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ICANN lawyers slam “fire him” story “blogger”

Kevin Murphy, August 15, 2016, 08:36:28 (UTC), Domain Policy

ICANN lawyers have launched an extraordinary attack on a “blogger” who recently wrote an article headlined “ICANN’s general counsel should lose his job over this”.

Early Friday, ICANN’s board of directors issued its response to the recent Independent Review Process case in which new gTLD applicant Dot Registry managed to show that the board had breached its transparency and accountability bylaws.
The board resolution did not say what is going to happen to Dot Registry’s four new gTLD applications, due to lack of guidance from the IRP panel.
But it did contain a surprising retaliation against Chris Williams, a reporter for online news site The Register, referring to “factual inaccuracies that have been reported in online blogged reports”.
(Before going any further, some disclosure: I freelanced for The Register for several months about five years ago, when Williams was the copy editor I sometimes had to work with. I also worked directly under its current group editor for about five years at a different publication in the early-mid 2000s.)
In the rationale accompanying its resolution last week, the board said:

the Board also notes that there have been online blogged reports about what the [IRP] Final Declaration actually says, yet many of the items reported on have been factual inaccuracies

I immediately grew worried that the resolution was having a pop at this site. But it actually refers to The Register, a news site with millions of readers that, despite its tabloid style, is not usually described as a “blog”.
The board ordered the simultaneous release of their staff-prepared briefing notes (pdf) for the meeting at which the resolution was passed, which contain an 800-word rebuttal of Williams’ August 3 article “Simply not credible: The extraordinary verdict against the body that hopes to run the internet”.
The article covers the Dot Registry IRP decision in a tone that is harshly critical of ICANN.
It is particularly critical of ICANN’s legal team and specifically general counsel John Jeffrey and notes that he makes a tonne of cash due to his regular, generous pay rises.
I compared each point in the rebuttal to the original article and I think ICANN is generally on fairly safe ground in some of what it says are inaccuracies.
In other cases, the rebuttal instead takes issue with the opinion of a third party quoted in the piece, or with a different, but in my view fair, characterization of the IRP declaration.
It seems the Reg article did incorrectly conflate “ICANN staff” and the “ICANN legal team” in at least one instance, as the ICANN rebuttal claims.
It also does in fact quote sections of “the [IRP] Panel’s recitation of Dot Registry’s claims as if they are the Panel’s own finding” as the rebuttal says it does.
But the actual findings of the panel were arguably much harsher than the text the Reg quoted.
So why is the ICANN board of directors passing a resolution addressing the veracity of a news report rather than the real concerns raised by the IRP declaration?
Column yards of horseshit are written about ICANN on a daily basis — I’m probably responsible for an inch or two myself — so why has ICANN zeroed in on this particular piece?
Could it be because Williams’ follow-up piece, August 4, leads with Dot Registry CEO Shaul Jolles calling for the head of Jeffrey? Jolles is quoted as saying:

ICANN’s general counsel should lose his job for this. The advice that he gives, everything was processed through him. It’s shocking.

There’s a rich irony at work here.
The main takeaway from the IRP’s declaration was that the ICANN board sometimes rubber-stamps resolutions drafted by ICANN staff without doing its due diligence.
The Reg then reported that fact.
In response, ICANN staff drafted a resolution designed to shoot the messenger, deflecting attention from the IRP’s findings, which the board then approved without amendment.
If somebody over at ICANN is chagrined about inaccurate reporting, I can’t help but feel that the best way to deal with that would be to request a correction or publish a rebuttal in the form of a blog post or some other kind of statement.
Using the very method under scrutiny — staff drafts, board approves — to issue a rebuttal simply serves to highlight the failings outlined by the IRP panel.
Compounding this, the only reason we’re able to see the full rebuttal today is that the board approved a (staff-drafted) resolution authorizing the concurrent publishing of staff briefing materials.
Usually, briefing materials are published alongside formal minutes when they are approved many weeks later.
If the ICANN board is able to publish briefing materials just a couple of days after passing its resolutions, why on Earth does it not do so as a matter of course?
Did any member of the ICANN board raise her or his hand to ask why these materials had to be published with such haste?
Can ICANN only be transparent in a timely fashion when its lawyers have been criticized in the press?

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Comments (5)

  1. Andrew says:
    August 15, 2016 at 11:41 am

    I thought Kieren McCarthy writes about ICANN for The Register?
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/Author/2886/
    So why did Chris Williams publish the last two stories?
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/Author/2400/

    Reply
    • Kevin Murphy says:
      August 15, 2016 at 11:55 am

      I don’t know.
      Williams has written about ICANN on several other occasions before those two pieces though, if memory serves.

      Reply
  2. Michael Palage says:
    August 15, 2016 at 3:10 pm

    Kevin you raise a really good question on why ICANN cannot be as timely with Board briefing material on a more regular basis.
    The other question I have is when will the transcripts of this meeting be made available, see http://domainincite.com/20479-icann-to-publish-board-meeting-transcripts

    Reply
  3. Desiree says:
    August 16, 2016 at 2:34 pm

    I wouldn’t hold my breath on the Boards 8/9/16 hearing transcripts, Michael. Transparency = Liability at ICANN. From what I can tell, Amy Stathos did her normal thing and read the Board instructions from ICANN legal and the Board once again “rubber stamped” it. Nothing has changed or will change unless the broader community demands change or ICANN gets its pants sued off them, which seems more likely. I’m waiting for the class action by all the community applicants that also got screwed by ICANN / EIU.

    Reply

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