Link | Posted on May 20, 2013 10:00 PM PDT by Suresh Ramasubramanian

ICANN certainly needs to listen to GAC in regards to sensitive strings. There are certainly issues with music and the protection of intellectual property given the ineffectiveness of the DMCA and the loopholes used by many to monetize piracy while turning a blind eye to content creators. As a matter of fact 39% of pirates are classed as "ambiguous infringers" i.e downloaders who aren't sure what is legal and what isn't (Source: Ofcom). This is the heart of the matter with many of these sensitive strings. The perception of legitimacy is what will harm not only content creators but also enrich pirates and abusers who will have new signal posts i.e sensitive strings to capitalize on.

Many are quick to shoot down GAC but many of us have been expressing these concerns to ICANN for years. Also the issue of community establishment and the 14-point threshold criteria has never been "developed" with multi-stakeholder ICANN community advice/input (as ICANN now mentions in their Beijing Public Forum responses) since ICANN has never responded to countless clarification questions in regards to how the determination of the 14-point threshold was developed, quantified and substantiated. ICANN mentions in their Public Comments responses that "an application that fails community priority evaluations simply means that it does not meet the developed criteria of a defined community under the New gTLD program. It does not necessarily nullify the existence of that particular community." So does that mean that communities have to pass ICANN's "developed criteria of a defined community" so that ICANN can listen to those communities expressing their opinions? GAC's advice "that in those cases where a community, which is clearly impacted by a set of new TLD applications in contention, has expressed a collective and clear opinion on those applications, such opinion should be duly taken into account, together with all other relevant information."

We have expressed these issues in Community Objections with the International Chamber of Commerce before the GAC Beijing Communique advice was announced as well as in recent letters to GAC/ICANN. The category-based approach and enhanced safeguards is not new information to ICANN applicants and they should have taken these GAC advice issues in consideration as well as the nuances and sensitivities for each applied-for string and the community their policies impact before they applied for them. GAC's advice is important and must be taken into consideration by ICANN. It is within GAC members' right to express their opinion on any string independently through Early Warnings or GAC to collectively give their advice on a breadth of category-based sensitive strings as expressed in the GAC Beijing Communique.

We support GAC and their efforts to protect the global public interest and to serve a strong reminder to some applicants that certain sensitive strings must have the appropriate safeguards and governance structures to prevent abuse and ensure the strings are in the best interest of the communities they serve not conflicting with financial interests of some applicants at the expense of IP protection and high likelihood of material harm to the legitimate interests of certain sensitive communities.

Constantine Roussos
.MUSIC

Link | Posted on May 13, 2013 1:08 PM PDT by Constantine Roussos

I agree that the approach you've described might be appropriate for many of the TLD's that feel the GAC safeguards might apply to them.

While some applicants are digging in and resisting any changes to their applications, agreeing to a compromise such as this to address the GAC's concerns may well be the path of least resistance.

The industry has a lot of experience in providing registrant verification and enhanced trademark protections.  This experience can be used to provide more efficient methods than has been used in the past.

If followed, it certainly will translate into some extra work and costs that many applicants were hoping to avoid in their business plans.  But it could mean the difference between launching in 2013 versus 2014 or even later.  As you say, it could well be the pragmatic approach for many to take.

best regards,

Tom Barrett
EnCirca

Link | Posted on May 10, 2013 6:27 PM PDT by Thomas Barrett

Link | Posted on May 08, 2013 2:47 PM PDT by Paul Budde

These companies operate within franchises, so there is no competition between them.

While many times it is exclusive, it isn't always.  That's up to the city councils to decide, so if this is an important issue to citizens, they can make their voice heard.

Link | Posted on May 08, 2013 12:33 PM PDT by Frank Bulk

Link | Posted on May 03, 2013 3:02 PM PDT by Stéphane Van Gelder

Link | Posted on May 01, 2013 8:04 PM PDT by Frank Bulk

We have to fix email.  And we are doing it, albeit at a significantly slower pace than, say, http enhancements.

