ICANN’s program to allow new top level domains is important.
You cannot have a global manager of the domain name system without some
kind of agreed policy for adding new top level domains to the root. Note that we
at IGP are agnostic about the level of economic demand for new TLDs and the
merits of any particular applicant. We believe that the choices of users and consumers should
determine the fate of new registries and new names – not a central planning
authority dominated by governments and special interest groups. The new TLD
program is also important because domain names are a form of expression on the
Internet. Any policy that regulates the creation or operation of new domains based
on their meaning or the content underneath them is, de facto, a form of globalized
content regulation.Thus, even people who think domain names are not that important need to pay attention to what happens in this space, especially now that domain take-downs are becoming an increasingly common form of state intervention.
In its second ICANN paper, the EC has taken the worst
possible position on both aspects of new TLD policy. Its paper is radically inimical to freedom of expression, and would erect huge,
unnecessary economic barriers to entry. It is also destructive institutionally:
it proposes to subordinate Internet community self-governance to hierarchical
control by nation-states, and would replace ICANN’s new gTLD policy with something
concocted in secret by a handful of unelected bureaucrats. The EC Paper New gTLD Process proposes to allow
governments, through the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) to take complete
control over what new top level domain names are allowed to exist. As such, it
shows that the EC refuses to accept the legitimacy or the authority of the multi-stakeholder
process that resulted in the policy. It wants to revert to an intergovernmental
system – just like China, Russia, Iran and Syria. Do they understand the implications of what they
are doing? The most charitable conclusion is that they do not.
The paper proposing these
radical changes was only accidentally leaked to the public by .Nxt. The EC –
which routinely engages in public consultations on policy documents – developed
these recommendations in secret and never allowed the European public to see or
comment upon them. The EC’s policy proposals, therefore, are completely lacking
in democratic legitimacy, making the paper’s claim that it represents or speaks
for the public interest in this matter an act of blatant hypocrisy.
The charge that the EC approach constitutes a governmental
takeover of the top level of the DNS may sound exaggerated, but it is not. Here
is the proof: 1) The EC explicitly supports the NTIA’s proposed modification of
the IANA contract, which would replace the objective procedural and substantive
criteria of ICANN’s Applicant Guidebook with a subjective determination by a technical body that a new top-level domain “has received consensus support from
relevant stakeholders and is supported by the global public interest.” 2) The
EC says that “the European Commission considers that defining what constitutes
consensus (including how it is achieved and expressed) lies within the
prerogatives of GAC itself.” 3) Voila! All new TLD applications must demonstrate
“consensus support,” and the GAC itself will unilaterally determine what
constitutes consensus. Any proposed service or domain that governments don’t
like can be vetoed by GAC.
This demand for control is particularly astounding given the
concessions that the ICANN Board has already made to the GAC. Without any
support from the public, the Board agreed to notify governments about the
applications received and “invite” them to indicate which TLDs might raise
“public policy concerns.” This is called the “GAC early warning.” “Public
policy concerns,” of course, is a term of art in ICANN; it has no objective
definition so that, in practice, it means that governments can try to block or
censor any content or applicant that they want, simply by claiming that the
application raises public policy concerns. In addition, the GAC will be able to
raise formal objections later in the process. The potential to exert a
heckler’s veto is, apparently, not enough. The EC wants any government in the
world, including ones with no human rights guarantees and established records
of repression, to be able to kill applications by claiming that they don’t have
consensus. And under the EC’s definition of “consensus,” each government could
use its own lack of support as evidence of a lack of consensus. It is a recipe for a governmental veto of any and every new domain.
But that is not all. The EC wants the GAC, which has no
legal authority and no ratification process that subjects it to national or
international law or judicial appeal, to become a legislator that can create a
list of words that no Internet user in the world can register. The EC paper
says that “GAC members [should be able to] request the reservation or blocking
of domain names at the second level under new gTLDs. It should do this by
constructing a censorship list, which it calls a “reference list for all new
gTLD operators to use and ICANN should ensure compliance through the contract
it negotiates with new gTLD registry operators.” And more: “The contractor
should also be required to ensure that governments and public administrations
can raise concerns about particular names after their registration if a serious
public order concern is involved, and with a view to the registry “taking
down” the name concerned.” Try to imagine 150 of the world’s governments
sitting in a room and agreeing on what words should not be available to the
world’s users: this is what the EC is proposing.
It gets even worse. The EC wants all applications to “demonstrate
a minimum level of support from the respective community that the TLD intends
to serve” before the GAC even has to consider it. Of course, demonstrating
support from a community is a standard that practically every truly innovative Internet
concept is unable to meet. New ideas, by definition, don’t have support
precisely because no one has ever thought of them before. Moreover, many new ideas are
threatening to old ideas or operators, and thus will be sure to generate objections. New proposals succeed because their
backers are free to offer them, and people support them only after they are offered.
It would have been impossible for the TCP/IP protocols, for example, to
demonstrate any support among the world’s data communication users before the Internet
was put into operation. Worse, this requirement of demonstrated support is sure
to kill any application or idea that is the least bit controversial. Any vocal
segment of a community will be able to object to, and kill, any proposal.
Another
disturbing aspect of the paper is that it reinforces the American
government's growing tendency (urged on them by trademark holders) to
try to make the IANA contract a regulatory system. As we have
demonstrated in other posts, because lobbyists from a few big
corporations are unhappy with the compromises they have had to make in
the ICANN process, both the U.S. NTIA and now the EC want to abuse the
IANA contract, by forcing it to make vague “public interest” and
“consensus” determinations which would no doubt be heavily influenced by governmental pressure.
In terms of its regard for the freedom and
openness of the Internet, this is a document that could have been prepared by
the governments of Iran, China or Saudi Arabia. Europeans should be ashamed of
their putative government, and rights advocates there should challenge the
Commission papers and expose them as lacking in any public support. The EC
officials who developed these proposals should be pressured to resign.
We are somewhat surprised to find that your link to the EC paper comprises an Evernote screengrab of a webpage on our .Nxt site, with no reference to the fact that it is taken from .Nxt.
We also note that your third link is to our analysis of the papers, but can't help but notice that you don't make it clear that .Nxt is your sole source of information for these papers.
It should be clear to you that this approach goes against both journalistic and academic practice. It also violates our copyright.
If the IGP or Syracuse University wants access to documents and to stay apprised of the latest events in Internet policy and governance, can we suggest that you become a full member of .Nxt?
Failing that, we'd like to request that you take a more professional approach to your work in future.
Thank you,
Kieren McCarthy
CEO, .Nxt
Self-important much? Evernote is not your website, the content you posted there is not your content, and a hyperlink is not a copyright infringement either. Exactly what copyright are you claming the IGP infringed? All you did was leak the source documents they used.