MEDIA: ICANN rejects .xxx domain

Fri May 12 13:20:53 UTC 2006

earlier i wrote: 

> the how-to-label problem has been around since the w3c's pics effort.
>
> the jurisdictional issue is aterritorial, as the cctlds cover that,
> and the authority, nominally, is a 501(c)(3) in marina del rey, and,
> purely contractual, as is the registry restricted to cooperative entities
> and the registry restricted to aviation entities.

this drew a response from martin hannigan:

: Negative. 92% of the root is under US jurisdiction with most ccTLD's
: riding on that infrastructure. I'm in the process of analyzing that
: now. I'll let you know what the number comes out to, but I bet it's
: close.

having been a party to the drafting of the icann new gtld contracts, an
interested party in the case of the neu* .biz contract, and an invited,
if ad hoc, expert in the case of the aero/coop/museum contracts, mostly
at louis touton's initiative, i'm of the (ianal) opinion that other than
the easily answered california incorporated 501(c)(3) jurisdictional
question implicit in the contracts between icann and the new gtld sponsors,
that no jurisdictional restrictions were specified in the ngtld contracts.

some actual lawyer may comment on the distinction between statutory
authority over the conduct of parties to a private contract, and the
civil law jurisdiction the parties agree to to resolve contractual
disputes.

there are parties that hold a territorial jurisdiction trumps all point
of view. the us doc placed territorial jurisdiction (physical location)
requirements in the .us rfp, which i also wrote the winning response to,
so all .us nameservers are within the continental united states.

personally i view this requirement as brain-dead.

similarly, icann last summer adopted a contested redelegation process
for cctlds which values territorial jurisdiction claims.

personally i view this process change as brain-dead.

obviously, milage varries.

now the issue of controlling authority has come up previously, and the
claim that there is only one jurisdiction, the us, has also been made  
previously.

see the w3c's p3p standard, and the data collection (aka "privacy) policy
regimes we (i'm wearing that co-author hat now) provided mechanism for.

again, ymmv.
eric