[governance] control and censorship - revelation?

[David Allen]

Kieren McCarthy - again - writing for the Register, yesterday posted 
a remarkable piece of investigative reporting.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/29/us_undermines_internet/

The article speaks for itself.  To summarize, quoting McCarthy:

"If a company running a country code top-level domain refuses to 
agree to hand over any information or data held by it to the 
government, ... the government can simply replace the [old ccTLD 
manager] with a government-run agency. If it refuses to shut down a 
website, or to redirect it elsewhere, the government can simply 
replace it with a government-run agency."

Re the re-delegation of the Kazakhstan ccTLD, which has now shut down 
a comic's website:  "Why? The president of the [newly appropriated 
Kazakh ccTLD manager] said it was so the comic 'can't bad-mouth 
Kazakhstan under the .kz domain name'. If you want an example of 
government-owned and run censorship on the internet, you'll be hard 
pushed to find a clearer example."

According to the story, this change was made in aid of the US Iraq 
adventure.  Yes, there is the bit that ICANN still retains some 
'judgment.'  But it appears that even if the supplicant is a 
strongman state, if it is still providing bases for Afghan operations 
...

If this story is correct - there is nothing on its face to suggest 
otherwise, but we can vet that here - it is explosive.  The _whole_ 
rationale for the US position in WSIS was that it would guarantee 
freedom of expression on the net.  To explain retaining control of 
the root, the USG said that would prevent unnamed governments from 
being able to censor sites, to insure for instance against critics 
being frozen out of the root.  That was the grand and overarching 
rationale.

McCarthy says in effect, the US government has handed censorship of 
the net to other governments of the world.

David
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