[kictanet] why i voted fo .xxx- by susan crawford

Thu Apr 5 15:20:31 EAT 2007

Rebecca, I personally prefer to remain succinct.

In addition to the reasons stated in the resolution, I vote no for the
following reasons.
>>  
>> 1. that the ICM proposal does not take into account the global cultural
>> issues and concerns that relate to the immediate introduction of this TLD
>> onto the internet,
>> 2. that the ICM proposal will not protect the relevant or interested
>> community from the adult entertainment websites by a significant percentage
>> 3. that the ICM proposal focuses on content management which is not in
>> ICANN¹s technical mandate
>> 4. the ICM proposal conflicts with our recently consistent rebattle with ITU
>> during the WSIS, which is still very fresh in our minds and  the community,
>> we need to be consistent with core mandate of ICANN

In reference to the resolution, this can be accessed:-
http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-30mar07.htm

Be reminded that the vote was 9 against and 5 for, and 1 abstention. If you
look at the trend from inception, this matter has even received a for vote
initially and therefore cannot be sighted my this fact that the vote was
based on morality and personal believes. This has been a complex issue and
will continue to be until we resolve some fundamental principles of
structure and redefined objectives of the institution/corporation as a
whole.

Ps, this information was posted on the internet as well.

Njeri,

On 4/5/07 9:09 AM, "Rebecca Wanjiku" <rebeccawanjiku at yahoo.com> wrote:

