Keep The Core Neutral

Here are some legal briefs and articles addressing the issues of the Keep The Core Neutral campaign:

• Christine Haight Farley
  Professor of law, American University Washington College of Law
  Professor Farley addresses problems with respect to the February 2007 version of the GNSO Draft Report, in the context of Trademark Law. In general, trademarks differ from domains in their territorial application, consumer subjectivity, and context-specificity, where domains are globally defined, address a subjectively elusive global public, and are inherently abstract and divorced from specific context of use.
   

• Jacqueline Lipton
  Professor of Law, Co-Director, Center for Law, Technology and the Arts, Associate Director, Frederick K Cox Center for International Law, Case Western Reserve University School of Law
  Professor Lipton addresses additional issues with the GNSO Draft Report, beyond those highlighted by NCUC, and suggests that ICANN's technical orientation is not well matched with the need to identify and discuss legal and social issues that emerge from the creation of gTLDs. Instead, other individuals and bodies with appropriate expertise should be identified and brought into the policy process, ultimately resulting in new regulations to be drafted by public governments.
   

• Dawn C. Nunziato
  Associate Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School
  Freedom of Expression, Democratic Norms, and Internet Governance
  Professor Nunziato challenges "the prevailing idea that ICANN's governance of the Internet's infrastructure does not threaten free speech and that ICANN's governance of the Internet therefore need not embody special protections for free speech." Nunziato argues "that ICANN's authority over the Internet's infrastructure empowers it to enact regulations affecting speech within the most powerful forum for expression ever developed. ICANN cannot remain true to the democratic norms it was designed to embody unless it adopts policies to protect freedom of expression. While ICANN's recent self-evaluation and proposed reforms are intended to ensure compliance with its obligations under its governance agreement, these proposed reforms will render it less able to embody the norms of liberal democracy and less capable of protecting individuals' fundamental rights. Unless ICANN reforms its governance structure to render it consistent with the procedural and substantive norms of democracy articulated herein, ICANN should be stripped of its decision-making authority over the Internet's infrastructure."