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<p><font face="Verdana">Issue</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">As a US based entity, ICANN is subject to
full range of US laws. Almost any US court can take up for its
judicial consideration whether ICANN works within each of such
applicable law or not. This brings up a high likelihood that any
time in the future ICANN will have to change under US courts'
directions its actions taken in pursuance of its global
governance function of developing global DNS related policies
and implementing them. This is obviously undemocratic and
inappropriate that one country's law and its court decide what a
global governance body like ICANN will or will not do.</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">Further, it is not only a matter of a court
actually finding legal fault with an ICANN action and forcing to
change it. Knowing that ICANN is subject to the full range of US
public law, ICANN would always take care to keep its actions
with them (as it has no doubt done till now). This is what is
called as the "<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect">chilling
effect</a>". This phenomenon which is already in existence
with ICANN's actions, since its inception, is undemocratic and
illegitimate from the point of view of the non US people, since
they did not participate in making the US laws, and the laws
they may have actually developed may even be in contradiction to
US law on a particular subject. This phenomenon therefore leads
to denial of democratic rights to non US citizens. <br>
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<p><font face="Verdana">Solution:</font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana">Any given court would not heed to any
pleadings about ICANN being special as a global governance
organisation, and should be treated as such. Neither is the
court legally supposed to do, under the US constitution and
laws. The only solution there is </font><font face="Verdana">a
general immunity under the US International Organisations
Immunities Act, with proper customisation and exceptions for
ICANN to enable to be able to perform its organisational
activities from within the US. The chief exception I understand
would be the application of California non profit law. <br>
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