Re: [ga] DNSO General Assembly call to change seating rule

[Kendall Dawson <kendall@obs-us.com>]

At 11:35 AM 11/11/00 -0800, Kent Crispin wrote:
>But pointless resolutions demanding that
>Directors resign etc have undone all that.

Kent,

If you are referring to my forwarded message from Jeff Williams -- I 
apologize to Mr. Stubbs and the rest of the list. It was not my intention 
to engage in name-calling or personal attacks on Ken Stubbs. But, the 
reasons behind my support of Mr. Stubbs' resignation are NOT pointless and 
are completely credible.  It bothers me that according to ICANN's by-laws 
[article V-7] conflicts of interest are prohibited. But, the supporting 
organizations (and specifically the NC Chair) do not have to adhere to any 
sort of "conflict-of-interest policy"?


Here are my reasons for supporting Ken Stubbs' resignation as the Chair of 
the Names Council:
----------------------------

1) A person by the name of Kenyon T. Stubbs is a 5% (or more) shareholder 
of iDomains, Inc which submitted an application to operate new TLDs (.biz / 
.ebiz / .ecom ).  Not surprisingly , the evaluation team concluded that 
this application "merited further review".  A "Notice of Material Change of 
Circumstances Regarding Ownership" 
(http://www.icann.org/tlds/biz3/notice.html) was posted by ICANN just 
before midnight on 7 November, barely two days before ICANN posted the 
results of its review of the proposals,  Report on TLD Applications. [The 
same person??]

2) Ken Stubbs, is a member of the Board of Afilias who has submitted an 
application to operate new TLDs ( .info / .site / .web).

3) Ken Stubbs is the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Internet 
Council of Registrars (CORE) who's members (if selected by ICANN) will 
profit handsomely from sale of new top domain names.

3) Ken Stubbs is on the "Whois Committee for the DNSO" ??  [ This was 
revealed at the 19 October teleconference of ICANN's Names Council. Mr. 
Touton described it as - "just a group of people that...of various 
interest...who the ICANN staff asked to get together and try to formulate 
some proposals or ideas that might then be passed as appropriate to either 
the Names Council or the ICANN staff, depending on whether it's a policy 
matter or an implementation matter." This "informal" group was unknown even 
to the DNSO's secretariat 
[http://www.tbtf.com/roving_reporter/icann3.html#8]. The only other known 
reference to this group is a message from Michael Palage to the DNSO's 
registrars' mailing list.  It is odd that we have never heard of it or its 
activities and that this "committee" has a scope so broad that its 
recommendations will be sorted on an ad hoc basis into "policy" or 
"technical" procedures and channels.]

4) And, finally, as a member of Working Group C, I was not satisfied with 
the explanation given by the Names Council for making a year's worth of 
their work irrelevant. I know that Mr. Stubbs is not the only member of the 
NC - nor did he vote on this alone.  But, being the Chair of the NC -- it 
should be his responsibility to provide an honest answer (from the other NC 
members) as to why the Names Council completely ignored a hard-won 
recommendation for 6 -10 new gTLDs that took Working Group C over a year to 
reach.


And, as far as the other board members go? Here are some more examples of 
conflict of interest:
----------------------------

Four boardmembers (Abril i Abril, Blokzijl, Crew, Davidson) who recused 
themselves from involvement in decisions on new TLDs. Well, maybe not... 
They did so, curiously, en masse, on 1 November -- just one day before the 
application period ended, that is to say, up to three weeks after the 
relevant proposals were submitted (Abril i Abril, Afilias 
".info/.site/.web" [12 Oct] and CORE ".nom" [19 Oct]; Blokzijl, Telnic 
".tel" [11 Oct]; Crew, JVTeam ".biz" [15 Oct] and JVTeam ".per" [11 Oct]; 
Davidson, Group One ".one" [11 oct]). ICANN assures that they recused 
themselves "prior to their consideration of any application"; in other 
words, they spent months contributing to proposals while crafting ICANN's 
new TLD process. (http://www.tbtf.com/roving_reporter/)


My point is that, according to their by-laws, ICANN has to adhere to a 
conflict-of-interest policy, and so should the rest of the supporting 
organizations and the NC members. Anything else just makes the whole 
process seem suspicious.


Regards,

Kendall








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