ICANN has encouraged new constituencies to get involved in the GNSO. Now it has got what it asked for. This month, Cheryl Preston filed a petition with ICANN to form a new “Cyber-safety Constituency.”

It turns out that this constituency is nothing more than an extension of the CP80 Foundation. CP80 is devoted to systematic, global censorship of internet content in order to eradicate pornography. Backed by Mormon religious activists based on Utah, the group frames its attempt to regulate internet content with talk of “protecting children online.” But it’s not just children’s Internet access they are targeting; it’s all of us.

This is a group that wants the NTIA to include content regulation in ICANN’s contract. It wants to massively extend the mission of both ICANN and the RIRs to play a role in enforcing global regulation of obscene content. The CP80 website says it all: “With a basic understanding of the current Internet governance hierarchy, it is easy to understand how this [domain name and address] hierarchy could be leveraged to implement, manage and enforce the appropriate policy.”

Last week, Preston mobilized the Mormon anti-pornography network to email about 100 form letters to ICANN’s public comment period in support of the so-called Cyber-safety constituency. If you want to comment on this application, you can do so by e-mailing this address: cyber-safety-petition@icann.org

1 thought on “Cyber-safety, or global censorship?

  1. Goshalmighty. Yet another specially interested with a heart for the needy. For that the rose pics are raked by his giverth tools. Surfrecon.com, Orem, Utah, funded by thinkatomic, Orem, Utah, set up by (according to en.wikipedia) anti-GNU/Linux nuisance and SCO bankrupt Robert Yarro III. Thinkatomic is also backing CP80, Orem, Utah. The press quotes the usual soundbites, like here.

Comments are closed.