ICANN Board Approves Censorship Policy for Domain Names Based on Morality: 2 Board Members Speak Against It]
FYI Robin Gross wrote:
26 June 2008 -- Update on Keep the Core Neutral Campaign
*ICANN Board Approves Censorship Policy for Domain Names Based on Morality: 2 Board Members Speak Against It*
Today in Paris the ICANN Board passed the GNSO's controversial recommendations <http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/council-report-to-board-pdp-new-gtlds...> to censor top level domains based on notions of "morality and public order", and broadly defined "community" wishes.
However, 2 ICANN board members, law professors Wendy Seltzer (on behalf of the At-Large Internet Users) and Susan Crawford, made very powerful and compelling statements to protect free expression on the top level of the Internet. Hopefully Professor Crawford is right and this harm can be mitigated through narrowly tailored implementation.
However, ICANN staff member Kurt Pritz, who is charged with implementing these global prohibitions on expression, said this week in Paris that he strongly favors permitting anyone in the world to object to a new GTLD based on morality and public order and that will be staff's recommendation to the board. Not exactly "narrowly tailored" as Professor Crawford is urging from staff.
The domain name applicant's freedom of expression rights are "outside of scope" of this exercise, according to Pritz in a recent new GTLD briefing meeting. Perhaps ICANN staff forgot about the GNSO's Principle G to protect the applicant's freedom of expression rights?
Another problem with ICANN staff's implementation plan is to auction-off of the most sought after domains and hold "beauty contests" to decide which applicant "provides more value to the DNS". Pritz said he could not say how "value" is defined in this analysis however.
There should be another opportunity for the public to provide comment to ICANN on this proposal.
The statements of Professors Seltzer and Crawford are below.
Thank you, Robin
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26 June 2008 ICANN Board Meeting -- transcript extracts:
WENDY SELTZER: Thank you, Peter. So the at-large, as registrants and as users of domain names, supports the introduction of new gTLDs. Has no interest in delaying that process, but does wish to express its concern about two of the recommendations in the GNSO recommendation set. Specifically, the morality and public order objection and the objection based on community objections. And ALAC and its RALOs, in discussion during this meeting, put together a statement, which I won't read in its entirety, but expressed concern that putting these criteria into the gTLD approval process, even as opportunities for objection, injects ICANN into the business of making morality and public order decisions, or injects that into ICANN's processes in a way that, as ALAC put it, debases the ICANN process. And at-large does not want to see ICANN put into the business of adjudicating or even delegating the adjudication of morality or public order or community support. And so we hope that in implementation, these criteria can be kept sufficiently narrow so that they are both administrable and understandable and so that they do not involve ICANN, the organization, in making, or allowing to be made, determinations about any claim to generally accepted morality principles. Thank you. [ Applause ]
SUSAN CRAWFORD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have mixed feelings on this day. I have long supported the entry of new gTLDs into the root. It has seemed to me that it's inappropriate for ICANN to use its monopoly position over giving advice about the existence of new TLDs to create artificial scarcity in TLDs, where there is no natural scarcity, in my view. And that has led to a great deal of pent-up demand for the creation of new TLDs for various reasons, for communities, for new identities, all over the world. And in particular, it is urgent that we create IDN gTLDs for the many language communities around the world that would prefer to have those. The question presented to the board today is a little strange. What we're being asked to respond to is whether the recommendations, the policy recommendations from the GNSO are implementable. And then staff will go on, and if we decide they are, theoretically, implementable, will draft the implementation guidelines for the recommendations made by the GNSO council. There is a lot of important effort to go into those implementation details. And I am signing up to these recommendations on the condition that the implementation work will proceed as planned, and that the board and the community will have an opportunity to comment in detail on that implementation work. In particular, I want to applaud and underline what Wendy Seltzer just said about the morality and public order recommendation, recommendation number 6. Way back when ICANN was formed, that original MOU, which we're now talking about as the JPA, talked of transitioning the management of the Domain Name System to the private sector. And the idea was to figure out whether the private sector had the capability and resources to assume the important responsibilities related to the technical management of the DNS. So that was the question. And so the creation of ICANN, and the question before all of us, was whether this entity would be a good vessel for allowing the private sector to take the lead in the management of the Domain Name System. And, in fact, the white paper in 1998 said that while international organizations may provide specific expertise or act as advisors to the new corporation, the U.S. continues to believe, as do most commenters, that neither national governments acting as sovereigns nor intergovernmental organizations acting as representatives of governments should participate in management of Internet names and addresses. Of course, national governments now have, and will continue to have, authority to manage or establish policy for their own ccTLDs. This wasn't done out of enthusiasm for the free market alone. The idea was also to avoid having sovereigns use the Domain Name System for their own content, control, desires. To avoid having the Domain Name System used as a choke point for content. Recommendation 6, which is the morality and public order recommendation, represents quite a sea change in this approach, because the recommendation is that strings must not be contrary to generally acceptable legal norms relating to morality and public order