Hi Michael,

Responses in-line and below:

> On Sep 12, 2019, at 7:56 PM, Michael Karanicolas <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Amr,
> 
> I don't think this is the time to re-litigate the argument over price
> caps. There was a spirited debate, and the NCSG took a position: let's
> leave it at that. I don't see the price caps as the focus of this
> discussion anyway.

Agreed.

> 
> Rather, to me this is about an ICANN institution dismissing an
> important civil society advocacy tactic as akin to "spamming" and, to
> the extent that it goes beyond that, about the broader decision to
> ignore a huge number of comments and just plow ahead with the course
> of action they decided on at the outset. This is hugely problematic
> from the perspective of ICANN's public accountability, and the
> question as to whether there is any real substance underlying ICANN
> comment processes at all.

Well…, I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that ICANN’s handling of the “tactic” is as detrimental to its accountability as you say it is. To my knowledge, civil society has never actually used this tactic with ICANN before. I recall it once being used by registrars, and this time by the ICA. ICANN can choose to deal with campaigns like the ICA campaign in the manner it did, but ideally, it would make this clear up-front, not after-the-fact. The NCSG could also choose to disagree with ICANN, and raise the issue with the ICANN Board.

However, it is important to separate our view on this practice in a general sense, and the ICA campaign, which is the issue of the blog that kickstarted this thread.

I agree that ICANN’s handling of this should not be standard practice. At a minimum, their handling of this should be a little more nuanced than simply dismissing the comments because they were part of a coordinated campaign. Although this might be a concern on a broader institutional level, it has never actually been an issue for NCSG specifically. That doesn’t mean we leave it alone, but we can be a bit more tactful in our approach to this, as opposed to supporting the ICA when we should not be in a position to do so at this time.

How about the NCSG address this with ICANN through some other process or occasion in which NCSG concerns are the focus, not those of commercial registrants? We can bring this up during one of our meetings with the ICANN Board, or possibly even via ATRT3, which if I’m not mistaken, you rep NCSG on?

What we should not do is marry this issue to the one of the .org price caps removal on which there is disagreement within NCSG. If we do, then the first paragraph in your email above is pretty pointless. It’d be like saying, let’s not re-litigate the .org price caps issue, but let’s support others who oppose the removal of those caps irrespective of the differences of opinion within our stakeholder group.

Thanks again.

