Re: [soac-mapo] Comments on 4.2 and 5.4

[Evan Leibovitch <evan@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 21 September 2010 09:29, Sivasubramanian M <isolatedn@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hello
> I am concerned about the implication of Recommendation 4.5: "The contracted
> advisors will be expected to have specific expertise in interpreting law
> instruments of public international law ....." which would invariably lead
> to a situation where the advisors are Lawyers from Law firms engaged by
> ICANN at a thousand dollars an hour, which would necessitate equally
> expensive counter measures on the part of the TLD applicant.
> If this is a 'morality and public order' issue, by whatever name we call it,
> why do we emphasize that the Advise needs to come from Lawyers and Law
> firms? This is very Californian.
> Sivasubramanian M

As a non-Californian and non-lawyer, I believe there is value to this approach.

A major problem with the original MAPO scheme was that it enabled
objections based on very subjective criteria; one community's isolated
sense of offence was sufficient for a serious objection. In evolving
the status quo into something more acceptable, we required some kind
of objective standard by which objections can be measured, and the
clearest (and most transparent) standards are laws and treaties.

If a string isn't objectionable enough to be the subject to action
according international law and treaty, it isn't objectionable enough
for ICANN to consider blocking it. It is not ICANN's duty to create
de-facto treaties on morality; instead it must track and stay
consistent with existing law and treaty.

- Evan