A low point
The XXX decision on Wednesday by ICANN's board, which voted 9-5 to reject the XXX contract, represents a low point for ICANN. I am a member of ICANN's board, and I voted in favor of the agreement.
Here is the statement I made in connection with the vote on Wednesday afternoon:
We are asked today to approve a draft registry contract with ICM Registry, who is proposing to run a top-level-domain. The string chosen by ICM and proposed by them to ICANN is “xxx”.
ICANN’s mission is to coordinate the allocation of domain names and numbers, while preserving the operational stability, reliability, and global interoperability of the Internet. The vision of a non-governmental body managing key (but narrow) technical coordination functions for the Internet remains in my view the approach most likely to reflect the needs of the Internet community.
ICANN’s current process for selecting new gTLDs, and the artificial scarcity this process creates, continues to raise procedural concerns that should be avoided in the future. I am not in favor of the “beauty contest” approach taken by ICANN thus far, which relies heavily on relatively subjective and arbitrary criteria, and not enough on the technical merits of the applications. I believe this subjective approach generates conflict and is damaging to the technically-focused, non-governmental, bottom-up vision of ICANN activity. Additionally, both XXX and TEL raise substantial concerns about the merits of continuing to believe that ICANN has the ability to choose who should “sponsor” a particular domain or indeed that “sponsorship” is a meaningful concept in a diverse world. These are strings we are considering, and how they are used at the second level in the future and by whom should not be our concern, provided the entity responsible for running them continues to comply with global consensus policies and is technically competent.
We need to adopt an objective system for the selection of new gTLDs, through creating minimum technical and financial requirements for registries. Good proposals have been put forward for improving this process, including the selection of a fixed number annually by lottery or auction from among technically-competent bidders.
In the meantime, I am not persuaded that there is any good technical-competency or financial-competency reason not to enter the draft registry agreement between ICM and ICANN that has been posted for public comment. I therefore vote “Yes” on the motion to approve the draft agreement.
Additionally, ICM is saying that it will establish elaborate registration requirements for second level domains using this top-level-domain string, will comply with the promises it has made as an applicant, and will, among many other things, “create automated tools to monitor registrant compliance with registry policies related to labeling and the prohibition of child pornography.” I have carefully reviewed the concerns raised by the Governmental Advisory Committee in its 28 March 2006 communique, and have compared them to the draft contract, and I am satisfied that these concerns have been addressed by this draft contract. Indeed, I believe we may have gone too far in addressing these concerns. Policies as to the use of domain names, as opposed to the registration of domain names, are not appropriate subjects for ICANN decisionmaking. By keeping such a short leash on ICM’s development of its policy organization, which will in turn make decisions about the use of names at the second level, ICANN may be getting into dangerous territory. We should not run the risk of turning ICANN into a convenient chokepoint for the content-related limitations desired by particular governments around the world. Governments have many powers within their territories, and are free to use them there.
Added later: Veni Markovski posted his statement here. The entire voting transcript is here.