A request for action

[Rick Weingarten]

Just a comment here.

It's really important to keep in mind that concerns about xxx are not confined to the right wing. ALA and others on the free speech side of the spectrum also have grave concerns that labeled speech is a major step toward censorship. Let's guess how many days will elapse between the actual establishment of the domain and the appearance of the first bills in the US Congress seeking to limit access to xxx (such as in schools and libraries) and requiring that certain information providers be restricted to xxx.  It could be a nightmare for us.

We are also, of couse, very concerned (but hardly surprised) at the willingness of the Department of Commerce to set aside its fig leaf of neutrality and push ICANN around (of course, they didn't ask our opinion.) That tension between the goal of international and US control has been in existence and in evidence for many years, and I don't see it resolving anytime soon.

I can't help but think that ICANN shot itself in the foot by stepping into what is, at least for us, one of the most contentious social issues around the Internet--pornography and content control. And, they have managed to entangle it with an equally difficult governance issue in a way that makes it very difficult for groups like ALA to weigh in, much as we would like to.

Rick

Frederick W. Weingarten, Director
Office for Information Technology Policy
American Library Association
1615 New Hampshire Avenue, NW
Washington, DC  20009
(202) 628-8410
Fax (202) 628-8424
rweingarten at alawash.org

Frederick W. Weingarten, Director
Office for Information Technology Policy
American Library Association
1615 New Hampshire Avenue, NW
Washington, DC  20009
(202) 628-8410
Fax (202) 628-8424
rweingarten at alawash.org
>>> Milton Mueller <Mueller at SYR.EDU> 08/25/05 8:11 PM >>>
-------------------------------------------------------
Should Governments Censor the Domain Name 
System? Should the US Government Have 
Unilateral Authority Over ICANN?
-------------------------------------------------------

On August 11, the U.S. Commerce Department
responded to a campaign by conservative relligious 
groups favoring online content controls by telling 
ICANN to reconsider its agreement to create a new 
.xxx top-level domain for sexual content.
ICANN complied by delaying its process.

The US Commerce Dept's intervention raises 
profound issues about how the Internet is governed. 
This occurs at a time when the World Summit on the 
Information Society and many other national 
governments are focusing on ICANN. According to the
Internet Governance Project (IGP), the letter "calls 
into question the neutrality of the U.S. government's 
special authority over ICANN," and is the first open
exercise of the USG's unilateral authority over the
ICANN regime.

The IGP has prepared a "Statement 
Opposing Political Intervention in the Internet's 
Core Technical Administrative Functions." 
The statement carefully analyzes the implications of 
this action for ICANN and for Internet governance 
generally. You can read the statement here: 

http://dcc.syr.edu/signaturepost.asp 

If you agree with it, you can sign on as an endorser
by filling out the form at the bottom of the page.

You can also download the statement itself here:
http://dcc.syr.edu/miscarticles/STATEMENT-XXX.pdf 

Sign on or not, IGP urges everyone not to let the
advocates of content regulation be the only voices
heard by the Commerce Department.



Dr. Milton Mueller
Syracuse University School of Information Studies
http://www.digital-convergence.org 
http://www.internetgovernance.org