Proposed NCUC/NCSG comment on the ICM Registry case

[Milton L Mueller]

- "While a .xxx domain is undeniably controversial, ICANN must guard against becoming a tool of those who wish to discourage or censor certain kinds of legal content. The Board's action with respect to the IRP decision will be potentially significant for future decisions involving morality and public order objections for new top level domains. ICANN's mandate to coordinate top level domain names cannot and should not become a mechanism for content regulation or censorship."


Yikes! This is exactly what we DON'T want to say. The board's decision on .xxx should be based on the process it established for the approval of sTLDs back in 2004-5 and NOT on any retroactively-applied standards of "morality and public order" that were defined precisely in order to censor things like .xxx. If there is one big reason why handling of this IRP outcome is not going the way it is supposed to, it is because the ICANN management fears that "The Board's action with respect to the IRP decision will be potentially significant for future decisions involving morality and public order objections for new top level domains.."
NCUC adamantly opposed the "morality and public order" provisions anyway and most of us, if not all, believe they are illegitimate anyway. I believe that that linkage does not and should not exist, and therefore the sentence is factually wrong.

Strike that sentence from Mary's amendments and they are all acceptable to me. I do, however, believe that we are, and should be proud to say we are, "advocates of civil liberties and freedom of expression".

--MM
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