RE: [soac-mapo] On "universal resolvability" and useful questions that emerged yesterday

["Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Milton,

Let me be clear about a couple things.  As one of the co-chairs, I do
not plan to make any unilateral rulings.  Second, whether you agree or
not with Avri's suggestion, it was constructive in that it proposed a
possible direction that could be considered and that is helpful in
developing any possible recommendations or not.

I plan to continue to encourage efforts to formulate solutions while at
the same time encouraging debate of proposed solutions.

Chuck

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-soac-mapo@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-soac-mapo@xxxxxxxxx] On
> Behalf Of Milton L Mueller
> Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 9:28 PM
> To: Avri Doria; soac-mapo
> Subject: RE: [soac-mapo] On "universal resolvability" and useful
> questions that emerged yesterday
> 
> 
> I don't think there is any merit to Avri's legal concerns.
> If ICANN can get sued for making a decision, getting advice from a
> bunch of "hyper-respected" jurists won't make a bit of difference.
> Chuck, I don't agree that this opens a promising path.
> 
> > What controls the board in many cases, after their duty to do the
> right
> > thing, is their fear of being sued.  But since the basis for a suit
> is
> > determined by US and California law, this makes the US law, and its
> > prejudices, the driving condition. This leaves a gap for any country
> or
> > issue that is not US.
> 
> Insofar as this argument is valid, it applies to any and every
decision
> the Board makes. MAPO neither worsens nor improves those issues.
> 
> > For example things that might be barred by the US terrorism rules
> might
> > be perfectly reasonable TLDS.
> 
> Terrorism is an area where there is a surprising degree of
> international consensus among most developed and even developing
> nations, both on who is designated a terrorist organization and on
> international cooperation measures (in banking, financial regulation
> and tracking, extradition, etc) to oppose them. If the U.S. has
> sanctions against an organization there is a very good chance that
> other countries do as well. (think of Al Qaeda)
> 
> And for those hypothetical organizations or entities that are _only_
> targeted by the U.S. (can you name one?), if they apply for a TLD
> string and for some reason it is illegal for ICANN to give it one,
> outsourcing an advisory decision will...not...make...any...difference
-
> it will still be illegal for ICANN to do.
> 
> I note that ICANN is currently not barred from maintaining ccTLDs for
> sanctioned countries and countries deemed sponsors of terrorism (Iran,
> No. Korea, etc.)
> 
> Could someone with some real legal expertise in this area weigh in on
> this before our chair buys this argument and promotes it?
>