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

[George Sadowsky]

The few posts that I have made on this list have generally resulted 
in a heated, time-consuming, lengthy and non-productive set of 
exchanges.  I don't want to initiate another such set.

So rather than adding specific opinions, let me just say that of all 
the opinions I've heard on this subject, I think that Vittorio has a 
really excellent grasp of the issues and I ally myself strongly with 
his point of view.

George Sadowsky

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At 1:04 AM +0200 4/4/07, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
>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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