[discuss] Some more legal tangles for ICANN

[parminder]

On Friday 27 June 2014 03:34 PM, Nick Ashton-Hart wrote:
> - the double posting for real this time.
>
> I'm sorry Parminder, but this case has nothing to do with the point 
> you are making. The court - and the plaintiff's solicitor - simply 
> don't understand that a ccTLD and ICANN don't exchange money, ICANN 
> doesn't license them or anything of the sort. This is a 
> non-enforceable judgment based upon flawed information at a very 
> fundamental level.

Nick

The basic issue is that the US courts, at all levels, from the lowest 
onwards, have full jurisdiction over ICANN - its activities, assets, 
relationships, finances and so on. This is of course quite evident 
without having to go through the papers of this case, or a few others 
that US courts have picked up reg ICANN (like the one on whether .xxx is 
compatible with commerce related laws of the US). This case simply 
further highlights the obvious control that the US jurisdiction and law 
has over the ICANN, in all respects, and fully. Whether cctld makes no 
payment is a minor point - an Iran based gtld, which does make payments, 
could be in the 'accused box' on some other issue....

In a recent write up, I used the example of, say, a private gtld of an 
Indian company which sells generic drugs. Lets call it dot 
genricdrugs...  Its business may be completely legitimate in India and 
most of the world, but lets say a US pharma takes its business model to 
a US court, and the court finds it running foul of the stupidly severe 
US IP protections, and similarly, as in the quoted case, asks ICANN to 
seize both the payments made to ICANN as well as possibly the gltd from 
the root server itself. I consider this not only very plausible but a 
round the corner scenario. Can you show me how this is not possible. Why 
should Indian companies and citizens be at the mercy of US law and 
institutions? That is the point. And that point is rather strongly 
accentuated by the court judgement being discussed currently, whether in 
its specific elements it is enforceable or not.

As you can perhaps well judge, no one here is interested in the specfic 
subject of this judgement, but on the very important global Internet 
governance issue that it raises. And this issue goes to the heart of 
ICANN oversight transition issue. ICANN oversight is foremost about 
figuring out the legitimate political domain that it should be anchored 
in and responsible to... But of course we can put aside such real issues 
and sink back again into the comfort zone of all the ICANN-ic 
trivialities that IMHO have filled up the ICANN oversight transition 
discussion.

parminder


>
> On 27 Jun 2014, at 11:53, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net 
> <mailto:parminder at itforchange.net>> wrote:
>
>> Many of us have been saying for years now that ICANN as a global 
>> governance body is simply not sustainable to remain under US 
>> jurisdiction, and must be incorporated under international law with 
>> host country immunities.... And we have said a thousand times that it 
>> is not just the issue of what the US executive decides, but also what 
>> any court in US could decide any day on any issue, which could 
>> unravel the whole structure and its plausibility.... Sorry for the 'I 
>> told you so' sentiment, but well, we need to wake up. Even now.... 
>> parminder
>>
>>
>> On Friday 27 June 2014 02:54 PM, Bill Woodcock wrote:
>>> On Jun 27, 2014, at 2:22 AM, michael gurstein<gurstein at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>>> http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-us-terror-victims-now-own-irans-internet/  
>>> For those not following on NANOG:
>>>
>>> http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Subpoena-Ben-Haim-02-1611-with-Schedule-A.pdf
>>>
>>>                                  -Bill
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> discuss mailing list
>>> discuss at 1net.org
>>> http://1net-mail.1net.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>
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>

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