[governance] ICANN Board Vote Signals Era of Censorship in Domain Names

[Milton Mueller]

>>> froomkin at law.miami.edu 4/3/2007 10:06 AM >>>
>The way to get out of these horrible debates is to have a
>new process, one which is focued entirely on technical merits
>(meeting some threshhold), and in which ICANN has none or
>at most minimal input/veto on semantics

But people, including Vittorio especially, seem not to realize that by
vetoing .xxx that is precisely what ICANN and the world's governments
(led by the USA) have decided NOT to do.

You can come up with all kinds of after-the-fact rationalizations, as
Vittorio does, but there is only one thing that has changed between June
2005 (when the ICANN Board voted to approve the application) and last
week (when they voted to kill it) and that is the strong and sustained
objections of governments, opponents of pornography and adult
webmasters. .xxx was killed because it was controversial and ICANN
lacked the spine to stand up to that kind of pressure. full stop.

Let me dispose of the absurd notion that the semantics of a domain name
doesn't affect the ability to express oneself freely online. This
argument has been decisively rejected by a court in the US. (Taubmann).
And it's intuitively obvious why this argument is silly. Imagine someone
saying, "you cannot name your book "The Middle East: Peace or Aparthed"
because that will offend the Israelis, but you can say whatever you like
inside the book." Is that free expression? Imagine someone saying, "you
can say whatever you like in a newspaper, but you can't put up bumper
stickers or distribute buttons with locator information that indicates
that this is a
[conservative/socialist/nationalist/your-favorite-ideology-label-here]
newspaper."

The same argument was used by IPR interests in their attempt to claim
sweeping property rights over any mention of tbeir brand. "You can talk
about our company and its products all you like, you just can't use a
label or domain name that tells people you are doing so." These efforts
were deliberate attempts to suppress critical commentary on their
brands.

Vittorio's notion that the Board sat down and carefully debated whether
.xxx met their criteria is laughable. This was the 4th vote. .xxx met
their criteria long initially. Then the criteria changed after the USG
objected. ICM Registry then worked hard to meet the new criteria, which
involved more stringest contractual conditions meant to regulate
content. It met those GAC-imposed criteria. Then the board (some
members) complained about the content regulation. No, this is about
"finding an excuse to kill something" not about anything else.