[Excuse this long message. The issue is very important and I wanted to give as much relevant background information as possible. Alex] Four issues covered on this message: - 1. Disclosure within ICANN: 2. Commercial Stakeholders are going to allow any of the existing members of the IPR, ISP, and Commercial Constituencies VETO any board vote creating a new commercial constituency in the CSG. 3. Proved: ICANN ignored own bottom-up Policy Development Process ( or PDP) 4. Subject: ICANN and Free Speech Thank you for reading and your action is needed Alex Gakuru ICT Consumers Association of Kenya Non-Commercial Users Constituency - Kenya -------- 1. Disclosure within ICANN: [Of big brand owners and 'Intellectual Property" industry oiling ICANN domain name policy making process - to the detriment of people like us, in Kenya, and Africa. Countries that do not have well established digital IP laws, "Famous Marks" registries, and poor, if any, software and IT innovations patent system. If just continue sitting back and allow ICANN be influenced by wealthy IP interests, then expect those IP interests to patent/copyright even our traditional languages such that we cannot have our cultures nor use languages over the internet. Who knows, even using vernacular language on email could become 'copyright infringement' We already know the kiondo and Kikoy examples. Alex Gakuru] ---- The US government requires lobbying efforts to be documented, figures of dollars spent per industry are broken down by sector. This is because of the right of people to know who is spending what when policy is being made. Domain name law, such as it is, is being written as we watch. A large number of people are spending a lot of money to do this. Marilyn Cade spoke and wasn't exacly forthright that she represented the intellectual property interests of AT&T or that AT&T was the #1 "heavy hitter" for lobbying the government, something Marilyn has done since 1996. And it's no coincidence the Department of Commerce that oversees ICANN is the fourth most lobbied agency in the US government. The amount the trademark lobby spend on preventing new TLDs since 1996 is staggering IBM admitted to spending $30M/yr in 1998 and 1999 but we have no other figures. There is not now, full disclosure of lobbying efforts on behalf of the trademark lobby Or known how much big business spending this year to lobby against the creation of new top level domains. Question part 1: Is full disclosure of lobbying not consistent with ICANN's "open and transparent" US Government mandate? Question part 2: Would anybody care to estimate what they think this figure might be this year lobbying ICANN and what has WIPO spent doing this since the 1995 OECD meeting where they first publically ventured into this issue? Can these figures be published sometime before the end of this quarter for both WIPO and the business community as a intrest group in this consultation under this current monopoly procedure that could create thousands of jobs? For more information, see http://docs.vrx.net/dns/timeline/20/09/nyc_irt/ 2. Commercial Stakeholders Group are going to allow any of the existing members of the IPR, ISP, and Commercial Constituencies VETO any board vote creating a new commercial constituency in the CSG. We (noncommercial users) have really been asleep at the wheel over the last year while the ICANN Board of Directors had their heads filled with mis-representations about NCUC by relentless back-door lobbying. They get it from the commercial/IPR crowd and they get it from staff, neither of whom want to see noncommercial users effective in policy development. The fact that we haven't engaged in backdoor lobbying the way our critics do is coming back to haunt us by ICANN trying to take away our newly won 3 elected council seats for noncommercial users and staff imposing its "stranglehold" charter while ignoring all of work we did to develop one that was supported by global civil society (63 organizations + dozens of individuals in public comments). In particular, under the SIC approved charter<http://gnso.icann.org/en/improvements/csg-proposed-petition-charter-22jun09.pdf>for the CSG, they are going to allow any of the existing members of the IPR, ISP, and Commercial Constituencies VETO any board vote creating a new commercial constituency in the CSG. Amazing! The press should be having a field day with this level of incompetence and favoritism. "4.2 Membership shall also be open to any additional constituency recognised by ICANN’s Board under its by-laws, provided that such constituency, as determined by the unanimous consent of the signatories to this charter, is representative of commercial user interests which for the purposes of definition are distinct from and exclude registry and prospective registry, registrar, re-seller or other domain name supplier interests." We must push-back against ICANN injustice to get them to listen to noncommercial users and to stop developing policy through backdoor negotiations while ignoring the expressed will of the public and a bottom-up process. ICANN is accepting public comments until 21 July on their imposed charter, so we have to weigh in loudly on their failure to follow bottom-up processes and allow noncommercial users to govern themselves. More info on comment period: http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/#stakeholder --- 3. Proved: *ICANN ignored own bottom-up Policy Development Process ( or PDP) * Attached find two documents:- The first is a set of comments describing our procedural concerns about the way the IRT Committee was constituted and much fairer ways to proceed forward. The second is s set of detailed comments with our deep substantive concerns re: the IRT Report, and particularly the problems of the Globally Protected Marks List, the URSP system (a displacement of the UDRP), the IP Clearinghouse and the Thick Whois. Your action needed: Send your comments to ICANN under Non-Commercial Users Constituency (“Internet Users”) Attachments: 1. NCUC Procedural Comments on IRT Final Report.pdf 84K 2. NCUC Substantive Comments on IRT Final Report.pdf 116K ---forwarded message--- *4. Subject: **ICANN and Free Speech* For what it's worth I wrote a post on my blog about ICANN free speech issues and the importance of including non-commercial voices, aimed at people who know little or nothing about the IRT, NCUC, or how ICANN works. http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2009/07/icann-and-free-speech.h... Best, Rebecca Rebecca MacKinnon Open Society Fellow | Co-founder, GlobalVoicesOnline.org Assistant Professor, Journalism & Media Studies Centre, University of Hong Kong