[ga] Fw: ICANN's Karl Auerbach responds to Joe Sims over .kids domain

[Bruce James <bmjames@swbell.net>]

    Very interesting email from Karl Auerbach:

/Bruce

----- Original Message -----
From: "Declan McCullagh" <declan@well.com>
To: <politech@politechbot.com>
Cc: <karl@cavebear.com>; <jsims@JonesDay.com>
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2001 17:18
Subject: FC: ICANN's Karl Auerbach responds to Joe Sims over .kids domain


Previous messages:

"ICANN replies to Politech post about House bill and .kids"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-02227.html

"U.S. House bill would force ICANN to approve .kids domain"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-02216.html

---

Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 12:04:59 -0700 (PDT)
From: Karl Auerbach <karl@cavebear.com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject: Re: FC: ICANN replies to Politech post about House bill and .kids
In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.0.20010706111252.0378a410@mail.well.com>


On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:

 > [Perhaps I have done ICANN a disservice by suggesting that it is
"becoming
 > just another regulated federal agency."
 > .... See below for a note from
 > Joe Sims on behalf of ICANN. --Declan]

Joe Sims does not speak for ICANN.

As for my own point of view as a member of the Board of Directors of
ICANN:

Yes, there are thousands, probably tens of thousands, of bills submitted
every year into the hoppers of legislatures and administrative agencies
around the world.  And a lot of those do not become law.

But many do.

Any time members of the legislative body of the United States go so far as
to submit a draft bill that not only affects ICANN, but indeed directly
names ICANN and mandates ICANN behaviour, then as a Director I have to sit
up and take notice.

It simply would not be prudent to stick my Director's head in the sand
and pretend to see nothing.

I do not consider it appropriate management to bluster, as Sims does,
against a situation and pretend that it has gone away.

Unlike Sims, I am Director of ICANN and I am accountable for ICANN's
actions.  I am not free to live in a fantasy world in which the United
States Congress is of no more import than a small cloud in an otherwise
clear sky.

Personally, I think that the bill has some troublesome aspects - for
instance, given that the US Government, not ICANN, controls the root zone
via a contract with Verisign, the bill could simply take the form of a
mandate to the Dept of Commerce to take the appropriate steps without any
involvement from ICANN at all.

But I find a lack of wisdom in any top-down imposition of "chartered" or
limited purpose top level domains, particularly one in which the subject
matter is as subjective and personal as "appropriate" content for
children.  (One has to wonder at the amount of the content that would be
considered appropriate by both the parents of a five year old Pakistani
Islamic girl and the parents of a fifteen year old Danish boy.)

I am perfectly happy to let private companies try to find their way
through such a maze.  But it seems rather an inappropriate role for a
national government, particularly given the extraterritorial impacts.

The bill also falls victim to the commonplace belief that the domain name
system is the only naming system for the Internet, and that the Internet
is merely the world wide web.

Content labelling by use of domain name names is a very naive, and
bludgeoning, way to make use Internet technology as a tool of government.

--karl--




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