Hi Avri,
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Aren't various government and intergovernmental actions forcing ICANN to take action based on content.


In the two instances mentioned, I'm unaware of any jurisdictionally appropriate court order "forcing" ICANN to engage in quasi law enforcement activities. Perhaps I'm wrong but I'm unaware of any ICANN staff member or official being detained or physically threatened, a.k.a. "forced", to assist law enforcement in tracking down alleged criminals. How is ICANN being forced to do anything? 

"Pressured" might be a better term and, of course, ICANN is often pressured to do many things. One of the things I would hope the Board could clarify for us is how ICANN determines which pressures to respond to and which pressures not to respond to. For example, there are jurisdictions that classify gay and lesbian sexual activity as being deviant and impermissible behaviour equivalent to that of adult sex with children. Does ICANN cooperate with law enforcement authorities in identifying those responsible for putting online gay and lesbian content? One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter: is it ICANN's role to assist law enforcement in identifying those responsible for websites some may believe aids and abets terrorism while others believe the same websites assist "freedom fighters"? Who decides what pressures to yield to? What is the procedure for making such decisions? Should there not be transparency in such processes so that those making the decisions are held responsible for their judgement and actions?

 
  Unfortunately we keep saying they have no business discussing content based issue, yet, others impose these issues on ICANN.  How do we give the Board and Staff  guidance, recommendations and advice on how to handle the contents tissue imposed on ICANN without dealing with it?

Pressure goes both ways. If ICANN Board and staff perceive no blow back from their incursions into content regulation they will continue to do it. Why not? At the NCPH meeting Fadi reached out to the community for guidance: in some ways it could be seen as a plea to "blow back". If we in the noncommercial community strongly direct ICANN to stay out of content regulation it gives Fadi and others something to point to to justify resisting pressures to get involved in content control. If we remain silent in response to Fadi's invitation to direct ICANN in this matter,  then it would inappropriate to hold ICANN responsible for decisions made to ban content we actually like. First it was child pornography, now ICANN is considering getting involved in intellectual monopoly violations, what is next? 

Our direction to ICANN should be "just say no". There may be times ICANN is commanded through legal processes to do certain things. When those things involve content ICANN should resist to the fullest extent permitted by applicable laws. ICANN's response needs to be uniformly "we don't do content". Period.

Yet if ICANN is going to do content, something beyond it's mission statement and appearing nowhere in it's Bylaws, there need to be procedures developed so content regulation no longer continues to be done on an ad hoc basis. There should be procedures in place, the community needs to be involved, standards need to be promulgated and publicised. I, as a noncommercial user without extravagant resources, should have the same ability to "force" ICANN to delete content I find objectionable as the i.p. industry does to "force" ICANN to chase after Bulgarians whose content they find objectionable. Personally, I find the militarisation of the internet to be far more objectionable and dangerous than websites offering allegedly "stolen" telenovelas. I believe certain online actions by governments contravene international humanitarian law. I know ICANN has the technical capability to stop some of these illegal actions. Should I not be able to "force" ICANN to act to prevent these illegal actions? I hope the answer is 'no' because ICANN does not do content, but if it does...

Once ICANN gets involved in content it's a slippery slope with a final destination I presume many of us would find unappealing. One only has to look at the United Kingdom for an indication as to what might happen. Here in the U.K. filters initially designed to ban child pornography are now used to ban many types of material some find objectionable. One of the latest sites to run afoul of the censors was the Chaos Computer Club ( http://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2014/ccc-censored-in-uk ). As bad as national filters are they pale in terms of what ICANN has the capability of doing.. 

So, Avri, the direction to ICANN should be to stay out of content regulation. Period. However, if they are determined to have a California public benefits corporation engage in censorship with global effect it needs to be done in an open, transparent manner with defined conditions and standards available to all with community participation. 

Ed





 

avri

On 25-Jan-15 20:33, Edward Morris wrote:

Hi Rafik,

 

I’d like to suggest a topic that has not had high visibility in our stakeholder group in recent years, yet is a big part of the NCSG DNA: the belief that ICANN should not be involved in content control. It’s part of our belief in free expression and it’s something that very slowly ICANN is getting involved in fairly blatantly. I think it would be productive for us to raise the flag in this area to get word to the Board that we’re noticing this and that we do not approve of this mission creep.

 

ICANN has always been involved in content to some degree. The most visible activity in this area came during the .XXX battles where contractual language specified forms of prohibited content. Obviously the new gTLD programme involves, in many ways, content classification. But recently…

 

This autumn we learned that ICANN had employees going through corporate records of firms in Panama to help law enforcement track down an alleged child pornography ring. ( http://domainincite.com/14842-icann-helps-bust-russian-child-porn-ring ). Now Fadi tells us they are attempting to figure out what to do with the case of a Bulgarian man with servers in Costa Rica who is allegedly putting i.p. ingringing content online ( NCSG – CEO meeting, NCPH intersessional transcript, p. 19-20). This is certainly a long way from names and numbers.

 

We know Fadi’s perspective. According to Mr. Chehade, ICANN is under pressure. It’s one of the reasons ICANN is supposedly getting involved in the NMI. Yet during the interessional meeting Fadi also stated several times that ICANN needed community input to help determine “how far does ICANN want to go?” on matters like these (intersessional transcript, p. 10). We need to tell him that ICANN has no role to play in policing content online.

 

Although we know Fadi’s position (both revelations mentioned above came as a result of Fadi speaking extemporaneously) and expressed confusion on these matters  we haven’t really heard from the Board about situations like these. On the one hand we’re told during the transition that ICANN has a limited remit and is going to stick to it. On the other hand we have ICANN employees searching through Central American corporate records to assist authorities in policing content. I think it would be appropriate for us to express concern about ICANN’s incursions, both actual and contemplated, into content and to try to get clarification as to the Board’s views and intentions on the matter.

 

Ed 

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On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 10:23 PM, Rafik Dammak <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi everyone,

We need to get 3 topics to discuss with the ICANN board at singapore meeting.

Best, 

Rafik

On Jan 20, 2015 10:32 AM, "Rafik Dammak" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi everyone,

like every time in preparation for ICANN meeting, we have to discuss what kind of topics/issues we want to raise with ICANN board members when we  meet them.

we will try to get 3 topics and send them 1 week prior to the session. 
please propose  topics and suggest short descriptions . we will conduct later a polling to pick-up the 3 topics among the proposals.

Best Regards,

Rafik