[kictanet] Official response to the "facts" circulated by Alice on behalf of DotConnectAfrica

[McTim]

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 1:52 AM, Gideon <gideonrop at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Ms.Alice Munyua,
>
>
>
> I am asked by our organization to post this clarification below to the
> statements you posted last week Re:Facts Regarding the African Union
> Commission (.Africa) application in the interest of the public.
>
>
>
> That you ahead for your cooperation.
>
>
>
> First, the deliberate distortion

That's a bit strong.  how do you know it was deliberate?

If you want to talk about facts, use the link that Neil provided,
click on download the "public portion of the application", and see how
many times the AU and AUC are referenced.   It is clear to me that the
AU and UniForum are partnering in this application.


 that AUC/UniForum has submitted an
> application for .AFRICA is unwarranted and quite misleading, and this should
> not be treated as 'fact'. The true fact is that the AUC is not an applicant.

While they may not be an applicant, they are certainly working 'in
cooperation with" or "in partnership with".


> Only UniForum is the applicant acknowledged by ICANN. Therefore, it is
> untruthful and rather disingenuous on your part to present the AUC as an
> applicant - either as a co- or joint applicant to UniForum. Everyone should
> know that the AU has not applied to ICANN for anything, so there is no AUC
> application the way that you have been distorting 'facts' to suit your
> purpose.
>
>
>
> Second, though you have listed many things, the most important thing that
> you have left out is that the UniForum application was not submitted on
> behalf of either the African Union Commission, African governments, the
> African  Community or African Internet Community. You should have listed
> this as 'fact', but you have not.


If it were listed as "fact" you surely would have complained about that!

The "fact" is that it is a geographic TLD and NOT a community based TLD.

Are you suggesting that your application for .DotAfrica (or .Africa if
that is what you have applied for) is a community based application
and NOT a geo-TLD?



Therefore, there is actually no community
> ownership of the Applied-for string so your use of the term 'official AUC
> endorsed application for the dotAfrica (.Africa) Top Level Domain' is rather
> specious and a misnomer.

It is neither specious nor a misnomer.  They do have an official
endorsement and they have a large community of support behind them.



  Against this background, how is the UniForum
> application, in your estimation, "a collaborative African initiative"?  One
> would expect at least that if it is a collaborative African initiative, then
> the ownership of the TLD by the community should have been properly
> demonstrated by a community application conveyed as an application on behalf
> of the African Community for a .AFRICA Community TLD.

It only stands to reason that a geo-TLD (a continental wide one at that) have a
collaborative community behind it.

Are you applying for a Community-based string?

>
>
>
> In the absence of this, we still see the UniForum application as a deceptive
> ploy that  used the purported support of the AU Commission to garner support
> from African governments to enable them provide support for an application
> that will benefit a special interest group.  The way we see it is quite
> simple: DCA Trust will continue to expose this fraud for what it truly is.
> If the AUC provided support to UniForum to apply on behalf of the African
> Community, then we believe that “a Community TLD application “for .AFRICA
> should have been submitted by UniForum to ICANN.

Again, would this same reasoning have applied to you?  If not, why not?

Is .DotAfrica a community or geo-TLD?


>
>
>
> Third, you seem to make much of a process that was "mandated by African
> Heads of State (OR Tambo Declaration) and African Minister’s in charge of
> ICT (Abuja Declaration)" to justify your 'facts'. Would these African Heads
> of States and Ministers not demand some form of accountability regarding why
> a community TLD application for .Africa was not submitted by Uniforum?


again with the red-herrings!  This is a geo-TLD, NOT a "Community-TLD".


> Since you seem to know many facts regarding the so-called 'African Union
> Commission (.Africa) application, perhaps you should help clarify for
> everyone's benefit why a Community TLD application for .Africa was not
> submitted by Uniforum.
>

This is a geo-TLD, NOT a "Community-TLD".


>
>
> Fourth,  you have tried to make much over the fact that the UniForum
> application is AU-supported, and that the "application meets and exceeds,
> the minimum evaluation criteria set by ICANN for application of Geographic
> strings." Alas, the evaluation is not only on the basis of the evaluation
> criteria for 'geographic strings'. The evaluation criteria is actually more
> comprehensive, and covers a wide range of issues such as technical,
> operational, financial criteria; coupled with terms & conditions, legal
> issues, etc.  We remain confident that the Uniforum application will fail
> based on the scope of its separate agreement with the African Union
> Commission.  We prefer to leave such issues to the Evaluation and the
> outcome of any Dispute Resolution.


but if you had gotten the endorsement of the AU, you wouldn't be
claiming the same thing, would you??!


>
>
>
> Fifth, the application submitted by DCA Trust is for the geographic name
> 'AFRICA', pronounced as 'DotAfrica'. This is for a 6-character ASCII string.
> The application submitted by DCA Trust was correctly designated by ICANN as
> referring to a geographic name. Your understanding that it is for
> 'dotdotAfrica' is incorrect.  Our published part of application is posted
> and available here…………………

http://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/1276

or

http://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails:downloadapplication/1276?t:ac=1276

to dload public parts of application.


>
> Finally, it is important for us to note that you have become openly
> supportive of the UniForum application, and we therefore hope that you will
> not use any of your official affiliations either within the Kenyan
> government or the ICANN GAC to influence things in their favour.

Why not?  if the AUC has endorsed UniForum as their partner in
bidding, should not all AU governments act accordingly?


 We caution
> you not to be official or unofficial spokesperson of UniForum, and allow the
> applications that have been submitted to ICANN to be evaluated fairly
> without any undue interference on your part or on the part of the group that
> you now seem to represent in the most unabashed manner .


how is statement of facts "interference"?


-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel