Thanks, Kathy. I agree with you, NCUC also has very good reasons to

celebrate!

Just a typo: we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the UNDHR, not the 50th.

bs

--c.a.

Kathy Kleiman wrote:

Hi All,

Yesterday was the 50th Anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human

Rights, and I wanted to congratulation us. Within ICANN, the NCUC, since

its founding, has been the voice of the UN Declaration of Human Rights,

especially Article 19, and it has been a difficult, but wonderful

responsibility. As you know, Article 19 proclaims the right of freedom

of expression:

       /Article 19./

     Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this

     right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and

     to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any

     media and regardless of frontiers.

Since our first NCUC resolutions in August 1999 in Santiago, Chile

(1999), the NCUC has urged ICANN to protect freedom of expression and

personal privacy. We have worked so hard to protect the rights of

noncommercial speech, speakers and domain name holders. It has been our

job, and responsibility, to remind the commercial community, and the

rest of ICANN, of the importance of personal, political and religious

speech.  They often forget (or never knew) that for its first few

decades, the Internet (under DARPA and NSF) barred commercial speech.

The only Internet speech allowed was noncommercial, educational and

research -- a ban that continued into the early 1990s.

Many proposed policies -- including the UDRP (as first drafted) -- would

have been tremendously damaging to noncommercial speech. We fought them

and committed the Constituency to protecting highe values, those of the

Declaration of Human Rights.

My great thanks to our officers and GNSO reps for the wonderful job of

NCUC. Under difficult circumstances and almost always as a minority

voice, we fought for international human rights and giving meaning to

Article 19 in the Internet Age. We have made a unique and critically

important contribution to ICANN. We have made the Internet a better

place for our children.

I think Eleanor Roosevelt, chairman of the UN Declaration of Human

Rights Committee  (and my personal heroine) would have been proud. I

wish our current officers, GNSO reps and members the best in the

struggles ahead.  Preserving human rights is an awesome task.

Best,

Kathy Kleiman, Esq.

Co-Founder of ICANN's Noncommercial Users Constituency (back in the old

days of 1999)

---------------------------------------------

From the UN website:

       On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations

       adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

       the full text of which appears in the following pages. Following

       this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries

       to publicize the text of the Declaration and "to cause it to be

       disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in

       schools and other educational institutions, without distinction

       based on the political status of countries or territories."

       http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html