[governance] Letter from U.S. Senator Rockefeller to ICANN on new TLDs

[parminder]

On Friday 28 June 2013 08:42 PM, Thomas Lowenhaupt wrote:
> This letter from Senator Jay Rockefeller, chair of the Commerce 
> Committee to ICANN's Dr. Steven D. Crocker - 
> http://images.politico.com/global/2013/06/26/rockefeller_letter_to_icann.html 
> - might be of interest to the list.

The senator's letter makes some very important points. Although it comes 
mostly from trademark owners' point of view while the problems in the 
new round of gTLDs associated with general community ownership of 
linguistic terms are underplayed, but that is perhaps expected from a 
mainstream US politician.

GAC in their communiqué at the end of Beijing ICANN meeting proposed two 
very important things with regard to new gtlds

(1) "For strings representing generic terms, exclusive registry access 
should serve a public interest goal"


(2) "Strings that are linked to regulated or professional sectors should 
operate in a way that is consistent with applicable laws (and)... 
establish a working relationship with the relevant regulatory....bodies "

I think civil society groups like the IGC should endorse these very 
important 'advices' which have a far reaching implication vis a vis how 
domain names allocation system functions.... Purely as a highest-bidder, 
market based system, or as a public interest oriented governance system.


These 'advices" represent the abject failure of the ICANN system to meet 
public interest requirements concerned with its global governance 
functions..... And I see this failure as kind of systemic. ICANN has 
somehow organised itself to *not* be able to address real world public 
interest issues, despite committees over committees over independent 
experts that it may designate on any issue - as it of course did it on 
the new gTLDs issue.

Now, if you ask anyone on the street what does ICANN do, one is likely 
to say, if at all recognising the organisation, that it allocates top 
level domain names like .com..... and to that extent the new round of 
gTLDs represent ICANN's basic function.... and that it failed so 
miserably to address and uphold key public interest issues in terms of 
its basic function says a lot about the ICANN governance paradigm...

parminder
>
> Best,
>
> Tom Lowenhaupt

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