IP Enforcement Permeates ICANN, US Internet Policy

The push for ever more far-reaching intellectual property enforcement in the domain name system was heavily criticised at a conference of the Non-Commercial User Constituency (NCUC) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Friday.

The NCUC conference on “Internet Governance and the Global Public Interest” took place one day before the first constituency meetings of the 40th ICANN meeting in San Francisco (13-18 March).

The protection of intellectual property is again on the agenda of the ICANN meeting as the ICANN Board and the Government Advisory Constituency (GAC) talk about the future application procedure for new top level domains (TLDs) like .gay, .nyc or .music.

At the NCUC conference, Eric Goldman, professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, discussing recent domain name seizures covering over 80,000 domains in the United States and the draft Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, said: “Our government has gone rogue on that, and we don’t fight back enough.”

Trademark owners want tools like the Whois (a database on domain name holders) and the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) or the currently debated Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS). They would like to extend these tools to other areas.

Besides IP, privacy and freedom of speech issues, the NCUC conference also discussed potential attempts by administrations to use ICANN policies to extend national legal regimes – including IP protection – globally. The role of governments in ICANN currently is a hot topic there.