On 16 February 2011 12:41, Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg@epic.org> wrote:
This issue is not going away. ALAC should develop a position.
Agreed, but for this to be relevant for ICANN I would like to make such a position both broader and more specific: - broader in the sense that government meddling in the DNS goes beyond high profile umbrella Internet shutdowns, and definitely beyond the one-time circumstance in Egypt. Targeted, ongoing, content-related seizing of domains in the US (see other threads here related to COICA etc) also pose a substantial threat to the stability of the namespace. But this is not limited to the US; in ways this is just a continuing threat that includes existing filtering of domains in China and official blockage of the.il ccTLD in some Mideast countries. - more specific in that ICANN is not about all things to do with Internet governance. If our message is going to carry weight it has to directly address, and limit itself to, ICANN's own mandate. I would feel far more comfortable being part of an alliance on this that also perhaps includes ISOC and IGF, because they have the scope to address issues that are beyond our specific focus. (This is why I encouraged linkage with the ISOC statement on Egypt). We do have something to contribute. ICANN *claims* its actions to be independent of domain content, yet its shameful meddling in the .xxx issue (which ALAC opposed) set a poor precedent which I fear will be exploited again. I would escalate this beyond NARALO, though, for this is hardly a North American regional issue. - Evan