[governance] Susan Crawford"s ICANN statement on the .xxx

[Carlos Afonso]

Michael and all, the all text transcripts of all public forums are
available in the ICANN site (including the Crawford speech). There was
applause (not standing ovation really, and lasted much less than one
minute) for different reasons -- a few were in favor on approving .xxx,
others applauded because of the incisive comments regarding the current
TLD decision-making process -- although still others, even agreeing with
the comments, considered highly inappropriate to deliver them during the
voting process.

[]s fraternos

--c.a.

Michael Gurstein wrote:
> 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.
>  
> MG
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thomas Lowenhaupt [mailto:toml at communisphere.com] 
> Sent: April 9, 2007 11:24 AM
> To: Michael Gurstein
> Subject: on governance
> 
> 
> 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.
> 
> Tom
> 
>>> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> I'd like to talk about the 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, 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.
> 
> 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 -- 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.
> 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, everything not prohibited is permitted.
> 
> This understanding, this value, has led directly to the striking success
> of the Internet around the world.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> I'd like to speak about the process of this application.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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. 
> 
> 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.
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> I note as a side point that such a requirement in the U.S. would violate
> the first amendment to our Constitution. 
> 
> 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.
> 
>>> VINT CERF: Susan --
> 
>>> SUSAN CRAWFORD: I am almost done.
> 
>>> 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.
> 
>>> SUSAN CRAWFORD: I do, and I will give it to them also in typed form. 
> 
> 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 laws.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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. 
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> [ applause ]
> 
>>> VINT CERF: Since we are in a voting phase, Susan, you also need to
> cast your vote.
> 
>>> SUSAN CRAWFORD: I began my statement, Mr. Chairman, by casting my
> vote.
> 
>>> VINT CERF: Which was no? Okay, thank you.
> 
> !DSPAM:2676,461a847774226583287887! 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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-- 
Carlos A. Afonso
diretor de planejamento
Rits - Rede de Informações para o Terceiro Setor
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