Deep Policy Issues
I am reposting the insightful remarks of Bertrand de La Chapelle (Special Envoy for the Information Society, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- GAC member) found on the cpsr governance list on the topic of the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) action with regard to the Cuban-themed websites of Steven Marshall -- (note: this topic was first raised in the article "A Wave of the Watch List, and Speech Disappears" by Adam Liptak of the New York Times). Milton, Following your remarks to McTim below, and supposing this indeed is done through the courts, the interesting set of questions here is : 1) Would/should a foreign registrar comply with a court order from the US ? 2) And if it failed to do so, would the court order Verisign to do it (block the domain name) ? 3) Should Verisign do it, does that mean that all .com registrants become indirectly subject to US law, not only in terms of appropriate strings, but also in terms of the very activity they run, even on servers not located on US territory and serving customers outside of the US ? This is a real and useful discussion. Nothing to do with the "oversight of the root" via IANA. It is exposing the core challenge of competing or overlapping jurisdictions and probably the need for some "globally-applicable public policy principles". I believe nobody has the full complete answer. In my personal view, this is an illustration of the mutation of sovereignty, disconnecting it from the sole physical territory and allowing it to expand in a fractal manner on other territories - or conversely, retract - depending on the influence of the corresponding national actors in the digital sphere. And those national actors are not only the governments : the existence of a dominant player in a specific domain (Verisign, but also a Google, YouTube, MySpace or Facebook) does bring the corresponding government a leverage. But it probably also gives it a special responsibility it did not have before. This notion of "fractal sovereignty" is harder to handle than the traditional territory-based one but probably more adapted to our connected world than the notion of strict subsidiarity : the challenge is to manage interdependence and interactions. To enrich the discussion, I'd like to put in perspective here the issue of IDNs. Will the physical location of the future major registries for IDN TLDs (particularly gTLDs if any) give the corresponding national courts a specific authority/legal power on all registrants in those TLDs, even if they are not located in that country and have no business with its citizens ? These are deep policy issues and I'd be interested in comments on those challenges. Because they are challenges for governments too. Best Bertrand ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping
Thank you for this reposting Danny which raises an issue that IMO is important and has great potential for further discussion in ALAC/ the RALO's and the ALS's as well as no doubt some of the WG lists, as well as here... This topic overlaps with the specific area of interest and expertise that some of these lists members have and indeed is part of the subject material reviewed by the part time Executive Director of my own ALS ISOC-AU in the International Law section of the Master Class she teaches at the University if NSW in Cyberlaw (thus my c.c. directly to her... Should for example the community feel it needs to further explore these issues from a global perspective (LAW and User desires for outcomes) perhaps a presentation or discussion forum might be considered useful as part of our education and outreach activities *and/or* be a possible entry as a topic for the Summit Content subgroup of the ALAC Summit WG, where we would have an opportunity for the widest possible global involvement on this topic (and remember ASLS reps *will be* required to do pre prep on subject material *before* they attend) and so if that was to happen I am fairly sure that Holly and ISOC-AU, amongst others would be more than happy to help... Could even make a good topic for an entertaining & informative exploratory exercise along similar lines to the Hypothetical on ccTLD re-delegation that the ccNSO ran back at the Wellington ICANN meeting. CLO -----Original Message----- From: alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Danny Younger Sent: Saturday, 8 March 2008 12:34 AM To: At-Large Worldwide Subject: [At-Large] Deep Policy Issues I am reposting the insightful remarks of Bertrand de La Chapelle (Special Envoy for the Information Society, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- GAC member) found on the cpsr governance list on the topic of the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) action with regard to the Cuban-themed websites of Steven Marshall -- (note: this topic was first raised in the article "A Wave of the Watch List, and Speech Disappears" by Adam Liptak of the New York Times). Milton, Following your remarks to McTim below, and supposing this indeed is done through the courts, the interesting set of questions here is : 1) Would/should a foreign registrar comply with a court order from the US ? 2) And if it failed to do so, would the court order Verisign to do it (block the domain name) ? 