IP Justice Publications
ICANN’s NonCommercial Users, IP Justice, APC, Others Submit Comments on ICANN’s Plan to Kill Privacy Protections for Domain Names
Today, IP Justice submitted comments, together with ICANN's Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG), the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), and several other organizations and individuals concerned about ICANN's proposal to restrict access to privacy protections for domain name registrations. Read the comments submitted from NCSG, IP Justice, and others here. See the many other comments submitted by concerned Internet users here. ICANN Public Comment Forum on this issue is here. See also "Powerful Coalition Letter Highlights Danger of ICANN's New Domain Registration Program"
IP Justice Encourages ICANN to Protect the Privacy Rights of Internet Users
1 July 2015 To: comments-whois-accuracy-14may15-en@icann.org ICANN Public Comment Forum: https://www.icann.org/public-comments/2013-whois-accuracy-spec-review-2015-05-14-en Dear ICANN, Thank you for this opportunity to provide comment on the Review of the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement's Whois Accuracy Program Specification. IP Justice is a San Francisco-based nonprofit civil liberties organization that promotes balanced intellectual property rights and Internet policy that enables freedom and innovation.(http://www.ipjustice.org) IP Justice strongly opposes ICANN's recommendation that domain name registrars must delete and suspend domain name registrations without due process of law and its recommendation that registrars must verify the identity of customers in case intellectual property lawyers might want to sue them at some point in the future. This proposal does not respect the privacy rights of Internet users, who have a fundamental right to privacy under numerous international treaties, national constitutions, and other legal instruments throughout the world. Article 29 Working Party has repeatedly informed ICANN of its policy's divergence from international law, citing chapter and verse of the many violations, to no effect on ICANN. https://community.icann.org/display/gnsononcomstake/Privacy ICANN's continuous thumbing of its nose to Privacy Commissioners and Data Protection Authorities was even the subject of a 2014 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Workshop in which multi-stakeholders participated, including a Dutch Privacy Authority and the Council of Europe. http://bit.ly/1FS3aHp And yet ICANN soldiers on, claiming to represent "the global public interest" while ignoring all [...]
IP Justice Advises ICANN Board to Protect Freedom of Expression Rights and Respect Community-Developed Policy in ICANN Top-Level Domain Policy
IP Justice sent a letter this week to ICANN's Board Governance Committee to express concern for ICANN's treatment of Internet user's freedom of expression rights in the organization's policy for new Generic Top-Level Domains (GTLDs). The letter, which urged the committee to reconsider it's recent decision to restrict numerous lawful of the word "doctor" in the Internet's domain name system, stated ...
Freedom of Expression Chilled By ICANN’s Addition of Speech Restrictions in DNS: ‘Public Interest Commitments’ Amount to Illegitimate Usurpation of Bottom-Up Policy
Freedom of expression on the Internet is at risk from ICANN’s recent decision to prohibit anyone but one specific type of doctor from using the word within the .doctor new gTLD space. Last month, ICANN’s New GTLD Program Committee decided that only “medical practitioners” would be allowed to register a domain in the .doctor name space. ICANN’s decision to exclude numerous lawful users of the word, including a broad range of individuals who are _in fact_ doctors comes at a time when the world is watching ICANN to see if it can adequately protect Internet users’ rights in the absence of US Government supervision. If ICANN’s treatment of free expression in the implementation of its new gTLD program is any indication, ICANN has not yet sufficiently developed to be trusted with protecting Internet users’ rights in the domain name system. Often overlooked is that ICANN’s community sought to protect freedom of expression rights in the new gTLD program by including free expression principles and recommendations in the GNSO’s final approved new gTLD policy. However, those protections were quietly violated in the staff’s subsequent implementation of the GNSO’s policy, which afforded no protection to Internet users’ free expression rights. Specifically, after the GNSO approved the community’s policy for new gTLDs, ICANN staff added a new requirement to the policy, called “Public Interest Commitments” or “PICs”, [...]
Civil Society Cautions Against ICANN Proposal to Give Governments a Veto Over New Domains Using “Geographic Names”
A group of twenty-four civil society organizations and individuals today submitted a joint statement regarding a proposal from an ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) sub-group on the use of geographic names in top-level domains. The joint civil society statement cautioned against the adoption of the GAC proposal that would give governments veto power on domains that use geographic names. The submission stated that the proposal would threaten to chill freedom of expression and other lawful rights to use words in domain names, stifle innovation, and undermine the multi-stakeholder model for Internet governance. The group also stated that the proposal is based on flawed presumptions of law and 'the public interest' and is entirely unworkable from a practical standpoint.
Do Not Empower Non-Democratic Governments’ Control Over the Internet with this Draconian “GAC Veto” on ICANN Board Decisions
This draconian proposal to change ICANN's bylaws would fundamentally transform ICANN away from being a "bottom-up" and "private-sector-led" organization and into a governmental regulatory agency by changing the GAC's role from "advisory" into "primary decision maker" by essentially creating a "governmental veto" on all key organizational decisions. This would mark a truly significant change in the overall power structure at ICANN that would dramatically empower national governments (some democratic, some authoritarian) over the management of critical Internet resources at the expense of those who participate in the bottom-up policy development process...