[governance] Where are we going?

[Avri Doria]

On 6 apr 2007, at 07.21, Bertrand de La Chapelle wrote:

>
> - anything accepted / legal in one country / culture should be  
> accepted / legal on the Internet as a whole;


i do not see why this is untenable when speaking of the Internet.

i am also not sure i know what 'as a whole' means in this context, in  
that we already know that countries are filtering on anything they  
don't approve of. the Internet as a whole barely exists anymore.

but in terms of the core of the Internet, why shouldn't anything that  
is acceptable at least somewhere be available.  with it being up to  
the local government to stop their citizens from the exercise of  
freedom according to their local customs - every country exercises  
some constraint on what it believes proper behavior from their subjects.

personally, i don't approve of the firewalls countries put up nor do  
i think they are legitimate under internal agreements such as the  
UDHR, but that is a unfortunate issue that each people has to fight  
on its own against their own governments. we can't pretend that most  
countries are not already at least monitoring, if not controlling,  
what crosses their national borders through the Internet.

BTW: my position is based not on the USan so called right to free  
speech, but on the UDHR which a lot of the countries that complain  
about the imperialism of freedom of expression have signed:

Article 19.

       Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression;  
this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and  
to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media  
and regardless of frontiers.

And while i one of those who believes that the relation between a  
label in a TLD and a word with meaning is purely subjective and a  
happy coincidence, i do accept that a domain name is a media through  
which one can receive and impart information.


a. 
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance