+1 On Aug 2, 2010, at 11:28 PM, Karl Auerbach wrote:
On 08/02/2010 03:07 PM, John R. Levine wrote:
Short of asking IANA to remove the NS for ccTLDs who do naughty things, how do you propse to get from where we are to where you want to be?
Might we want to step back and ask, and ask very carefully, do we want to get there (wherever that might be)?
The reason that I ask is that I perceive a lot of desire to use ICANN as a policeman to enforce some sort of notion of good behaviour.
That would be nice if we all agreed about what good behaviour is.
But we do not.
Some of us might find images of our prophet to be sacrilege worthy of strong reactions and require them to be totally prohibited. Others of us might find that it's OK to make fun of things.
I am sure that some of you out there are saying "but that is entirely different from business practices of ccTLDs."
Really, is it?
Once we grant the power to ICANN to enforce notions of what are good and bad practices of ccTLDs where is the bright line that says where that power ends?
And who or what would prevent ICANN from crossing that line? (As if, particularly in the area of trademark enforcement, it has not already run far past that line.)
Might we prefer a small ICANN that stays in its small garden bounded by a clear white picket fence?
Or do we want an ICANN that feels that its role is to expand, blob-like, into any and every activity that affronts someone who happens to be an ICANN "stakeholder".
Much as many might wish ICANN to be the arbiter of what is nice and what is bad in ccTLDs, I would suggest that such a wish is one of those that afterwords someone might say with heavy irony "you got what you wished for."
We have learned through centuries of painful experience that the art of construction of institutions of governance, whether those be internet institutions or otherwise, is largely the art of controlling and limiting their power.
--karl--
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