ICANN shall act strictly in accordance with, and only as reasonably appropriate to achieve its Mission. ICANN shall not impose regulations on services that use the Internet’s unique identifiers, or the content that such services carry or provide. ICANN shall have the ability to negotiate, enter into and enforce agreements with contracted parties in furtherance of its Mission.

I have added the following Note per our discussion:

Note to drafters: In crafting proposed Bylaws language to reflect this Mission Statement, the CCWG wishes the drafters to reflect the following considerations:

1. The prohibition on the regulation of “content” is not intended to prevent ICANN policies from taking into account the semantic meaning of domain names.

2. The issues identified in Specification 1 to the Registry Agreement and Specification 4 to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (the so-called “Picket Fence”) are intended and understood to be within the scope of ICANN’s Mission. A side-by-side comparison of the formulation of the Picket Fence in the respective agreements is attached for reference.

The PDF (as well as the PDF of the Picket Fence language) is attached.

Please note also that I have added a general note to the effect that we expect the the Bylaws drafters may need to modify the Articles of Incorporation to align with the substantive changes to the Bylaws.

Becky