[council] Next steps with the new gTLD recommendations

["Bruce Tonkin" <Bruce.Tonkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello All,

With respect to the Council meeting on 7 June, I would like to get a
sense of how the Council wants to handle the current new gTLD
recommendations.

As others have pointed out, some of the recommendations require further
work with respect to developing dispute resolution processes.     There
are also no doubt some recommendations with stronger support than
others.    The intent is that the recommendations as currently drafted
by staff are capable of supermajority support based on the discussions
during the new gTLD committee meetings.

My current concern is that if we don't move the work we have done to
some kind of vote - which may accept all or some of the recommendations
by super-majority vote - we are in danger of losing the consensus that
has been built up through many meetings.   I also feel we are at the
point of diminishing returns.   No significant new issues were raised in
Lisbon that had not already been discussed in the new gTLD committee.

I feel that there is a community expectation that the GNSO Council
either conclude its work, or at least identify which bits are concluded
to allow the Board to consider the recommendations and to allow staff to
begin to do further work.    We don't want the GNSO to be seen as the
barrier to new TLDs (either IDN or non-IDN based).

If we can't make some sort of statement about the level of consensus of
the recommendations, it becomes hard to justify ICANN staff spending
additional time working on the implementation details.

I expect that as staff begin working on the implementation details of
dispute processes and other implementation details, that they may seek
further clarification of the recommendation, or even recommend the
removal of a recommendation if not external dispute process can be
developed.     I would also expect that we will get more input on the
dispute processes once detailed drafts are published - this will ensure
that issues such as freedom of speech are properly addressed in the
dispute processes.  


No doubt as new people become involved in ICANN and the GNSO - there
will be desire to reset the clock, and start the policy development
again.  I feel however that we will never get a perfect answer, and that
it is better to proceed in such a way that minimises risk in the first
round, but also allows flexibility to update the recommendations based
on experience of the first round.


It would be useful to hear the views of Council members on this topic
via the Council mailing list prior to the Council meeting next week.

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin