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

[Milton Mueller]

>>> vb at bertola.eu 04/03/07 6:33 PM >>>
>May I challenge the frequent use of "subjective" as a pejorative 
>adjective? Policy decisions in a global and very diverse environment 
>necessarily reflect differences in mindsets and evaluations, and 
>thus differ according to the person; they can't be anything but 
>subjective. 

Are you begging the question? The issue we are debating is whether
something like this should be a "policy decision" at all, or whether
ICANN is a coordinator of the root that focuses on technical criteria.
Of course, the latter is a policy decision too but it is one that avoids
giving a small group of people the power to impose their subjective
views of what is a "good idea" on the rest of the world. ICANN's control
of the root, we believe, should not be used to exert policy leverage
over things not directly related to the coordination of unique
identifiers. There are other, more decentralized mechanisms for dealing
with the policy problems. 

>Perhaps you, Milton, Susan etc would get better results 
>by convincing the world to embrace your "hyper-liberalistic" view 
>of this market, though I don't think that it'd be easy to get
significant 
>support for that political orientation outside of a few developed
countries.

I kind of like the label "hyper-liberal". Certainly it seems a more
appealing ideology than the stale corporatism that animates your view of
policy making. 

But what you don't seem to understand is that it is the architecture of
neutral technical coordination -- hyperliberalism if you will -- that
made the internet possible, that made it succeed in undermining
monopolies and opening up such fantastic resources of information and
communication. You don't get a vibrant and innovative internet by asking
"the community" or hierarchical bodies for permission for every move you
make. The presence or absence of a .xxx domain is not the big deal here.
What matters is the increasing use of ICANN's technical leverage by your
um, "stakeholders" to establish and exercise chokepoints over what
people can do on the Internet. 

Controls to foil criminals or prevent major technical harms is one
thing. But if all you offer us is some apparatus that allows any
organized group to engage in hyper-lobbying over an unpleasant stew of
econommic interest, political power mongering, and subjective values you
are not adding value to the internet, to put it as mildly as I can.
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