[governance] ICANN Board Vote Signals Era of Censorship in Domain Names

[Norbert Bollow]

Vittorio Bertola <vb at bertola.eu> wrote:

> Actually, if .xxx had been approved, then many governments could have 
> passed laws to force porn sites into it, thus actually making censorship 
> easier.

I'd like to expand on this thought a bit, since I think it's crucially
important...

The big issue with regard to censorship is not about "censorship" of
domain names, but whether there is censorship of what you can use the
'net for, and how you can use it.

Any government desiring to implement political censorship will look for
some kind of culturally-acceptable excuse for crossing the threshold
from "no censorship/filtering" to "some censorship/filtering", which
includes getting it accepted to either spend tax money on technical
infrastructure implementing censorship and/or filtering, or to force
all ISPs to do so.  This in any case involves somehow forcing or
otherwise influencing ISPs to go along with the censorship/filtering
plan.

The .xxx TLD together with the then-obvious idea of desiring to
"clean" the "rest of the internet" would in this regard make things
easier for those who want to introduce censorship and/or filtering
for reasons which in truth have not much to do with any desire to
protect children from porn or with any kind of genuine religion.

Therefore, regardless of whether you consider the existence of porn
on the 'net to be good or bad, introducing a .xxx TLD would definitely
be bad for the freedom of the 'net, even with regard to essential,
fundamental freedoms like being able to communicate first-hand
eyewitness accounts of events you have personally witnessed (but which
some government might want to keep hush-hush).

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                    http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG  http://SIUG.ch
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