<div>Dear Bertrand and All:</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Indeed Issues of <em>virtual geography</em> abound (I think of this when reading Michael's enriching community posts, and as early as a few decades ago (in litigation) encountered e.g. in online defamation cases and whether judges consider that they have jurisdiction - can bring cases into their courtroom (or, that is, wish to).</div>
<div> </div>
<div>My experience in courts is that the reach of the court is pretty narrowly construed in the USA as compared with some *physical) places in Europe, at least (and still) with currently seated judges, but jurisdiction is a HUGE issue. Glad to read the posts here, though at a slant with <em>CyberLibel,</em> CyberStalking, e-IdentityTheft, or other aspects of Reputation Management, etc.. But however enumerated, these legal sub-domains are included in <u>Human Rights</u> concerns, as are many commonly embedded otherwise in <u>Development</u> discussions. Can <u>Security</u> be far b ehind?</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I hope we'll find a place at Conferences for all of these inter and intra cultural considerations, regarding one region's influence over others, wherever in the <em>spatial/temporal</em> world they may be..</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Just some thoughts from here on current and quite interesting discourse,</div>
<div>With very best wishes, LDMF.</div>
<div>Linda D. Misek-Falkoff, Ph.D., J.D.</div>
<div>*Respectful Interfaces*.</div>
<div>For I.D. only here: Communications Coordination Committee For the U.N.<br><br> </div>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 3/7/08, <b class="gmail_sendername">Bertrand de La Chapelle</b> <<a href="mailto:bdelachapelle@gmail.com">bdelachapelle@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Milton,<br><br>Following your remarks to McTim below, and supposing this indeed is done<br>through the courts, the interesting set of questions here is :<br>
<br>1) Would/should a foreign registrar comply with a court order from the US ?<br>2) And if it failed to do so, would the court order Verisign to do it (block<br>the domain name) ?<br>3) Should Verisign do it, does that mean that all .com registrants become<br>
indirectly subject to US law, not only in terms of appropriate strings, but<br>also in terms of the very activity they run, even on servers not located on<br>US territory and serving customers outside of the US ?<br><br>This is a real and useful discussion. Nothing to do with the "oversight of<br>
the root" via IANA. It is exposing the core challenge of competing or<br>overlapping jurisdictions and probably the need for some<br>"globally-applicable public policy principles". I believe nobody has the<br>
full complete answer. In my *personal* view, this is an illustration of the<br>mutation of sovereignty, disconnecting it from the sole physical territory<br>and allowing it to expand in a fractal manner on other territories - or<br>
conversely, retract - depending on the influence of the corresponding<br>national actors in the digital sphere. And those national actors are not<br>only the governments : the existence of a dominant player in a specific<br>
domain (Verisign, but also a Google, YouTube, MySpace or Facebook) does<br>bring the corresponding government a leverage. But it probably also gives it<br>a special responsibility it did not have before.<br><br>This notion of "fractal sovereignty" is harder to handle than the<br>
traditional territory-based one but probably more adapted to our connected<br>world than the notion of strict subsidiarity : the challenge is to manage<br>interdependence and interactions.<br><br>To enrich the discussion, I'd like to put in perspective here the issue of<br>
IDNs. Will the physical location of the future major registries for IDN TLDs<br>(particularly gTLDs if any) give the corresponding national courts a<br>specific authority/legal power on all registrants in those TLDs, even if<br>
they are not located in that country and have no business with its citizens<br>?<br><br>These are deep policy issues and I'd be interested in comments on those<br>challenges. Because they are challenges for governments too.<br>
<br>Best<br><br>Bertrand<br><br><br><br><br>On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 12:06 AM, Milton L Mueller <<a href="mailto:mueller@syr.edu">mueller@syr.edu</a>> wrote:<br><br>> > -----Original Message-----<br>> > From: McTim [mailto:<a href="mailto:dogwallah@gmail.com">dogwallah@gmail.com</a>]<br>
> > In this case, the registrar took action, not the registry, so it<br>> > remains to be seen if a non-US .com registrar (and non-US registrant)<br>> > would take the same action. Probably not.<br>><br>
> The action was not taken by the registrar, the registrar complied with a<br>> legal order.<br>><br>> .com is located in Virginia.<br>><br>> > Then the question (that I<br>> > think you are raising) is would VRSN remove the records from the .com<br>
> > zone in such a case.<br>> ><br>> > I would hope not.<br>> ><br>><br>> It is not up to VeriSign. It is up to the courts.<br>> ____________________________________________________________<br>
> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:<br>> <a href="mailto:governance@lists.cpsr.org">governance@lists.cpsr.org</a><br>> To be removed from the list, send any message to:<br>> <a href="mailto:governance-unsubscribe@lists.cpsr.org">governance-unsubscribe@lists.cpsr.org</a><br>
><br>> For all list information and functions, see:<br>> <a href="http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance">http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance</a><br>><br><br><br><br>--<br>____________________<br>
Bertrand de La Chapelle<br>Délégué Spécial pour la Société de l'Information / Special Envoy for the<br>Information Society<br>Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et Européennes/ French Ministry of Foreign<br>and European Affairs<br>
Tel : +33 (0)6 11 88 33 32<br><br>"Le plus beau métier des hommes, c'est d'unir les hommes" Antoine de Saint<br>Exupéry<br>("there is no greater mission for humans than uniting humans")<br>____________________________________________________________<br>
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:<br> <a href="mailto:governance@lists.cpsr.org">governance@lists.cpsr.org</a><br>To be removed from the list, send any message to:<br> <a href="mailto:governance-unsubscribe@lists.cpsr.org">governance-unsubscribe@lists.cpsr.org</a><br>
<br>For all list information and functions, see:<br> <a href="http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance">http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance</a><br></blockquote></div><br>