[CCWG-ACCT] Reflections on human rights protection and promotion by ICANN

[Eric Brunner-Williams]

Colleagues,

Some will recall that when the Government of Egypt, then going through 
crisis, directed the ISPs within its jurisdiction to withdraw their 
respective prefix announcements, affecting a series of changes to the 
global routing database communicated via BGP4, which took Egypt 
"off-line", that the Corporation did something.

It announced that the one remaining authoritative server for the .eg 
zone which remained globally accessible would, if its data "expired" 
before the Government of Egypt directed the ISPs within its jurisdiction 
to re-announce their respective prefix announcements, again affecting 
changes to the global routing database communicated via BGP4, putting 
Egypt back "on-line", refresh the zone date of the one remaining 
authoritative server for the .eg zone, so that the pre-existing data for 
the entire .eg zone would not be discarded.

In effect, the Corporation guaranteed the continuous existence of zone 
data and correctness of resolution, independent of the express intent of 
the (then) Government of Egypt, because ...

And there is where we have the possibility of writing in the human 
rights rational for keeping the .eg data from expiry. It could be the 
rights of Egyptians to continuity and correctness of resolution withing 
the .eg zone, or the global right to continuity and correctness of 
resolution of any zone, including the .eg zone, or possibly even further 
reaching, conditions upon the abilities of state actors to access the 
global routing database.

Next, at the Santa Monica meeting, which I was able to attend in person, 
I pointed out that we (Amadeu, myself, ... Vint, ...) had no idea in 
2005 that a "cultural and linguistic application" by a Catalan NGO would 
trigger a vast amount of text generation in Catalan in the namespace 
delegated to the Catalan NGO. I said something along the lines of 
"access to namespaces is something the Corporation has direct control 
over", with the implication that the use of local language, and so the 
infrastructure which reasonably facilitates that use, is a human right, 
protected and promoted by the Corporation.

And here too is where we have the possibility of writing in the human 
rights rational for the IDN program, with all its warts and bells and 
whistles.

Are there other ways to approach human rights protection and promotion 
by ICANN? It seems likely to me, but these are things we've done, the 
Corporation has done with the full knowledge and consent of the 
Community, and are rather central to the mission of the Corporation -- 
continuous correct routing and resolution, and identifiers in languages 
other than US English.

Eric Brunner-Williams
Eugene, Oregon