US Govt Agrees with NCUC on ICANN's "Inappropriate" Plan to Police Morality and Public Order

[Milton L Mueller]

K: 

Yours is a tough but justifiable position. In favor of "abandonment,"
there are a host of things about the new gTLD process that are horrific
and need to be resisted, including most obviously the absurdly high
costs and the MAPO (morality and public order) regulations, which
apparently even the USG thinks is straying too far out of scope. 

 

On the downside, shutting down the addition of new TLDs puts a brake on
new entry into the industry, which is especially harmful to those who
want to come in with new IDN top level domains. It caves in to the
trademark interests, which I am sure you would not like. And it also
speaks to the failure of the bottom up process. It basically says that
GNSO is incapable of delivering a legitimate policy outcome, because a
policy that came out of GNSO with the requisite votes would be
abandoned, and where does that leave us? 

 

I myself am a bit divided on the issue. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I
think we should join forces with those who want to junk the thing, even
if many of them are less than palatable allies. On the other days of the
week, I wonder what the heck ICANN's so-called bottom up policy process
can deliver if it can't deliver this. (Today is Tuesday ;-)). 

 

About 75% of the problem is the staff's poor implementation of the
general policy that the GNSO gave it. I think I would prefer a middle
ground, in which we concentrate fire on the staff implementation and
send the staff back to the drawing board (not the entire policy) and in
particular we get them to reduce the costs and to moderate the MAPO
stuff. But if the general constituency thinks that we should try to sink
the ship, I'd go along. 

 

--MM

 

 

 

________________________________

From: Non-Commercial User Constituency
[mailto:NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Konstantinos
Komaitis
Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 5:11 AM
To: NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: [NCUC-DISCUSS] US Govt Agrees with NCUC on ICANN's
"Inappropriate" Plan to Police Morality and Public Order

 

My personal view is that ICANN should abandon the whole new gTLD process
altogether - at least for the time being - in order to address all the
issues that seem to generate concerns. From my reading of the proposal
my understanding has been that ICANN has voiced, but not quite
addressed, the issues that would make the addition of new gTLDs
debatable. The proposal seems draft as in all three categories that
ICANN suggests there are serious legitimate objections that ICANN has
not managed to resolve. I think that this time ICANN's effort can be
seen as a massive failure. Unlike the UDRP (still a policy making
process falling outside ICANN's remit) which came straight from the MoU
and was curing the problematics of the former NSI policy as well as the
general issue of domain names vs trademarks, the new policy serves no
such purpose. The way I see it, it is an attempt of ICANN to politically
position itself once again only this time in a more substantial way. It
is a very big move which at the same time signals and offers some
insight as to what ICANN is capable of doing when it comes fully
independent (after the expiration of the JPA).
If the new policy raises objections from the US Government and some part
of the trademark constituency then I think we need to put more pressure
on ICANN and we stand a better chance of having our voices heard.

Happy holidays to everyone.

Best

KK 


On 20/12/2008 16:31, "Milton L Mueller" <mueller at SYR.EDU> wrote:

Well the news is partly good and partly bad. As a whole the letter seems
to be an attempt by NTIA to get ICANN to stop or delay for another 2
years or so any addition of new TLDs. We know that lots of
business/trademark lobbies have been complaining loudly about the new
gTLD process. While the paragraph cited by Robin does indeed agree with
our position, the general upshot is "back to square one." I would like
to solicit constituency comment: is this new gTLD process so bad that we
want to stop it altogether? In many ways this would have to be seen as a
massive failure - after 10 years, ICANN still cannot define an ongoing
process to add new TLDs? 
 

________________________________

From: Non-Commercial User Constituency
[mailto:NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Robin Gross
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2008 1:49 AM
To: NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: [NCUC-DISCUSS] US Govt Agrees with NCUC on ICANN's
"Inappropriate" Plan to Police Morality and Public Order

The US Govt submitted its comments to ICANN on the introduction of new
gTLDs. 

   http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-guide/msg00175.html



And the US Govt agreed with a point NCUC has been making throughout this
entire process.  The US suggests ICANN "Focus on coordinating technical
functions related to the management of the DNS and not on matters more
appropriately addressed by governments, such as adjudication of morality
and public order and the community objections in accordance with
international human rights law.  The proposed mechanisms are
inappropriate."



Interesting to say the least.



Best,

Robin





-- 
Dr. Konstantinos Komaitis,
Lecturer in Law,
GigaNet Membership Chair,
University of Strathclyde,
The Lord Hope Building,
141 St. James Road,
Glasgow, G4 0LT,
UK
tel: +44 (0)141 548 4306
email: k.komaitis at strath.ac.uk 

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