Thanks for the info Cheryl. 

I am curious to hear more about how you envision ICANN as a place for 
regulating content on the Internet.  How would that work in practice?

Thanks,
Robin


Cheryl Preston wrote:

>I include here a statement of my objectives for NCUC and then a link to
>a brief bio.
>
>I have worked on issues involving Internet governance and policy for
>only a few years.  After looking at federal and state involvement in
>Internet law, I began writing a series of papers on the history and
>current position of ICANN, and its potential as an organizing force
>around which a global law of Internet governance could be discussed,
>considered and maintained.  When I attended my first NCUC meeting last
>Spring in San Juan, I was presented with the "Keep the Net Neutral"
>petition NCUC had drafted and sponsored.  It included a statement
>charging ICANN to do everything in its power to impose an absolute free
>expression value at every level of the DNS system.  
>
>I admit that I was rather stunned that the NCUC was so deeply involved
>in promoting a particular social, political and legal position regarding
>the role of ICANN.  We were able to work a compromise by striking the
>affirmative charge language in the petition, but the petition and the
>later workshop sponsored by NCUC evidenced a clear commitment to this
>absolutist ideological view.  
>
>After that meeting I did considerable investigation about the history
>of the NCUC and the people who have been involved, as well as the
>history and people involved in the larger sphere of those who advocating
>this position in Internet and other policy debates.  In addition, I
>spoke with my friends and colleagues who have been involved with other
>constituency groups or with long-time players such as VeriSign.
>
>My personal and professional opinion with respect to ICANN and the
>Internet, both nationally and globally, is very simplistically stated
>as:
>
>(1) Competing values need to be appropriately balanced in this new
>virtual world, just as we have strived to do in the real world in every
>jurisprudential era;
>
>(2) Even the strongest forms of idealized free speech (i.e. under the
>U.S. First Amendment) are balanced and nuanced by centuries of the best
>legal minds;
>
>(3) A passionate commitment to the principle of free expression,
>including the right of all people to political and subversive speech,
>does not mean that we must abandon all forms of constraint on the
>Internet;
>
>(4) Having a thoughtful, balanced and realistic view of what few
>extreme forms of speech are more harmful than helpful does not mean that
>next week we will construct the Chinese Wall, imprison dissidents, or
>squelch all religious freedom;
>
>(5) One issue that deserves study, dialogue and exploration is if we
>can and/or should look for a way to configure the technology,
>traditional and nontraditional forms of regulation, and economic and
>social incentives to give a choice to parents around the world who do
>not want their children educated in sex and human relations by the kind
>of pornography and obscenity now flooding the Internet; and
>(6) It may be that ICANN might have an appropriate role in supporting
>any kind of eventual resolution to this problem we might someday devise
>though the good faith dialogue of the global community.
>
>Yes, in short, although I agree with the extreme importance of free
>expression on the Internet and elsewhere, I do not think that now, at
>this early date in the development of the technology, law and culture of
>this new information society, we should seek to bind ICANN to a
>value/politics laden (and revolutionary and untried) legal position of
>pushing for unfettered free expression at the expense of all other
>values.  
>
>And, yes, I do not believe that we ought to excuse entirely ICANN from
>the trust and stewardship it has been given over this global resource
>created with the funds of the US public standing for themselves and for
>all of world’s humanity of this generation and the future.
>
>With that disclosure on the table, my view of NCUC is:
>
>(1) I am confident that the handful of people who have almost
>exclusively run NCUC from the beginning are honest, smart, skilled and
>devoted.  But, I have researched to the extent I can the backgrounds and
>views of these actors and the organizations with whom they affiliate. 
>These are fine organizations and I do not doubt their good faith or the
>quality of their intellectual work.  However, they are uniformly of a
>particular social/political viewpoint on critical issues concerning the
>Internet.  This viewpoint is not representative of the full range of
>noncommercial Internet users, nor of the variety of positions and causes
>promoted by the many nonprofit organizations focused specifically on the
>Internet in the US - not to mention such users and organizations in the
>wide range of countries around the globe.
>
>(2)  I believe that NCUC should not be an advocacy group for same the
>reasons that the IGF has determined that their dynamic coalitions not be
>advocacy groups.  Moreover, NCUC absolutely should not be used as a tool
>for the advocacy of a single, highly contested position just because the
>actors who became involved in the beginning (before most of the world
>even knew there was such a thing as ICANN or NCUC) share a particular
>view.  Nor should it be an advocacy group for my position or any other. 
>I have heard, but conducted no objective study, the opinion that the
>statements coming out of the NCUC, unlike other groups, are routinely
>dismissed as a refrain of a single, inflexible, and particularized
>approach to ICANN and the Internet, which approach doesn't well
>accommodate the dynamic dialogue envisioned by the multi-stakeholder
>principle.
>
>(3)  NCUC should take seriously the trust of representing the interests
>of noncommercial users of the Internet and make some effort to determine
>who falls in this category of users and what these users want in terms
>of long-term, global Internet policy.  NCUC should then study, consider
>and discuss these interests and make representative, respectful and fair
>suggestions to the GSNO for the betterment of the Internet.  This seems
>to be the charge given by ICANN.
>
>(4) In any event and notwithstanding all three of the above, the
>leadership of any group entrusted to represent a large and diverse
>constituency and make, on their behalf, recommendations should be
>routinely renewed and refreshed by new perspectives and approaches.  I
>fully understand that involvement in ICANN is very expensive and almost
>prohibitive for those whose employers or clients do not have the
>economic stake or the resources to support the individuals doing the
>work.  I agree that NCUC needs to make a case to the ICANN board why, by
>definition, the "non-commercial" users cannot afford to participate in
>the same way that the commercial constituencies can.  Thus, the
>noncommercial interest group exists of record, but it cannot function
>effectively without support.  The result of the current system is that
>NCUC speaks only for the few such organization that, for what ever
>reason, have established relationships with businesses and individuals
>with loads of disposable cash, with sufficient economic incentive to
>justify supporting that particular organization, with governments, and
>with the few universities who generously fund advocacy work.  While I
>understand that funds are now given by ICANN to support NCUC work, I
>fully understand that the ICANN support is insufficient and those
>involved must be financially able to absorb the travel and time costs. 
>
>
>I admit readily that I do not have the hands-on experience or long-term
>background that Robert has.  I don't suppose I am the best qualified or
>most able person in the North American region to do this work.  I would
>joyously vote for anyone else who wanted to do this and who could (1)
>begin a practice of reaching out to other viewpoints; and (2) create a
>pattern where new people can be given the opportunities and thus the
>experience necessary for leadership - with the duty to invite, in turn,
>new people and perspectives to work through the system.
>
>My basic biographical information is available at:
>http://www.law.byu.edu/Law_School/Faculty_Profile?102 
>
>Please ask if you have questions.  Thank you for taking the time to
>consider these recommendations and my candidacy. 
>
>
>Cheryl B. Preston
>Edwin M. Thomas
>Professor of Law
>J. Reuben Clark Law School
>Brigham Young University
>424 JRCB
>Provo, UT 84602
>(801) 422-2312
>[log in to unmask]
>
>  
>