ICANN should refrain from imposing political views

[William L Landahl III <Bill.Landahl@xxxxxxxxx>]

Name: William L Landahl III
Email: Bill.Landahl@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: ICANN should refrain from imposing political views
Comments:
I've been an IT professional since 1974, a PC user since 1977, and a follower of political policy and technical 
development even longer.  The commentary below is much more eloquent than myself, and I fully endorse it.  
Attempting to apply recommendations such as #6 & #20 would seem to lead to the absurdity of only allowing 
names such as: "A", "AA", and "A12".  Anything else is sure to offend someone, 
someplace whether it be conservative Christians, Muslim fundamentalists, or the Chinese government.  PLEASE be 
very careful in attempting to regulate international communications in this manner.

William L Landahl III

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ICANN should not try to regulate morality and public order on the Internet.  
But the proposed policy for approving new gTLDs threatens to do just that. 
There is no global consensus on these cultural issues, and applying a 
one-size-fits-all policy to censor the global Internet cannot work. Also, 
trademark law doesn't match the way Internet domains are used, and the proposed 
policy would apply trademark law in ways that are completely unprecedented in 
any national law or international treaty.  This is completely inappropriate, 
and is likely to be illegal in many cases.

The proposed challenge process allows too much subjective uncertainty in what 
should be a completely objective, transparent and well-defined application 
procedure.  It requires ICANN to judge cases for which it has no established 
institutional capacity, and sets up a completely spurious legal jurisdiction 
without any accountable political authority. It would also allow wealthier and 
more powerful gTLD applicants to hijack the application process, suppress 
competition and innovation, and generally establish more firmly entrenched 
gatekeeper power in the market for gTLDs.

These problems are too important to let the proposed policy be approved without 
fixing them. Please protect freedom of expression and innovation by removing 
non-technical and non-operational criteria from all ICANN policies.  Keep the 
Internet open and nondiscriminatory.  Keep the core neutral!