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

Vittorio Bertola vb at bertola.eu
Wed Apr 4 08:47:02 EDT 2007


Milton Mueller ha scritto:
> 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.

I agree 101% with you that the freedom to innovate without having to ask 
for central authorizations, and the "intelligence at the end", are 
crucial features that need to be preserved. However, on resources that 
are not infinite (and sure, TLDs now are artificially scarce, but would 
not be infinite anyway) and need central coordination, you need to have 
a central process. When these issues assume social significance (and you 
agree that domain names have a semantic value), it is natural that 
social considerations come into play.

Try stopping someone in the middle of the road and asking, "should .xxx 
domain names be created?". You will get plenty of replies, in favour or 
against, focusing on many different social and political issues. I don't 
think that you will find anyone replying "who cares, that's just a 
technical issue".

Now, you can decide that the world is wrong, but I think that a 
democratic system of governance must first of all reflect the average 
mindset of its constituents.

I'd be very concerned if ICANN started to think that its mission is to 
"educate" the world about the value of a specific political approach to 
this matter.
-- 
vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
-------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/  <--------
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