[governance] Wikileaks Domain Revoked?

[Paul Lehto]

I'm about to renew some domain names, and if the Terms of Service (to
date, unknown to me in this particular), happen to contain the term
apparently relied upon by everydns that being subject to a DDOS attack
(a criminal act) is a violation by ME of their terms of service, I'm
going to hold off on renewing and tell them why.

I realize it's possible all other hosts and sellers of domain names
might have the same language somewhere, especially with legal
boilerplate language being such as it is and the rampant extent of
copycat lawyers who try to give corporate or ISP clients the most
overbroad and overreaching claimed TOS rights as the lawyer can
possibly dream up.

Still, I have serious doubts about the enforceability of contractual
terms that find ME in violation of terms of service for criminal acts
against me that are the fault of someone else.  Of course, the claimed
TOS violation for not owning all rights in the material is a different
argument.  The lawyer who argued that one was misguided, in my
opinion, for the federal government in the USA claims no copyright.
They would be better off arguing the catchall warranty of "no
violation of state or federal law" in the material posted.  But then
that falls into Assange's argument that censorship has been privatised
and websites taken down for "illegality" without any due process much
less a trial.

Paul Lehto, J.D.

PS  I think it is important, on the general level, to not drop one's
critical analysis of documents just because they claim to have been
"leaked" via Wikileaks or anywhere else.  While many are surely
authentic, with such volumes as are present here, and with documents
readily available electronically to relatively low level military
people, the risk of capture is surely a known risk and therefore there
could easily have been the foresight to have disinformation within
that data stream and not just "information."  To the extent, IF ANY,
that this is true, the wikileaks documents constitute some of the most
effective possible propaganda because they are immediately accepted on
their face as true documents, a glimpse into the "inner workings" of
government, and thus the statements in their pass straight into the
history books (eventually) without question.  If there were a few or a
bunch of such plants, this would be a very clever way to write or
rewrite history.  Do I believe this to be the case?  Not really, but
the single document I saw on WORLD PERCEPTIONS of the USA as an
exporter of terrorism failed to mention the USA government itself as
being PERCEIVED anywhere around the world as such an exporter.  Surely
a CIA analyst is not under political restrictions when speaking about
perceptions in other countries and can't really be quite that dumb or
uninformed, so there's a tiny seed in my mind of doubt about the
authenticity of at least that one single document I saw.  But, at the
end of the day, all I'm advocating is not belief or disbelief in
authenticity, but just retaining one's usual circumspection and
thoughtful analysis and not presuming everything is as it seems.
That's the whole idea in the world of spooks, isn't it? That not all
is exactly as it seems??  ;)   Have fun wrapping your mind around this
if you've even read this!  :)
On 12/5/10, Pouzin (well) <pouzin at well.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 11:32 PM, Riaz K Tayob <riaz.tayob at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Is there now really a case for ruling the root in the US?
>
> - - -
>
> As we may observe, China and USA (among others) are countries where shutting
> off web sites and revoking domain names result from  government decisions.
>
> This is a wake-up call for clients of US registries such as .com, .net,
> .org, and about all TLD's feeding ICANN cash cow. Luckily open roots are in
> the offing to provide safer harbors.
>


-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box 1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-4026 (cell)
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