Opinions
As feared, ICANN has made substantive decisions affecting the rights of individuals, small businesses, and non-commercial organizations. Unlike its mandate for "technical management," ICANN's domain name dispute policies could directly affect your rights to free speech on the Internet. These decisions are being made without seating the duly elected board members, and are instead being made by special interest board members and "Board Squatters" who extended their own terms. It's time for this fiasco to end.
Domain Name Rights
http://www.netpolicy.com/mainindex.html
Muiltinational corporate (MNC) trademark and intellectual property owners typically have vast resources to devote to dispute initiation -- much more than their victims. Even to participate in a proceeding is likely to cost a domain name holder hundreds or thousands of dollars. Thus, a legitimate defendant in a case has strong financial incentives to yield to a reverse domain name hijacker, regardless of the merits of the objection.
Dr. Milton Mueller, Associate Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
http://www.icann.org/comments-mail/comment-udrp/current/msg00088.html
To the WIPO Internet Domain Name Process Panel:
As presidents of the oldest and largest educational and professional computing and Internet societies, we are writing to you regarding the rules for the adjudication of disputes of global top-level domains (gTLDs) proposed in WIPO's Interim Report on the Internet Domain Name Process, RFC-3 (Dec. 23, 1998). We are particularly concerned that the plan may negatively impact the Internet and may harm the civil liberties that create the climate of free inquiry and debate in which science and technology flourish. We are also concerned that these rules will inhibit economic development by discouraging participation in the Internet.
Barbara Simons, Ph.D.
ACM President
Donald M. Heath
President/CEO
Internet Society
Full letter link is here:
http://www.isoc.org/internet/issues/dns/19990325wiporfc3response.shtml
...ICANN has failed to recognize the needs of individual Internet users and non-commercial organizations. The combination of artificial domain names scarcity, arbitrary rules for selection of new gTLDs, arbitrary rules for the assignment of names within the new gTLDs, and limits on Domain Name System (DNS) expansion present a serious threat to freedom of expression
Barry Steinhardt, Associate Director
Laura W. Murphy, Washington National Office Director
American Civil Liberties Union
Barbara Simons
Past-President
Association for Computing Machinery
Hans Klein
Chair
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Et. al.
Full text here: http://www.internetdemocracyproject.org/DoClt1.htm
Internet historians studying the end of the twentieth century will probably conclude that 1998 was the year that American entertainment and information industries achieved their initial objects in their takeover of Netspace.. In 1998, while the public's attention on Internet related issue was absorbed with smut control, and the media debated the pros and cons of censorship and hard-core porn, big business persuaded politicians of both parties to transfer much of the basic architecture of the Internet into business's hands, the better to promote the transformation of as much of the Net as possible into a giant American shopping mall.
Jessica Litman, Professor of Law, Wayne State University, June 29, 2000
Full text here: http://www.law.wayne.edu/litman/papers/freespeech.pdf
Free speech isn't as strongly protected in other countries as it is here, so UDRP arbiters unfamiliar with U.S. law may not even apply the concept in a decision.
Berkman Fellow Diane Cabell,
Harvard Law School
Ms. Cabell's analysis:
http://eon.law.harvard.edu/udrp/analysis.html
The UDRP:
http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp-policy-24oct99.htm#4c
The majority, in an effort to stop a practice that it seems to take upon itself to believe is an unstated purpose of the ICANN Policy, has completely over-stepped its mandate as arbitrators." It rejects the idea that someone might not know exactly how he or she intends to use the domain name, and makes such uncertainty bad faith registration. The majority identifies as automatic "constructive" notice of another's trademark rights but this element would be satisfied for all registered trademarks by virtue of the simple fact of registration. A generic term permeates any analysis for trademark purposes Complaint is now trying to use the ICANN rules to achieve what it cannot do by negotiations for the purchase of the name.
Gervaise Davis III, WIPO Panelist: Case: D2000-0054
...If ICANN were really open and transparent instead of negotiating all the key deals in secret, you'd find people were a little less suspicious.
Michael Froomkin, Professor Law
http://www.law.tm/
Full detail here
http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=16
You may remember that back in July 2000 the ICANN Board gave staff the go-ahead to negotiate agreements with the operators of the various root servers; to prepare a plan "for transition of the current root-server-system architecture to an enhanced architecture based on use of a dedicated primary nameserver operated by ICANN"; and to "acquire equipment and software in support of the Corporation's assumption of responsibility for maintaining the root zone." Well, the folks at ICANN have been busy.
Jonathan Weinberg
Professor of Law
Wayne State University
http://www.icannwatch.org/
http://www.law.wayne.edu/weinberg/
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers was formed in 1998 behind closed doors by bureaucrats inside the US Department of Commerce and their friends from the corporate sector. At most ICANN should only be responsible for keeping track of domain assignments and acting as a repository for technical data about the domain system. Instead ICANN is bullying itself into the position of World Government over the Internet, in the corporate interest, casting the rights of individuals to the wayside.
From "Stealth Threat Hidden Agenda--the WTO of the Internet"
SF Bay IndyMedia
http://sf.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=2550
I urge you to refrain from taking any major steps to further empower or delegate authority to ICANN. The supervision of the domain name system by
the Department of Commerce has brought stability to the biggest marketplace in the world, the Internet. That stability could be threatened by a policymaking process moving forward under a legal cloud.
U.S. Senator Conrad Burns, R-Montana
http://www.internetworld.com/news/archive/03282001d.jsp
ICANN is a big step in the erosion of the sovereign nation-state and its partial replacement by supra-national entities and the creation of a world in which we are subject to overlapping sovereignties. I'm wondering whether ICANN heralds a world that might be more familiar to a 16th century Florentine than to those of us who grew up with clearly delineated and all-powerful nations.
Karl Auerbach, the only elected "at large" member of ICANN's governing board from the U.S. (there are only five elected members of ICANN, a scant minority).
More here: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filter/auerbach.html
And here:http://www.cavebear.com/cavebear/growl/index.htm
More Opinions, organized by topic are forthcoming.
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These Opinions are Not Necessarily Endorsed by AFM.COM, Andy Hasse, Hasse, Inc., Globemedia, or Anyone involved in the production of this Website or the current Domain Dispute brought by the AFMA.