No Agreement section in
the report as we have now and put it out for public comment.  We explain in
the section that we are going to take into consideration comments received
and try once more to see if there is way to figure out a mechanism to
measure whether a generic closed TLD can serve a public interest goal during
the (and after) the draft final report public comment period.  

 

I think we ought to clarify first whether or not closed generic gTLDs are
bound to serve a public interest goal by the new gTLD program. If that was
never clarified: then the GNSO has to do it now (not we in this WG - but by
consensus of the stakeholders).

 

I guess once we have answered that fundamental question this WG might easily
come up with suggestions: and we can ask the community to weigh in on them. 

 

By simply stating that we have not been able to come up with policy advice:
what do you expect the community to do? They find a magical solution? It
will be the same all over: some assert that there is no public interest
goal, others do.

 

At bar minimum it must be clarified whether the GNSO stakeholders see the
introduction of closed generic gTLDs as being bound to serve a public
interest goal. 

 

Thanks,

 

Alexander

 

 

 

 

From: Gnso-newgtld-wg <gnso-newgtld-wg-bounces at icann.org
<mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg-bounces at icann.org> > On Behalf Of George Sadowsky
Sent: Monday, July 13, 2020 12:32 PM
To: gnso-newgtld-wg at icann.org <mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg at icann.org> 
Subject: [Gnso-newgtld-wg] A few additions to yesterday's post re a
different approach to public interest closed generic strings.

 

All,

 

I'd like to add one more criterion for comfort in chartering public interest
closed generic string domains:

 

"7. Registration fees and revenue in general should be set at a level to
cover costs and provide a reasonable rate of return for the administration
of the domain.  Should assets build up over time for an unrelated reason, it
should be required that they be periodically withdrawn and dedicated to an
external effort in a manner related to the public interest objective for
which the collective management of the domain enjoys rough consensus."  

 

More important, reflecting on my post of yesterday, it occurred to me that
there were some general principles behind the detail that might be worth
abstracting as guidelines for how we might think about setting ground rules
for structuring closed generic domains to obtain the conduct of participants
and effectiveness of behavior in the public interest that we might want to
see.  I suggest the following (again a rough approximation of what could be
possible):

 

A. The initial applicants for such a domain should all come from a base of
organizations already involved in action with regard to the public interest
issue to be addressed by the domain's name and purpose, and should
constitute a large enough representative subset of that gro p to skeak with
some authority about the substance, importance, and legitimacy of the issue.

 

B. The financial arrangements governing the operation of the domain should
provide a reasonable operational return to t he activities of the domain and
should preclude any windfall gains to the organization.  Rationale: This
should serve to cater to the public service aspects of the activity rather
than any significant financial gain.

 

C. The rules governing the development of the domain should encourage
competition among registrants to provide the best, most relevant and most
useful information and services for beneficiaries who access information
from the site.  Competition should be directed to the area of substantive
content and not to competitive structure or direct financial profit.
Rationale: The primary purpose of the domain will be the substantive content
that it provides.  Competition among organizations is inevitable, so let's
create a structure that focuses that competition on what's most important
for the user: helpful and useful content.

 

 

Is this too draconian?  If the resulting domain is truly to be a public
interest web site, then the incentive for organizations in creating one
should be more in the centralization and enlargement of a more useful and
more visible collection of helpful information, not hopes for large
financial gain.

 

George  

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
George Sadowsky                                    Residence tel:
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8300 Burdette Road, Apt B-472                          Mobile:
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Bethesda MD  20817-2831  USA                                    Skype:
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http://www.georgesadowsky.org/ 

 

 

 

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