AW: [governance] "Oversight"

[Milton L Mueller]

From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of parminder

You would know that the nature of contractual relationships between private entities has very little bearing, if any, on enforcement of a large majority of national laws.

[Milton L Mueller] What? That's a pretty sweeping statement. Maybe I don't get your meaning here. In fact, contracts among private parties play a huge role in the enforcement of national laws, and national laws often have a huge role in enforcing contracts.

And it is the possible enforcement of such laws of US on ICANN that we have been speaking about. ( The.xxx decision being currently examined in a US court on anti-trust grounds is a case in point.)

[Milton L Mueller] That case is a joke, and will go nowhere. But still, the application of US antitrust laws to a global entity is not necessarily a bad thing. Just as US consumers might be helped by smart application of European or Indian or Chinese pro-competition laws that limit what transnational giants can do. Of course, from the business's perspective, too many different, possibly conflicting jurisdictions can be a problem. But more deeply, yes, ICANN's status as a US Corp. means that there will always be a threat of lawsuits of this kind. However, remove that threat and put it where? Some of those lawsuits are excellent means of imposing accountability on the governance entity. Make ICANN a standard IO, and almost all of those forms of accountability disappear. Have you tried suing the ITU or WIPO for its competition policy effect? Or for any other reason?

When all the .com based websites were seized by US gov on IP related grounds what contract got seen??? No contract mattered, did it. The websites simply disappeared.

[Milton L Mueller] What this means is, simply, don't register under .com if you want to be insulated from US IPR law. You have a choice. Register under .IN instead, eh? Or any number of new domains that are not under US jurisdiction. I thought you'd like that, Parminder, as it encourages erosion of that evil US dominance.

You should be cheering every time US LEAs over-reach and exploit their handles on US companies operating the Internet!

For those who have been arguing that ICANN cannot remove individual websites, that might be true, but they can remove complete domain names, like cctlds, isnt it. (If in doubt about this, pl read the blog by the CEO of Canadian Internet Registration Authority.) For us outside the US, that is bad enough.

[Milton L Mueller] and your solution is...?
Parminder: allow the UN to do this?
Avri: to allow a "multistakeholder process" to do this?

My view: don't allow _anyone_ to do this arbitrarily and without lawful, well-defined checks and balances.

On the other hand, I am not completely sure what is the impact of the recent securitisation of the DNS/root zone with regard to possible domain seizures and other interferences, but I suspect that there are indeed some important implications of it. It is the lack of capacity outside well funded North based IG spaces that we dont have such required analysis and information available widely.

[Milton L Mueller] So, read the IGP blog religiously. (P.s., your org is more well-funded than ours...)

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