[governance] Big Porn v. Big Web Ruling Could Spell Trouble for ICANN / was Re: new gTLDs

[parminder]

On Saturday 01 September 2012 03:14 AM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
> */[Milton L Mueller] Any law from ANY jurisdiction constraining or 
> dictating ICANN’s action would have global effect, insofar as the 
> global Internet relies on ICANN to administer the DNS./*

Milton, In face of clear facts to the contrary, you continue to claim 
that EU's, India's, Ghana's, all of 192 government's, jurisdictions have 
similar implication and impact on ICANN. I dont think I need to labour 
to disprove this patently absurd proposition.

But just to continue with the present discussion on the .xxx case, even 
if the ICM registry was * not* US based, the porn industry majors could/ 
would have brought the case against ICANN for instituting .xxx (since 
the registry would of course have serviced domain name demands from the 
US among others). ICANN would still be forced to defend itself in the 
case, and if it lost the case to annul or modify .xxx agreement. It does 
not take a political scientist to understand that the same is not true 
vis a vis the jurisdiction of any other of 192 countries. Let someone 
bring up a similar case, say, in a court in Bangladesh, And you will 
find ICANN etc merrily laughing at the impertinence of it. This is 
inequity, Milton, but you dont seem to be trained to recognise it.

> */The only unique thing about the US is the IANA contract. Please try 
> to concentrate your fire on that./*

IANA contract is a problem, but special application of US law and 
jurisdiction on all actions of ICANN is at least as big a problem. You 
cannot banish the 'problem' merely becuase you dont have a response to it.

> */And if your solution is to have 192 governments share that power, I 
> suggest it will be a long time before most people involved in Internet 
> matters support you./*

One, you say above that ICANN is already equally subject to the 
jurisdiction of all the 192 governments. Are you not therefore 
contradicting yourself here? And if it indeed is already subject to 192 
jurisdiction, even efficiency, since you dont recognise issues of equity 
and democracy, would demand that there be some forum to help harmonise 
these 192 jurisdictional claims on ICANN, especially the world gets more 
and more into the digital thick. Otherwise we are in a rather 
unsustainable and dangerous situation, dont you think!

Secondly, I have heard similar arguments in India against Indian 
democratic system and I completely understand the sentiment - it is 
better to have a dictator rather than be governed by the '550 tyrants' 
sitting in the parliament. Do you also believe/ propose so about the US 
democratic system? Just looking for some consistency here.

parminder


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