[governance] ICANN Board Vote Signals Era of Censorship

[wcurrie at apc.org]

Doesn't this debate have to do with section I.B.1 of the September MoU
between ICANN and the US Dept of Commerce:

The Department reaffirms its policy goal of transitioning the technical
coordination of the DNS to the private sector in a manner that promotes
stability and security, competition, bottom-up coordination, and
representation.  Consistent with this objective, the Department agrees to
perform the following activities:
1.	Transparency and Accountability:  Continue to provide expertise and
advice on methods and administrative procedures to encourage greater
transparency, accountability, and openness in the consideration and
adoption of policies related to the technical coordination of the Internet
DNS;

What is the state of play here?

willie

> Milton Mueller ha scritto:
>> I kind of like the label "hyper-liberal". Certainly it seems a more
>> appealing ideology than the stale corporatism that animates your view of
>> policy making.
>>
>> But what you don't seem to understand is that it is the architecture of
>> neutral technical coordination -- hyperliberalism if you will -- that
>> made the internet possible, that made it succeed in undermining
>> monopolies and opening up such fantastic resources of information and
>> communication.
>
> I agree 101% with you that the freedom to innovate without having to ask
> for central authorizations, and the "intelligence at the end", are
> crucial features that need to be preserved. However, on resources that
> are not infinite (and sure, TLDs now are artificially scarce, but would
> not be infinite anyway) and need central coordination, you need to have
> a central process. When these issues assume social significance (and you
> agree that domain names have a semantic value), it is natural that
> social considerations come into play.
>
> Try stopping someone in the middle of the road and asking, "should .xxx
> domain names be created?". You will get plenty of replies, in favour or
> against, focusing on many different social and political issues. I don't
> think that you will find anyone replying "who cares, that's just a
> technical issue".
>
> Now, you can decide that the world is wrong, but I think that a
> democratic system of governance must first of all reflect the average
> mindset of its constituents.
>
> I'd be very concerned if ICANN started to think that its mission is to
> "educate" the world about the value of a specific political approach to
> this matter.
> --
> vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
> -------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/  <--------
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Willie Currie
Communications and Information Policy Programme Manager
Association for Progressive Communications (APC)

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