[governance] RE: Human rights and new gTLDs

[Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law]

On Wed, 26 Sep 2007, Vittorio Bertola wrote:

> Milton L Mueller ha scritto:
>>> you need to get the www.info.abortion URL to speak about abortion, and 
>>> that your freedom of expression would be seriously harmed if you had to 
>>> resort to publishing the same speech at www.abortion.info instead.
>> 
>> In the latter paragraph, you are arguing that there is no difference in
>> the two identifier formulations and that the issue is trivial. In the
>> earlier paragraph, you are saying that the mere existence of the TLD
>> "slaps people in the face" and is "highly provocative." Which argument
>> are you making, my friend?
>
> I am making the argument that it does not make any practical difference for 
> the freedom and accessibility of the *content* whether it is located at the 
> first or at the second identifier. You could say the same things without

I submit that there are two differences: one minor, one hard to quantify. 
The minor difference is that shorter URLs look better on a bus or a 
billboard and are easier to remember.  The other, more important but 
unquantifiable, difference is that as soon as you introduce another 
intermediary (the people runing the registry, the registrar, whatever), 
you add another party that might choose to engage in censorship by 
terminating the agreement.  If I have .mine I need only wory about ICANN 
(and the US government and/or GAC) assuming I can choose a friendly host 
for my site.  If I have mine.yours I have to worry about ICANN, my 
registry and my registrar (and associated governments).  If I have 
mine.hers.yours (or hers.yours/mysite), I have at least two more people to 
worry about, and so on.

I am not saying that this factor alone justifies TLD expansion (I think 
the economic case does that).  I am merely suggesting that there may in 
fact be a practical difference here of somewhat uncertain scope and 
non-zero salience.

[...]

-- 
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A. Michael Froomkin   |    Professor of Law    |   froomkin at law.tm
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