[Ccwg-auctionproceeds] Wrt (not) lobbying

[Erika Mann]

+ Sam
+ Xavier 

That's correct Mathieu! 

Adding Sam and Xavier explicitly for further clarification (both are already included but might not see this exchange), 

Erika 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Mar 24, 2017, at 11:42 AM, Mathieu Weill <mathieu.weill at afnic.fr> wrote:
> 
> Daniel, All,
> 
> Reviewing the slides provided by ICANN Legal
> (https://community.icann.org/display/CWGONGAP/Legal+and+Fiduciary+Constrai
> nts+Related+Materials?preview=/64073737/64073741/DT%20for%20Auction%20Proc
> eeds%20-%20CCWG%20Legal%20Presentation.pdf ) on slide 13, it seems that
> the statement that "lobbying is a forbidden activity for ICANN" is not
> entirely accurate.
> 
> The slide recognizes that ICANN engages in some lobbying activities (more
> about it is disclosed here :
> https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/lobbying-disclosures-contributions-2
> 015-11-18-en) and mentions a requirement from our CCWG Charter against
> providing funds in support of attemps to influence legislation.
> 
> The relevant section of our Charter is quoted below, from the "scope"
> section (https://community.icann.org/display/CWGONGAP/CCWG+Charter) :
> 
> "To align with requirements imposed to maintain ICANN’s U.S. tax exempt
> status, the CCWG must include a limitation that funds must not be used to
> support political activity/intervening in a political campaing public
> office[2] or attempts to influence legislation[3]. The definitions of the
> limitations that are imposed to meet U.S. tax requirements must be applied
> across all applicants, and not only those from or intending to use the
> funds within the U.S. These requirements will apply to comparable
> activities across any location where applicants are located or intend to
> use the funds."
> 
> So my interpretation would be that organizations who engage in lobbying
> activities (such as the examples given by Daniel) would not be ruled out
> as a matter of principle, but should commit and ensure that any funds they
> would receive from the ICANN Auction Proceeds would not be used in
> lobbying or political funding activities.
> 
> Would that be correct ?
> 
> Best,
> Mathieu
> 
> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : ccwg-auctionproceeds-bounces at icann.org
> [mailto:ccwg-auctionproceeds-bounces at icann.org] De la part de Daniel
> Dardailler
> Envoyé : jeudi 23 mars 2017 18:54
> À : ccwg-auctionproceeds at icann.org
> Objet : [Ccwg-auctionproceeds] Wrt (not) lobbying
> 
> Hello all
> 
> In the legal slides, lobbying is pointed out as a forbidden activity for
> ICANN and is loosely defined as "attempts to influence legislation".
> 
> I'd like to understand exactly what that means.
> 
> For instance, both IETF and W3C have been active in various European
> official fora (parliament, commission, national governments) to change the
> old EU legislation wrt public procurement so that procurers be allowed to
> reference our standards directly (e.g. IPV6 or HTML).
> This is clearly about legislation, and it's more than an attempt, since we
> eventually succeeded (look for the EU Multistakeholder Platform for
> details).
> 
> Is this sort of policy oriented work to make the Internet and the Web
> technologies more "official", and therefore better deployed, without
> fragmentation, considered lobbying ?
> 
> Let's take another example. Suppose that some governments want to pass a
> brain-damaged legislation related to IP routing. Shouldn't ICANN be
> allowed to inform the public authority about the risks of doing just that
> ? If ICANN doesn't do it, who will ?
> 
> This is not a rhetorical case, every year or so, I get alerted by some
> advocacy groups that "deep linking" is about to become illegal somewhere
> on the planet (a deep link is just a link to a page "inside" another site,
> bypassing their "home" page) in order to protect some publisher business.
> Such an approach would undermine a fundamental piece of the Web
> architecture: freedom to link anywhere, and if we, the technical
> community, don't explain that point to policy makers, who will ?
> 
> There are dozens of public policy topics that are directly related to the
> Internet and the Web. They are all technical in nature of course and they
> only exist because of the net, because of us. As it happens, these topics
> are not very "hot" in the technical community, mostly because of their
> "policy/legal" flavor (not geek enough), so it's already difficult to find
> resources to represent our point-of-view.
> 
> My point is: at this point in time in Internet history, with lots of
> legislators trying to control the net without much of a clue of how things
> work, I think it would be a strategic mistake from the Internet technical
> community to self-censored itself in these debates.
> 
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