Digital Rights + Internet Governance + Innovation Policy

IP Justice Comments on ICANN Accountability & Transparency Concerns: Lack of Accountability to Non-Commercial Users Remains Problematic for ICANN’s Promise to Protect the Public Interest

IP Justice is deeply concerned that ICANN is insufficiently accountable to relevant non-commercial interests. Certain interests, such as business interests (in particular the trademark and domain name industries) are over-represented at ICANN both in structure and in practice. On the other hand, non-commercial interests and individual Internet users are not given the appropriate representation, although some improvements have been made in recent years. There is a real worry that ICANN is an "industry organization" and works predominantly for trademark interests and the domain name industry. Too often non-commercial concerns are ignored by ICANN; without any real "muscle" behind non-commercial interests, ICANN has little incentive to protect those interests in its policy development process...

IP Justice Statement to ICANN on Need to Respect Decision of Independent Review Panel on .XXX Domain

IP Justice supports the swift adoption of the decision of the Independent Review Panel (IRP) by ICANN and the inclusion of the applied for .xxx domain name into the root. This IRP decision should not be, and cannot be, a referendum on pornography as some comments urge. This decision is only about ICANN's accountability mechanism - its means of correcting its past mistakes, and in particular its mishandling of the .xxx domain name application...

“Top Ten Myths About Civil Society Participation in ICANN” From the Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC)

ICANN Staff and the commercial constituencies at ICANN have been busy spreading mis-information about civil society participation at ICANN - largely to keep civil society and noncommercial interests marginalized. For example, ICANN is not allowing the noncommercial users to elect their representatives on the GNSO Policy Council and will instead "appoint" representatives, unlike all the other constituencies at ICANN. Here are a few of the top myths spread about civil society at ICANN and the truth about these myths.

IP Justice Comments on ICANN Proposal to Expand Trademarks Rights in Domain Names

IP Justice submitted comments today in opposition to the proposals contained in the "IRT Report" a proposal from ICANN's Intellectual Property Constituency to create new trademark rights to domain names that do not exist in law. ICANN's Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) also filed comments with ICANN discussing thesubstantive problems with the proposal and also the procedural concerns, which led to the creation of a one-sided report....

ICANN Go-Ahead on GTLDs with “String Criteria” of “Morality and Public Order”

"There has been wide coverage of ICANN’s decision this week to adopt a new process for creating new global Top Level Domains (gTLDs).... Civil libertarians supporting Susan Crawford’s line argue that if governments are able to pressure ICANN into prohibiting .jihad (which has perfectly non-violent meanings in Islam as well as the terrorist connotations it has recently acquired in the West), then can a prohibition on .falun-gong be far behind? ..."

Work Remains For ICANN’s New Top Level Internet Domains (IP-Watch)

Internet Technical Body an Authority on Morality? ICANN announced the "biggest extension of the DNS [domain name system] in 40 years" after its decision last week to finish implementation of a new policy for introducing new top-level domains (TLDs). According to the timeline presented at the ICANN meeting in Paris, new TLDs to compete against the existing .com, .biz or .museum TLDs will be open for application in the second quarter of 2009. ... But the most discussed and criticised reason for an objection clearly is “morality and public order.” This objection criterion would allow any government to veto strings (domains), ICANN director and US law professor Susan Crawford warned before the vote on the new TLD policy. This could undermine ICANN’s mission to act as a private self-regulatory body, she said, by giving such influence to governments. “It’s allowing governments to censor,” Crawford said, adding that the idea of having a private internet governance model was also “to avoid having the domain name system used as a choke-point for content.” Together with her colleague Wendy Seltzer, who acts as liaison of the ICANN At-Large User Community to the board, Crawford asked for clear-cut and narrow rules for the morality objection....

ICANN Board Approves Censorship Policy for Domain Names Based on Morality: 2 Board Members Speak Against It

Today in Paris the ICANN Board passed the GNSO's controversial recommendations to censor top level domains based on notions of "morality and public order", and broadly defined "community" wishes. However, 2 ICANN board members, law professors Wendy Seltzer (on behalf of the At-Large Internet Users) and Susan Crawford, made very powerful and compelling statements to protect free expression on the top level of the Internet. Hopefully Professor Crawford is right and this harm can be mitigated through narrowly tailored implementation.

IGF 2008 Hyderabad: Program, Agenda and Format of Hyderabad Meeting

Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Program, Agenda and Format of the Hyderabad Meeting I. Introduction This paper aims to provide an update to the planning on programme, agenda and format of the third IGF meeting, which is to take place in Hyderabad on 3 – 6 December 2008. The paper is conceived as a rolling document [...]

Class Action Lawsuit Against Network Solutions & ICANN for “Front-Running” of Domains and Defrauding Consumers

Network Solutions has forced millions of people to buy Internet domain names from them instead of cheaper competitors through a scheme that's netted the firm millions of dollars, a federal class action lawsuit filed today by Kabateck Brown Kellner, LLP states. ICANN, whose policies facilitate the scheme, is also named in the suit, filed in U.S. District Court, Central District of California. Each time someone asks Network Solutions about a domain name, the firm creates a monopoly for itself, forcing consumers to pay the price they demand," said Brian Kabateck, lead counsel in the class action and Kabateck Brown Kellner's Managing Partner. Whenever someone searches for the availability of a domain name through Network Solutions' website, the company immediately registers the name for itself, preventing other companies from selling it and forcing consumers to pay Network Solutions' expensive fees. If a consumer were to go to another, cheaper site to register the name, they would find the name is "unavailable." Consumers are never informed that inquiring as to a name's availability through Network Solutions results in the company holding a monopoly on selling that name. This allows Network Solutions to continue charging substantially higher prices for domain name registration. Network Solutions charged $34.99 to register the name sought by this suit's lead plaintiff. A competitor would have charged $9.99. Network Solutions' scheme is made possible by ICANN. ICANN allows companies that sell domain names to avoid paying registration fees for names cancelled within five days. Thus, Network Solutions can defraud customers at no cost to itself....

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