As mentioned in the meeting here was my response to Esther's posting to the IP list. Farber has not, as yet, elected to forward it. He is anti-GTLD expansion too. I snipped the attachments which were Esther's testimony and the WP article. j ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: WWWhatsup <joly@dti.net> Date: Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 2:02 PM Subject: Re: [IP] from Dyson -- ICANN What’s the .rush? - The Washington Post To: dave@farber.net Cc: ip <ip@listbox.com> Hi Dave, Esther says: ICANN is unaccountable to anyone except its own coterie of registries,

registrars, trademark lawyers. In theory, it's accountable to the public, but the public pays no attention....

The truth is that Esther herself has paid no attention during the six years of process that has led to the new gTLD program. She ignores the roles of the NonCommercial Stakeholder Group, the At-Large Advisory Council, and, most importantly, the Government Advisory Council - all representing the public in one form or another - in forging the rules. The North American Regional At-Large Organization, incidentally, is unique amongst the regions in that it is open to participation by individuals - http://naralo.org. Also, there have been long fought out battles within the "coterie" - you can bet that the trademark lawyers had plenty of input. This culminated in a series of public hearings worldwide where voiced public outrage shot down such concepts as a global trademark reserved list. As for accountability, ICANN still operates under an agreement with the United States Government under which it guarantees accountability and transparency. http://www.ntia.doc.gov/category/icann In fact, Larry Strickling of the NTIA addressed the issue on the very same day as the Senate hearing. http://www.ntia.doc.gov/speechtestimony/2011/remarks-assistant-secretary-str... Here is what he said: For example, at ICANN, a multistakeholder process that ran for six years

resulted in the approval last summer of an expansion of top level domains. This process involved global stakeholders from the business community, civil society, registries, registrars, and governments. At NTIA, we worked throughout the process to make sure that ICANN adequately addressed government concerns and we have also spent significant time the last two years pushing for overall improvements in ICANN’s accountability and transparency to the global Internet community.

Nonetheless, we are now seeing parties that did not like the outcome of that multistakeholder process trying to collaterally attack the outcome and seek unilateral action by the U.S. government to overturn or delay the product of a six-year multistakeholder process that engaged folks from all over the world. The multistakeholder process does not guarantee that everyone will be satisfied with the outcome. But it is critical to preserving the model of Internet governance that has been so successful to date that all parties respect and work through the process and accept the outcome once a decision is reached. When parties ask us to overturn the outcomes of these processes, no matter how well-intentioned the request, they are providing “ammunition” to other countries who attempt to justify their unilateral actions to deny their citizens the free flow of information on the Internet. This we will not do. There is too much at stake here.

But we are sensitive to the concerns being raised by some companies about the introduction of new gTLDs. Today, Chairman Rockefeller held an important oversight hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee on the subject of how ICANN will expand top level domains. We agree with the Chairman’s concerns over how this program will be implemented and its potential negative effect if not implemented properly. We will closely monitor the execution of the program and are committed to working with stakeholders, including U.S. industry, to mitigate any unintended consequences.

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 11:19 AM, Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Esther Dyson <edyson@edventure.com> Date: Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 11:17 AM Subject: Re: [IP] ICANN What’s the .rush? - The Washington Post To: David Farber <dave@farber.net> Cc: ip <ip@listbox.com>

Dave -

Thanks so much for reposting this. I know everyone is concerned (and justly) about SOPA right now, but ICANN is unaccountable to anyone except its own coterie of registries, registrars, trademark lawyers. In theory, it's accountable to the public, but the public pays no attention.... So, everyone, please pay attention! In 5 years, people will use Google et al. instead of URLs anyway, but in the meantime a TLD 1 percent is going to get rich by confusing and "protecting" the 99 percent.

<snip>

-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -