[governance] Human rights and new gTLDs

[Carlos Afonso]

I dream of a day the Internet will be far more advanced and the current 
paradigm of domain names will be just history (and not a nice one, as we 
see from the unending debates and the monies involved). A dream hard to 
become reality since the USA decided to create the market for domain 
names -- and of course it quickly became the realm of a quasi-monopoly 
which feeds the entity governing the logical infrastructure.

So we will have to find ways acceptable to all (or most -- how to 
measure this?) to minimize the problems without violating basic 
individual rights. A big, big challenge...

--c.a.

Karl Auerbach wrote:
> Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> 
>> Milton, the position you are pushing is that anyone should be free to 
>> get a domain such as ".abortion" (your example) or ".childpornography" 
>> or dot-whatever-blasphemy, and if there are countries of the world 
>> that are unhappy about that, they should censor these domains or break 
>> out of the global Internet.
> 
> I don't know for a fact that that is what Milton was suggesting.
> 
> But it is certainly what I feel is not merely appropriate, it is necessary.
> 
> We will destroy the internet if we reduce the internet to the thin 
> residual that is left after removing every pieces that is offensive to 
> someone, somewhere.
> 
> Why shouldn't there be TLD for .abortion?
> 
> Does one think that if we don't have a TLD that the abortions will go away?
> 
> What about people who engage in extreme puppy fumping, are they to be 
> denied the .puppyfumpers TLD because some bitty in Tomania (from 
> Chaplin's movie the Great Dictator) gets his/her nose bent because they 
> don't like the thought of puppies being fumped?
> 
> If someone finds work on the Sabbath or on holy days offensive should we 
> shut down the internet on those days?
> 
> The idea that every conceivable burr and splinter has to be removed from 
> the internet else people will not interact is an idea that is 
> inconsistent with to the history of mankind and our oft demonstrated 
> human capacity to reach across borders, languages, religions, and races.
> 
> The idea that any body of internet governance should act as a modern day 
> Torquemada or Savonarola is, to use an understating euphemism, 
> discomforting.
> 
> It is not that this has not been tried before - in 1515 the Lateran 
> Council tried to require that all books obtain the approval of the 
> Catholic church in Rome - De impressione liborum - 
> http://www.piar.hu/councils/ecum18.htm - (Look for the phrase "On 
> printing books" to find the relevant part.)
> 
> It did not work. In fact a rather significant process of dissent was 
> begun a mere two years later in Wittenberg Germany.
> 
> Sure, we ought to remove barriers that serve no purpose.  But we ought 
> not to erect ICANN as the internet net nanny that suppresses expression 
> because it feels that someone might be offended.
> 
> The price of freedom of expression is a thickened skin.
> 
>  > Moreover, if there is half of the world that is offended by such a
>  > visible reference to, say, abortion or blasphemies or whatever, I
>  > think  that you have to respect that.
> 
> Respect yes, but change my behavior to fit norms to which I do not 
> subscribe, no.
> 
> There are large numbers of fundamental religious people out there, of 
> many religions, who not merely disagree with my lifestyle - comfortable, 
> California beach, liberal, progressive, humanistic, secular - who 
> actually want to reach out and kill me as they did to so many of my 
> fellow countryman a few years back in New York and Oklahoma City.
> 
> I am not going to fit my life or expression into their strictures.
> 
> It would be very improper indeed for a body of internet governance to 
> empower such forces and opinions by giving them a lever to suppress the 
> behavior of those who hold ideas contrary to their beliefs.
> 
> Yet that is exactly the road that ICANN is taking - suppression or, to 
> use the more blunt word, "censorship".
> 
> And its not just suppression on the basis of a conflict of beliefs; 
> ICANN has elevated the trademark industry to the level of a universal 
> church and turned trademarks into words from on high that may not be 
> uttered on the internet without the making of appropriate honorific 
> noises.  Even originators of ideas and words - for example "Nike" - are 
> subordinated to ICANN's golden calf of trademark,
> 
> 
> As for the internet being a "major factor in democratizing many 
> societies".  I disagree.  It is the desire and need of people who want 
> to have a voice in the bodies that govern them that is the driving 
> force.  The communication afforded by the internet was merely a 
> lubricant making organization easier.  Telephones and televisions have 
> arguably had a greater facilitating impact.
> 
> It does seem that the internet can be as much as force of suppression as 
> it is of promotion of democratic principles.  For example, ICANN itself, 
> the epitome of the internet based enterprise, retreated from democratic 
> elections and replaced democratic processes with something substantially 
> less.
> 
> 
>> Incidentally, I think that there are several other important issues 
>> that are affected by ICANN's new gTLD process. For example, depending 
>> on application fees and technical requirements, the developing world 
>> might be deprived of the possibility of accessing this resource
> 
> I quite agree with you.
> 
> 
> Not merely the developing world, pretty much anybody who does not have 
> the resources to pass through ICANN's gauntlet of incumbent protective 
> irrelevancies.
> 
> ICANN is proposing to continue its process of choosing TLD operators on 
> criteria, that were we choosing which airlines could fly, would be akin 
> to evaluating whether they serve Coke or Pepsi during the flight and 
> whether they publish the names and address of people who buy tickets 
> rather than evaluating whether they have safe airplanes, safely 
> maintained and operated.
> 
> I have suggested a simple criteria for new TLDs - 
> http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000324.html - that avoids all of 
> that nonesense and substitutes an expensive, objective, fast procedure.
> 
>         --karl--
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> 

-- 

Carlos A. Afonso
Rio       Brasil
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