3) Should Verisign do it, does that mean that all .com registrants become indirectly subject to US law, not only in terms of appropriate strings, but also in terms of the very activity they run, even on servers not located on US territory and serving customers outside of the US ? This is a real and useful discussion. Nothing to do with the "oversight of the root" via IANA. It is exposing the core challenge of competing or overlapping jurisdictions and probably the need for some "globally-applicable public policy principles". I believe nobody has the full complete answer. In my personal view, this is an illustration of the mutation of sovereignty, disconnecting it from the sole physical territory and allowing it to expand in a fractal manner on other territories - or conversely, retract - depending on the influence of the corresponding national actors in the digital sphere. And those national actors are not only the governments : the existence of a dominant player in a specific domain (Verisign, but also a Google, YouTube, MySpace or Facebook) does bring the corresponding government a leverage. But it probably also gives it a special responsibility it did not have before. This notion of "fractal sovereignty" is harder to handle than the traditional territory-based one but probably more adapted to our connected world than the notion of strict subsidiarity : the challenge is to manage interdependence and interactions. To enrich the discussion, I'd like to put in perspective here the issue of IDNs. Will the physical location of the future major registries for IDN TLDs (particularly gTLDs if any) give the corresponding national courts a specific authority/legal power on all registrants in those TLDs, even if they are not located in that country and have no business with its citizens ? These are deep policy issues and I'd be interested in comments on those challenges. Because they are challenges for governments too. Best Bertrand ____________________________________________________________________________ ________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping _______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org At-Large Official Site: http://www.alac.icann.org
Hello Cheryl, Thanks for the valuable feedback. When I first read Bertrand's comment a few things went through my mind: 1. The inordinately high percentage of gTLD registrars and registries based in the U.S. (and let's not forget the "back-end" registry services based in the U.S. for non-U.S. ccTLDs). 2. The risk to which non-US users are exposed as highlighted by the US action on Cuban-related domains. 3. The need for a policy to promote the formation of registries and accredited registrars elsewhere in the world. 4. ICP-1 I mention the ICANN Policy Document ICP-1 because it contains a very clear, short and pithy policy formulation, namely "The administrative contact must reside in the country involved for ccTLDs". As we move into the future world of IDN gTLDs/ccTLDs we similarly should think in terms of establishing clear-cut policy designed to promote a more internationalized DNS... perhaps a policy that states: "The registry operator for an IDN gTLD/ccTLD must be situated within the nations and/or territories of the language community that it serves." regards, Danny PS. Looking forward to seeing your comments on the GNSO Improvements ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
As we move into the future world of IDN gTLDs/ccTLDs we similarly should think in terms of establishing clear-cut policy designed to promote a more internationalized DNS... perhaps a policy that states: "The registry operator for an IDN gTLD/ccTLD must be situated within the nations and/or territories of the language community that it serves."
An excellent point, but devil is in the detials. There is a Chinese-language community in US (CA) and a Japanese-language community in Brazil (SP). No matter how much we love the term "language community", it should be very cautious to use it in a policy statement. I'd rather suggest "The registry operator for an IDN gTLD/ccTLD must be situated within the nations and/or territories in which majority people are using the commensuate IDN scripts." I guess it may address Mr. Bertrand's concern, "Will the physical location of the future major registries for IDN TLDs (particularly gTLDs if any) give the corresponding national courts a specific authority/legal power on all registrants in those TLDs, even if they are not located in that country and have no business with its citizens ?" Hong
Hong Xue wrote:
An excellent point, but devil is in the detials. There is a Chinese-language community in US (CA) and a Japanese-language community in Brazil (SP). No matter how much we love the term "language community", it should be very cautious to use it in a policy statement. I'd rather suggest "The registry operator for an IDN gTLD/ccTLD must be situated within the nations and/or territories in which majority people are using the commensuate IDN scripts."
Agree that we need to have some formulation of this type. Unfortunately, it will not be an easy task, because we will have many different cases. What, for instance, if a script/language is used by a minority in one country, but there is no other country where the language/script is a majority? Anyway, I don't suggest we try to solve the problem on this list, my only point is that we need, in the interest of the registrants, call for some sort of protection of the communities involved.
I guess it may address Mr. Bertrand's concern, "Will the physical location of the future major registries for IDN TLDs (particularly gTLDs if any) give the corresponding national courts a specific authority/legal power on all registrants in those TLDs, even if they are not located in that country and have no business with its citizens ?"
Unfortunately, I believe that the likely answer to Bertrand's question is "Yes". Ultimately, the registry is where the essential data reside. If a national court of the country where the registry resides orders to delete (or make invisible) a record from the zone file, I don't see how the registry can avoid complying with the order. Of course, this will pretty much depend on what the local laws allow, but by and large, this is very likely to be the situation in the majority of the cases. There are countries where some type of information are more protected than others. For instance, there are countries where financial information are treated differently by banks. I wonder whether we will see a similar situation developing in juridical practices about domain name registries: i.e. whether some national laws will develop in a way to provide a different set of rules, and maybe attract the business of registries because of that. Cheers, Roberto
At 23:58 09/03/2008, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
I wonder whether we will see a similar situation developing in juridical practices about domain name registries: i.e. whether some national laws will develop in a way to provide a different set of rules, and maybe attract the business of registries because of that.
