Re: [soac-mapo] charter and mission

[Jon Nevett <jon@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I can't speak for Antony, but I think that the approach he was taking issue 
with was the one Evan mentions directly below and not the IO process.  If not, 
I will.  I think that the IO objection process would be easier to implement 
than a banned list or a pre-application advisory process.  First, a list would 
require a whole lot of needless debate about names that no one would have 
applied for during the process.  Second, a pre-application advisory would not 
be able to take into account the applicant, the string, and the intended use.  
If it did, it would give these applicants an unfair advantage over other 
applicants that might be in a grey area on other issues (e.g. trademarks on the 
top level, string similarity, etc.).  Finally, we shouldn't be too worried 
about applicants (and their investors) who apply for a name that they know will 
be highly controversial.  They obviously will know that going in and there 
already is a partial refund available in DAG4 if they see that their 
application got caught up in an objection process and they choose not to 
proceed. 

Thanks.

Jon


>  other option raised during the GAC/At-Large meeting was inspired by the 
> trademark clearinghouse. There could be an advisory process through which TLD 
> applicants would know -- in advance of approval -- whether their string was 
> likely to be blocked by countries once implemented. Based on that advice, a 
> TLD applicant could withdraw or continue, knowing ahead of time that their 
> string could cause problems being seen in some jurisdictions. An advisory 
> process rather than an objection one preserves free expression, while 
> ensuring that applicants (and their investors) are aware of national 
> obstacles that may lie ahead.



On Jul 12, 2010, at 3:49 AM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

> 
> 
> On 12 July 2010 03:28, Antony Van Couvering <avc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The issue with this approach is that the string itself may not be the issue 
> -- I would contend that in most cases it would be the combination of the 
> string and the applicant.  There is nothing wrong with the string "boy," for 
> instance.  But there's a big difference between .boy operated by the Boy 
> Scouts and .boy operated by NAMBLA.
> 
> On the contrary, that's the strength of the At-Large proposed approach. By 
> putting such issues in the hands of the Independent Objector and offering 
> sufficient leeway, context can matter as much as the literal string itself. 
> Unanticipated problem applications can be objected to "on behalf of the 
> public interest" by the IO rather than depending upon some external body 
> (who? The Boy Scouts? A government? The Catholic Church?) to object to a 
> NAMBLA-run registry ".boy".
> 
> (Of course none of this prevents NAMBLA from purchasing second-level domains 
> under .boy, but that's a different issue :-P)
> 
> Under a similar scenario mentioned in one of the meetings, even everyone's 
> favourite example of  ".nazi" might be acceptable if it was proposed purely 
> for academic study. But this, like the NAMBLA one, is a rhetorical device 
> rather than a real-world proposal that will have to be confronted. That's the 
> nice thing about having an IO process that's not tightly restricted ... that 
> when real-world problem applications come up, we have a process suitably able 
> to deal with it.
> 
> (In more recent versions of the DAG, certain undesirable restrictions were 
> put on the IO that would inhibit the role's effectiveness in performing such 
> a duty. However we can recommend changes that remove such limitations.)
> 
> - Evan
> 
>