> -----Original Message-----
> That's what I liked about Joy's phrasing, I'll pull it verbatim here: "The
> broader notion of public interest ... ensures that the mighty cannot
> overpower the weak, just because they are more powerful" 

OK, so this will put to rest all those folks out there who are advocating overpowering the weak by the mighty. That will settle a lot of ICANN policy debates. Seriously, is this intended to provide a constraint on majoritarian rule? Or what?

> ICANN context this notion of public interest needs to be protected to ensure
> the DNS is not appropriated to suit purely private ends."  This seems to me
> the core of what PI is all about, especially at ICANN.

This is where we part company. What the heck does "purely private ends" means and why does this PI rhetoric always imply that the private is BAD?  I am a registrant of a domain name and so is a small organization I am affiliated with. My main concern is to ensure that my right to use that domain and the speech associated with it - which is a purely private matter - is not interfered with or limited in certain ways. Yes, certain forms of private malfeasance, such as criminality or business fraud or monopolistic pricing, might be of concern to me here and there, but on the whole I think policy should be FACILITATING DNS  use for "purely private ends," and that privacy should be protected, and more often than not the imposition of so-called 'public interest' standards is all about one group exploiting its power to serves their collective ends at the expense of my private ends, or a weaker groups collective or private interests. 

And this is the trap that a PI standard always falls into.