[Excuse this long message. The issue is very important and I wanted to give as much relevant background information as possible. Alex]
Four issues covered on this message: -
1. Disclosure within ICANN:
2. Commercial Stakeholders are going to allow any of the existing members of the IPR, ISP, and Commercial Constituencies VETO any board vote creating a new commercial constituency in the CSG.
3. Proved: ICANN ignored own bottom-up Policy Development Process ( or PDP)
4. Subject: ICANN and Free Speech
Thank you for reading and your action is needed
Alex Gakuru
ICT Consumers Association of Kenya
Non-Commercial Users Constituency - Kenya
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1. Disclosure within ICANN:
[Of big brand owners and 'Intellectual
Property" industry oiling ICANN domain name policy making process - to
the detriment of people like us, in Kenya, and Africa. Countries that
do not have well established digital IP laws, "Famous Marks"
registries, and poor, if any, software and IT innovations patent
system. If just continue sitting back and allow ICANN be influenced by
wealthy IP interests, then expect those IP interests to
patent/copyright even our traditional languages such that we cannot
have our cultures nor use languages over the internet. Who knows, even
using vernacular language on email could become 'copyright
infringement' We already know the kiondo and Kikoy examples. Alex
Gakuru]
----
The US government requires lobbying efforts to
be documented, figures of dollars spent per industry are broken down by
sector. This is because of the right of people to know who is spending
what when policy is being made.
Domain name law, such as it is,
is being written as we watch. A large number of people are spending a
lot of money to do this. Marilyn Cade spoke and wasn't exacly
forthright that she represented the intellectual property interests of
AT&T or that AT&T was the #1 "heavy hitter" for lobbying the
government, something Marilyn has done since 1996. And it's no
coincidence the Department of Commerce that oversees ICANN is the
fourth most lobbied agency in the US government.
The amount the
trademark lobby spend on preventing new TLDs since 1996 is staggering
IBM admitted to spending $30M/yr in 1998 and 1999 but we have no other
figures.
There is not now, full disclosure of lobbying efforts
on behalf of the trademark lobby Or known how much big business
spending this year to lobby against the creation of new top level
domains.
Question part 1: Is full disclosure of lobbying not consistent with ICANN's "open and transparent" US Government mandate?
Question
part 2: Would anybody care to estimate what they think this figure
might be this year lobbying ICANN and what has WIPO spent doing this
since the 1995 OECD meeting where they first publically ventured into
this issue? Can these figures be published sometime before the end of
this quarter for both WIPO and the business community as a intrest
group in this consultation under this current monopoly procedure that
could create thousands of jobs?
For more information, see http://docs.vrx.net/dns/timeline/20/09/nyc_irt/
2. Commercial Stakeholders Group are going to allow any of the existing members of the IPR, ISP, and Commercial Constituencies VETO any board vote creating a new commercial constituency in the CSG.
We (noncommercial users) have really
been asleep at the wheel over the last year while the ICANN Board of
Directors had their heads filled with mis-representations about NCUC
by relentless back-door lobbying. They get it from the
commercial/IPR crowd and they get it from staff, neither of whom want
to see noncommercial users effective in policy development.
The fact that we haven't engaged in backdoor lobbying the way our
critics do is coming back to haunt us by ICANN trying to take away
our newly won 3 elected council seats for noncommercial users and
staff imposing its "stranglehold" charter while ignoring
all of work we did to develop one that was supported by global civil
society (63 organizations + dozens of individuals in public
comments).
In particular, under the SIC approved
charter
for the CSG, they are going to allow any of the existing members of
the IPR, ISP, and Commercial Constituencies VETO any board vote
creating a new commercial constituency in the CSG. Amazing! The press
should be having a field day with this level of incompetence and
favoritism.
"4.2 Membership shall also be open to any additional constituency recognised by ICANN’s Board under its by-laws, provided that such constituency, as determined by the unanimous consent of the signatories to this charter, is representative of commercial user interests which for the purposes of definition are distinct from and exclude registry and prospective registry, registrar, re-seller or other domain name supplier interests."
We must push-back against ICANN injustice to get them to listen to noncommercial users and to stop developing policy through backdoor negotiations while ignoring the expressed will of the public and a bottom-up process.
ICANN is accepting public comments until 21 July on their imposed charter, so we have to weigh in loudly on their failure to follow bottom-up processes and allow noncommercial users to govern themselves. More info on comment period: http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/#stakeholder
---
3. Proved: ICANN ignored own bottom-up Policy Development Process ( or PDP)
Attached find two documents:-
The first is a set of comments
describing our procedural concerns about the way the IRT
Committee was constituted and much fairer ways to proceed
forward.
The second is s set of detailed comments with our
deep substantive concerns re: the IRT Report, and particularly the
problems of the Globally Protected Marks List, the URSP system (a
displacement of the UDRP), the IP Clearinghouse and the Thick Whois.
Your action needed:
Send your comments to ICANN under Non-Commercial Users Constituency (“Internet Users”)
Attachments:
1. NCUC Procedural Comments on IRT Final Report.pdf 84K
2. NCUC Substantive Comments on IRT Final Report.pdf 116K
---forwarded message---
4. Subject: ICANN and Free Speech
For what it's worth I wrote a post on my blog about ICANN free speech issues and the importance of including non-commercial voices, aimed at people who know little or nothing about the IRT, NCUC, or how ICANN works.
http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2009/07/icann-and-free-speech.html
Best,
Rebecca
Rebecca MacKinnon
Open
Society Fellow | Co-founder, GlobalVoicesOnline.org
Assistant
Professor, Journalism & Media Studies Centre, University of Hong
Kong