Ross Rader wrote, On 10/10/08 15:37:
On Oct 10, 2008, at 7:28 AM, John L wrote:
I read it as primarily an invitation to foreign governments. They can accept comments from anyone, but I agree that individuals outside the US aren't likely to be high on the list of influencers.
I read it as a way of subverting the global, private sector led process that we all agreed to back in the '90's.
Please clarify "we". Actually, when the DoC set up ICANN in 1998, there was no alternative model proposed, apart from the gTLD MoU which was shot down by the Clinton administration. Hence, we could only agree by default. Now, all we can do is try to get the best of this model and work towards a better one. This being said, the private sector has not yet demonstrated it does better than nation states in terms of regulation, or self regulation in that case. This is also the case of the Internet industry. After 10 years of ICANNing, we still have no global legal framework to deal with issues like privacy, harmonized consumer rights regarding domain names, etc. This is outside ICANN's mandate, mostly because ICANN and the USG have no standing on their own in generating international private law. The only ones who could would be nation states, working under a common umbrella.
The USG needs to back-off of our internet.
I agree. -- Patrick Vande Walle Check my blog: http://patrick.vande-walle.eu