I'd say these are enhancements, not fixes. By fixes I would think of something that would replace SMTP, like HTTP 1.1 can be seen a fix for HTTP 1.0. I think enhancements of email are a good thing, and many of them are needed.

Spam and phishing are continuing to grow, at least in a cumulative sense.

But that's irrelevant, isn't it? It doesn't matter if a trillion, or a quintillion email messages have been sent in the past. No one has to deal with them any more. What matters is what happens now.

A number of battles are not yet fully won, though.

Sure - I agree with that.

Link | Posted on May 01, 2013 4:24 AM PDT by Martijn Grooten

> The first is that we don't have to fix email.

We have to fix email.  And we are doing it, albeit at a significantly slower pace than, say, http enhancements.  Email authentication and abuse reporting, for example, are currently experiencing some achievements.

> Still, if spam volumes had continued to grow, we would have had little choice but to introduce a sub-optimal replacement.

I'm not clear on third conditional there.  Spam and phishing are continuing to grow, at least in a cumulative sense.  A number of by-country sub-optimal replacements exist.  Their own local nature prevents them to be global solutions, but the risk of switching to such kind of infrastructure is non-zero.  The edges of those government-endorsed walled gardens can be joined in a way similar to how ITU standardized telephony several years ago.

> Despite the doom predicted by some a decade ago, email is still with us — and we have won a number of important battles against spam. But if we want to win the war, we need to shift our focus.

I share the optimism, and look forward to a second installment to explain what the new focus is.  A number of battles are not yet fully won, though.

Link | Posted on May 01, 2013 4:09 AM PDT by Alessandro Vesely

while current allocations of address resources are associated with a fee, the fee is not uniform in time, scope and condition.

the references to "control" and "power" are not useful.

Link | Posted on Apr 30, 2013 7:54 PM PDT by Eric Brunner-Williams

Link | Posted on Apr 29, 2013 6:18 PM PDT by Frank Bulk

A fairly good summary of the report and related issues. You do note that

In either case, a greater degree of transparency about refused transfers and the basis for ARIN’s determination would be welcome.

While probably not meeting all of your requirements, we have been providing increased information about transfer requests, including metrics on those pending and denied, in our periodic reporting. This was presented as well as ARIN 31, in the Update on Resource Transfers presentation that I gave, which is available here: Update on Resource Transfers

FYI,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN

Link | Posted on Apr 29, 2013 2:17 PM PDT by John Curran

Link | Posted on Apr 24, 2013 4:30 AM PDT by Frank Bulk

Link | Posted on Apr 23, 2013 2:18 PM PDT by George Kirikos

Thanks for your timely, open and transparent response.

With regard to my first question, thank you for clarifying between the winning bid and the winning price. I see how my choice of wording may have created an issue. I agree the winning price is the more critical factor. While I think knowing the exact finial winning price would be the more optimal outcome for all stakeholders, I understand that in trying to balance competing interests/concerns compromises needs to be made.  I think disclosing the pricing per round and the knowing the final range is a reasonable compromise for those applicants participating in this first round.

With regard to my second question, I believe your clarification in connection with Question 1 is important. Currently I have only one applicant which has expressed an interest in the use of a private auction. I believe based on the clarification you have provided and re-reading the RFP, non-portfolio applicants would be provided equal footing in this round in connection portfolio applicants. So in light of my previous rating I would change my "bad" to an "indifferent."

I appreciate your response to my third and fourth questions.  Having addressed my primary concern of what data will be available to participants and when, I think my primary concerns of portfolio applicants having a competitive advantage in the current/future round has been largely addressed/mitigated. I appreciate that the service you are trying to provide is one in which one must balance many competing interests. 

I have been impressed by the professionalism of the Applicant Auction team and I look forward to participating in your upcoming auction.

Link | Posted on Apr 23, 2013 6:13 AM PDT by Michael D. Palage