Big Pharma Comes to ICANN?

[Robin Gross]

Interesting read:
http://www.knujon.com/ddb_master_draft.pdf

It appears to be a privately commissioned report using inflammatory  
rhetoric and extreme examples to frighten the public into requiring  
every possible privacy invasion that the IP Constituency has been  
lobbying for over the last decade.   Domain name registrars are the  
"choke-point".

The authors ultimately want to pressure domain name registrars to  
police and control their systems in order to protect the interests of  
certain branded companies (using "sick, dying, elderly people that  
are being prayed upon" as the example.  Seriously, it does.  I  
suspect the next report will be on the connection of "funding  
terrorism through trafficking in unlicensed perfume" ).

If domain name registrars can be punished for what 3rd-parties do,  
registrars will be pressured to police and control their systems to  
prevent the sale of unlicensed, but lawful, generic medicines (as if  
registrars are in any position to know what is licensed, what is  
dangerous, what is lawful generic, etc).  It sets a very dangerous  
precedent that courts (and even legislatures) have been unwilling to  
give the IP Constituency and Big Pharma.  It also uses examples of  
medicines for powers that will more often to be used to "protect" $5k  
handbags and shoes.  It is the legal responsibility of the branded  
companies to protect their own private brands.  It is neither ICANN's  
responsible (as PDT said clearly at the Nairobi ICANN meeting), nor  
is it registrars responsibility to ensure that private brands are  
"protected" on the Internet.  Of course big branded companies want to  
shift this burden of policing to protect their private rights over to  
others to do for them.

On a positive note, over-the-top reports like this could inspire the  
interest of the formidable Access to Medicines movement and generic  
medicines distributors to become involved in ICANN policy making.   
(That would be great for NCSG, but not so great for the IP  
Constituency).

Best,
Robin


IP JUSTICE
Robin Gross, Executive Director
1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA  94117  USA
p: +1-415-553-6261    f: +1-415-462-6451
w: http://www.ipjustice.org     e: robin at ipjustice.org



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