Introduction
Alan Greenberg, ALAC member from the North American Regional At-Large Organization (NARALO) and the ALAC Liaison to the GNSO, composed an initial draft of this Statement [PDF, 217 KB] after discussion of the topic within At-Large and on the Mailing Lists.
On 21 February 2014, this Statement was posted on the At-Large Related-Issue Compliance Submission Process Workspace.
On that same day, Olivier Crépin-Leblond, Chair of the ALAC, requested ICANN Policy Staff in support of the ALAC to send a Call for Comments on the Recommendations to all At-Large members via the ALAC-Announce Mailing List.
On 25 February 2014, this Statement was discussed in the ALAC Monthly Teleconference. During that meeting, the draft Statement was discussed by all the At-Large members participating via Remote Participation.
The Chair of the ALAC then requested that a ratification vote be held on the Statement. Staff then confirmed that the vote resulted in the ALAC endorsing the Statement with 14 votes in favor, 0 votes against, and 0 abstentions.
You may review the result independently under: https://community.icann.org/x/3xHRAg.
Summary
- ICANN Contractual Compliance (CC) accepts complaints either on a one-by-one basis using web-based submission tools, or for selected partners, using a bulk-submission process. The ALAC understanding is that regardless of the submission vehicle, each complaint is reviewed on its merits and processed individually.
- However, this methodology is not suitable when the subject of a complaint is not an individual occurrence, but a more wide-spread problem that affects multiple gTLD registrations.
- Just as the UDRP allows multiple related disputes to be filed in the same single complaints, CC should allow multiple, related issues to be raised in a single complaint.
- If such a process were created, the workload of CC could be better controlled, and substantive issues could be resolved quicker and earlier than by using today's methodology alone.
- It is reasonable that, at least at the start, the use of such a "related complaint" submission process be used only by those with whom ICANN can develop a good working relationship, and possibly accreditation for the existing bulk-submission tool could be used to determine who could use the new process.
- This recommendation is being submitted to CC on behalf of the At-Large Advisory Committee, and the ALAC believes that it is to all parties' mutual advantage that we have the opportunity to further investigate such a process with Contractual Compliance.