[governance] Emergency resolution on.xxx recall

[Milton Mueller]

>>> "Ewan SUTHERLAND" <ewan at intug.net> 08/18/05 4:33 AM >>>
>I am at a total loss to see where "censorship" came into this. 
>Labelling material that one person or one groups considers to 
>be triple-X or salacious or whatever and placing it in a set of 
>domain names is neither prohibiting it nor promoting it. 

That is of course true. The .xxx domain is not charged with censorship
(at least, not by me).
The censorship comes from people who want to _prevent_ the existence of
a .xxx domain because it recognizes or acknowledges the existence of
pornography. 

>There is a European precedent. A group came forward wanting some
>pan-European telephone numbers (E.164 range +3883-9) for use with
>premium rate services, read that as triple-X. Initially, the
numbering

I think this precedent is quite relevant. But it reinforces the
censorship argument. Basically the technical experts were being told:
try to handle the numbering issue in a way that allows us to pretend
that phone sex doesn't exist as a distinct category of traffic. From a
purely perceptual standpoint, to make a system-engineering decision that
responds to demand generated by pornography is to associate oneself with
it, and the politically safest strategy is to avoid the whole thing. I
would not hold that up as a positive example. 

What you have going on here is the creation of a "taboo." We cannot
talk about something, we cannot recognize its existence or make obvious
technical adjustments or decisions that respond to it's exstence. It's
silly, in my opinion. All this talk about "sensitivity" is just another
way of saying: if we avoid talking about it, we can pretend it doesn't
exist. 

>The issue for ICANN is whether, if it ignores the advice from GAC it
>would damage its credibility. It might take the view that the whole
>thing, in the medium term, will blow over.

Let's hope so. 
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