<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">Thanks everyone, I will send the draft letter to the list and hopefully clarify my intent. I think Sam Lanfranco captured very well what I was thinking, but I also wanted to convey what Dorothy was mentioning... to many of our members this is/was a decision of concern for financial reasons. I don’t wish to criticize the ombudsman’s position, merely point out that the use of form letters in itself must not be dismissed. Commenting on binary issues should not require a creative writing contest, signing a petition or form letter is a perfectly adequate way to express support and should not be dismissed as “spam”.<div>Cheers Stephanie<br><br><div id="AppleMailSignature" dir="ltr">Sent from my iPhone</div><div dir="ltr"><br>On Sep 12, 2019, at 13:15, Amr Elsadr <<a href="mailto:aelsadr@icannpolicy.ninja">aelsadr@icannpolicy.ninja</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr">Hi,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">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.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Earlier on this thread, Michael Karanicolas said this:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div class=""></div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Sep 12, 2019, at 1:13 AM, Michael Karanicolas <<a href="mailto:mkaranicolas@GMAIL.COM" class="">mkaranicolas@GMAIL.COM</a>> wrote:</div><div class=""><br class="">Ugh. This is a really bad look for the Ombudsman. These kinds of<br class="">coordinated campaigns are absolutely standard practice for civil<br class="">society. Open Media, for example, does this all the time in public<br class="">comment periods, providing their network with a list of "talking<br class="">points" and a link, and encouraging them to submit things on these<br class="">lines. So long as these are actual people or organizations that are<br class="">submitting the comments (as opposed to bots) - it's 100% legitimate.<br class="">There's been no indication that the comments here were automated, or<br class="">that there was anything fishy about the organizations submitting the<br class="">comments.<br class=""></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>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.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>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.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>The campaign was coordinated by the Internet Commerce association (ICA) - “<a href="https://www.internetcommerce.org/about-us/" class="">a non-profit trade organization representing domain name investors, website developers and related companies</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">” (This link is to the ICA's </span><a href="https://www.internetcommerce.org/about-us/" class="">“About” page</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""> if anybody would care to look at it).</span> 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.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>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 <a href="https://www.internetcommerce.org/comment-org/" class="">web page</a> 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.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>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.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>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.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Thanks.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Amr</div><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Sep 12, 2019, at 4:02 PM, dorothy g <<a href="mailto:dgdorothydg@GMAIL.COM" class="">dgdorothydg@GMAIL.COM</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class="">
<div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">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. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br class=""></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">best regards</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Dorothy</div></div><br class=""><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 12:07 AM Stephanie Perrin <<a href="mailto:stephanie.perrin@mail.utoronto.ca" target="_blank" class="">stephanie.perrin@mail.utoronto.ca</a>> wrote:<br class=""></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div class=""><p class=""><font size="+1" class=""><font face="Lucida Grande" class="">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.<br class="">
</font></font></p><p class=""><font size="+1" class=""><font face="Lucida Grande" class="">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. <br class="">
</font></font></p><p class=""><font size="+1" class=""><font face="Lucida Grande" class="">Let me know by the end of the week, if there is no objection I will draft up a letter.<br class="">
</font></font></p><p class=""><font size="+1" class=""><font face="Lucida Grande" class="">Kind regards, <br class="">
</font></font></p><p class=""><font size="+1" class=""><font face="Lucida Grande" class="">Stephanie Perrin</font></font></p><p class=""><font size="+1" class=""><font face="Lucida Grande" class="">NCSG Chair</font></font><br class="">
</p>
<div class="gmail-m_7965337762443441513gmail-m_4164780628373577882moz-cite-prefix">On 2019-09-11 19:23, Ayden Férdeline wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<pre class="gmail-m_7965337762443441513gmail-m_4164780628373577882moz-quote-pre">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 <a class="gmail-m_7965337762443441513gmail-m_4164780628373577882moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:mkaranicolas@GMAIL.COM" target="_blank"><mkaranicolas@GMAIL.COM></a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<pre class="gmail-m_7965337762443441513gmail-m_4164780628373577882moz-quote-pre">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 <a class="gmail-m_7965337762443441513gmail-m_4164780628373577882moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:icann@ferdeline.com" target="_blank">icann@ferdeline.com</a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<pre class="gmail-m_7965337762443441513gmail-m_4164780628373577882moz-quote-pre">Dear all,
I am sharing this article for information purposes:
org price cap complaints more like “spam” says Ombudsman
<a class="gmail-m_7965337762443441513gmail-m_4164780628373577882moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://domainincite.com/24720-org-price-cap-complaints-more-like-spam-says-ombudsman" target="_blank">http://domainincite.com/24720-org-price-cap-complaints-more-like-spam-says-ombudsman</a>
Kind regards,
Ayden Férdeline
</pre>
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all" class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div>-- <br class=""><div dir="ltr" class="gmail-m_7965337762443441513gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr" class="">Dorothy Gordon</div></div>
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