[CCWG-ACCT] Board comments on the Mission statement

[Nigel Roberts]

And as I think I've already argued, I think it is fundamental to 
accountability in a post-NTIA environment that we know exactly under 
what legal authority such regulation takes place.

After all the millions on legal fees, is it the case that we still don't 
know?

On 11/22/2015 03:41 PM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 22, 2015 at 02:43:50AM -0500, Greg Shatan wrote:
>> ​GS: Bruce, if you are talking about the software processes that underlie
>> the websites and email systems used by registries and registrars, I believe
>> that's correct.  But what do you believe is the impact of that?  Do you
>> think that what ICANN currently does or hopes to do would constitute
>> "imposing regulations on" these software processes?    ​
>
> As I think I've already argued, ICANN does in fact impose regulations
> on some of those processes.  ICANN imposes regulations on content of
> contracted registrars for some registries, and all contracted
> registries, for certain services offered over http(s) and also over
> whois ("port 43 whois" is the way ICANN policy people seem to express
> this).  It's a direct specification of content: what must and must not
> be on the relevant web pages or available over the service.
>
> I think Becky has pointed out that we could get out of this by using
> the "service" definition we have and relying on the "ICANN can
> undertake contracts" sentence to permit this regulation.  I wonder
> whether that approach solves our problem, however, since if ICANN can
> regulate content on some web pages in the service of the DNS, why
> can't it regulate others?  Plainly, the line we want is the one
> distinguishing "things relevant to domain name registrations in
> contracted domains" and "everything else", but I still don't know how
> to write that down.
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>