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

Tue Apr 3 11:38:15 EDT 2007

Some clarifying ideas that come to my mind:

* Domain name space is also considered by some, and rightly so
IMHO, as subject to free speech, freedom of expression, etc. So
the question of censorship (or limitation of the aforementioned
rights) in the DNS is to be distinguished from, and as valuable
as, censorship of the Internet contents per se.

* The intricacies in this debate cannot be separated from the
conditions of the initial application and the outcome of the
first round assessment/appraisal by the board. In that regard,
yes, that application should probably not have got off the
ground in the first place, but now it's no surprise that
people's assumptions and reactions also have to do with that
baggage. 

* So it's hard for people to believe that the operational
conditions were met in the earlier round (as it seemed based on
the progress then made in the application process, but please
correct me if I'm wrong,) and after religious/political
pressures (incidentally), they by chance happen to be no longer
met.

* Further, even though they may not like it because the outcome
might lead to easier censorship, some people feel they have to
assert or support a principled stance as to whether or not a
governance body such as ICANN had to be concerned with bad or
good content, or even whether ICANN should be concerned at all
with the possibility that their decision to authorize a new TLD
string will make censoring contents easier or not, so long as
part of the community requests it and meets the operational
requirements, and so long as ICANN follows a predictable
pre-established process.

* I can only agree with you that all decisions around this
technical artifact (DNS) and at its interface with human
communities embed great socio-political impacts. For that
reason, we can only expect those decisions be as transparent as
possible, in every sense of the word "transparent" --
accountable, neutral, seemless in terms of value orientation
beyond duly processing legitimate requests (and preferences
where possible) from the user and industry communities.

Mawaki

--- Vittorio Bertola <vb at bertola.eu> wrote:

> Robin Gross ha scritto:
> > From my cyberlaw blog:
> > http://ipjustice.org/wp/2007/04/02/icann_board_votexxx
> 
> Well, once in a lifetime, we disagree completely :-)
> 
> I have had the luck to witness personally the last three
> months of 
> discussions in the ICANN Board. So, believe it or not, your 
> interpretation of the reasons and the value of this vote is
> IMHO quite 
> wrong. Let me explain.
> 
> First of all, ICANN had a process for TLD applications (which,
> 
> incidentally, is quite a bad process, starting from the
> meaningless 
> "sponsorship" idea, but that's what we had at the moment), and
> the vote 
> was meant to judge whether the application meant the
> requirements. There 
> was no discussion on whether "adult entertainment" is good or
> bad or 
> whether it should be censored. There was, however, discussion
> on whether 
> the criteria were met; some directors thought they were, most
> thought 
> they weren't. That's how the vote went. Susan and another
> director - not 
> even all the five who voted against rejection - apparently
> assumed that 
> those who disagreed with them did so due to political pressure
> or desire 
> for censorship. This was entirely their assumption and many of
> the 
> others felt personally offended by it.
> 
> Even if you forget about the process and think about the idea
> in itself, 
> it looks like a bad idea. Adult entertainment sites do not
> want to be 
> labelled, exactly because they are afraid of being censored;
> many of 
> them - basically all, according to some's judgement; for
> example, there 
> was no single adult webmaster speaking in support of .xxx in
> the entire 
> meeting - made it clear that they'd not have used the new
> domain. So the 
> only purpose for this domain would have been defensive
> registrations, 
> e.g. transfering money from consumers to the company who would
> have run 
> it. Personally - and especially given that I represent
> consumers on the 
> ICANN Board - I think that this would have been publicly
> detrimental.
> 
> Then, let's discuss about "censorship". I think that the
> statement that 
> not approving .xxx is "content-related censorship" is
> impossible to take 
> seriously. You write:
> 
> > By voting to turn down the .XXX
> > application for public policy reasons, the Board indicated
> it will go 
> > beyond its technical mission of DNS coordination and seek to
> decide what 
> > ideas are allowed to be given a voice in the new domain name
> space.
> 
> Do you seriously mean that since there is no .xxx there is no
> porn over 
> the Internet?
> 
> Actually, if .xxx had been approved, then many governments
> could have 
> passed laws to force porn sites into it, thus actually making
> censorship 
> easier. The only reply I got to this observation was "yes, but
> in the US 
> we have the First Amendment that would make it impossible".
> And what 
> about the rest of the world?
> 
> All in all, of course there are sociopolitical aspects in some
> of the 
> decisions that ICANN has to take. Even refusing to consider
> these 
> aspects, and embracing the hyper-liberalistic, totally free
> market 
> approach of approving each and every application for a new TLD
> no matter 
> how controversial it is, which you and others seem to
> advocate, is a 
> political choice. It's way too common to hide behind memes
> such as "it 
> should be a technical decision only" or "let the market
> decide", but 
> these are political choices as well, with lots of
> implications. I am 
> surprised by how so many brilliant people from the liberal US 
> environment seem unable to accept diversity on this issue, to
> the point 
> of questioning the legitimacy or good faith of decisions when
> they go in 
> a different direction.
> 
> I'll stop here, pointing at the comment I left on Susan's blog
> - 
>
http://scrawford.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2007/3/30/2845638.html#882501
> 
> - for further consideration about the "cultural diversity"
> issue.
> 
> Ciao,
> -- 
> vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu  
> <--------
> -------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ 
> <--------
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