Big Pharma Comes to ICANN?

[Robin Gross]

Interesting read:
http://www.knujon.com/ddb_master_draft.pdf

It appears to be a privately commissioned report using inflammatory
rhetoric and extreme examples to frighten the public into requiring
every possible privacy invasion that the IP Constituency has been
lobbying for over the last decade.   Domain name registrars are the
"choke-point".

The authors ultimately want to pressure domain name registrars to
police and control their systems in order to protect the interests of
certain branded companies (using "sick, dying, elderly people that
are being prayed upon" as the example.  Seriously, it does.  I
suspect the next report will be on the connection of "funding
terrorism through trafficking in unlicensed perfume" ).

If domain name registrars can be punished for what 3rd-parties do,
registrars will be pressured to police and control their systems to
prevent the sale of unlicensed, but lawful, generic medicines (as if
registrars are in any position to know what is licensed, what is
dangerous, what is lawful generic, etc).  It sets a very dangerous
precedent that courts (and even legislatures) have been unwilling to
give the IP Constituency and Big Pharma.  It also uses examples of
medicines for powers that will more often to be used to "protect" $5k
handbags and shoes.  It is the legal responsibility of the branded
companies to protect their own private brands.  It is neither ICANN's
responsible (as PDT said clearly at the Nairobi ICANN meeting), nor
is it registrars responsibility to ensure that private brands are
"protected" on the Internet.  Of course big branded companies want to
shift this burden of policing to protect their private rights over to
others to do for them.

On a positive note, over-the-top reports like this could inspire the
interest of the formidable Access to Medicines movement and generic
medicines distributors to become involved in ICANN policy making.
(That would be great for NCSG, but not so great for the IP
Constituency).

Best,
Robin


IP JUSTICE
Robin Gross, Executive Director
1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA  94117  USA
p: +1-415-553-6261    f: +1-415-462-6451
w: http://www.ipjustice.org     e: robin at ipjustice.org



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