Previous Politech messages: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/08/16/bush-administration-asks/ http://www.politechbot.com/2005/08/16/family-research-council/ http://www.politechbot.com/2005/08/16/milton-mueller-on/ -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Governments and Internet DNS Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 17:09:55 -0400 From: Milton Mueller <Mueller@private> To: <declan@private> ------------------------------------------------------- Should Governments Censor the Domain Name System? Should the US Government Have Unilateral Authority Over ICANN? ------------------------------------------------------- On August 11, the U.S. Commerce Department responded to a campaign by conservative relligious groups favoring online content controls by telling ICANN to reconsider its agreement to create a new .xxx top-level domain for sexual content. ICANN complied by delaying its process. The US Commerce Dept's intervention raises profound issues about how the Internet is governed. This occurs at a time when the World Summit on the Information Society and many other national governments are focusing on ICANN. According to the Internet Governance Project (IGP), the letter "calls into question the neutrality of the U.S. government's special authority over ICANN," and is the first open exercise of the USG's unilateral authority over the ICANN regime. The IGP has prepared a "Statement Opposing Political Intervention in the Internet's Core Technical Administrative Functions." The statement carefully analyzes the implications of this action for ICANN and for Internet governance generally. You can read the statement here: http://dcc.syr.edu/signaturepost.asp If you agree with it, you can sign on as an endorser by filling out the form at the bottom of the page. You can also download the statement itself here: http://dcc.syr.edu/miscarticles/STATEMENT-XXX.pdf Sign on or not, IGP urges everyone not to let the advocates of content regulation be the only voices heard by the Commerce Department. Dr. Milton Mueller Syracuse University School of Information Studies http://www.digital-convergence.org http://www.internetgovernance.org _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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