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

Wed Dec 24 11:12:19 CET 2008

Dear Milton,

I totally agree with you and just to make sure that I was not misunderstood on this, I was suggesting that before implementing the policy, the GNSO staff needs to ensure that they have addressed all these issues that are of serious concern, like trademark rights as well as the MAPO.
As you say my main concern is the legitimacy mechanisms that the GNSO is using to implement the new policy. I can see the advantages (open competition in the gTLD space and create more incentives for the industry) but not under the current construction of it. I think that 'abandoment' at this stage does not only mean that the GNSO is incapable of delivering legitimate policy outcome - it also says that the GNSO, when proceeding to policy-making, should be very careful especially if that policy has implications upon legal and social arrangements. That is what I would like to highlight - the GNSO and other ICANN groups engaged in policy should be very careful and considerate of any policy-making decisions they seek to put forward and implement. Especially for this one, I think that the GNSO should take on board all the comments received from the various interested parties (NCUC and US Gov.).
How can we do this? Personally, I would like to continue with this one and exercise any influence we have - not really suggest to abandon it as such, but at least for the GNSO to address our concerns. What do you think?

KK
________________________________
From: Milton L Mueller [mueller at syr.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 3:54 PM
To: Konstantinos Komaitis; 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

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<UrlBlockedError.aspx>> 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<UrlBlockedError.aspx>
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<UrlBlockedError.aspx>