ICANN Monday

Today is the first day of the 30th ICANN meeting. I’ve been here since late Friday - I wanted to go to the all-day GNSO Council meeting on Saturday about whois, new TLDs, and other issues. Yesterday, Sunday, the GNSO continued to meet, the board committees met, and the board had an all-afternoon workshop plus a dinner.

This afternoon there’s a key discussion about the policies to govern the selection of new TLDs. I’ve been hoping for a standardized, objective process for new TLDs for a very long time, and my hope is that we’ll move forward on this. The GNSO Council has adopted a set of recommendations, and this workshop was designed to focus on them.

We’ve reached the most contentious area of recommendations — the processes for addressing worries about particular strings being chosen as new TLDs.

Recommendation 3:

Strings must not infringe the existing legal rights of others that are recognized or under generally accepted and internationally recognized principles of law. Examples of these legal rights that are internationally recognized include, but are not limited to, rights defined in the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industry Property (in particular trademark rights), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (in particular freedom of expression rights).

Recommendation 6:

Strings must not be contrary to generally accepted legal norms relating to morality and public order that are recognized under international principles of law.

Examples of such principles of law include, but are not limited to, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, intellectual property treaties administered by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS).

This is definitely tricky. International law doesn’t have anything to say about “morality” when it comes to gTLDs. And, of course, morality varies by country….and city.

Recommendation 20:

An application will be rejected if an expert panel determines that there is substantial opposition to it from a significant portion of the community to which the string may be explicitly or implicitly targeted.

Also very tricky. “Implicitly targeting” is defined as being in the mind of the objector - that objector can assume that there’s targeting “or that the objector believes there may be confusion by users over its intended use.” Whoof.

This is a six-hour workshop, and we’re moving into the fourth hour. Lots of challenges ahead. How will/can these policies be implemented? My top priority is making sure we have a standardized, obvious, objective process.

If you’re interested in this subject, read this for more information. All comments very welcome.

October 29, 2007 | Filed Under icann 

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