Proposed NCUC/NCSG comment on the ICM Registry case

[Alex Gakuru]

+1

On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 10:39 PM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
>
>
> - "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