[NA-Discuss] Fwd: Fwd: [New gTLD RG] Community objection - health

[Eric Brunner-Williams]

Resending at 17:33, original sent to na-discuss@ at 13:10.


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Fwd: [New gTLD RG] Community objection - health
Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2013 13:10:54 -0800
From: Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net>
Reply-To: ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net
Organization: wampumpeag
To: na-discuss at atlarge-lists.icann.org

All,

I may have missed this, but I didn't observe anyone provide to the
NA-Discuss list subscribers a link to the correspondence by Antonine
Geissbuhler of the International Medical Informatics Association, on
the 20th of last month.

In that note [1] Mr or Ms Geissbuhler wrote to inform the New gTLD RT
that an Overview [2] and Objections table [3] had been posted to the
ICANN site for review. Please see the links in the footnotes for the
originals.

In the Overview, in the sixth paragraph, its authors write that

"The community has argued to ICANN and the GAC that .health should not
be attributed until a broad-based consultation of the community has
taken place, and the rights, rules and responsibilities for the
operation of the domain had been elaborated. It is vital that there is
at least one trusted place on the Internet for health. In the same way
that the Internet is a global public good, .health can be considered
as a global asset for health."

Several frequent contributors to the NA-Discuss list have argued to
the contrary, in effect that:

[a] .health should be irrevocably delegated to a private, for-profit
actor before the "rights, rules and responsibilities" have been worked
out.

[b] No necessity, or even competitive utility exists for the existence
of even "one trusted place on the Internet for health."

[c] Unlike the Internet, which is a global public good, .health must
be a private asset of a for-profit actor.

I've reviewed the registration policies of the five applicants for
"health" in the Latin and Han scripts and find them more similar to
the policies of open registries than those of socially responsible
registries I've worked with in the past -- .museum, .coop, and of
course, .cat.

Unlike those arguing for [a] I see only harm to the public interest in
delegation before adequate rule determination.

Having worked for the creation of sponsored, and then community-based
registry types, within Working Group C (1998-2000), with Louis Touton,
ICANN's first Vice-President, Secretary, and General Counsel of ICANN,
and subsequently with the .aero, .coop and .museum projects, and the
.cat project for which I was the CTO of application record, and as CTO
of CORE, which provides back-end services for .museum and .cat, I see
not just a compelling utility, but stark necessity for at least one
namespace with policies that transform the public trust in tangibles
related to public health to a public trust in the intangibles related
to public health.

Unlike those arguing for [b] I see only harm to the public interest in
the absence of any "place on the Internet" where the intangibles
related to public health can be trusted.

I came to "the Internet" and via the exercise of writing, inter alia,
in 1984, the XPG/1 socket specification. Not long afterwards I'd the
honor of managing one of SRI's larger computer facilities, in the same
building (in fact directly over), Jake Feinler's shop, which carried
out the Network Information Center function. I've contributed to the
IETF (as has Avri Doria), the W3C, the 3rd version of the XPG
specification (now The Single Unix Specification), and so on. I've no
doubt that the Internet is mostly a global public good. I'd like to
see more of it in Indian Country, and I liked it better before the
Commercial Exchange Agreement and the privatization of the NIC
function, but on the whole, it remains "a global public good".

Unlike those arguing for [c] I see only harm to the public interest in
making the "Internet of Public Health" the monopoly of a for-profit,
private actor.

There is still time for thoughtful discourse on the objections to the
five applications for "health" in the Latin and Han scripts.
Obviously, had I been elected to the office I ran for in the last
election I would not be abstaining on this question.

Eric Brunner-Williams

[1] http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/newgtldrg/2013-February/000326.html

[2]
https://community.icann.org/download/attachments/40930482/Health+Community+Objection+20+Feb2013.pdf

[3]
https://community.icann.org/download/attachments/40930482/Health+Community+Objection-table.pdf