Digital Rights + Internet Governance + Innovation Policy

ICANN Expands Trademark Rights & Violates Bottom-Up Policy Process: NCSG Position on ICANN Board-Staff Violation of Corporate Bylaws by Imposing ‘TM+50 Policy’ on GNSO

  NCSG Position on ICANN Board-Staff Violation of Corporate Bylaws by Imposing “TM+50 Policy” on GNSO  7 November 2013   Available as .pdf   At the request of ICANN legal staff as per its Cooperative Engagement Process (CEP), the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG) provides this further explanation of our complaint regarding the ICANN Board-staff’s violation [...]

Statement of ICANN’s Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG) on the Trademark Clearinghouse Talks and Staff Strawman Model

At ICANN’s 45th international meeting in Toronto in October 2012, ICANN’s Intellectual Property and Business Constituencies sent a letter to ICANN to request that additional changes be made to the policies for new top-level domain names. Despite the fact that the current policy had been long finalized via a painstakingly arduous consensus process in which all stakeholders compromised and ultimately reached unanimous agreement, nonetheless the IPC and BC sent a letter to Fadi Chehade, the new CEO, and the ICANN Board of Directors with 8-points for consideration and policy modification. Many of these points were the same requests the intellectual property/ business community has made before. Unfortunately, the key aspects of most of the 8-points sought to re-open previously closed agreements. Further, most of the points proposed policy changes, rather than merely clarifying technical implementation details.

ICANN’s 11th-Hour Domain Name Trademark Policy Negotiations: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly — Dissecting the Strawman

ICANN organized a meeting on 15-16 November 2012 in Los Angeles, the Trademark Clearinghouse policy negotiations, to consider the 8-point policy requests sent by the Intellectual Property and Business Constituencies to the ICANN board and senior staff at the October 2012 Toronto ICANN meeting. I participated in the LA policy meeting on behalf of noncommercial users and below is my personal evaluation of the meeting and initial reactions to the output of the meeting...

Statement of ICANN’s Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group on Proposals for Additional Trademark Rights Protection Measures for New Top-Level Domain Names

* NCSG is concerned by proposals from the IPC and BC to change consensus policy and re-open previously settled policy matters on Rights Protection Mechanisms for new tlds. * The proposal under discussion does not reflect the hard-won balance found in the current consensus policy, nor the traditional limitations that exist in trademark law. * The proposal removes matters from the negotiated RAA and registry agreements into a vague 'backdoor process', and binds ICANN to unlimited compliance obligations. * Both the substance of the proposals and the manner of presenting it directly to ICANN without a proper policy process undermine our shared desire to create a truly multi-equal stakeholder process that honours ICANN's commitment to transparency and accountability.

Top Civil Society Leaders Converge in Toronto for “ICANN & Internet Governance: Security and Freedom in a Connected World”

Cyber-Security Expert Ron Deibert and new ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade Address Non-Commercial Users Policy Conference on Eve of ICANN #45 - Public interest groups involved in ICANN will gather for the event, "ICANN & Internet Governance: Security & Freedom in a Connected World" on Friday 12 October at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto, Canada. Sponsored by the Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC), the voice of civil society in ICANN, the policy conference will focus on key ICANN policy issues like the need to promote both cyber-security and human rights in the development of global Internet policies. The event kicks-off with a morning address from cyber-security expert Ron Deibert, Director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and The Citizen Lab, an inter-disciplinary research and development hothouse at the University of Toronto. Deibert will address the need to establish a cyber-security strategy for global civil society.

IP Justice Comment on Olympic Committee and Red Cross Requests to be Granted Global Exclusive Licensing Rights to Words in the DNS

The comment was filed in response to requests from the International Olympic Committee and Red Cross groups who have asked ICANN to grant them the exclusive right to use in domain names several hundred words that these groups claim are their "exclusive property". Despite their grossly exaggerated legal claims and overblown fears, these groups lobbied the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) at ICANN to put pressure upon the ICANN Board and GNSO Policy Council to create such unprecedented rights over the use of words in domain names...

Non-Commercial Users Send Letter to Privacy Commissioners on Proposed Changes to ICANN Registrar Agreement

ICANN's Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) sent a letter to a number of Privacy Commissioners and Data Retention Officers regarding proposed changes to ICANN's Accreditation Agreement with registrars that impact the privacy rights of Internet users everywhere. According to the letter, ICANN's contract exacerbates privacy harms, in particular, "the current requirements in the new draft contracts [...]

IP Justice Comment on Request to ICANN from Red Cross & Olympic Committee to Ban Others’ Use of Words in Domain Names

Today I write to express my personal disappointment with the way ICANN has mis-handled this request for special rights to prohibit the use of certain words in domain names which are desired by politically powerful, but ultimately arbitrary, interests. Unfortunately, this case represents another clear example of ICANN departing from its own established policies and stated principles of bottom-up governance to demonstrate that it is not quite ready to be a legitimate global governance institution that can be trusted to manage the security and stability of the domain name system in the public interest...

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