Key changes: - All mention of GAC letter eliminated, focus is exclusively on U.S. DoC. Puts the heat where it belongs. - Focus is exclusively on role of government as it affects content reg./censorship - Process is gone. I am not convinced that this is not a serious issue, but discussion of it diverts us from the more serious problems (asking ICANN to respect process? --laugh) - It's much shorter ====== DRAFT STATEMENT on .XXX v 2.0 8/19/05 The following civil society groups and individuals wish to express our concern over the recent request by the U.S. Department of Commerce to delay, and possibly deny, a gTLD delegation decision by ICANN's Board. The intervention by the U.S. Commerce Department raises important issues regarding the role of governments in the administration of Internet identifiers. ICANN was intended to globalize the governance of the domain name system by placing responsibility in the hands of a private sector/civil society-based authority. Under ICANN's original design, business, civil society and the technical community all had roughly equal status, and governmental representatives acted in an advisory capacity. Non-governmental internationalization of Internet administration was intended to keep the Internet's core coordinating functions free from national politics, geopolitical rivalries and territorial jurisdiction. The Commerce Department intervention, however, raises the possibility that governments will assert authority to overrule ICANN decisions in response to national and international political pressures. The concern is particularly strong in this case because of the open acknowledgement in the Commerce Department's August 11 letter of the influence of an organized campaign by domestic political interests devoted to content regulation of the Internet. In reviewing its decision regarding the .xxx delegation, we urge the ICANN Board to be mindful of the need to restrain the influence of governments, national politics and advocates of content regulation in the Internet's operation. We urge it not to make any concessions that would encourage more such interventions in the future. We call to your attention the conclusion of a recent U.S. National Academy of Sciences expert report that "Governance of the DNS is not an appropriate venue for the playing out of national political interests." We believe that administration of Internet identifiers should be content-neutral; censorship and content regulation are appropriately the province of national-level policies and should not be extended into the global management of the domain name system. We acknowledge the existence of legitimate demands for revising the oversight relationship between governments and ICANN. If change is to take place fairly and legitimately, however, it must occur through careful, deliberate negotiations and multilateral agreements among governments and other stakeholders.