[governance] Statement made in Plenary

[Vittorio Bertola]

Avri Doria ha scritto:
>>>do you think it should not become an international body?
>>
>>I think it is.
> 
> as long as it is subject to all US and California law past and  
> future, i disagree.
> 
> the US government would be well within its national mandate to  
> prohibit companies from associating with certain foreign powers (the  
> so called rogues and evil ones) and to prohibit contractual relations  
> with entities in those countries.  It is this sort of potential  
> restriction that I believe is inappropriate for ICANN.

I remember one young Iranian guy coming to me at the Cape Town ICANN 
meeting, and telling me the story of their .com domain names being 
suddenly lost as their American registrar refused to make business with 
them any more. Also, they tried to get a local ISP accredited by ICANN 
as a registrar, but ICANN could not make a contract with an Iranian 
company, and even if it did, Verisign, Thawte etc would refuse to sell 
them an SSL certificate necessary for the communication.

I am not sure about to which extent this story is true, but as far as I 
know it certainly could be.

I also remember the story of the biggest Macedonian ISP losing their 
customers' domains as the American registrar who they were using started 
refusing credit cards from Balkan countries to reduce fraud risks (in 
practice, assuming that anyone attempting to pay with a credit card from 
Balkans is likely to be a fraudster).

Now, one could say that this kind of things falls into the realm of 
private law... but still, if we accept (as per the Tunis declaration) 
that "the Internet is a global facility available to the public", I 
don't think that this kind of things should be allowed to happen any more.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...
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