[governance] Where are we going?

[Carlton A Samuels]

Question.  Is there any space for [personal and informed] choice in this
view?

 

Carlton

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Vittorio Bertola [mailto:vb at bertola.eu] 
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 12:02 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Milton Mueller
Subject: Re: [governance] Where are we going?

 

Milton Mueller ha scritto:

> You are thus advocating

> self-censorship and deference to authority, in the hopes that that will

> buy ICANN some time. The attitude is, "don't do anything that will

> provoke people."

 

There is a basic point that I think needs to be done here, even if it 

brings us much farther than Internet governance itself.

 

What you call "self-censorship and deference to authority" (thus 

implying that governments speak for the sake of authority rather than to 

convey an actual feeling of their citizens, something that would at 

least deserve case by case evaluation) could be considered by others 

basic respect for different opinions, especially when the issues touch 

into the personal sphere of ethics.

 

For example, I am an atheist and in my country blasphemy is not 

forbidden by law, but still I don't go around saying blasphemies about 

the gods of whatever religion, even if I'm technically free to do that.

 

So, I consider abortion a right of every woman, but I would not see why 

you would want to make headlines by creating a .abortion TLD, thus 

possibly offending and provoking those cultures and individuals which 

have not matured that right yet. Note that this does not prevent 

abortion itself, where legal, or its discussion in any way! It's just 

overloading the domain name system with content-related value battles 

that do not pertain to it.

 

I understand that the "respect" or "decency" argument is often used as 

an excuse to promote actual censorship. However, I think that in certain 

cases it is a valid argument and will become more valid as the world 

gets further integrated and needs more inclusion and reciprocal 

understanding; there needs to be a specific evaluation and balancing of 

different views and sensitivities. You need a tolerant attitude towards 

other people's taboos, or even just different views of the world; and an 

approach that uses dialogue to let people freely grow out of them, 

rather than aggressive vindication of your supposed freedom to disregard 

them.

-- 

vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------

-------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/  <--------

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