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

[David Allen]

At 10:06 AM -0400 4/3/07, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote:
>There is much to commend in Vittorio Bertola's remarks.
>
>It certainly leads one to this: The way to get out of these horrible debates is to have a new process, one which is focued entirely on technical merits

Noting:  Vittorio also offered:

memes such as "it should be a technical decision only" or "let the market decide" [...] these are political choices as well, with lots of implications.

>(meeting some threshhold), and in which ICANN has none or at most minimal input/veto on semantics (one might, for example, have a rule that no gTLD that is confusing with existing ccTLDs, or even all existing TLDs is allowed -- but NO semantic/contect regulation).
>
>Then this need never happen again!  If someone decides to run .xxx or .hate or whatever, that's then their problem, not ICANN's.

David

>
>On Tue, 3 Apr 2007, Vittorio Bertola 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,
>>
>
>--
>http://www.icannwatch.org   Personal Blog: http://www.discourse.net
>A. Michael Froomkin   |    Professor of Law    |   froomkin at law.tm
>U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA
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