On Sunday 19 June 2016 10:56 AM, parminder wrote:

On Sunday 19 June 2016 04:13 AM, Paul Rosenzweig wrote:

The Economist | A virtual turf war: The scramble for .africa http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21700661-lawyers-california-are-denying-africans-their-own-domain-scramble?frsc=dg%7Cd

Not that this fact is being discovered now, but it still is the simplest and clearest proof that US jurisdiction over ICANN's policy processes and decisions is absolutely untenable. Either the US makes a special legal provision unilaterally foregoing judicial, legislative and executive jurisdiction over ICANN policy functions, or the normal route of ICANN's incorporation under international law is taken, making ICANN an international organisation under international law, and protected from US jurisdiction under a host country agreement.

While the democratic logic of this should be self-evident, that the global public cannot be made subject to laws and judicial processes that it took no part in shaping (I call it 'no legislation without representation') let me still explain further the inherent risk in this specific kind of situation. Were it the issue of a US state, say, Arizona, and .Arizona, was in similar dispute, a US court will be *primarily* concerned with the larger public/ community interest involved, and pay particular attention to what the Economist describes as "regional names that are, in a sense, a virtual commons", as it weighs that claim against the procedural fairness demands of US contract law, non profit incorporation law, and so on. However, if the 'region' and the 'public' involved is non US, as in this case, the attention to the technicalities of the latter aspects of US laws vis a vis the wider ' (non US) public interest and claim' can easily be expected to be very different. And this is absolutely wrong, and unacceptable.

parminder

parminder

Paul Rosenzweig

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