Trying to give my own comments, and also to reply to some other comments. JohnL
Well, I was going to point out how utterly unconstructive it is to invent bogus arguments based on hoary stereotypes of national character and and use them as straw men to try to discredit people with whom one disagrees, but then, what else would one expect from an Italian?
;>) And "the other Italian on the list" is going to confirm the stereotype, inventing more bogus arguments.
If I were making a list of the 100 most important things that a bunch of people who speak a language needed to create a lively and effective online community, I'd put a TLD at about number 97.
OK. I spare you the argument that non-English, non-ASCII-proficient communities might have a different view, as it is probably bogus, and come to the question. On the same scale 1 to 100, what would be the importance of a TLD for communities who would ask for its use, in the case of, say, ".kill-all-[add your favourite minority]", ".[add your favourite insult][append your favourite trademark]", or any other subject that might have controversial "morality" or "public order" implications? IMHO, much higher than 97. So, my personal conclusion is that, in absence of other constraints, we will see more of the latter case than of the former. More hate speech (protected by the first amendment), than positive development of communities (protected as well by the first amendment, but more often than not restricted by other means). And I might sound very old-fashioned and illiberal, but my personal opinion is that we have more than enough hate speech given the current state of affairs, that I don't see the need to create more ways to convey it. On a different level, I have always stated my failure to understand the need for a domain name (whether a SLD in past discussions, or a TLD in the present discussion) to reaffirm freedom of speech. To me, freedom of speech is related to motivated contents, not to slogans. And domain names only provide slogans, without any relation to possible contents. You might want to ask people who really suffer from free speech limitations how they would rate, on a scale from 1 to 100, the introduction of a TLD, and the ability to have uncensored contents on an existing, general purpose, TLD. The moment I will see some of the first amendments advocates operating in countries or situations where we do *really* have risks for personal safety in expressing ideas, I might change my mind. But for the time being, I consider this a theoretical fight, unrelated to the real needs of the people whom they claim to act for. In simple terms, the fight for being able to insult a religion or a community has IMHO absolutely nothing to do, and is often opposite, to the fight for democracy. But I am aware that different people think in different ways, so I am sure that there are opposing opinions. Evan Leibovitch:
I found it saddening and disheartening that it took 10 years for ICANN to do this. Perhaps had competition been allowed earlier, .com would not now be seen as a global "default" and we would have had a truly competitive environment.
Absolutely agree.
It is even more saddening and disheartening that ICANN's board, with few exceptions, appears incapable of giving the world new TLDs without imposing a centralized morality as a pre-condition. It was fully capable -- and entitled by law -- to amend the GNSO recommendation and approve the policy to create new TLDs _without_ the offending two clauses.
Not really. The Board could have rejected the specific recommendation, but my understanding was that in this case it should have sent back the package to the GNSO for reconsideration. Furthermore, if the GNSO, who is the body who is tasked of making policy, came to a conclusion, it would be disruptive if the Board did disagree with a policy element. But there are two elements that have to be taken into consideration. The first one, which is "what is the compelling reason for opening the flood gates", and which basically comes to what are the advantages of allowing a broader scope vs. the problems it would create, has been discussed before. The second one is a simple reality check. Suppose ICANN does not have safeguards related to public order and morality in the granting of new TLDs. This would only mean that the TLDs cannot be refused, not at all that they would be available. Moreover, since the governments have, until proof of contrary, jurisdiction over the country they govern, they would have the right to impose to ISPs the filtering of the "offending" TLDs. "So what?" you might say, "some countries already do some filtering". Well, the problem is on the political level. Some countries do not apply democracy principles, as they are interpreted in western democracies. In those cases, the problem is moot: the filter what they want, and what ICANN allows in the root is irrelevant. In other countries, the decision of imposing filtering on ISPs is a difficult one, because it goes against the democracy principles they share, at least in principle. What a wonderful opportunity would be to take the case of a .nazi, to filter with some popular support, to introduce a system by which ISPs could be furhter asked to filter more granularly other sites? For most ISPs, the problem is the cost, not the sacred fire of freedom of expression. Filtering does not come for free. So, if the government has a damn good excuse to fund the filtering ("We must stop nazi propaganda"), it might come up later with some more filtering requests, piggybacked by the already allocated funds, for some less kosher filtering. What do we gain from this? And what do we miss if we do not allow "obviously" objectionable TLDs? I do have what I believe is a flexible attitude, but also a firm "picket fence". IMHO, the best approach for gTLDs is to have a very conservative first round, in which all what has general consensus can go through, but in which objectionable TLDs are not delegated. This is the same approach the ccNSO is using for the fast track: do not stop who does not have objections for the ones who do have objections. Then, we can analyse the situation, we can see what TLDs have been objected, and why, and maybe loose the constraints for further runs. To start with a completely unrestricted situation could be, in theory, an appealing solution, but in practice, a recepy for problems. In theory, theory and practice are alike. However, in practice, they widely differ. Cheers, Roberto