Amr

> That's the focus in my view - not the price
> caps.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Michael
> 
> On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 1:16 PM Amr Elsadr <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Personally, I have a problem with sending a letter berating the ombudsman on this issue, but that will depend on what the NCSG would be advocating in this letter. For better or for worse, not everyone here disagreed about price caps being lifted from the .org Registry Agreement. Some of us, including myself, believe that ICANN should have no business regulating gTLD domain name registration prices. We had quite a lengthy discussion on this back when the Registry Agreement renewal was open for public comment. I’ll try to not be repetitive on the substance of the issue now, but focus more on why I’m concerned with this letter being proposed.
>> 
>> Earlier on this thread, Michael Karanicolas said this:
>> 
>> On Sep 12, 2019, at 1:13 AM, Michael Karanicolas <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> 
>> Ugh. This is a really bad look for the Ombudsman. These kinds of
>> coordinated campaigns are absolutely standard practice for civil
>> society. Open Media, for example, does this all the time in public
>> comment periods, providing their network with a list of "talking
>> points" and a link, and encouraging them to submit things on these
>> lines. So long as these are actual people or organizations that are
>> submitting the comments (as opposed to bots) - it's 100% legitimate.
>> There's been no indication that the comments here were automated, or
>> that there was anything fishy about the organizations submitting the
>> comments.
>> 
>> 
>> Michael, I know you’ve been following this topic closely, so I’d hope that you’d be as clear as possible when commenting on it to the rest of the membership. Pretty much everything you say in your email is true, so I agree with all of it, but when one considers the context, your email could appear to be very misleading.
>> 
>> You rightly state (in very generic terms) that civil society uses this kind of coordinated campaign as standard practice, the provision of a civil society network with talking points, etc… No argument from me on any of that. However, your email suggests, without explicitly stating, that this coordinated campaign, and those who've used it, are civil society actors. This is, of course, categorically false.
>> 
>> The campaign was coordinated by the Internet Commerce association (ICA) - “a non-profit trade organization representing domain name investors, website developers and related companies” (This link is to the ICA's “About” page  if anybody would care to look at it). Domain name investors (aka domainers) are commercial, not non-commercial registrants, who are represented in the Business Constituency. If the NCSG is going to send a letter to the ICANN Board supporting the ICA’s position, then maybe we should have a discussion about that, instead of contributing to passing them off a civil society organization/network.
>> 
>> In all honesty, I bring this up, not because I don't believe we should coordinate with other constituencies when our goals are aligned. Rather, I honestly don’t believe it is in the best interest of non-commercial registrants (or the DNS as a whole) to give ICANN control of how gTLD domain names are priced, while the ICA seems to believe the opposite. If NCSG is going to take a principled stand on this, we need to do so both when it does, or doesn’t work in our favor. Also fyi, here is the web page that the ICA used to recruit commenters on the .org Registry Renewal agreement. A link to this page was also provided by the ombudsman in his evaluation of the Request for Reconsideration.
>> 
>> If the NCSG would like to send the ICANN Board a letter expressing disagreement with inclusion of the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) in the .org Registry Agreement, I’m all for that. There are several sound arguments, mostly concerning due process, on why this should not be done at this time. However, let's not pretend that the ICA campaign is a civil society one, and that we should support it. If we, as a stakeholder group, disagree with removal of price caps (which again, I personally do not at all), let’s disagree for our own reasons and not on behalf of domainers. At a minimum, if we do defend use of coordinated campaigns, like this one, during public comment periods, let's at least be honest with ourselves and the ICANN Board about it. Perhaps even defend it in a generic sense, as opposed to trying to pass off the ICA as a trade organization that is somehow representative of civil society, because it really isn’t.
>> 
>> The ICA is concerned with making profit in a secondary market in which domain names (both gTLD and ccTLD) are bought and sold. It is therefore in their best interest to use whatever means are available to them to keep registration and renewal prices down, and their profits up. The NCSG does not, and should not have such concerns.
>> 
>> Thanks.
>> 
>> Amr
>> 
>> On Sep 12, 2019, at 4:02 PM, dorothy g <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> 
>> Dear all,  First, thank you Ayden for sharing the information. Is the ombudsman trying to tell us that the concerns are not real?  I support Stephanie's position.  Farzaneh we are not trying to reform the ombudsman's office but the price cap on .org is such a serious matter that in my view Stephanie's position makes sense.  The whole situation does raise credibility issues with regard to the office and the individual occupying that office. Certainly if this was a city level ombuds person they may have had to resign.
>> 
>> best regards
>> Dorothy
>> 
>> On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 12:07 AM Stephanie Perrin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I think that the matter merits a response from us.  Civil society functions in broad coalitions and does a lot of its work through petitions and sign on campaigns.  To dismiss a form letter is therefore unacceptable for these reasons; to interpret a signature on a form letter as spam is in my view at least demonstrating a failure to understand how public campaigns actually work.  The onus is on us, as users of this technique, to correct this assertion.
>>> 
>>> If our members support this opinion, I will draft up a letter to send to the Board.  The Ombudsman is of course entirely entitled to his opinion and response, but we should explain to the Board how we feel about the matter.
>>> 
>>> Let me know by the end of the week, if there is no objection I will draft up a letter.
>>> 
>>> Kind regards,
>>> 
>>> Stephanie Perrin
>>> 
>>> NCSG Chair
>>> 
>>> On 2019-09-11 19:23, Ayden Férdeline wrote:
>>> 
>>> Thanks Michael, I agree that the optics here are poor - particularly given this does seem inconsistent with how ICANN has previously treated coordinated submissions. Back in 2017, when numerous intellectual property interests were sending in identical, form letters regarding the importance of maintaining open-ended unaccountable Whois, I didn't see these being disregarded as being spam submissions. Nor should they have been, as while the messaging was identical, the sentiments were sincerely held. I hope that the Ombudsman might reconsider his stance on this matter.
>>> 
>>> Ayden Férdeline
>>> 
>>> ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
>>> On Thursday, 12 September 2019 01:13, Michael Karanicolas <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Ugh. This is a really bad look for the Ombudsman. These kinds of
>>> coordinated campaigns are absolutely standard practice for civil
>>> society. Open Media, for example, does this all the time in public
>>> comment periods, providing their network with a list of "talking
>>> points" and a link, and encouraging them to submit things on these
>>> lines. So long as these are actual people or organizations that are
>>> submitting the comments (as opposed to bots) - it's 100% legitimate.
>>> There's been no indication that the comments here were automated, or
>>> that there was anything fishy about the organizations submitting the
>>> comments.
>>> 
>>> Even putting aside his ultimate recommendation to dismiss the
>>> complaint, this is a very disappointing and narrow-minded stance for
>>> the Ombudsman to take.
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> 
>>> Michael Karanicolas
>>> Wikimedia Fellow
>>> Yale Law School
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Sep 11, 2019 at 3:22 PM Ayden Férdeline [log in to unmask] wrote:
>>> 
>>> Dear all,
>>> I am sharing this article for information purposes:
>>> org price cap complaints more like “spam” says Ombudsman
>>> http://domainincite.com/24720-org-price-cap-complaints-more-like-spam-says-ombudsman
>>> Kind regards,
>>> Ayden Férdeline
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Dorothy Gordon
>> 
>>