Open letter to ICANN from the Legal Counsels of intergovernmental organizations

[David Cake]

On 20/12/2011, at 2:28 PM, McTim wrote:

> Hi David,
> 
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 8:28 AM, David Cake <dave at difference.com.au> wrote:
> 
>        The arguments against are all similar/equivalent.
>        The arguments for are different, however.
>        I think the position can be argued that treaties/legislation granting special rights to the IOC and RC have strong arguments against them, they have nevertheless been ratified/passed and it is not ICANNs position to reopen the issue but simply to acknowledge decisions already made.
> 
> 
> International treaty rights give special privileges in the DNS?

	No. But international treaty rights may serve as a relatively forceful argument in favour of changes to DNS policy (policy that does, after all, reflect many other forms of international treaty rights). I'm certainly not suggesting that international treaties should be a mechanism for changing DNS policy, merely that rights granted by international treaty may (and probably should) be one of the many factors weighed by the GNSO (and other SO, for that matter) policy creation process. 
	To turn the argument around, I don't think the GNSO policy process should be deliberately excluding international treaties as a factor when making policy decisions. Does anyone want to advance the argument that they should?

> 
> I thought that was done by RFC?

	RFCs are one path to creating DNS changes, but not the only one. The GNSO makes a LOT of policy decisions that have nothing to do with RFCs. 


> 
> .example as well as example.org for instance.

	Which just goes to show that ICANN as a whole can be somewhat hypocritical. We do a lot of handwringing about excluding things like the Red Cross (which really do have some pretty solid international treaty support for their position), but there is a lot of stuff on the reserved names list via IETF processes on far flimsier justifications. Not that 'example' is particularly problematic.

	Cheers

		David

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