[Poll] reminder: Topics for discussion: NCSG - ICANN Board meeting Tuesday 9th February

[Matthew Shears]

Agree - important topic.

On 1/26/2015 7:36 PM, Robin Gross wrote:
> I very much like the proposal to remind ICANN of the importance to 
> stay out of content regulation (leave that to legal / judicial 
> processes).  Thanks for the suggestion, Ed!
>
> Best,
> Robin
>
>
> On Jan 25, 2015, at 5:33 PM, Edward Morris wrote:
>
>> Hi Rafik,
>>
>>
>> I’d like to suggest a topic that has not had high visibility in our 
>> stakeholder group in recent years, yet is a big part of the NCSG DNA: 
>> the belief that ICANN should not be involved in content control. It’s 
>> part of our belief in free expression and it’s something that very 
>> slowly ICANN is getting involved in fairly blatantly. I think it 
>> would be productive for us to raise the flag in this area to get word 
>> to the Board that we’re noticing this and that we do not approve of 
>> this mission creep.
>>
>>
>> ICANN has always been involved in content to some degree. The most 
>> visible activity in this area came during the .XXX battles where 
>> contractual language specified forms of prohibited content. Obviously 
>> the new gTLD programme involves, in many ways, content 
>> classification. But recently…
>>
>>
>> This autumn we learned that ICANN had employees going through 
>> corporate records of firms in Panama to help law enforcement track 
>> down an alleged child pornography ring. ( 
>> http://domainincite.com/14842-icann-helps-bust-russian-child-porn-ring ). 
>> Now Fadi tells us they are attempting to figure out what to do with 
>> the case of a Bulgarian man with servers in Costa Rica who is 
>> allegedly putting i.p. ingringing content online ( NCSG – CEO 
>> meeting, NCPH intersessional transcript, p. 19-20). This is certainly 
>> a long way from names and numbers.
>>
>>
>> We know Fadi’s perspective. According to Mr. Chehade, ICANN is under 
>> pressure. It’s one of the reasons ICANN is supposedly getting 
>> involved in the NMI. Yet during the interessional meeting Fadi also 
>> stated several times that ICANN needed community input to help 
>> determine “how far does ICANN want to go?” on matters like these 
>> (intersessional transcript, p. 10). We need to tell him that ICANN 
>> has no role to play in policing content online.
>>
>>
>> Although we know Fadi’s position (both revelations mentioned above 
>> came as a result of Fadi speaking extemporaneously) and expressed 
>> confusion on these matters  we haven’t really heard from the Board 
>> about situations like these. On the one hand we’re told during the 
>> transition that ICANN has a limited remit and is going to stick to 
>> it. On the other hand we have ICANN employees searching through 
>> Central American corporate records to assist authorities in policing 
>> content. I think it would be appropriate for us to express concern 
>> about ICANN’s incursions, both actual and contemplated, into content 
>> and to try to get clarification as to the Board’s views and 
>> intentions on the matter.
>>
>>
>> Ed
>>
>> ᐧ
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 10:23 PM, Rafik Dammak 
>> <rafik.dammak at gmail.com <mailto:rafik.dammak at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     Hi everyone,
>>
>>     We need to get 3 topics to discuss with the ICANN board at
>>     singapore meeting.
>>
>>     Best,
>>
>>     Rafik
>>
>>     On Jan 20, 2015 10:32 AM, "Rafik Dammak" <rafik.dammak at gmail.com
>>     <mailto:rafik.dammak at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>         Hi everyone,
>>
>>         like every time in preparation for ICANN meeting, we have to
>>         discuss what kind of topics/issues we want to raise with
>>         ICANN board members when we  meet them.
>>
>>         we will try to get 3 topics and send them 1 week prior to the
>>         session.
>>         please propose  topics and suggest short descriptions . we
>>         will conduct later a polling to pick-up the 3 topics among
>>         the proposals.
>>
>>         Best Regards,
>>
>>         Rafik
>>
>>
>

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