[governance] "Oversight"

[Norbert Bollow]

David Conrad <drc at virtualized.org> wrote:
> On Jun 4, 2012, at 3:05 AM, parminder wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> No, ICANN, acting unilaterally, cannot.
> 
> ICANN, acting as the IANA Functions Manager under contract to the US
> Government, can at the direction of the administrators for the
> top-level domain in question _make a request_ to have that top-level
> domain removed.  That request (once validated by IANA staff) is sent
> to the US Dept. of Commerce NTIA for approval to ensure that
> existing policies and processes were followed, and when approved
> that request is forwarded to Verisign as the Root Zone Manager for
> that TLD's entry in the root zone to be deleted.  At that point, the
> modified zone file is DNSSEC-signed (by the Root Zone Manager with
> a key that is held by (handwave) the IANA Functions Manager) and
> pushed to the 13 root servers that will make the modified root zone
> available to the Internet.

Suppose that someone (e.g. an industry association of the copyright
industry) sued Verisign in a US court with the demand that a given
TLD (with a TLD operator not subject to US jurisdiction) be taken
down (on the basis that the TLD operator does not comply with demands
to take down domain names that are used for purposes that are, under
US law, copyright violations), and suppose that then Verisign as the
Root Zone Manager is served a formally valid court order to take down
that TLD.

Am I right in assuming that there is nothing that would stop Verisign
from feeling obligated to comply with that court order?

> The point here is that no single party involved in root management,
> the TLD administrators, ICANN, NTIA, Verisign, or the root server
> operators, is able to unilaterally "remove complete domain names"

But maybe someone who is not normally involved in root management, a
judge who maybe hasn't been given any information on how what this
action would affect the Internet as a whole, could do it?

Greetings,
Norbert

-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t