US Laws Remain Set To Govern The Coming Multilingual Internet thru ICANN's New gTLDs As ICANN Publishes Its Last Applicant Guidebook For Its Board Consideration.

Ankabooot Breaking News:

US Laws Remain Set To Govern The Coming Multilingual Internet thru ICANN's New gTLDs As ICANN Publishes Its Last Applicant Guidebook For Its Board Consideration.

ICANN published its 7th and supposed final New gTLD Applicant Guidebook in preparation for its board consideration on June 20th during its Singapore meeting.

To many nations and citizens around the world, especially the Non-English speaking communities, this will be seen as a strategically alarming direction for the global Internet. US laws remain set to govern ICANN's New gTLDs and the coming multilingual Internet in languages like Arabic, Chinese, Urdu, Cyrillic and many others which these New gTLDs will bring with them.

The clause on US laws appears on page 27 of the last Guidebook under the heading "Legal Compliance". It remained unchanged, un-discussed, and un-addressed by ICANN since Guidebook version 5 (DAG 5) came out last year despite many official open letters and interventions to ICANN.

Under this rule any applicant or entity whether Chinese, Russian or Arab, and regardless of their nationality, will be screened against U.S. laws and its economic and trade sanction program administered by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. These U.S. Sanctions are imposed on certain countries, entities and individuals that appear on its OFAC's list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (the SDN List).

People, entities and countries the U.S. deems undesirable, or who don’t meet U.S. foreign policy agenda can be listed. Applicants for any New gTLD in any language that are named on such list will be refused by ICANN per this "legal compliance" clause that invokes U.S laws.

On this latest news Multilingual Internet Group, Ankabooot and MINC Chairman Khaled Fattal said: "There is a great realistic risk now that many governments and local language communities would boycott the New gTLD program. Some governments may actively start to consider deploying their own alternative Internets globally with serious economic and political consequences. The Internet we all use today, which is U.S. controlled and ICANN managed on their behalf, will no longer remain the only Internet root. We warned ICANN and the U.S. about this many times publicly and privately."

It is worth noting that ICANN had initially stipulated in Version 4 of its Guidebook (DAG4) under the same legal compliance that "Terrorism checks" will be conducted on all applicants while it provided no definitions whatsoever. This was strongly objected for by Chairman Khaled Fattal to ICANN Executives and its board that subsequently led to the deletion of the "terrorism check" from Guidebook 4 by a board resolution. ICANN subsequently replaced "Terrorism Checks" with US laws, OFAC and SDN in versions 5, 6 and now 7, its last.

ICANN’s new publication was accompanied by Explanatory Memoranda related to implementation and communication plans as well as analysis of the public comment received on the previous Guidebook version. Yet, little or no mention of the public concern ICANN received on the matter of US laws has been accounted for.

ICANN did note the diplomatic cooperation and compromise on many issues between its Board and its Government Advisory Committee (GAC) on the Applicant Guidebook 7.

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