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

[Alejandro Pisanty]

Vittorio,

due to travel I'm not quite able to regularly access and especially reply to
email, but am following this debate (I'm reading on Blackberry all day, but
can't reply because of the thing's limitations, and my laptop connects only
through a webmail - I have some firewall issues, which I've not been able to
solve, with my usual ssh to server; and, am only connected this way once or
twice a day.)

So let me tell you YES, you are right, and pointing out the most serious
problems with Milton's (and Froomkin's, etc.) positions, including the
appalling parochiality of their US-centered views.)

So, forza, Azzurri...

Alx

--
Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
Director General de Servicios de Cómputo Académico
UNAM, Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico, D.F., Mexico
Tels. +52-55-5622-8541, +52-55-5622-8542; Fax +52-55-5622-8540



> ----- Message from vb at bertola.eu ---------
>     Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2007 01:04:35 +0200
>     From: Vittorio Bertola <vb at bertola.eu>
> Reply-To: governance at lists.cpsr.org, Vittorio Bertola <vb at bertola.eu>
>  Subject: Re: [governance] ICANN Board Vote Signals Era of Censorship in
Domain Names
>       To: Milton Mueller <Mueller at syr.edu>
>
> Milton Mueller ha scritto:
> > You can come up with all kinds of after-the-fact rationalizations, as
> > Vittorio does, but there is only one thing that has changed between June
> > 2005 (when the ICANN Board voted to approve the application) and last
> > week (when they voted to kill it) and that is the strong and sustained
> > objections of governments, opponents of pornography and adult
> > webmasters.
>
> Actually, the most significant change in these years was that a relevant
> part of the adult entertainment world, which initially supported the
> proposal, changed their mind and started to actively oppose it. Vint
> Cerf's vote, for example, was mostly due to this, as he said in his
> declaration. And he was one of those who initially voted in favour of
> negotiating an agreement.
>
> In any case, why do you think that opposition by governments should be
> disregarded? They are a significant stakeholder and their opinion has to
> be taken into account. Actually, one of ICANN's core values (see the
> Bylaws) is:
>
> "11. While remaining rooted in the private sector, recognizing that
> governments and public authorities are responsible for public policy and
> duly taking into account governments' or public authorities'
> recommendations."
>
>  > .xxx was killed because it was controversial and ICANN
> > lacked the spine to stand up to that kind of pressure. full stop.
>
> It seems to me that you are trying to read the minds of Board members...
> and not even correctly :-) Actually, you need more "spine" to stand up
> to the multimillion dollar lawsuits that ICM is likely to bring.
>
> > Let me dispose of the absurd notion that the semantics of a domain name
> > doesn't affect the ability to express oneself freely online. This
> > argument has been decisively rejected by a court in the US.
>
> Oh well, if a court in the US (one of the zillion courts in the US) says
> so, then it's settled for the globe... :-)
>
> > And it's intuitively obvious why this argument is silly. Imagine someone
> > saying, "you cannot name your book "The Middle East: Peace or Aparthed"
> > because that will offend the Israelis, but you can say whatever you like
> > inside the book." Is that free expression?
>
> Top level domains are not the expression of an individual, they are
> broad group names that are to be used by thousands or millions of
> individuals together. You simply can't pretend to have exactly your own
> favourite string as TLD - even if we had one million of them, there
> wouldn't be enough to grant one to every user.
>
> Still, while I see how your free expression is harmed by not being able
> to set up a website at the URL <trademark>sucks.com, I can't see how
> your free expression is harmed by setting up your pro-abortion website
> at proabortion.com rather than at pro.abortion. It is perhaps more
> harmed by the fact that if no new gTLDs are introduced then it'll be
> hard to find proabortion.<anything> still available.
>
> Incidentally, even if this wasn't a factor in the decision, I think
> that, if ICANN had approved .xxx, one minute later there would have been
> many governments suggesting to freeze the introduction of new gTLDs
> until ICANN started to be more considerate in choices. In realpolitik
> terms, it would have been a disaster.
> --
> vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
> -------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/  <--------
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> ----- End message from vb at bertola.eu -----



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