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Re: [council] Proposed amendment to BCUC motion


Mike Rodenbaugh wrote:
What else do the Registrars not like in their contracts?  Maybe you
could propose a PDP to examine them for awhile, obstruct and obfuscate
the process so that there is no consensus as to continued viability of
those provisions, and so argue that they too should be removed.  If you
are successful with this on WHOIS, what will be next?

Mike - I believe the record is extremely clear on where the obfuscation and obstruction has come from. At each turn, your and your "Big Company" brethren, in the guises of the IPC, ISPC and BC have thwarted every attempt at progress, and even in situations where there has been clear majority support for proposals at the council level, the registries, NCUC and registrars have taken the time to try and bring your views into the fold. This last round of work was specifically designed to enlist your support and instead your community ran the process into the ground with excessively unreasonable and selfish demands resulting in an unimplementable mess. The failure here belongs to you and your constituency, not mine and there are literally hundreds of citations on the record to support this.

So the answer then ought to be to work and discuss further to try to
reach consensus.  The WG found consensus on several fundamental points,
even as to a general OPoC policy that was not supported by 3
Constituencies.  The WG also several factual points of contention that,
if resolved, could lead to consensus policy.  We should not throw away
all the work that has gone into this, and decide on a radical solution
that has never previously been proposed or discussed.

The WG found one thing, and one thing only - that those parties that require access to protect their commercial interests tend to agree with one another on how they should receive access - although even that seemed to break down at the end of the WG when the banks and other sectoral participants withdrew their support for the report.

In other words, the working group did not find consensus on anything, despite the best efforts of many to dress the pig up.


The existing contractual provisions are certainly not 'unsupported' and
obviously were the product of consensus among not only the contracting
parties but also the rest of the community.  Everyone or at least
'almost everyone' should agree on any change to that status quo,
including of course any proposal to eliminate it.

The existing contractual provisions aren't supported by policy. Whether these clauses are preserved or eliminated is a matter that will solely be decided by the contracted parties, although I am sure that ICANN will in some way consult with its stakeholders similar to how it has in past contract negotiations. Nonetheless, my proposal is simply that the GNSO recognizes that there is no consensus in this area, and until there is, relieve contract parties from Whois obligations for which there is no broad consensus support or pre-existing consensus policy.

After 7 years of study, I think its time we move beyond the notion that there will be consensus on the question of whois. If I'm right with this assessment, then council needs to seriously consider the investment it is making in this area. And, by extension, if there is no basis for consensus in this area, then we need to start thinking about sunsetting those provisions that were initially enacted to support legacy practices while consensus policy was being created.

--
Regards,

Ross Rader
Director, Retail Services
Tucows Inc.

http://www.domaindirect.com
t. 416.538.5492



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