that are recognized under international principles of law. That's the language of the recommendation. Now, if this is broadly implemented, this recommendation would allow for any government to effectively veto a string that made it uncomfortable. Having a government veto strings is not allowing the private sector to lead. It's allowing sovereigns to censor. Particularly in the absence of straightforward clear limits on what morality and public order means, people will be unwilling to propose even controversial strings and we'll end up with a plain vanilla list of TLDs. So I am unhappy about this recommendation. I am willing to vote for it on the strength of the board's discussion and the staff's undertakings that the standards for this recommendation will be narrowly stated. And on my expectation that the board and the community will have an opportunity to review and approve, or not, the details of those standards. We do have some global norms of morality and public policy. They are very few. One of them is incitement to violent, lawless action. Nobody wants that around the world. A second might be incitement to or promotion of discrimination based on race, color, gender, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. And the third might be incitement to or promotion of child pornography or other sexual abuse of children. Otherwise, the question of morality and public order varies dramatically around the world. It's a diverse, complicated world out there. And it may not be -- it should not be possible to state that there is a single standard of morality and public order around the world. So I am asking that staff come back with an express standard that's constrained to stated norms, like the three I just listed, found and expressly in their national treaties. We need clear lines of adjudication. And I would be content with that kind of implementation. Another concern of mine is with -- with this list of recommendations is recommendation 20 which says, "An application will be rejected if an expert panel determines that there is substantial opposition to it from a significant portion of the community to which the string may be explicitly or implicitly targeted." It's quite unclear how it's all going to work out, whether any generic applicant could ever win over a community, could ever succeed in contention for a string over a community that says it's a community. And I look forward to many more details on this recommendation as well. And finally -- and I'm sorry to speak at such length but I think it's an important moment. Finally, I'm not happy with the idea that there will be auctions on strings for which there is more than one applicant. And I note that the GNSO's own recommendations on this subject don't mention auctions. And I hope the board will not adopt this approach. My bottom line is I will vote for this set of recommendations, and I hope that the implementation will be sensible. Thank you. [ Applause ]
PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Susan.
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More Info: http://ipjustice.org/wp/campaigns/icann/gtlds/ http://www.keep-the-core-neutral.org/
ALAC statement: https://st.icann.org/alac/index.cgi?new_gtld_document_recommendation_6_draft...
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IP JUSTICE Robin Gross, Executive Director 1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA 94117 USA p: +1-415-553-6261 f: +1-415-462-6451 w: http://www.ipjustice.org e: robin@ipjustice.org <mailto:robin@ipjustice.org>
IP JUSTICE Robin Gross, Executive Director 1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA 94117 USA p: +1-415-553-6261 f: +1-415-462-6451 w: http://www.ipjustice.org e: robin@ipjustice.org <mailto:robin@ipjustice.org>
to censor top level domains based on notions of "morality and public order", and broadly defined "community" wishes.
You don't need to think very long to know that words exists that are so ridden with hate that they do not deserve to be hard-wired into the fabric of the Internet. This doesn't mean that speakers can't speak -- they can register a domain in any other TLD and write until their arms fall off. It only means that ICANN isn't going to elevate hate speech into the root zone. Let's watch and see how this process works before we condemn it. I acknowledge that there is some potential for abuse in the implementation of such vague notions as "morality and public order." Nevertheless, if we get the narrow implementation hoped for by Professor Crawford, I think this can work out well for the benefit of everyone. -- Bret
Bret and all, I think what this is all about is the second guessing of DOC/NTIA after receiving many complaints from citizens to the .XXX gTLD. Such a gTLD has little to do with hate speech, but may have allot to do with promoting questionable sexual/personal behavior. Lets not forget that the GNSO recommended .XXX to the board, and the board seemed to be leaning towards approving .XXX. That got nixed by DOC/NTIA, and I believe rightly so. Next thing you know is that proposals for .GAY or .FAG will be submitted and than be considered by the GNSO for approval. I may be wrong, but my guess is that such proposals whether gTLD's or IDN gTLD's will be met with significant public displeasure as well as international political intrigue that ICANN doesn't want or frankly, need. Bret Fausett wrote:
to censor top level domains based on notions of "morality and public order", and broadly defined "community" wishes.
You don't need to think very long to know that words exists that are so ridden with hate that they do not deserve to be hard-wired into the fabric of the Internet. This doesn't mean that speakers can't speak -- they can register a domain in any other TLD and write until their arms fall off. It only means that ICANN isn't going to elevate hate speech into the root zone.
Let's watch and see how this process works before we condemn it. I acknowledge that there is some potential for abuse in the implementation of such vague notions as "morality and public order." Nevertheless, if we get the narrow implementation hoped for by Professor Crawford, I think this can work out well for the benefit of everyone.
-- Bret
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Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 281k 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
You don't need to think very long to know that words exists that are so ridden with hate that they do not deserve to be hard-wired into the fabric of the Internet.
