[At-Large] At-Large Use of Country and Territory Names as Top Level Domains

Evan Leibovitch evanleibovitch at gmail.com
Wed Sep 23 17:25:07 UTC 2015


> I am not GAC phobic, I just want them to understand their role and not
> assert more authority than they have on paper.

Good luck with that. The more ICANN goes rogue on the public interest,
the more it invites governments to do their own thing. Keep it going,
guys.

ICANN's authority is not by treaty (like ISO), it is only by tacit and
informal international consent. That consent can be withdrawn or
modified at any time by any state(s). The GAC is ICANN's only buffer
against that, on paper or not.

Or ... maybe it can do another PR campaign for "universal acceptance".

> In practice, they have done end-arounds to implement the blocking of
> thousands of strings at the second level without appropriate GNSO action as
> just one example of how they would like to have more power.

I didn't expect to find humour in this debate, but that gave me a chuckle.

Governments have ZERO obligation to honour the GNSO. That's one of the
little unfortunate truths that people tend to forget inside the bubble
called ICANN.

Governments are sovereign over their territories in exactly the way
that ICANN is not. They already possess all the power you complain
that they seek; the industry just screams like a baby whenever that
power is asserted, as if it is magically entitled to a veto.

Especially in the absence of international oversight, it is the GNSO
that needs to demonstrate that it deserves the trust of the world's
governments to operate, not vice versa. Right now that trust is in
short supply and on the decrease; making a land-grab on the 3-letter
ISO country codes would go a long way to eroding it even faster.

Yeah, you tell the GAC -- you tell the global public -- that this
issue needs a PDP, that the domain industry gets to hold court on it.
This'll be fun to watch,

- Evan


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