C'est déjà le cas. En fait les lois de beaucoup de pays interdisent le Whois. Ceci est appliqué par certain ccTLD. Il serait important à mon avis que l'ICANN se penche sur les disposition de l'OMC sur les obstacles techniques au commerce (WTO/TBT). Tu n'aurais pas du laisser Bart et Jaap aller seuls à Genève fin janvier. Tout cela repousse trop de chose vers ce que je prépare, le retarde, et posera à la fin des problèmes car trop de choses devront être discutées en même temps. Ciao! jfc
Roberto and all, Excellent thoughts and comments in your response below. My take on same interspersed below yours... Roberto Gaetano wrote:
Hong Xue wrote:
An excellent point, but devil is in the detials. There is a Chinese-language community in US (CA) and a Japanese-language community in Brazil (SP). No matter how much we love the term "language community", it should be very cautious to use it in a policy statement. I'd rather suggest "The registry operator for an IDN gTLD/ccTLD must be situated within the nations and/or territories in which majority people are using the commensuate IDN scripts."
Agree that we need to have some formulation of this type. Unfortunately, it will not be an easy task, because we will have many different cases. What, for instance, if a script/language is used by a minority in one country, but there is no other country where the language/script is a majority?
Good question. And example might be Sanskrit. Very few users of that language, but still used none the less...
Anyway, I don't suggest we try to solve the problem on this list, my only point is that we need, in the interest of the registrants, call for some sort of protection of the communities involved.
Perhaps having the communities involved and/or directly mostly effected can go a long ways in solving this?
I guess it may address Mr. Bertrand's concern, "Will the physical location of the future major registries for IDN TLDs (particularly gTLDs if any) give the corresponding national courts a specific authority/legal power on all registrants in those TLDs, even if they are not located in that country and have no business with its citizens ?"
Unfortunately, I believe that the likely answer to Bertrand's question is "Yes". Ultimately, the registry is where the essential data reside. If a national court of the country where the registry resides orders to delete (or make invisible) a record from the zone file, I don't see how the registry can avoid complying with the order. Of course, this will pretty much depend on what the local laws allow, but by and large, this is very likely to be the situation in the majority of the cases.
Well almost right here. If additionally a US court issues such an order to a registry, regardless of its actual country of residence, under contract law and US statutes as well as corresponding trade agreements if in existence, that registry also must comply with such a court order accordingly.
There are countries where some type of information are more protected than others. For instance, there are countries where financial information are treated differently by banks. I wonder whether we will see a similar situation developing in juridical practices about domain name registries: i.e. whether some national laws will develop in a way to provide a different set of rules, and maybe attract the business of registries because of that.
Maybe so, but they will if they are ICANN accredited registries, be bound by US law accordingly or face serious consequences a la extradition ect.
Cheers, Roberto
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Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 277k members/stakeholders strong!) "Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" - Abraham Lincoln "Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt "If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B; liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by P: i.e., whether B is less than PL." United States v. Carroll Towing (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947] =============================================================== Updated 1/26/04 CSO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security IDNS. div. of Information Network Eng. INEG. INC. ABA member in good standing member ID 01257402 E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com My Phone: 214-244-4827
Danny and all, Excellent thoughts here Danny. I seem to remember that these same thought were discussed at great length back in the old DNSO days on the GA list forum. I did a quick check/search of my archives and found a significant number of very relevant and in depth posts as such accordingly. It's for a very long time that INEGroups position that ICP-1 requirements for registry operators and admin. contacts should or must reside in the country of origin as well as the Registry itself. This position way back when was not supported by the than sitting ICANN board for reasons that were somewhat unclear or due to a lack of unreasoned and unverified technical qualifications of necessary expertise. Danny Younger wrote:
Hello Cheryl,
Thanks for the valuable feedback.
When I first read Bertrand's comment a few things went through my mind:
1. The inordinately high percentage of gTLD registrars and registries based in the U.S. (and let's not forget the "back-end" registry services based in the U.S. for non-U.S. ccTLDs).
