[CCWG-ACCT] Reflections on human rights protection and promotion by ICANN
Eric Brunner-Williams
ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net
Thu Nov 5 16:53:37 UTC 2015
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
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