Comment on IOC/ICRC Proposal

[Alain Berranger]

Thanks Andrew,

This would make an excellent start to the one-pager briefing to the Board
suggested before by Dan!

Alain

On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 8:08 PM, Andrew A. Adams <aaa at meiji.ac.jp> wrote:

> I strongly object to both the process that led to and the outcome of this
> proposal.
>
> There was a very long period of discussion and the development of an
> aplicant
> guidebook during which neither the IOC nor the ICRC, so far as I am aware,
> engaged with ICANN processes. At the last minute before the new gTLD system
> came into force these two organisations then put pressure on through the
> GAC
> for special treatment. This has then been rushed through with too little
> debate and too much pressure to cave in to pressure exerted through one of
> the ICANN stakeholders. The resulting proposal is deeply flawed on both the
> specifics and the general principle and opens up the name space to future
> claims by a myriad of other organisations.
>
> The two organisations are completely different in nature and scope and the
> limited discussions that have taken place appear to have treated them the
> same, with no consideration of their differences.
>
> The case for the IOC is based upon an international treaty which only
> protects their graphical trademark and not the words Olympic or Olympics.
> Indeed, as we can see from the current second level names registered there
> are huge numbers of commercial and non-commercial (e.g. geographic regions,
> not least the region from where the name is drawn) who have currently
> registered variants on the name and who hold trademarks on such names.
> Privileging the IOC in any way in the gTLD name space is unjustified and
> expansionary.
>
> The case for the ICRC is slightly better, given that the existing
> international treaties do protect their names from actual use. I believe
> that
> these treaties provide sufficient protection against any misuse of their
> name
> and thus no added protection is needed. Any group which uses a name in
> such a
> way as to create confusion amongst net users would be subject to severe
> penalties and an application to have such domains blocked would easily be
> accepted under existing rules. THis proposal is again expansionary in that
> the current proposal restricts registration of names in languages not
> covered
> by the existing international treaty and also includes the concept that
> names
> not explicitly mentioend but "similar" should be protected.
>
> So, firstly, when the GNSO votes on this matter the two proposals should be
> separated. Even if one accepts that case for the ICRC, the case for the IOC
> is far, far weaker.
>
> Second, the GNSO votes should include more nuanced considerations of
> restricting the scope of any protection offered, in particular paying close
> attention to non-expansionary processes.
>
> Finally, if any protections are extended, these should be explicitly stated
> as exceptions to the rules, apply only to the current round of gTLD
> expansion
> and require any future protections to be argued for via ICANN's usual
> bottom-up policy process and not forced on the community by one stakeholder
> at the eleventh hour. Such limited and clearly exceptional protections must
> be clearly constrained to prevent other organisations seeking to bypass the
> bottom-up processes and force their own restrictions on others'
> self-identification into the domain name system without proper balance
> being
> considered in a measured and true consensus manner.
>
> In accepting these proposals, I believe the GNSO would do much more
> significant harm to ICANN than would follow to anyone by allowing the
> existing treaties to provide the rules and the existing mechanisms to
> follow
> those rules.
>
>
> --
> Professor Andrew A Adams                      aaa at meiji.ac.jp
> Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and
> Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
> Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/
>



--
Alain Berranger, B.Eng, MBA
Member, Board of Directors, CECI,
http://www.ceci.ca<http://www.ceci.ca/en/about-ceci/team/board-of-directors/>
Executive-in-residence, Schulich School of Business, www.schulich.yorku.ca
Trustee, Global Knowledge Partnership Foundation, www.gkpfoundation.org
NA representative, Chasquinet Foundation, www.chasquinet.org
interim Membership Committee Chair, NPOC, NCSG, ICANN, http://npoc.org/
O:+1 514 484 7824; M:+1 514 704 7824
Skype: alain.berranger
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