Power-Grab: ICANN to Become Internet's "Word Police"

Tue Feb 27 00:49:07 CET 2007

Better formatting below:

*NCUC Media Release*
27 February 2007

Power-Grab: ICANN to Become Internet’s "Word Police"

Media Contacts:
Robin Gross, IP Justice Executive Director
Email: robin(at)ipjustice(dot)org

Milton Mueller, Professor at Syracuse University & Partner, Internet 
Governance Project
Email: Mueller(at)syr(dot)edu
Phone: +1-315-254-3242

Top-Level Domain Policy to Bypass National Sovereignty and Free Speech

Civil Society Proposes Amendment to Protect Civil Liberties and Innovation

ICANN’s Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) submitted a proposal to 
protect freedom of expression and innovation in the introduction of new 
generic top-level domains (gTLDs). ICANN’s policy council, the Generic 
Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), is currently developing policy 
recommendations to regulate the introduction of new top-level domain 
names on the Internet.

NCUC is troubled by the GNSO’s draft recommendation to create string 
selection criteria that would prevent the registration of a new gTLD 
string that contains a controversial word or idea. In the 13 February 
2007 GNSO draft report, proposed Term of Reference 2(v) of the string 
criteria states that “the string should not be contrary to public policy 
(as set out in advice from the Governmental Advisory Committee)”.

According to the GAC guidelines: “No new gTLD string shall promote 
hatred, racism, discrimination of any sort, criminal activity, or any 
abuse of specific religions or cultures. … If the GAC or individual GAC 
members express formal concerns about a specific new gTLD application, 
ICANN should defer from proceeding with the said application until GAC 
concerns have been addressed to the GAC’s or the respective government’s 
satisfaction.”

Unless reformed, this ICANN policy will prevent anyone in the world from 
being able to use controversial words like “abortion” or “gay” in a new 
gTLD if a single country objects to their use. The proposal would 
further prevent the use of numerous ordinary words like “herb” and 
“john” in a string since they can have an illegal connotation in certain 
contexts.

In addition to any country in the world being able to stop a new gTLD 
string, ICANN staff would also be able to prevent any idea that it 
deemed too controversial to exist in the new domain space. The 13 Feb. 
proposal (Term of Reference 2(x)) gives ICANN staff the important job of 
making preliminary determinations as to whether a string is 
inappropriate and who the “legitimate sponsor” of a domain name (such as 
.god) should be.

"The 13 Feb proposal would essentially make ICANN the arbiter of public 
policy and morality in the new gTLD space, a frightening prospect for 
anyone who cares about democracy and free expression," said Robin Gross, 
Executive Director of IP Justice, an NCUC member organization. "The 
proposal would give ICANN enormous power to regulate the use of language 
on the Internet and lead to massive censorship of controversial ideas."

NCUC proposes to amend the GNSO draft policy so that only the legal 
restrictions in the national jurisdictions of the string application in 
question will apply to the particular string. Under NCUC’s proposal, 
national law would be the measure for what words are permitted to be 
registered in any particular nation, not ICANN policy.

NCUC’s proposal recognizes the reality that there are competing 
standards of morality and competing public policy objectives and that 
ICANN should not try to set a universal standard. NCUC’s amendment 
better protects freedom of expression, since only those words and ideas 
that are actually outlawed in a particular nation could not be 
registered in that nation.

Instead of engaging in censorship in the new domain space, ICANN policy 
should respect international freedom of expression guarantees. Article 
19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees that 
"everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right 
includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, 
receive and impart information and ideas through any media and 
regardless of frontiers." ICANN should adhere to Article 19 and permit 
the registration of lawful, but controversial strings in the new gTLD 
space.

Besides free expression, NCUC’s proposal also protects national 
sovereignty, and the right of nations, not ICANN, to decide what words 
may be used in their jurisdictions. The current draft report would usurp 
the right of an individual nation to permit the use of words in its own 
country that are controversial in other countries.

Rather than blanketly applying 240 nations’ cumulative restrictions on 
speech onto every country, NCUC’s proposal is more narrowly tailored to 
limit only those words that are actually illegal where registered.

Milton Mueller, Professor at Syracuse University School of Information 
Studies and NCUC Executive Committee member said, "There has always been 
a danger that ICANN’s exclusive control of Internet identifiers would be 
used as leverage to enforce extraneous policies. ICANN needs to stick to 
its narrow, technical coordination role, We need to protect the Internet 
from globalized, centralized regulation."

The current GNSO proposal is further flawed because it is framed from an 
irrelevant 1883 treaty on trademarks that is inappropriate, both because 
of its archaic origin and because trademark law is intrinsically a 
narrow legal paradigm that does not extend to a full vision of societal 
benefits and rights. Most notably, trademark law is not designed to 
regulate non-commercial speech, which is vast majority of online 
communication.

NCUC’s proposal to amend Term of Reference 2 (v) is the main proposal in 
a group of 5 NCUC proposals to reform the policy recommendations in the 
13 Feb. GNSO draft report. It is possible that ICANN’s GNSO Policy 
Council will vote on draft final report as soon as the next ICANN board 
meeting in Lisbon in late March 2007.

NCUC urges individuals and organizations that are concerned with 
protecting free expression and innovation to contact ICANN Board Members 
and their national representative of the Government Advisory Committee 
(GAC) to express their out the current draft and support for NCUC’s 
amendments.

If you live in the United States, your representative on the GAC is 
Suzanne Sene from the US Commerce Department. Suzanne Sene can be 
contacted via email to SSene[at]ntia.doc.gov .

The ICANN GAC representatives from other countries are listed here:
http://gac.icann.org/web/contact/reps/index.shtml

The ICANN Board of Directors is listed here:
http://www.icann.org/general/board.html

*Links to relevant documents:*
GNSO Draft Final Report on the Introduction of New Generic Top-Level 
Domains:
http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/GNSO-PDP-Dec05-FR13-FEB07.htm

NCUC proposal (Feb. 2007) to amend the draft report:
http://www.ipjustice.org/ICANN/drafts/022207.html

NCUC Comments on Fall 2006 Draft Report
http://www.ipjustice.org/ICANN/NCUC_Comments_on_New_gTLDs.pdf

Internet Governance Project Alert:
“Will the UN Take Over the Internet” Through ICANN?
http://internetgovernance.org/news.html#UNTakeOverInternetThroughIcann_022207 

GNSO Council Webpage on Intro of New gTLD Policy:
http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/

*About the NCUC:*
The Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) is the part of the Internet 
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that represents the 
interests of noncommercial Internet users. NCUC is a voting member of 
the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), which develops policy 
and advises the ICANN Board on matters regarding generic top-level 
domains on the Internet. NCUC develops and supports Internet policies 
that favor noncommercial use on the Internet. The NCUC is made up of 40 
civil society organizations from around the world and maintains a 
website at http://www.ncdnhc.org .