[governance] Where are we going?

[Milton Mueller]

>>> Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> 4/7/2007 3:17 PM >>>
>But what about the second part of my question...
>"Would/could/should ICANN or whoever is the supreme authority here
>maintain jurisdiction over the naming patterns of the sub-tld's (or
the
>organizations managing the existing tld's)... My understanding is
that

Should it? No, absolutely not. Could it? Yes, it could. Would it? That
depends on politics. 

>The implication I think here is that "in cyberspace 
>(without a "name") nobody knows you (and whether or not 
>you are a dog or a massage parlour or an opposition 
>political party doesn't make much difference)..."

Exactly right. That is why the people who say that content regulation
of labels is not content regulation are wrong. 

>Imagine a scenario where all of the domain names say under the
country
>.tld are vetted from the perspective of a one party state which
controls
>the tld--it would be a good way of (at least electronically)
>"disappearing" one's opposition.

These are the kind of scenarios that motivated many of us to get
involved in domain name stuff back in 1996. 

>So these issues aren't simply matters of free speech or dare I say
human
>rights, they seem to me to be quite fundamental issues of how, at
least
>potentially, political power may be used (or misused) in an
"Information
>Society".

??? There is no disjunction between conceiving of them as "how
political power may be used" and as issues of "free speech and human
rights." The two dovetail perfectly. If you are concerned about
political abuses of the control of Internet governance, then you must
bring in human rights and free speech norms to moderate or restrict
state and some kinds of private power over how this is done. 

>Hmmmm...

Michael, I think we may have finally gotten you interested in internet
governance ;-) 

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