Tomorrow, December 15, 2011,  the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary will meet to markup and potentially vote in committee on H.R. 3261, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” or SOPA. Today the Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) - of which ISOC-NY is a member - has written a letter to the House Committee expressing its profound concern with the proposed legislation, and the equivalent PROTECT-IP (PIPA) bill in the U.S. Senate, both of which would mandate the blocking and filtering of the Domain Name System(DNS).

In particular, the NCUC is very concerned with the provisions in both Bills relating to Domain Name System (DNS) filtering. As identified by numerous technical, legal and policy experts:

• DNS filtering is often proposed as a way to block illegal content consumption by end users. Yet policies to mandate DNS filtering will be ineffective for that purpose and will interfere with cross-border data flows and services undermining innovation and social development across the globe.
• Filtering DNS or blocking domain names does not remove the illegal content – it simply makes the content harder to find. Those who are determined to download filtered content can easily use a number of widely available, legitimately-proposed tools to circumvent DNS filtering regimes. As a result, DNS filtering encourages the creation of alternative, non-standard DNS systems.
• DNS filtering and blocking raises human right and freedom of expression concerns, and often curtails international principles regarding the rule of law, due…

http://ncdnhc.org/events/ncsg-open-policy-discussion

All NCSG Council members are requested to attend.

All NCSG members are encouraged to attend.

Candidate Constituency Members who are not yet NCSG members are also invited to attend.