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

Tue Apr 10 12:44:42 EAT 2007

I believe my previous response, responds to this one too..

This is a complex affair and they are many issues of contention that MUST be
addressed first and the .XXX process was not the answer nor the solution.
That said, the issue of a broken process negates the possibility of due
process and debate in reference to the past. We must learn from the past and
focus on the future... This is already a work in progress

My two cents....

Njeri,

On 4/5/07 9:05 PM, "alice" <alice at apc.org> wrote:

> 
> Agree with you Njeri that ICANN's core mandate is technical regulation
> of the internet, however, the moment it made a decision on the dot XXX,
> a matter in my opinion that is ideologically loaded, it is moving out of
> technical regulation into the public policy sphere.
> 
> 
> Reason why numerous countries, and the EU for example, raised issues of
> public policy principles for management of internet resources during the
> WSIS Tunis agenda.
> 
> 
> As others have observed, the decision is indeed a symptom of
> international policy malaise on developing globally acceptable rules for
> governing the internet in the interest of the public and these
> contradictions are likely to recur.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Njeri Rionge wrote:
>> 
>> 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/
>> 
>> 
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>> 
>> 
>> ===================================================
>> 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.
>> /
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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===================================================
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
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