GAC proposal to ban top level domains that use a geographic word unless permission granted from govt (next rounds of gtlds)

[Sam Lanfranco]

Thanks Milton. Your argument is clear, but with regard to the absence of 
any treaty based framework as a basis for justifying government requests 
to ICANN there are still three thorny issues. 1: Does ICANN have the 
power to simply say it refuses to consider requests, or will it have to 
take the position that such requests are not welcomed and only in rare 
instances will they be entertained? Both postures put ICANN into an 
adversarial relationship with particular governments if requests are 
one-on-one, and with GAC is they are funneled through GAC. 2: Dealing 
with such an adversarial relationship GAC may decide to pursue one of 
those two paths. What is in GAC’s self-interest here and what is in 
ICANN’s broader remit self-interest? 3: Lastly, if governments make move 
to even discuss international treaties to address this issue, what are 
the risks that their choice of discussion venues elsewhere will begin, 
at the expense of ICANN, to build a separate multilateral 
(ITU??/treaty??/UN??) body involved in Internet governance?

Sam L.

On 06/10/2014 10:39 AM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
>
> The problem is that governments are supposed to act via passage of 
> laws and treaties. But governments cannot agree on the issues 
> surrounding geographical indicators and hence there is no applicable 
> law at the global level. Where there is no law, there should be no 
> global constraints on what ICANN or the users do. A claim of 
> “sensitivity,” an inherently subjective term, must not be transmuted 
> into global regulations just because ICANN can get away with it. If 
> governments want globally applicable constraints on those kinds of 
> names, let them pass and ratify international treaties. If they can’t, 
> then they must stop attempting to use ICANN as a back door regulator.
>


-- 
------------------------------------------------
"It is a disgrace to be rich and honoured
in an unjust state" -Confucius
------------------------------------------------
Dr Sam Lanfranco (Prof Emeritus & Senior Scholar)
Econ, York U., Toronto, Ontario, CANADA - M3J 1P3
email: Lanfran at Yorku.ca   Skype: slanfranco
blog:  http://samlanfranco.blogspot.com
Phone: +1 613-476-0429 cell: +1 416-816-2852

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/ncsg-discuss/attachments/20141006/ffd84c1c/attachment.htm>