[governance] RE: Human rights and new gTLDs

[Avri Doria]

On 26 sep 2007, at 09.27, Karl Auerbach wrote:

> The danger that I see in all of these governance movements

as one of those who is guilty of participation in this governance  
action, i figure i ought to add a viewpoint to this discussion.

> is the desire of good people to impose their sense of morality,  
> there sense of aesthetics, their cultural values, and their  
> personal values onto others.  What starts out nice can quickly turn  
> into an Kafkaesque web of restraint and limitation.

the problem i see is that we are in a classic example of a tussle* on  
this.  you are absolutely right and i personally agree that any word,  
or non word should be able to be used as a TLD - even .your-favorite- 
diety-sucks, .something-explicitly-child-pornographic, .so-and-so- 
does-it-with-goats or .people-of-this-origin-should-be-gassed .  but  
i found myself in room with people of equal conviction  who believed  
that people on the net should be protected from such things,  
especially children, and that there must be some restraint on what  
can be expressed publicly in a TLD.

i can argue all i want that they are wrong and that my way is the way  
it should be.  and whenever i can i will, and i may even help someone  
apply for .words-that-make-the-homophobic-puritan-squirm .  but in  
the world as we know it, policies must attempt to resolve the tussle  
so that the policies irritate both sides equally.

and i must admit, i too have the words i want to see protected.  for  
example, i hate it when i see the names of indigenous peoples used as  
commercial trademarks, e.g. Lakota used for a car model.  so i am  
happy there is a method by which the Lakota nation could object to  
big-car-company registering that as a TLD because it would do them  
harm and have a platform for arguing their case. and i know that this  
puts me on the opposite side of the tussle on this issue from those  
who are on the same side on the morality issue.

so i voted for a compromise that gives everyone the right to protest  
and contest a choice, but which outright, prohibits nothing.  of  
course a lot of the viability of this compromise will depend on how  
it is implemented.  but that is the battle to come.

i would never argue that the the new gtld policy is perfect - i am  
not sure there is perfect in a tussling world.  in fact we made an  
explicit decision to the best we could and then review what we had  
done after a cycle or two.  and we did our best to try and bridge the  
tussles, though i am sure both sides of every tussle can point out  
where we failed.  and, at least to some extent, they will be right.


a.

* tussle :  to make messy or untidy. Tussle was introduced in the  
Internet context by Clark, Sollins, Wroclawski and Braden in a 2002  
paper titled “Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrow's Internet”.  
their basic premise is “... one important reality that surrounds the  
Internet today: different stakeholders that are part of the Internet  
have interests that may be adverse to each other, and these parties  
vie to favor their particular interests.” Their emphasis in the paper  
was mostly architectural, but it applies to policy as well.  i think.

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