[ncdnhc-discuss] ICANN controlled by governments

[James Love]

----- Original Message -----
> As long as various governments, controlling ICANN (through the funding
> and the board) are also democratic, I have no objection.
> You position seems to be: Since all governements controlling ICANN may
> not be as democratic as us (means that decisions or positions of some of
> them, may not have the sufficient legitimacy), then it is better to put
> everyone under Uncle Sam's umbrella, to guarantee the freedom of speech.
> I can't follow you there. Yahoo's French court decision is an example,
> of a situation conform to your 1st amendment, but not-conform to the law
> in another democratic country.

    Well, I personally would  not have a problem with France doing it,
instead of the US.  But I really don't think the Lynn proposal is going to
be limited to "good" governments.   Once you make it multilateral, what is
used to address the claims by the Chinese and Egyptian governments?   The US
is handy, because it has the contract with ICANN, controls the root, and has
done so for years, and one could just keep things this way.  Giving it
France alone isn't so easy, so there are proposals to give it to lots of
governments.  I think this is a problem.   And, even giving it to *all*
democratic governments is going to create problems, because each government
has different areas for freedom and prohibited or regulated conduct.    The
common areas for freedom are smaller than any single government would
recognize.    Unless, of course, one could ensure in some binding way that
the government actions would be constained in some way.  Not sure how to do
this of course.

> > I do not think USA laws are in generally the best in the world, spend
much
> > time in the USA complaining about various US laws,
> -
> In the Yahoo example, I would talk about absence of law...

   Sometimes the absence of law is a good thing, IMO.

> > and much time in global
> > fora helping countries resist US trade policies on intellectual property
> > rights and other areas, and we certainly are appalled by various US
regimes
> > on IPR, that often themselves limit speech.
> -
> It would be a serious mistake to confuse freedom of speech with
everything.
> Example: freedom of political expression: I do not care about free
> political expression, since I am living in France and any "extreme"
> political expression is bounded by a "reasonable" legal framework: Not
> possible to promote racial hate, revisionist views, etc etc. I agree
> that in other countries, with less elaborated democracy, bounds may have
> less legitimacy or rationale (being set-up be a non representative
> governemnt body.

    Well, what about those "other countries"?  What about China?

> Freedom of entreprise and business: Why not, but provided it doesn't
> violate other's intellectual property rights. This may become a bit more
> touchy, since there are different IPR systems and rules, especially
> between US and FR.

    In general of course I agree, and support 90+ percent of IPR regimes,
but worry a lot about the last few percent.    But more to the point, why
have ICANN enforce IPR?    This is attract the IPR holds like honey attracts
bees, and ICANN will always be the center of intrigue and politics.

> > We do, however, see the future of free speech on the Internet as a big
big
> > deal, and are not at all ready to embrace the notion that every
country's
> > notion of limits on that speech deserve to be enforced worldwide,
including
> > for example the many examples of cross-border enforcement of various
> > national speech and IPR regimes.
> -
> I certainly agree with you, but I see limits. Let me give you an
> example: there is a domain name call eccole-primaire.com
> Everyone (especially pupils or school teachers in French speaking
> environment) would expect to find there something related to primary
> schools or education etc..
> Instead of that, it is only a for-sale domain name, with a content, not
> really appropriate for primary schools. I would guess that the actual
> content is there only to increase the cost for people who may be willing
> only avoid inadequate content regarding the DN. In term of strict
> business approach, I would think "fair enough". But I do not feel that
> ecole-primaire is only a matter of business.

    I personally support the expansion of restricted domains (lot of them)
so that people can rely upon the TLD as a signal.  I guess the .fr ccTLD
helps a lot, and so does .coop, .museum, .edu, .int, etc.    We just need to
open this up.  Rather than lose sleep over every .com registration, worry
about empowering people to set up TLDs that "mean something."


> > I believe the "benefits" of US 1st amendment protections are more
apparently
> > in repressive regimes like China or Egypt than they are in France.   I
am
> > liking too of those countries, and people I know in those countries who
> > believe the Internet provides an import opportunity to exercise freedom
to
> > speak and to read.
> -
> Agree with this, as the Internet may bring freedom to speech to those
> living in countries where such freedom may be limited (or even not
> existing). But again, this is completely out of the scope of your
> example with the Yahoo case (at least from a French point of view).

    I would agree that the Yahoo case is fairly narrow, and can be
distinguished in many important ways.  But the preceedent alarms many
people, for reasons that should be clear.  I don't worry so much about the
Nazi artifact collectors.

> > I can appreciate how some others may find hate speech and other similiar
> > things so repulsive that they are willing to live with a different
system.
> > But we are reluctant to say the least in giving up the freedom we have
now,
> > particularly given the range of national laws that one is facing.
> -
> Hope this will contribute to the discussion. Sure it will not close it.
>
> Going back to the Lynn's proposal, I see lot of reactions against it, as
> a consequence of my first point. Citizens or individuals must be
> protected against government decision! Reality is much more complicated,
> and saying that Lynn's proposal is fighting freedom of speech is just to
> simple and naive. Earlier I had a similar approach, vhen looking at the
> ALSC proposal, Where I found lot of goodies, even not in line with the
> NCDNHC position. But this question seems almost over already.

    If ICANN needs governments to fund its operations, maybe we should shop
for governments that we like.   Maybe Internet users should vote on which
government they want to use.  Kind of a competition for government
government.  They compete to host ICANN meetings.  Maybe they could compete
to fund and control seats on the  ICANN board.   We could pick maybe the
four or five most appealing governments that were willing to pay also for
ICANN expense, and agree to binding limits on the ICANN mission.

   Jamie