Digital Rights + Internet Governance + Innovation Policy

Freedom Not Fear Day 2008 International Campaign

Please Join IP Justice, EPIC, and EFF in signing the Freedom Not Fear Declaration. In recognition of Freedom not Fear Day, many US organizations set out the following recommendations: - End Watch Lists, Fusion Centers and other data profiling programs that fail to comply with the full requirements of the federal Privacy Act; - Affirm international human rights, including freedom of expression and privacy protection, so as to strengthen democratic institutions and protect the rights of individuals; - Repeal the Patriot Act and other legal authorities that permit warrantless surveillance and unconstitutional monitoring and tracking of individuals; - End the culture of secrecy that allows government officials to hide mismanagement, fraud, and incompetence behind the veil of "homeland security"; - Establish comprehensive data protection legislation that will safeguard personal information and reduce the risk of identity theft and security breaches. Please join us.

Public Interest NGO’s Express Concerns with Proposed Senate Bill on Intellectual Property Enforcement

Twelve Public Interest Organizations Send US Senate Judiciary Joint Letter on Concerns Regarding S.3325, the "Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008": "The undersigned groups write to express our concerns with S. 3325, the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008, soon to be marked up in the Committee on the Judiciary. While enforcing IP rights is necessary to ensuring the progress of science and the useful arts, an unbalanced approach to enforcement would lead to unintended harms and impede that progress. Several of the provisions contained within S. 3325 threaten such an imbalance...."

Public-Interest Principles for the Networked Communications Environment

Why is Free Expression Important in an Information Society? The UK-based "Freedom of Expression Project" posted "Public Interest Principles for the Networked Communications Environment". The draft document provides useful analysis on the importance of freedom of expression, open standards, interoperability, respect for privacy, and balanced copyright law as key policy goals for a healthy and robust information society. The project aims to complete an agreed set of principles by December 2008....

Comments to US Government on Review of Joint Project Agreement with ICANN by Robin Gross

"...In my view, given the international nature of the Internet, it is imperative that ICANN work toward moving away from oversight by a single nation and toward responding to the needs of the global Internet community. However, ICANN has yet to demonstrate that it has sufficiently evolved to the point that it should be left without any oversight and accountability, although it has made some progress in recent years. There remain significant problems with the existing structure and management of ICANN that must be resolved before ICANN can be left to itself to manage this crucial and shared public resource. In particular, “Internet users” (or the public-at-large) still remain outside of the ICANN decision-making process, such that the concerns of individuals, who have no “business” stake in ICANN policy are not adequately taken into account. ICANN continues to be dominated by large business interests and by specific commercial interests involved in providing Internet services...."

NCUC Statement on “Domain Name Tasting” ICANN Policy Issue

"The Final Outcomes Report of the ad hoc group on domain name tasting suggests a growing trend of registrants exploiting ICANN’s Add Grace Period (the “AGP”) to receive a full refund on the cost of registration by canceling their domain name registrations within five days. The AGP may have been adopted upon the assumption that all commercial uses of a domain name would require registration for a period longer than five days. Certain registrants, however, have discovered that they can profit from repeated use of extremely short-term registrations through the use of pay-per-click advertising or otherwise. A coordinated response by ICANN may be appropriate to close this loophole. This response, however, should not be disproportionate to the problem nor stem from any misconception of the issue...."

Explanation of NCUC’s Votes on WhoIs at LA ICANN Meeting – “Halloween Vote” on WhoIs

NCUC strongly supported Motion #3 because it provided a mechanism to spur uncompromising parties to the negotiating table on Whois in good faith. Without a mechanism to bring to the negotiating table parties who already have what they want, there is no incentive to voluntarily agree to any changes to the status quo with whois. NCUC continues to believe that “sun-setting” the non-consensus policy of Whois is the best course of action for the ICANN Board and the GNSO. There is no legitimate rationale for retaining policies that lack the broad support of the ICANN community, such as Whois. Whois never held a consensus position within the GNSO and it is a tragic mistake to continue with such a non-consensus policy, particularly when ICANN has been warned by national and regional data protection commissioners that Whois violates a number of national laws and international agreements. Reform of Whois is badly and immediately needed to protect the privacy rights of Internet users, bring ICANN into compliance with international law, and remove the legal risk on Registrars and Registries for violations of law imposed by ICANN contracts....

EPIC & NGO Letter to ICANN Board on Need for Whois Reform

"The purpose of this letter is to express our support for changes to WHOIS services that would protect the privacy of individuals, specifically the removal of registrants' contact information from the publicly accessible WHOIS database. It is also to propose a sensible resolution to the long-running discussion over WHOIS that would establish a bit of "policy stability" and allow the various constituencies to move on to other work. Both the WHOIS Task Force and the WHOIS Working Group agree that new mechanisms must be adopted to address an individual's right to privacy and the protection of his/her data. Current ICANN WHOIS policy conflicts with national privacy laws, including the EU Data Protection Directive, which requires the establishment of a legal framework to ensure that when personal information is collected, it is used only for its intended purpose. As personal information in the directory is used for other purposes and ICANN's policy keeps the information public and anonymously accessible, the database could be found illegal according to many national privacy and data protection laws including the European Data Protection Directive, European data protection laws and legislation in Canada and Australia...."

Joint NGO Statement at the 2nd Special Session of WIPO’s SCCR

We call upon WIPO delegates to reject the proposed WIPO Broadcast Treaty. After more than 9 years of discussions, efforts to find a treaty formulation that deals with piracy of broadcast signals, but which does not harm copyright owners and the legitimate users of broadcasts have failed.

“Keep the Core Neutral” Civil Society Workshop at ICANN Board Meeting 27 June in San Juan

Civil society's "Keep the Core Neutral" workshop will explore freedom of expression issues in the policy development process to introduce new generic top-level domains (gtlds)? As the ICANN community debates policy options to allow new top-level domains, it must consider important issues that impact what ideas may be expressed in a domain name. The workshop aims to provide a public discussion point in the ICANN policy development process for new top-level domains.

NCUC Proposes Amendments to Protect Free Expression in Domain Name Policy at ICANN

ICANN's Non-Commercial User's Constituency (NCUC) introduced 5 proposals to amend the draft GNSO recommendations for a policy to introduce new generic top-level domains (gtlds). NCUC's amendments are intended to provide some recognition of respect for freedom of expression rights in the GNSO recommendations. NCUC proposes that ICANN keep the core neutral of national, regional, moral, and religious policy conflicts. The current draft GNSO recommendations would not permit a controversial or offensive word to be included in a top-level Internet domain name and would expand the rights of trademark owners on the Internet.

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