> i thought we should expect reasons/explanations like this from ICANN
> representatives on the board,
> just a thought,
> read on
>  
> 
> Why I Voted for .XXX
> 
> By Susan Crawford <http://www.circleid.com/member/home/738/>
> <http://www.circleid.com/posts/why_i_voted_for_xxx/#comments>
> <http://www.circleid.com/member/tellafriend/1625/>
> 
> The ICANN Board voted today 9-5, with Paul Twomey abstaining, to reject a
> proposal to open .xxx. This is my statement in connection with that vote. I
> found the resolution adopted by the Board (rejecting xxx) both weak and
> unprincipled.
> 
> I am troubled by the path the Board has followed on this issue since I joined
> the Board in December of 2005. I would like to make two points. First, ICANN
> only creates problems for itself when it acts in an ad hoc fashion in response
> to political pressures. Second, ICANN should take itself seriously as a
> private governance institution with a limited mandate and should resist
> efforts by governments to veto what it does.
> 
> Role of the Board
> 
> This decision, whether to admit a particular non-confusing, legal string into
> the root, is put before the ICANN Board because (1) we purport to speak on
> behalf of the global internet community and (2) the U.S. Department of
> Commerce defers to the judgments of that community when deciding what to tell
> its contractor to add to the authoritative root zone file.
> 
> As a Board, we cannot speak as *elected* representatives of the global
> internet community because we have not allowed elections for Board members.
> This application does not present any difficult technical questions, and even
> if it did we do not as a group claim to have special technical expertise. So
> this is not a technical stability and security question. It seems to me that
> the only plausible basis on which the Board can answer the question in the
> negative ("a group of people may *not* operate and use a lawful string of
> letters as a top level domain") is to say that the people affected by this
> decision have a broadly shared agreement that the admission of this string to
> the root would amount to unjustifiable wrongdoing. Otherwise, in the absence
> of technical considerations, the Board has no basis for rejecting this
> application.
> 
> Let me explain. The most fundamental value of the global internet community is
> that people who propose to use the internet protocols and infrastructures for
> otherwise lawful purposes, without threatening the operational stability or
> security of the internet, should be presumed to be entitled to do so. In a
> nutshell, ³everything not prohibited is permitted.² This understanding, this
> value, has led directly to the striking success of the internet around the
> world.
> 
> ICANN¹s role in gTLD policy development is to seek to assess and articulate
> the broadly shared values of the internet community. We have very limited
> authority and we can only speak on behalf of that community. I am personally
> not aware that any global consensus against the creation of an .xxx domain
> exists. In the absence of such a prohibition, and given our mandate to create
> TLD competition, we have no authority to block the addition of this TLD to the
> root.
> 
> It is very clear that we do not have a global shared set of values about
> content online, save for the global norm against child pornography. But the
> global internet community clearly *does* share the core value that no
> centralized authority should set itself up as the arbiter of what people may
> do together online, absent a demonstration that most of those affected by the
> proposed activity agree that it should be banned.
> 
> Process
> 
> More than three years ago, before I joined the Board, ICANN began a process
> for new sponsored top level domains. As I have said on many occasions, I think
> the idea of ³sponsorship² is an empty one. *All* generic TLDs should be
> considered ³sponsored² in that they should be able to create policies for
> themselves that are not dictated by ICANN. The only exceptions to this freedom
> for every TLD should be, of course, the (very few) global consensus policies
> that are created through the ICANN forum. This freedom is shared by the
> country code TLDs.
> 
> Notwithstanding my personal views on the vacuity of the ³sponsorship² idea,
> the fact is that ICANN evaluated the strength of the sponsorship of xxx (the
> relationship between the applicant and the ³community² behind the TLD) and, in
> my view, concluded that this criteria had been met as of June 2005; ICANN then
> went on to negotiate specific contractual terms with the applicant.
> 
> Since then, real and ³astroturf² comments (filed comments claiming to be
> grassroots opposition that have actually been generated by organized
> campaigns) have come in to ICANN that reflect opposition to this application.
> I do not find these recent comments sufficient to warrant re-visiting the
> question of the ³sponsorship² strength of this TLD which I personally believe
> to be closed.
> 
> No applicant for any ³sponsored² TLD could ever demonstrate unanimous,
> cheering approval for its application. We have no metric against which to
> measure this opposition, and thus we have no idea how significant it is. We
> should not be in the business of judging the level of market or community
> support for a new TLD before the fact. We will only get in the way of useful
> innovation if we take the view that every new TLD must prove itself to us
> before it can be added to the root.
> 
> It seems to me that what is meant by ³sponsorship² (a notion that I hope we
> abandon) is to show that there is enough interest in a particular TLD that it
> will be viable. We also have the idea that registrants should participate in
> (and be bound by) the creation of policies for a particular string. Both of
> these requirements have been met by this applicant. There is clearly enough
> interest (including more than 70,000 pre-registrations from 1,000 or more
> unique registrants who are members of the adult industry), and the applicant
> has undertaken to us that it will require adherence to its self-regulatory
> policies by all of its registrants. To the extent some of my colleagues on the
> board believe that ICANN should be in the business of deciding whether a
> particular TLD makes a valuable contribution to the namespace, I differ with
> them. I do not think ICANN is capable of making such a determination. Indeed,
> this argument is very much like those made by the pre-divestiture AT&T when it
> claimed that no ³foreign attachments² to its network (like answering machines)
> should be allowed, in part because AT&T asserted there was no public demand
> for them. The rise of the internet was arguably made possible by allowing many
> ³foreign attachments² to the network - called modems.
> 
> We established a process for sTLDs some time ago. We have taken this applicant
> through this process. We now appear to be changing the process. We should not
> act in this fashion.
> 
> Politics
> 
> Discomfort with this application may have been sparked anew by (1) the letter
> from individual GAC members Janis Karklins and Sharil Tarmizi (to which Amb.
> Karklins has told us the GAC acceded as a whole by its silence), and (2) the
> letter from the Australian government.
> 
> I am not at all opposed to receiving advice from the Government Advisory
> Committee. But the entire point of ICANN¹s creation was to avoid the operation
> of chokepoint content control over the domain name system by individual or
> collective governments. The idea was that the US would serve as a good steward
> for other governmental concerns by staying in the background and overseeing
> ICANN¹s activities, but not engaging in content-related control. Australia¹s
> letter, and concerns expressed in the past by Brazil and other countries about
> xxx, are explicitly content-based and thus inappropriate, in my view.
> 
> If, after creation of an xxx TLD, certain governments of the world want to
> ensure that their citizens do not see xxx content, it is within their
> prerogative as sovereigns to instruct internet access providers physically
> located within their territory to block such content. Also, if certain
> governments want to ensure that *all* adult content providers with a physical
> presence in their country register exclusively within xxx, that is their
> prerogative as well. (I note that such a requirement in the U.S. would violate
> the First Amendment to our Constitution.) But this content-related censorship
> should not be ICANN¹s concern, and ICANN should not allow itself to be used as
> a private lever for government chokepoint content control by making up reasons
> to avoid the creation of such a TLD in the first place. To the extent there
> are public policy concerns with this TLD, they can be dealt with through local
> law. Registration in (or visitation of) domains in this TLD is purely
> voluntary.
> 
> If ICANN were to base its decisions on the views of the Australian (or US, or
> Brazilian) government, ICANN would have compromised away its very reason for
> existence as a private non-governmental governance institution.
> 
> Conclusion
> 
> I continue to be dissatisfied with elements of the proposed xxx contract,
> including but not limited to the ³rapid takedown² provision of Appendix S,1
> which is manifestly designed to placate trademark owners and ignores the many
> due process concerns that have been expressed about the existing UDRP. I am
> confident that if I had a staff or enough time I could find many things to
> carp about in this draft contract. But I am certain that if I complained about
> these terms my concerns would be used to justify derailing this application
> for political reasons. I plan, therefore, to turn my attention to the new gTLD
> process that was promised for January 2007 (a promise that has not been kept)
> in hopes that we will someday have a standard contract and objective process
> that can help ICANN avoid engaging in unjustifiable ad hoc actions. We should
> be examining generic TLD applicants on the basis of their technical and
> financial strength, and we should avoid dealing with ³content² concerns to the
> maximum extent possible. We should be opening up new TLDs. I hope we will find
> a way to achieve such a sound process in short order.
> Rebecca Wanjiku,
> journalist,
> p.o box 33515, 
> Nairobi.00600
> Kenya.
> 
> Tel. 254 720 318 925
> 
> blog:http://beckyit.blogspot.com/
> 
> 
> 
> Finding fabulous fares is fun.
> Let Yahoo! FareChase search your favorite travel sites
> <http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097;_ylc=X3oDMTFtNW45amVpBF9TAz
> k3NDA3NTg5BF9zAzI3MTk0ODEEcG9zAzEEc2VjA21haWx0YWdsaW5lBHNsawNxMS0wNw-->  to
> find flight and hotel bargains.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> kictanet mailing list
> kictanet at kictanet.or.ke
> http://kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet
> 
> Please unsubscribe or change your options at
> http://kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/njeri.rionge%40igniteconsulting
> .co.ke

===================================================
Njeri Rionge
Chief Executive Officer
Ignite Consulting Limited
Eden Square 7th Floor
Chiromo Rd, Westlands
P. O. Box 15568 00100 GPO Nairobi, Kenya
T: (254 20) 3673250‹9
E: njeri.rionge at igniteconsulting.co.ke
http://www.igniteconsulting.co.ke

Professional, Life Skills Coaching, Value Added Training on Conformity and
Compliance,
Business Management, Organizational Development and Facilitation.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/pipermail/kictanet/attachments/20070405/6ec1e6d3/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 18906 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/pipermail/kictanet/attachments/20070405/6ec1e6d3/attachment.jpg>