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<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><SPAN class=489233112-10042007>While
this has been referred to, I don't know if the actual text has been circulated
on this list where it is most certainly pertinent.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><SPAN
class=489233112-10042007></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><SPAN
class=489233112-10042007>MG</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left><FONT
face=Tahoma size=2>-----Original Message-----<BR><B>From:</B> Thomas
Lowenhaupt [mailto:toml@communisphere.com] <BR><B>Sent:</B> April 9, 2007
11:24 AM<BR><B>To:</B> Michael Gurstein<BR><B>Subject:</B> on
governance<BR><BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<P>Not sure if you saw this. But it's ICANN board members Susan Crawford's
dissenting speech on the .xxx vote. I'm told that she got a 1 minute standing
ovation.</P>
<P>Tom</P>
<P>>>SUSAN CRAWFORD: I must dissent from this resolution, which is not
only weak but unprincipled. I'm troubled by the path the board has followed on
this issue since I joined the board in December of 2005. I'd like to make two
points.</P>
<P>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 governanced institution with a limited mandate and
should resist efforts by governments to veto what it does.</P>
<P>I'd like to talk about the role of the board.</P>
<P>This decision whether to admit a particular non-confusing legal string into
the root is put before the ICANN board because, first, we purport to speak on
behalf of the global Internet community. And second, 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.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>So this is not a technical stability and security question.<BR>It seems to
me that the only plausible basis on which the board can answer the question in
the negative -- so could say 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.<BR>Otherwise, in the absence of technical considerations, the
board has no basis for rejecting this application.<BR>Let me explain.<BR>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,
everything not prohibited is permitted.</P>
<P>This understanding, this value, has led directly to the striking success of
the Internet around the world.</P>
<P>ICANN's 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 a triple X domain
exists.</P>
<P>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 on-line, 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 on line, absent a demonstration that most of those affected by the
proposed activity agree that it should be banned.</P>
<P>I'd like to speak about the process of this application.</P>
<P>More than three years ago, before I joined the board, ICANN began a process
for new sponsored top-level domains. As I've said on many occasions, I think
the idea of sponsorship is an empty one. All generic TLDs should be considered
sponsored, 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.</P>
<P>Notwithstanding my personal views on the vacuity of the sponsorship idea,
the fact is that ICANN evaluated the strength of the sponsorship of triple X,
the relationship between the applicant and the community behind the TLD, and,
in my personal view, concluded that this criteria had been met as of June
2005. ICANN then went on to negotiate specific contractual terms with the
applicant.</P>
<P>Since then, real and AstroTurf comments -- that's an Americanism meaning
filed comments claiming to be grass-roots opposition that have actually been
generated by organized campaigns -- have come into ICANN that reflect
opposition to this application.<BR>I do not find these recent comments
sufficient to warrant revisiting the question of the sponsorship strength of
this TLD, which I personally believe to be closed.</P>
<P>No applicant for any sponsored TLD could ever demonstrate unanimous,
cheering approval for its application. We have no metric against which to
measure this opposition. 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.</P>
<P>It seems to me that what is meant by sponsorship -- a notion that I hope we
abandon in the next round -- 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 preregistrations
from a thousand 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.</P>
<P>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 in America, when it claimed
that no foreign attachments to its network -- like answering machines --
should be allowed. In part, because AT&T asserted at the time that there
was no public demand for them.</P>
<P>The rise of the Internet was arguably made possible by allowing many
foreign attachments to the Internet 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.</P>
<P>I would like to spend a couple of moments talking about the politics of
this situation. Many of my fellow board members are undoubtedly uncomfortable
with the subject of adult entertainment material. Discomfort with this
application may have been sparked anew by first the letter from individual GAC
members Janis Karklins and Sharil Tarmizi, to which Ambassador Karklins has
told us the GAC exceeded as a whole by its silence, and, second, the letter
from the Australian government. </P>
<P>But the entire point of ICANN'S 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 U.S. would serve as a good
steward for other governmental concerns by staying in the background and
overseeing ICANN's activities, but not engaging in content-related
control.<BR>Australia's letter and concerns expressed in the past by Brazil
and other countries about triple X are explicitly content based and, thus,
inappropriate in my view.</P>
<P>If after creation of a triple X TLD certain governments of the world want
to ensure that their citizens do not see triple X 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 triple X, that is their
prerogative as well.</P>
<P>I note as a side point that such a requirement in the U.S. would violate
the first amendment to our Constitution. </P>
<P>But this content-related censorship should not be ICANN's concern and ICANN
should not allow itself to be used as a private lever for government
chokepoint content control.</P>
<P>>>VINT CERF: Susan --</P>
<P>>>SUSAN CRAWFORD: I am almost done.</P>
<P>>>VINT CERF: No, no, no. I was asking you to slow down. The scribes
are not able to keep up with you. I think you want this to be on the
record.</P>
<P>>>SUSAN CRAWFORD: I do, and I will give it to them also in typed
form. </P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>To the extent there are public policy concerns with this TLD, they can be
dealt with through local laws.</P>
<P>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 U.S. or
Brazilian government, ICANN would have compromised away its very reason for
existence as a private non-governmental governance institution.</P>
<P>So in conclusion, I continue to be dissatisfied with elements of the
proposed triple X contract, including but not limited to the rapid take-down
provision of Appendix S, which is manifestly designed to placate trademark
owners and ignores the many of the due process concerns that have been
expressed about the existing UDRP. </P>
<P>I am confident that if I had a staff or enough time, I could find many
things to carp about in this draft contract. I'm equally certain if I
complained about these terms, my concerns would be used to justify derailing
this application for political reasons.</P>
<P>I plan, therefore, as my colleague Peter Dengate Thrush has said, 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 some day have a standard
contract and objective process that can help ICANN avoid engaging in
unjustifiable ad hoc actions.</P>
<P>We should be examining generic TLD applicants on the basis of their
technical and financial strength. We should avoid dealing with content
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. Thank
you.<BR>[ applause ]</P>
<P>>>VINT CERF: Since we are in a voting phase, Susan, you also need to
cast your vote.</P>
<P>>>SUSAN CRAWFORD: I began my statement, Mr. Chairman, by casting my
vote.</P>
<P>>>VINT CERF: Which was no? Okay, thank
you.</P></FONT></DIV>!DSPAM:2676,461a847774226583287887!
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