[alac] WIPO2 on the GNSO council

[Thomas Roessler <roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The GNSO council discussed the WIPO2 recommendations (as transmitted
to ICANN) today.  The council's formal advice to the board will be
*not* to implement these recommendations as part of the UDRP, but to
look at separate mechanisms for implementing these recommendations
in the course of a policy development process.

Concerns raised by individual council members included the concern
that these recommendations may not be backed by sufficiently clearly
uniform law internationally, that they may pose freedom of
expression risks, and that the proposed extension may actually pose
risks to the UDRP as it is established now.

I have made a brief statement on the basis of the few discussions on
the list so far, and on some private messages; I made that basis
transparent to the council.  I briefly elaborated on the limits of
ICANN's mission (which clearly does not include the creation of new
international law, but, as someone put it, "is limited to
architectural support for existing law"), contrasted that with the
WIPO2 report's finding that there is insufficient international law
in the areas concerned by the recommendations (see paras 168, 285,
289 of the report), cautioned about properly limiting future
policy-development, and mentioned the concern that some of the
recommendations actually seem to focus on the *use* of domain names,
i.e., on net content -- which isn't ICANN's business, either.


Unless there's some opposition by others on the Committee', I'd
start drafting an ALAC statement on this topic which takes up these
points in more detail, supports the GNSO Council's recommendation
that the WIPO2 recommendations should not be implemented in the
UDRP, and finally gives some "preliminary observations" on the
actual recommendations.

-- 
Thomas Roessler                        <roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>