[governance] Rights - privacy, ICANN, whois

[Milton L Mueller]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lisa Horner [mailto:lisa at global-partners.co.uk] 
> 
> My thoughts in response to your questions below...
> 

On Whois, Lisa wrote:

> In answer to the first question, as I understand it, the Whois
> negotiations have been dominated by the corporate sector, with IP
> lawyers to defend trademark interests.  Put crudely, money 
> and power led to IP rights trumping privacy rights.  Also exactly 
> what you highlighted before - a lack of understanding of rights and 
> how to balance them, and the global IP regime's interpretation of IP 
> rights in favour of corporate rights holders.

There is, to be blunt, no ambiguity about the contradiction between
Whois and existing data protection principles. There is simply an
unwillingness to confront it politically on the part of certain key
actors, notably the EU. 

> I think your second question also in part answers the first.  
> A lack of involvement in ICANN processes is the result of a lack of 
> understanding about said processes and the issues they address,
coupled with (a
> perception of?) their technical nature and intangibility.

That may be part of the problem. Let's distinguish first between
understanding the processes of ICANN, which I agree is pretty difficult,
and understanding the issues, which in the Whois case is pretty simple. 

The only way to understand the process, really, is to get involved in
it. And the real barrier, in my experience, comes from CS groups not
being willing or able to commit the time resources to sustained
involvement. Even if they don't get involved actively, simply joining
the noncommercial users constituency (NCUC) of ICANN and increasing its
membership has some kind of an effect, by showing the rest of the policy
community that CS is broadly representative, and creating a latent
capacity for action on more urgent matters should they arise. So, CS
groups could and should easily join NCUC either as organizations
http://www.ncdnhc.org/NCUC-Membership.txt or as individuals
http://www.ncdnhc.org/individual-memb-provisional.txt

> I know this
> lack of participation is something that you and others are trying to
> address, and I applaud your efforts.  I also understand it to be the
> result of ICANN structures of participation, proposals for 
> the reform of which I think have been hotly debated on this list.

ICANN is on the verge of increasing the representation of civil society
in domain name policy. This blog post discusses that:
http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2008/7/31/3817694.html

Again, what we fear now is that CS groups will not make use of the
opportunity. Long term this will work against us by providing an excuse
to limit or reduce our representation. 

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