2. The risk to which non-US users are exposed as highlighted by the US action on Cuban-related domains.
3. The need for a policy to promote the formation of registries and accredited registrars elsewhere in the world.
4. ICP-1
I mention the ICANN Policy Document ICP-1 because it contains a very clear, short and pithy policy formulation, namely "The administrative contact must reside in the country involved for ccTLDs".
As we move into the future world of IDN gTLDs/ccTLDs we similarly should think in terms of establishing clear-cut policy designed to promote a more internationalized DNS... perhaps a policy that states: "The registry operator for an IDN gTLD/ccTLD must be situated within the nations and/or territories of the language community that it serves."
regards, Danny
PS. Looking forward to seeing your comments on the GNSO Improvements
Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 277k members/stakeholders strong!) "Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" - Abraham Lincoln "Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt "If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B; liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by P: i.e., whether B is less than PL." United States v. Carroll Towing (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947] =============================================================== Updated 1/26/04 CSO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security IDNS. div. of Information Network Eng. INEG. INC. ABA member in good standing member ID 01257402 E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com My Phone: 214-244-4827
The issue deserves a serious debate ( further study to how to address the consequent problems) and I agree with the idea not only to be part of our agenda but also a topic for the summit ( inviting some international law expert from both point of view - common sense law and roman law) I start to study a little bit more deeply this issue. Best, Vanda Scartezini Polo Consultores Associados Alameda Santos 1470 #1407 Tel - +55113266.6253 Mob- +55118181.1464 vanda@uol.com.br Before print think about the Environment "The information contained in this message - and attached files - is restricted, and its confidentiality protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete this message and notify the sender immediately. Please be advised that the improper use of the aforementioned information will create grounds for legal action." "As informações existentes nesta mensagem e nos arquivos anexados são para uso restrito, com sigilo protegido por lei. Caso não seja o destinatário, favor apagar esta mensagem e notificar o remetente. O uso impróprio das informações desta mensagem será tratado conforme a legislação em vigor." -----Mensagem original----- De: alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] Em nome de Cheryl Langdon-Orr Enviada em: sexta-feira, 7 de março de 2008 15:50 Para: 'Danny Younger'; 'At-Large Worldwide' Cc: 'Holly' Assunto: Re: [At-Large] Deep Policy Issues Thank you for this reposting Danny which raises an issue that IMO is important and has great potential for further discussion in ALAC/ the RALO's and the ALS's as well as no doubt some of the WG lists, as well as here... This topic overlaps with the specific area of interest and expertise that some of these lists members have and indeed is part of the subject material reviewed by the part time Executive Director of my own ALS ISOC-AU in the International Law section of the Master Class she teaches at the University if NSW in Cyberlaw (thus my c.c. directly to her... Should for example the community feel it needs to further explore these issues from a global perspective (LAW and User desires for outcomes) perhaps a presentation or discussion forum might be considered useful as part of our education and outreach activities *and/or* be a possible entry as a topic for the Summit Content subgroup of the ALAC Summit WG, where we would have an opportunity for the widest possible global involvement on this topic (and remember ASLS reps *will be* required to do pre prep on subject material *before* they attend) and so if that was to happen I am fairly sure that Holly and ISOC-AU, amongst others would be more than happy to help... Could even make a good topic for an entertaining & informative exploratory exercise along similar lines to the Hypothetical on ccTLD re-delegation that the ccNSO ran back at the Wellington ICANN meeting. CLO -----Original Message----- From: alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Danny Younger Sent: Saturday, 8 March 2008 12:34 AM To: At-Large Worldwide Subject: [At-Large] Deep Policy Issues I am reposting the insightful remarks of Bertrand de La Chapelle (Special Envoy for the Information Society, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- GAC member) found on the cpsr governance list on the topic of the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) action with regard to the Cuban-themed websites of Steven Marshall -- (note: this topic was first raised in the article "A Wave of the Watch List, and Speech Disappears" by Adam Liptak of the New York Times). Milton, Following your remarks to McTim below, and supposing this indeed is done through the courts, the interesting set of questions here is : 1) Would/should a foreign registrar comply with a court order from the US ? 2) And if it failed to do so, would the court order Verisign to do it (block the domain name) ? 