Fergie's Tech Blog

.XXX Puzzle Pieces Start to Come Together: And the Picture is Ugly

Milton Mueller writes over on CircleID:

Americans who worried about governments somehow "running" the Internet through the United Nations failed to see the Trojan Horses that were rolled into ICANN's structure in 1998: the Governmental "Advisory" Committee and the special US Government powers over ICANN.

The attempt by the US Commerce Department to "recall" the delegation of .xxx to ICM Registry due to pressure from deluded right-wing groups in the US who think that it will add to pornography on the Internet is a major inflection point in the history of ICANN, and could represent the beginning of the end of its private sector/civil society based model of governance.

The issue is not only an assertion of censorship powers over top level domains, but the sudden assertion of authority through the GAC to overrule or veto decisions made by ICANN's own processes and its Board.

posted by Fergie @ 8/17/2005 11:24:00 AM