[CCWG-ACCT] Board comments on the Mission statement

[Andrew Sullivan]

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

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com