2020

Despite my misgivings about the sham that is the comment period for the Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process which I've written about in the past 4 blog posts, I attempted to continue to submit my comments today, which I had already started over the weekend (already more than 20 hours invested, to get to about 25% through the various questions, including background research and reading the report, etc.). However, the comment system is entirely broken.

The comment period for the Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process ends on May 4, 2020, just 7 days from now (which is not sufficient time to do a thorough analysis). I have previously written about it (see my prior blog posts here, here and here). However, it continues to be fraught with problems, including coordinated duplicative submissions.

ICANN actively mistreats stakeholders who don't understand English when it comes to policy development. While ICANN pretends to consider the global public interest, that cannot happen when non-English fluent participants are treated unfairly as second-class citizens. This is evident in the Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process which is now open for public comment, as I've been writing about it for the past week (see my prior blog posts here and here).

In my prior blog post, I wrote about the public comment period for the  Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process. Any comments that are submitted by the public will be analyzed by the working group members. I believe that working group has been captured, and here are some numbers to back up that belief.

ICANN has an open comment period for the  Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process. It ends in just 14 days, would have a great impact on registrants' rights and not a single person has submitted any comments to date, as of the time of this post.

To be able to comment, one has to first read the 147 page initial report. Then, one has to contemplate its contents, analyze it, and research related issues, including what its authors removed from it (see below). Then, one has to carefully submit thoughtful comments via an online form that has 192 separate sections!  The document simply describing all the questions in the online form is a whopping 71 pages. To actually submit thoughtful comments would take an enormous amount of time, far more than is available.

Over 9000 comments were submitted to ICANN regarding the controversial Proposed Amendment 3 to the .COM Registry Agreement. The staff report had been due on March 6, 2020, before ICANN67 commenced (see archive.org for proof). However, ICANN has quietly changed the due date for the staff report to March 16, 2020, after ICANN67 is complete.

It is very odd that that they would extend the report's due date, especially given that they would not extend the deadline for public comments (to ensure that the public had ample opportunity to reply to some of the statements that had been submitted by other stakeholders). ICANN has one set of standards for the public (deadlines are deadlines!), but another set of standards for their staff (deadlines are not really deadlines!).

It appears to me that this is a sign that ICANN intends to ignore the overwhelming opposition by the public to the proposed contract, and they hope to avoid immediate public scrutiny of such a biased report (just like their dot-ORG fiasco) by delaying it until after ICANN67 is complete. Had a biased staff report been delivered on schedule, they'd face difficult questions during their Public Forum. ICANN68 does not happen until late June of 2020, and by that time the ICANN Board may have already decided to rubber stamp the bad deal, making questions at ICANN68 pointless.

Given the above potential for "gaming" by ICANN staff, it's imperative that ICANN makes no decision regarding the dot-COM agreement until the public has an opportunity to scrutinize the staff report and provide feedback to the ICANN Board. As I pointed out in my own submission (point #17), there is no requirement to complete a "negotiation" with Verisign until October or November of 2020, so ICANN should refrain from making any decisions until at least after ICANN68.

Below is a (slightly reformatted) version of the comments I submitted to ICANN today regarding the Proposed Amendment 3 to the .COM Registry Agreement. The deadline for comments  is just a few hours away, so hopefully they inspire others to submit comments, if they’ve not already done so. [Note: I submitted a 2nd comment later in the day, which is below the first comment]