No court outside the US and perhaps in the US will give a dead rat's fuzzy behind.

And I am amazed at saying it makes sense to the (technical) community asking for it but nix it because alledgely courts are too stupid to understand.

My inderstanding is that courts figure stuff out...

And the rest as Nigel rightly points out are tactics too.

Since when has a court accepted "because I say so" as foundation in law? Even if ICANN is trying this again and again.

Courts in common law jurisdictions will consider a TLD to be property or not as they see fit.

ICANN has ABSOLUTELY no role with regards to ccTLDs, in particular those before ICANN (unless there is a contract). Never mind this primacy nonsense...

To combine Paul's search for a better term with Roelof's point that it doesn't belong here, I would propose to ask the IAB for clarification on both.

el

--
Sent from Dr Lisse's iPhone 5s

On 1 Nov 2015, 01:40 +0400, Nigel Roberts <nigel@channelisles.net>, wrote:

Paul makes some interesting tactical points.

But can you point to ANY legal foundation where ICANN actually IS a
"primary head of power"???



On 10/31/2015 08:32 PM, Paul Twomey wrote:

Becky

I think the points made by Malcolm and the IAB make a lot of sense when
viewed from the perspective of the engineering/technical community.

But I would observe that the wording will interpreted with most impact
on daily work of the ICANN community not by non technical entities, but
particularly by the courts in various lands and the ongoing
international "politics of technology" processes. When I look at the
proposed wording from that perspective, I worry that shifting to
"support" in the Mission statement could result in destabilising
uncertainty. As we have seen in various litigation (to give only one
example, litigation about trying to get TLDs recognized as property
which the Courts can order moved from one party to another), the ability
for the Judge's not to have any doubt as to the primacy of the ICANN
(including community) role in determining the general rules/approach in
this area has been important.

It could be destabilising if we leave the impression in the
politico/legal arena that ICANN only plays a supporting role, and that
they can go looking for another primary head of power.

I admit I am writing this from something of a paranoid view, but then I
do have sympathy with Andy Grove's observation that only the paranoid
survive.

I can also understand why the IAB questions the operational accuracy of
the use of the term "coordinates" in the opening sentence of the Mission
Statement as it now stands.

Is there a way of getting a more robust term than just "support"?

Paul

Paul Twomey

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