Mueller-Maguhn On Internet Governance

minna writes"In a recent article for the major German daily FAZ, Andy Mueller-Maguhn, newly elected ICANN board member for Europe, declares"What lawyers call "intellectual property" is -- as every Latin student knows -- no more than theft from the public domain. And because we, the netizens, now have no intention of letting these thieves destroy the public domain, we had to take a little corrective action; everybody goes their own way and we're all linked to the network. Through the public domain, through the collective unconscious and through Eris, the goddess of conflict, of discord, of argument. ... I intend to keep the public domain free of commercial rules, to guard the free flow of information and to give the bits their own domain. We want endless gardens of data, where the bits can flower, flourish and reproduce. Those are the cultural aspects of my government policy."The English version of his program for ICANN was distributed on the nettime list."

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Mueller-Maguhn will take his seat during one of Icann's busiest and most controversial times. Icann is in the middle of choosing registrars for new top-level domains names in the first web expansion since .com was created.

There are about 44 applications so far, which Icann is expected to narrow down by the end of the year. But why just 44? Mueller-Maguhn thinks all users should be able to create their own top-level domains (TLDs). "There is no natural or technical reason to [limit] TLDs. Why shouldn't there be a possibility of smaller business to run their own TLDs," he said. "Icann always says: 'There is a reason, this a very complicated, blah-blah-blah.' But most of the time it sounds like 'We would lose control.'"

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