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Purpose/Brief:

A collaboration between diverse members of ICANN's Business Constituency (BC) and At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) the ICANN community, which proposes the use of mandatory Policy Advisory Boards (PABs) for a subset of new Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) which are targeted at regulated industry sectors and other consumer-trust-sensitive fields. These ICANN community members assert that PABs are able to address what are perceived to be substantial public-interest deficiencies in the current implementation of ICANN's gTLD expansion program.

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At the Buenos Aires ICANN meeting, two members of the Business Community acting in their individual capacity – Ron Andruff and Marilyn Cade – met with Olivier Crepin-Leblond, Alan Greenberg and Evan Leibovitch from ALAC regarding an issue of mutual interest: the advancement of Policy Advisory Boards (PABs) developed by BC members as a way to address what are perceived to be substantial public-interest deficiencies in the new gTLD expansion program.  such concerns have been raised by the ALAC as well as the ICANN Government Advisory Committee (GAC) in previous statements. 

On January 27 2014, the five individuals listed above sent a letter to the ICANN New gTLD Program Committee requesting it hold a Public Comment Period regarding the use of PABs to address these concerns. Responses dated February 4 from ICANN staff and subsequently February 20 from the ICANN Board have rejected this proposal, prompting the ALAC to consider holding its own Public Comment Process.

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While it is agreed amongst the proposed that ICANN itself is not – and should not be – involved in the regulation of content of domains within these new TLDs, the original design of the program did not allow for any special external oversight over TLDs related to regulated industries or otherwise using trust-sensitive strings. In response to requests from its Governmental Advisory Committee ( GAC ) and other stakeholders (but without consulting them on the response), ICANN instituted a mechanism called Public Interest Commitments (PICs). While the PIC program superficially provided a mechanism that enabled TLD applicants to demonstrate a set of self-imposed rules intended to satisfy the GAC advice, upon further review PICs are revealed to provide little or no actual public interest benefit:

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To many stakeholders – especially those stakeholders who provide and use services and products over the Internet – this is simply not a sufficient infrastructure on which to base trust in the new gTLDs, particularly those related to regulated or sensitive industries. This dissatisfaction was repeated by the GAC in its Beijing Communiqué. In response, a February 10 letter from the ICANN Board to the GAC claims to address its concerns, however in a manner that uses PICs. The PAB proponents (and we believe many GAC and other community members as well) find this response to be completely unsatisfactory and against the public interest.

Outside the world of domain names, most countries have found good reason to regulate professional designations in medicine, engineering, and other fields that are sensitive to – and depend upon – maintaining high levels of public trust. The Internet Domain Name System cannot be immune from this societal need, the PAB model addresses this need using an open, multi-stakeholder process that maintains heightened public trust while reducing need for legislative action. For ICANN to fail to adequately provide for such protection of public trust is, to many in the community, an act of negligence. The PIC model, as currently designed, is wholly inadequate to this function.

 The ALAC believes that the PAB joins other members of the ICANN community in supporting the Policy Advisory Board model as described below , used – used for regulated fields and trust-sensitive strings (such the strings listed as "Category 1" in the GAC Communiqué) is – as an effective, implementable and implementable necessary solution to many of the trust issues that have been raised related to new gTLDs, and we are asking for the support of the wider ICANN community.

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• All regulated industry gTLDs shall establish an Policy Advisory Board to determine the policies of the registry, including registrant eligibility policies

• Such Policy Advisory Board shall be made up of 12 18 representative members from the broad spectrum of affected parties, including, but not limited to, users, suppliers, distributors, regulators, and consumers of registrant services reflective of global diversity in its overall composition. Stakeholder groups involved could include (non-exhaustive list):
   

  • • Accrediting organizations: Organizations that accredit practitioners with proven track record of responsible selling of product/service online across the global span of the internet.

    • Experts & Advocates: Experts and policy advocates with documented knowledge of the trustworthy delivery of product/service.

    • Safety Coalitions & Organizations: Coalitions and other recognized organizations of stakeholders in favor of protecting access to safe online regulated products/services.

    • Internet Freedom Experts/Organizations: Independent watchdogs of freedom of use of the Internet. 

    • Global Internet Commerce Experts/Organizations: Representation from individuals/groups from the relevant regulated industry/profession who can bring experience of best practices in online commerce in this global environment.

    • Consumers and Benefitting Organizations: consumers and organizations that rely on the products/services and have developed expertise in safe processes that enable them to source products/services from other parts of the world.

    • Constituent groups: those that recognize the need for the product/service to be delivered online for accessibility to affected constituents

    • Global enforcement groups: Internationally recognized authorities with global perspective of the need for the product/service and associated regulation and enforcement.

    • Human Rights expert: with particular knowledge of the issues pertaining to access to the products/services.

    • National enforcement groups: with first-hand experience dealing with complexities/benefits of distributing product/service within and across borders.  Purpose would be to assist with the development of international protocols.

    • Operators of the top-level-domain registry and their service providers
       

• Policy Advisory Board applicants who are not accepted due to numerical limitations shall have an opportunity to rotate on to the Policy Advisory Board as others rotate off at appropriate intervals, however all interested parties must be regularly apprised of Board activities and decisions with formal avenues for providing input and feedback.

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