[NCUC-DISCUSS] NomCom Review

[Mueller, Milton L]

It would be great to know the rationale behind that division. As it is, commercial vs non-commercial division sounds more relevant to me.

MM: Raoul, I’d be happy to explain.

The distinction between contracted and non-contracted parties is fundamental to ICANN’s mode of governance. ICANN governs by writing private contracts. End users don’t have contracts with ICANN; only registrar and registries do.  Parties that have contracts with ICANN are the regulated entities, the parties who directly bear the costs and burdens of ICANN’s rules, and who receive the “rewards” (TLDs, accreditation). If ICANN wants to regulate what internet users do, it can only do so by writing contracts that control what registries and registrars do.

Non-contracted parties, on the other hand, cannot be directly regulated by ICANN. Their interests as domain name registrants can be and often are strongly affected by what ICANN does, but those effects can only come through the intermediation of contracted parties. In many respects, both commercial and noncommercial stakeholders are users/consumers rather than suppliers of domain name services, and thus might be said to have more in common with each other than with contracted parties.

But that is not how it usually works out, because commercial users tend to prioritize trademark protection and various forms of law enforcement, whereas noncommercial users tend to prioritize individual rights to freedom of expression and privacy. So the CSG tends to support a heavy-handed, highly regulatory ICANN whereas NCSG tends to support a freer and more open DNS.


It should be noted that if there were more noncommercial registries and
registrars, they would still be within the RySG and RrSG not the NCSG,
though they then could assert their presence in those areas and might
indeed end up being NCSG allies.  In fact we often are in common cause
with them and in fact some of the funding NCUC gets is from a
noncommerical Registry.

Fascinating. So in addition to have almost no funding, it's also compromised.
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