[ncsg-policy] Revised xxx comment

[Debra Hughes]

All,

If this comment is intended to be comment submitted by the NCSG, then
please let the record reflect that I cannot endorse filing any comment
on this issue.   

Debbie

Debra Y. Hughes, Senior Counsel
American Red Cross

Office of the General Counsel 
2025 E Street, NW 
Washington, D.C. 20006 
Phone: (202) 303-5356 
Fax: (202) 303-0143
HughesDeb at usa.redcross.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Milton L Mueller [mailto:mueller at syr.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2010 9:45 AM
To: NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Cc: 'NCSG-Policy'
Subject: [ncsg-policy] Revised xxx comment

Hi, this has been revised to reflect Avri's and Mary Wong's comments. So
you can see the changes, I have used a Word doc with the tracking
function on. A text version pasted below.

Milton L. Mueller
Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
XS4ALL Professor, Technology University of Delft

====

Comments of the Noncommercial Stakeholders

The Noncommercial Users Constituency and Noncommercial Stakeholders
Group (NCSG) represent nearly 200 nonprofit organizations, public
interest advocacy groups, educators, researchers, philanthropic
organizations and individuals. 

NCUC and NCSG believe that ICANN has a very simple choice to make in its
handling of the .xxx domain.  The board can accept the fact that ICANN
made serious mistakes in its handling of the matter and then make a good
faith effort to rectify those mistakes - or it can refuse to do so. That
is all there is to this decision. The complicated "process options"
offered by the general counsel are distractions. Either ICANN accepts
the determination of the independent review panel and creates the .xxx
domain, or it doesn't. Those are the only "options" of relevance to the
community.

Noncommercial users believe that the board should accept the decision of
its independent review panel and prepare to add .xxx to the root.
Anything less will raise serious doubts about ICANN's accountability
mechanisms and will undermine the legitimacy of the corporation and its
processes. The contract offered to ICM Registry should be based on the
same template as that offered to .mobi, .jobs and other contemporaneous
applicants for sponsored TLDs.

Noncommercial stakeholders are deeply interested in the outcome of the
.xxx application for two reasons. 
1)	As supporters of improved accountability for ICANN, we would be
deeply concerned by a Board decision that ignored ICANN's own
Independent Review process. The IRP is one of ICANN's few external
accountability mechanisms. The .xxx case was the first test of that
process. A group of distinguished and neutral panelists reviewed the
record of this case in extensive detail, and decided against ICANN. A
Board decision that ignores or circumvents the IRP decision would
seriously undermine ICANN's credibility and raise fundamental questions
about its accountability mechanisms. We also feel that refusal to comply
with the IRP will encourage dispute settlement through litigation in
national courts, which is not in the interests of ICANN or its global
community.
2)	ICANN's decision has important implications for Internet freedom
of expression. 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. A TLD string to should not be
rejected simply because some people or some governments object to the
types of content that might be associated with it. ICANN's mandate to
coordinate top level domain names cannot and should not become a
mechanism for content regulation or censorship.

To conclude, we ask the Board to look past the noise that will surely be
generated by any public discussion that touches on pornography. This
public comment period should not be a poll assessing the popularity of
the .xxx domain. The board must focus exclusively on compliance with its
own appeals process and strive to maintain ICANN's integrity.