3) Should Verisign do it, does that mean that all .com registrants become indirectly subject to US law, not only in terms of appropriate strings, but also in terms of the very activity they run, even on servers not located on US territory and serving customers outside of the US ? This is a real and useful discussion. Nothing to do with the "oversight of the root" via IANA. It is exposing the core challenge of competing or overlapping jurisdictions and probably the need for some "globally-applicable public policy principles". I believe nobody has the full complete answer. In my personal view, this is an illustration of the mutation of sovereignty, disconnecting it from the sole physical territory and allowing it to expand in a fractal manner on other territories - or conversely, retract - depending on the influence of the corresponding national actors in the digital sphere. And those national actors are not only the governments : the existence of a dominant player in a specific domain (Verisign, but also a Google, YouTube, MySpace or Facebook) does bring the corresponding government a leverage. But it probably also gives it a special responsibility it did not have before. This notion of "fractal sovereignty" is harder to handle than the traditional territory-based one but probably more adapted to our connected world than the notion of strict subsidiarity : the challenge is to manage interdependence and interactions. To enrich the discussion, I'd like to put in perspective here the issue of IDNs. Will the physical location of the future major registries for IDN TLDs (particularly gTLDs if any) give the corresponding national courts a specific authority/legal power on all registrants in those TLDs, even if they are not located in that country and have no business with its citizens ? These are deep policy issues and I'd be interested in comments on those challenges. Because they are challenges for governments too. Best Bertrand ____________________________________________________________________________ ________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping _______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org At-Large Official Site: http://www.alac.icann.org _______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org At-Large Official Site: http://www.alac.icann.org
At 14:33 07/03/2008, Danny Younger wrote:
Following your remarks to McTim below, and supposing this indeed is done through the courts, the interesting set of questions here is :
1) Would/should a foreign registrar comply with a court order from the US ? 2) And if it failed to do so, would the court order Verisign to do it (block the domain name) ? 3) Should Verisign do it, does that mean that all .com registrants become indirectly subject to US law, not only in terms of appropriate strings, but also in terms of the very activity they run, even on servers not located on US territory and serving customers outside of the US ?
This is a real and useful discussion. Nothing to do with the "oversight of the root" via IANA. It is exposing the core challenge of competing or overlapping jurisdictions and probably the need for some "globally-applicable public policy principles". I believe nobody has the full complete answer.
Danny, Bertand, this is an important issue which raises the question of National Constitution overlaps. My understanding slightly differs because it is based upon the Internet Constitution and on the existing jurisprudence of the Rights of the Seas which considers the case of national ships subject to local foreign laws.
In my personal view, this is an illustration of the mutation of sovereignty, disconnecting it from the sole physical territory and allowing it to expand in a fractal manner on other territories - or conversely, retract - depending on the influence of the corresponding national actors in the digital sphere.
Correct. But I do not see how can this be said "fractal", since the nature and legitimacy of the sovereignty is different? The US authority may practically extend over a French citizen (starting with Patriot Act, or Guantanamo) but this authority is not the same as the one the French Constitution acknowledges to the French Government on its citizens, and to the US Government on its own citizens.
And those national actors are not only the governments : the existence of a dominant player in a specific domain (Verisign, but also a Google, YouTube, MySpace or Facebook) does bring the corresponding government a leverage. But it probably also gives it a special responsibility it did not have before.
Correct: IMHO it helps governments better understand their job in today's world (1) which is to manage national regalian extending services and (2) better understand that they are in competition with other regalian and dominant services. Every government knows what is tax competition. What is new is that the national territory is now not only real (land and infrastructures) and imaginary (culture) but also virtual. This is this territorial extension which is challenged (much like with Christopher Columbus, Magellan, Cartier, etc.). This also calls for a new phrasing to define a nation, a state, a fatherland. As some of their metadata are "emerging". There is no much difference between Portugal and Spain 500 years ago and Europe and USA now. It is certainly true that national virtual territories are currently significantly e-colonized by the US industry, through the "globalization" process we know quite well at the IETF. It uses the international extension of the US standards ("internationalization") to force interoperability through the localization process (their local adjustment) along with their US industry classification (Unicode). . That classification is unilaterally registered by the IANA LSRegistry in competition with the multilateral ISO 3166 reference. This is the "shaping the world" strategy. This strategy was disavowed at ISO where it was only supported by UK, Ireland and USA. It is the real stake of the Fast Crack ccNSO project. However, much is only the result of architectural lacks of the Internet which are not difficult to correct. However, their correction will deeply modify the Internet Governance, and therefore the very operations of the Internet. This is why great care is to be taken in doing it. The transition must be seamless, respecting the consensual agreement over legacy/emergences signed in Tunis (even if many of the signatories ignored what they actually signed). Let remember the adage "the Internet constitution is in the source code". This is very concerning as it means that the Internet stability is very uncertain. And not dependent at all on ICANN. But on the simple understanding of, for example, why the IDNs are not here for 8 years.
