Ars Technica ran an article “ICANN: no government veto over controversial top-level domains” featuring Syracuse University School of Information Studies (iSchool) Professor Milton Mueller as a critic of the Obama administration’s proposal to allow national governments to veto the creation of general Top Level Domain (gTLDs) by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
“Critics like [Mueller] warned that the provision would let individual governments scrap gTLDs like .humanrights or .gay,” wrote Ars Technica blogger Matthew Lasar.
The U.S. proposal would have allowed any members of the Government Advisory Committee, the representatives from governments to ICANN, to object to the creation of a gTLD, like .com, .info, or the newly proposed .gay. Essentially, the recommendations said that if a country objects to the creation of a gTLD and if other nations do not argue against the objection, ICANN will not adopt the creation of the gTLD.
Mueller vociferously criticized the Obama administration’s proposal he said was “nothing less than a struggle between governments and the Internet community over who shall govern the [Doman Name Service].”
Mueller is Professor at Syracuse University School of Information Studies, where he teaches courses on information and communication policy and telecommunication management. His research focuses on property rights, institutions and global governance in communication and information industries. His earlier book Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (MIT
Press, 2002) was the first book-length analysis of the political and economic forces leading to the creation of ICANN. Currently, he is doing research on the legal and regulatory responsibilities of Internet service providers, Internet Protocol addressing policy, the policy implications of Deep Packet Inspection technology and the security governance practices of network operators.
Mueller was one of the founders of the Internet Governance Project, an alliance of scholars in action around global Internet policy issues. (http://blog.internetgovernance.org) As co-founder of the Noncommercial Users Constituency he has played a leading role in organizing and mobilizing public interest groups in ICANN. Mueller is on the Advisory Council of Public Interest Registry (.org).