[governance] Where are we going?

[Adam Peake]

>It's so difficult to catch-up!
>
>Personally and very frankly, I don't feel like including .xxx to gTLD
>is such a big deal, and by the same token, denying .xxx is also not
>the most important policy issue for us.


Agree 100%.  One of the tragedies of xxx is the amount of time 
wasted.  Shame it continues to distract when the next IGF 
consultation is about 6 weeks away.   Perhaps we can keep up our 
successful run on non-contributions and leave comments to a few 
misguided souls who want to hand the whole process back over to 
governments? (Bureau anyone?)


>I also tend to agree with what Bertrand wrote.
>
>As Vittorio put it in the Board discussion in Lisbon, I see
>big cultural differences in the .xxx debate, namely, most supporters
>of .xxx to be added in the gTLD zone is from the US, except, perhaps
>Peter Dengate Thrush from New Zealand also supported its inclusion,
>though I am not sure how far New Zealand is from US socio-culturally ;-)


I think the others in the minority were:
Joi Ito's (Japan), Rajasekhar Ramaraj (India), David Wodlet (Canada - 
I think).  So Susan's the only director from the US.  Quite a diverse 
bunch in many respects.

Not mentioning this to be picky, but I think all these 
generalizations are pointless. (how did people from predominantly 
Catholic countries vote... I blame the pope... on today of all days 
:-)

I don't belive the xxx decision was about free speech or censorship 
-- it was a screw-up. Brought out the worst in the sponsored TLD 
process. It's not a sign of any new problems in ICANN and anything 
that ICANN isn't trying to fix (except to emphasize problems with GAC 
in the way it provides policy advice).  Hopefully there will be 
enough board members so annoyed at the mess they've created they'll 
look more seriously at the slow GNSO processes and kick some life 
into creating predictable processes for new TLDs.  Or I hope so.

I don't know how ICANN uses the fee it gets from new TLD applicants, 
but spending a little more on looking to see if there is an organized 
sponsoring community --and if there is finding out what that 
community thinks-- might have been a good idea.  xxx comment process 
was clearly riddled with form letters from a few organized groups 
(astroturf or not), but it should have been clear some real 
investigation was necessary. It was stupid to waste so much time and 
effort only to have a real organization ("Free Speech Coalition" 
<http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.freespeechcoalition.com/>) 
arrive so late in the day with some quite damning comments about lack 
of support from at least their part of the sponsoring community.  The 
board's failure to direct staff to look into the degree of support 
(sponsored'ness) was a significant screw up.  Porn's a multi billion 
dollar/yen/pound business world wide.  Analysts follow it, lobbyists 
lobby for it.  It shouldn't be hard to find out who to ask if ICM had 
support.

And I don't buy the ICANN narrow technical mission argument, 
shouldn't touch content. ICANN doesn't do much technical stuff.  It's 
a regulator.  It sets prices. It judges business plans and gives away 
multi-million dollar gifts. And it comes under political pressure 
(WSIS, like that didn't have the slightest influence on ICANN and the 
board...?) When Susan Crawford mentioned political pressures, I think 
it's pretty obvious she was talking about sustained pressure that 
began with  NTIA and GAC intervention last year. I remember one board 
member at the time mentioning having received threats of violence in 
response to his opinions on xxx. To deny pressure seems either silly 
or a sign of of cloth ears: board members are there to listen and 
soak up the pressure of lack of consensus.

Every year the NomCom selects people for leadership positions in 
ICANN and one of the things we say is we are trying to select people 
who place the broad public interest ahead of any particular 
interests.  I would be perfectly happy for any board member to say "I 
say no to xxx in the root, one reason is I think xxx fails to serve 
the public interest"  (because... some rightwing nut congressman in 
the US will try to use it to force filtering... or we've seen 
attempts like this with kids.us and it doesn't work and actually 
tends to restrict speech... or whatever reason they wished to stand 
up for).  Equally, they might support xxx in the name of the public 
interest (... because I think it will help, marginally, clean up the 
porn industry and while the business might fail it's worth a try. Or 
whatever.)  No problem with it. So long as they justify their 
decision either way.

Anyway, xxx's irrelevant.

So what are we going to prepare for the IGF Consultation?

Happy Easter,

Adam








>One phrase that comes to my mind around this debate is the famous
>one John Barlow wrote ten years ago: "In Cyberspace, the First
>Amendment is a local ordinance."
>
>To me, it suggests that what is accepted in one country does not
>become universal rule.
>
>Of course, I understand many non-US people advocate Free speech and
>which is in fact included in the Universal Declaration of Human Right,
>not in US constitution alone, and our Japanese constitution also has
>the similar clause.
>
>However, definition/interpretation of free speech differ quite a lot -
>which is most obviously displayed in the limit or acceptance of
>porn/nudity expressions in different societies. Free speech in this
>context is not absolute term by itself. New French rule concerning
>religious expression is also another good example.
>Many Muslim countries, they do not allow Western displays of nudes, right?
>Clearly, here we do not have one universal rule be it real world or 
>cyber world.
>
>In the cyberspace, as Bertrand well described, where there is no
>geographic progression of different cultures, the "g" TLD space,
>unlike ccTLD space, is naturally regarded as more global space than
>local/country/culture specific areas.
>
>If so, to me it is quite natural for such proposal as .xxx to be
>perceived as very offensive to some cultural/societal people.
>In Japan, making ".xxx" as public label is almost unacceptable (though
>there are some groups who might support this, of course). Please don't
>misunderstand, while xxx, or hard-core porns are very much illegal,
>so-called soft porns, quite bizarre photos and pictures are widely
>distributed and displayed in general magazines or some TV commercials
>in Japan. We just have different values and corresponding rules or
>systems.
>
>I also think "bottom up consensus" in a community usually means that
>if there is very strong opposition/dissent from some
>communities/stakeholders remains, in good faith, then even that is a
>minority, we should respect that and not take decision based on simple
>majority even though the majority could not accept with the reasons
>given from the minority. So, I may say that if .xxx proposal receives
>such strong opposition from some cultures/societies, ignoring them and
>put it into one sTLD is, even it is labeled and controlled as sTLD,
>may not be the best solution now.  If, as Karl argued well, there are
>5,000 or 50,000 TLDs are implemented, then the weight of one .xxx may
>become irrelevant. But that is still far from reality at this point -
>I like that to happen, though, so that we can end this rather
>counter-productive debate.
>
>best,
>
>
>izumi
>
>
>
>2007/4/6, Demi Getschko <trieste at gmail.com>:
>>Agreed, Bertrand!
>>
>>And just one more thing: I think all of us agree that in France there
>>is freedom to profess any religion. Notwithstanding (and here I am
>>*not* discussing the merit of the decision, just trying to make a
>>distinction between free speech and free display of signs and,
>>tentatively, one more analogy with TLDs), the France government in
>>some way restricts public abusive display of religious symbols in the
>>schools, like big crosses, the veil, the kippah etc etc.
>>Best
>>
>>demi
>>
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance