AW: AW: [governance] ICANN Board Vote Signals Era of Censorship in Domain Names

[Wolfgang Kleinwächter]

Michael Leibrand:
I'm not aware of any substantial .cat discussions in the GAC.

Wolfgang:
It was probably not discussed in the GAC (unfortunately the GAC meets in closed sessions), but as Amadeu told us during the ICANN Studienkreis meeting in Brussels in October 2005 ICANN wanted to have a statement by the Spanish government which was provided by the relevant ministry via the Spanish ambassador in Washington to ICANN (and supported also by letters from Andorra and the relevant local authority in France where Catalans are living) . With such a letter ICANN had no reason to ask more questions or to approach the GAC as a whole. I personally had a number of individual discussions with GAC members in Luxembourg in July 2005, a couple of month before the .cat contract was signed. The majority of the GAC members was well aware that this case could become the starting point of a big wave with a lot of political dynamite (.basque, .tibet, .tschetschnia .ossetia etc.) but everybody told me "this is not my problem here". When the new gTLD issues was raised in the open GAC meeting, there was silence. Then Michael Niebel raised the .xxx case an the whole discussion on new gTLDs started to become re-focused while .cat continued (fortunately) in the shadow of any serious governmental discussion. 
 
My approach is that the existing formulations in the GAC gTLD principle give enough space to handle individual applications on a case by case basis. A GEO-TLD can always be linked to a public authority (or to a number of public authorities if you have cities/regions/lakes/mountains with the same name in different countries) so that you can bring the involved parties on one table and look into the specific constellation. If the applicant can demonstrate his technical and financial capability as well as a documented interest of a substantial clocal community and if there is no serious concern by an involved public authority, the GEO-TLD should be allocated without any furhter discussion by the GAC or any other committee. Certainly the local public authority has the right to formulate some conditions which can be incorporated into or annxed to the ICANN-Registry contract.   
 
Wolfgang  

________________________________

Von: Michael Leibrandt [mailto:michael_leibrandt at web.de]
Gesendet: Di 10.04.2007 16:12
An: Carlos Afonso; governance at lists.cpsr.org
Betreff: Re: AW: [governance] ICANN Board Vote Signals Era of Censorship in Domain Names



Please note the huge difference regarding the public policy issues between a code like .cat which is just a placeholder for a geographic name and a code like .berlin which is 100% identical to a well known geographical name. Actually, for building a virtual community around a specific geographical location you only need to choose option one - the sponsored placeholder - which, at least from my point of view, doesn't raise any serious concerns and can therefore be introduced without permission from the relevant public authority. Michael, Berlin  
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