On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 05:14:56PM +0000, Burr, Becky wrote:
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.
Could I suggest a friendly amendment? Perhaps "taking into account issues with respect to domain name registrations as such"? Or "taking into account the use of domain names as identifiers in various natural languages"? Many of us are at regular pains to point out that "the semantic meaning of domain names" is a empty set, since domain names as such are arbitrary and have no language associated with them (and might not be in a language at all -- com and org are not in themselves meaningful strings). In any case, I don't think you want even a generous reading of that, because if we get into issues around the meaning of domain names, we are almost certainly on the slippery slope to regulating content anyway. It would be _really bad_ if any suggestion that domain names had in themselves semantic meaning made it into the bylaws. Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@anvilwalrusden.com