RE: [ga] GNSO Council: Ignoring the public, again

["Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Danny,

Please note my responses below.

Chuck Gomes
 
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
> [mailto:owner-ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Danny Younger
> Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2007 9:14 PM
> To: Avri Doria; GA
> Subject: [ga] GNSO Council: Ignoring the public, again
> 
> Avri,
> 
> Having listened to the entirety of today's GNSO Council 
> session, allow me to express my disappointment at your 
> failure to properly review the 81 public comments tendered on 
> the topic of new gTLDs.

I am not sure what you consider proper review to be. Please explain.

> 
> Your agenda called for a review of the topic, followed by a 
> review of the public comments, followed by a review of staff 
> notes and topic culmination in a vote.
>  
> 
> After you discussed the principles, recommendations and 
> aspects of implementation (which concluded at one hour and 
> twenty-two minutes into the session) you went directly to the 
> vote and totally bypassed the agenda segment that called for 
> a review of the public comments.

You neglected to note that earlier in the meeting Liz Williams gave a
brief overview of the review of the public comments she had written and
distributed to the Council and that Avri provided opportunity for
additional comments from Council members.  You also failed to note that
on quite a few instances during discussion of the recommendations
Councilors made reference to public comments.  In particular, references
to public comments were made by several of us regarding recommendations
6, 19 and 20.
> 
> The entire point of having a public comment session is to 
> allow for the possibility of corrections --  you did not 
> allow for the benefit of public input to properly accrue and 
> instead the Council voted on the sum of the recommendations 
> as a package.

I completely disagree with you on this point.  I like Avri and I am sure
other Councilors as well did review the public comments throughout the
comment period and after it ended.  In my opinion, the overwhelming
majority of comments repeated input that had already been considered by
the Committee and did not introduce any new issues.  This should not be
surprising because there were a multitude of opportunities for public
comment throughout the over 1.5 years of the PDP.  I do agree with you
that the public comment period is an opportunity for corrections, but
the fact that there were none does not mean that that opportunity was
not provided.  If there had been any clear evidence in the public
comments that justified a correction, we would have done so.  But I
personally do not believe there was.  You may disagree with me and I can
respect that.  I suspect that there may even be a few Councilors who may
disagree with me based on comments they shared in our meeting yesterday.
But a supermajority of Councilors did not believe that there was strong
enough basis for making changes.

Regarding Recommendation 19, one that you know I have interest in as a
member of the RyC and one that was discussed quite a lot on this list,
there was fairly extensive discussion about this during the meeting.  I
personally made several comments including making reference to the
public comments and, as I recall, Avri referred to discussion that
occurred on this list.  For the first time, I felt like some of the
concerns the registries had expressed many times about this
recommendation were recognized by several others on the Council.
Whereas I did not believe that there was enough support to make any
changes at this time, I still believe that as we continue to move
forward that some changes could be made before new gTLDs are introduced.
There is indisputable evidence from our meeting yesterday that the
public comments were considered by several Councilors with regard to
Recommendation 19. 
Av 
> 
> If this was going to be a thumbs up or thumbs down 
> proposition, then why did you even bother to ask for public 
> comments?  If there was no intent on the part of the Council 
> to modify, amend or correct any language in response to 
> public input, then why are we being put through this charade 
> of participation?

You already answered your own question.  It was done to see if there was
justification to make any corrections.

And let me add one more point of information regarding consideration of
public comments. You submitted a comment that was somewhat different
than most of the other comments in that it did not repeat an issue that
had already been considered by the Committee.  For ease of reference, it
can be found here: http://www.icann.org/tlds/new-gtld-sow-06sep07.htm
Because you listened to the MP3 of the meeting, you know that, toward
the end of the meeting and before 'any other business', I gave a brief
progress report of the work being done in planning for the New gTLD
Workshop in L.A.  I made brief mention of the fact that we are working
on a supplemental document, not to replace the full report, but
hopefully to provide a resource that will accomplish the objectives you
expressed in your posted comments.

> 
> 
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>        
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