Listening to the Names Council
I have aged. I have been listening to the last Names Council call. You can listen to it too, here. I can't seem to tear myself away. It seems as if Christopher Wilkinson saw my last post — he muttered something about hoping the casual comment he was about to make would not be “blogged all over the world.” Thomas Roessler pointed out that an mp3 recording of the call would be made available. But, rest assured, I am not blogging Mr. Wilkinson's remarks.
I am, however, troubled by the overall confusion that appears to reign at this moment with respect to what this PDP is designed to do.
If registries don't need to ask permission before acting to introduce something that isn't a registry service, and let's assume that the SiteFinder service was not a registry service, then how would this PDP apply to such introductions?
What's the relationship of all this to a consensus policy? If this is a consensus policy process, then if the registries resist the policy, it must mean that consensus will, in the end, not be documented. A mere vote of the GNSO won't do it. The objection of the registries, if they do object, will be eminently reasonable and not designed to harm anyone else — so it will block consensus. If anyone's an “impacted party,” they are. A statement during this call that no one constituency has any more “rights” than another has no application to the consensus process — which attempts to listen to particularly affected parties. If this isn't a consensus process, then why would registries adhere to the output?
What's the scope of the process that this PDP will guide? Who will decide what steps by registries have to enter into the stream of decisions to be made by ICANN?
I'm still listening. I'm getting older by the minute. I'm confused. If this is internet governance, we need some better governors.