This notion of "fractal sovereignty" is harder to handle than the traditional territory-based one but probably more adapted to our connected world than the notion of strict subsidiarity : the challenge is to manage interdependence and interactions.
This is something which should be also documented: "strict subsidiarity" can be understood in three ways: - objective : the full respect of subsidiarity - subjective: a subsidiarity with "strict" results. - circumjective: a subsidiarity which could be perceived as rigid by third stakeholders.
To enrich the discussion, I'd like to put in perspective here the issue of IDNs. Will the physical location of the future major registries for IDN TLDs (particularly gTLDs if any) give the corresponding national courts a specific authority/legal power on all registrants in those TLDs, even if they are not located in that country and have no business with its citizens ?
This is a good question. However two points should be clarified first: (1) what is the difference with the ASCII ccTLDs except that some bilateral trade reciprocity obligations can be involved or TTBs, (2) how could someone not located in a country and having no business with its citizens get a local language IDN ? I understand this is today the case for some ccTLDs like ".tv". Only because "TV" is a famous international name. By essence this is not the case with non-ASCII DNs
These are deep policy issues and I'd be interested in comments on those challenges. Because they are challenges for governments too.
This is the reason of the comments. Cordialement jfc
Danny and all, Indeed this is an important policy issue which seems to be not adequately or substantially addressed vis a vi ICANN, and perhaps is a significant issue for Users of the ALAC as they are or will be significantly effected or impacted in some form or another. Along this same line I believe EFF is or has been addressing this issue and a recent conference which some of our members will be attending has been announced, See: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=863 ( gotta pay to see this one, sorry ) Danny Younger wrote:
I am reposting the insightful remarks of Bertrand de La Chapelle (Special Envoy for the Information Society, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- GAC member) found on the cpsr governance list on the topic of the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) action with regard to the Cuban-themed websites of Steven Marshall -- (note: this topic was first raised in the article "A Wave of the Watch List, and Speech Disappears" by Adam Liptak of the New York Times).
Milton,
Following your remarks to McTim below, and supposing this indeed is done through the courts, the interesting set of questions here is :
1) Would/should a foreign registrar comply with a court order from the US ? 2) And if it failed to do so, would the court order Verisign to do it (block the domain name) ? 3) Should Verisign do it, does that mean that all .com registrants become indirectly subject to US law, not only in terms of appropriate strings, but also in terms of the very activity they run, even on servers not located on US territory and serving customers outside of the US ?
This is a real and useful discussion. Nothing to do with the "oversight of the root" via IANA. It is exposing the core challenge of competing or overlapping jurisdictions and probably the need for some "globally-applicable public policy principles". I believe nobody has the full complete answer. In my personal view, this is an illustration of the mutation of sovereignty, disconnecting it from the sole physical territory and allowing it to expand in a fractal manner on other territories - or conversely, retract - depending on the influence of the corresponding national actors in the digital sphere. And those national actors are not only the governments : the existence of a dominant player in a specific domain (Verisign, but also a Google, YouTube, MySpace or Facebook) does bring the corresponding government a leverage. But it probably also gives it a special responsibility it did not have before.
This notion of "fractal sovereignty" is harder to handle than the traditional territory-based one but probably more adapted to our connected world than the notion of strict subsidiarity : the challenge is to manage interdependence and interactions.
To enrich the discussion, I'd like to put in perspective here the issue of IDNs. Will the physical location of the future major registries for IDN TLDs (particularly gTLDs if any) give the corresponding national courts a specific authority/legal power on all registrants in those TLDs, even if they are not located in that country and have no business with its citizens ?
These are deep policy issues and I'd be interested in comments on those challenges. Because they are challenges for governments too.
Best
Bertrand
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Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 277k members/stakeholders strong!) "Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" - Abraham Lincoln "Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt "If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B; liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by P: i.e., whether B is less than PL." United States v. Carroll Towing (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947] =============================================================== Updated 1/26/04 CSO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security IDNS. div. of Information Network Eng. INEG. INC. ABA member in good standing member ID 01257402 E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com My Phone: 214-244-4827
participants (7)
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Cheryl Langdon-Orr -
Danny Younger -
Hong Xue -
Jeffrey A. Williams -
JFC Morfin -
Roberto Gaetano -
Vanda Scartezini UOL