Perhaps, but I also know that they're already there. (Try any sexual, racial, or religious slur in .com, and you'll find it's there.) I also know that there are strings that spell a benign word in one language, and an indecent word in another, and that public morality means very different things in different countries.
Let's watch and see how this process works before we condemn it.
We know that ICANN's track record with beauty contests has been dismal. Does anyone really expect that they'll do any better with ugly contests? R's, John
John and all, Good point John! John Levine wrote:
You don't need to think very long to know that words exists that are so ridden with hate that they do not deserve to be hard-wired into the fabric of the Internet.
Perhaps, but I also know that they're already there. (Try any sexual, racial, or religious slur in .com, and you'll find it's there.) I also know that there are strings that spell a benign word in one language, and an indecent word in another, and that public morality means very different things in different countries.
Let's watch and see how this process works before we condemn it.
We know that ICANN's track record with beauty contests has been dismal. Does anyone really expect that they'll do any better with ugly contests?
R's, John
_______________________________________________ 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://atlarge.icann.org
Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 281k 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
As long as we hear people for whom the main document created in history is the 1st ammendment to the US Constitution, there will be cross cultural problems. For me nonIregistering .gonazi or .hatejews is quite reasonable; for the Americans this is against the Constitution. For me shutting down web sites promoting the above mentioned domains is a good thing, but at the same time such web sites, in Bulgarian, exist and can not be shut down, because they are on US web servers. The world does not start and end with the US Constitution, and I somehow don't think this is bad. Veni On 6/27/08, John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
You don't need to think very long to know that words exists that are so ridden with hate that they do not deserve to be hard-wired into the fabric of the Internet.
Perhaps, but I also know that they're already there. (Try any sexual, racial, or religious slur in .com, and you'll find it's there.) I also know that there are strings that spell a benign word in one language, and an indecent word in another, and that public morality means very different things in different countries.
Let's watch and see how this process works before we condemn it.
We know that ICANN's track record with beauty contests has been dismal. Does anyone really expect that they'll do any better with ugly contests?
R's, John
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Veni and all, Perhaps your conclusion is correct, perhaps not. In any event, ICANN does begin with the US Constitution and ends there to a great extent for now anyway as ICANN is a California non-profit corporation in the US. Ergo US values, laws, and Constitutional requirements apply to all that ICANN does, decides, or is. Veni Markovski wrote:
As long as we hear people for whom the main document created in history is the 1st ammendment to the US Constitution, there will be cross cultural problems.
For me nonIregistering .gonazi or .hatejews is quite reasonable; for the Americans this is against the Constitution. For me shutting down web sites promoting the above mentioned domains is a good thing, but at the same time such web sites, in Bulgarian, exist and can not be shut down, because they are on US web servers.
The world does not start and end with the US Constitution, and I somehow don't think this is bad.
Veni
On 6/27/08, John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
You don't need to think very long to know that words exists that are so ridden with hate that they do not deserve to be hard-wired into the fabric of the Internet.
Perhaps, but I also know that they're already there. (Try any sexual, racial, or religious slur in .com, and you'll find it's there.) I also know that there are strings that spell a benign word in one language, and an indecent word in another, and that public morality means very different things in different countries.
Let's watch and see how this process works before we condemn it.
We know that ICANN's track record with beauty contests has been dismal. Does anyone really expect that they'll do any better with ugly contests?
R's, John
_______________________________________________ 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://atlarge.icann.org
-- Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com
_______________________________________________ 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://atlarge.icann.org
Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 281k 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
Veni Markovski ha scritto:
As long as we hear people for whom the main document created in history is the 1st ammendment to the US Constitution, there will be cross cultural problems.
For me nonIregistering .gonazi or .hatejews is quite reasonable; for the Americans this is against the Constitution. For me shutting down web sites promoting the above mentioned domains is a good thing, but at the same time such web sites, in Bulgarian, exist and can not be shut down, because they are on US web servers.
The world does not start and end with the US Constitution, and I somehow don't think this is bad.
I found it saddening and disheartening that at the moment when the Board finally approved in principle the creation of any number of new gTLDs, something that we had been advocating and waiting for ten years or so, the only thing that the At Large had to say was a negative statement on a possible interpretation of one of 20 recommendations, a recommendation which is actaully obvious for 95% of the world, but which seems to hurt the intellectuals of a specific developed country which accounts for less than 5% of the world's population but which is disproportionately represented in ICANN for historical reasons. I have disclosed that I have a direct interest in this - actually, I want to get my hands dirty in first person to make this happen - but I spent the days in Paris discussing with several people, and all of them were rejoicing and excited at the new possibilities that this decision is opening up. I saw several people from all parts of Europe willing to work to create TLDs for the promotion of their home cities and cultures. I had a great discussion with Nii Quaynor (the former At Large elected director for Africa) and we were thinking of how this new opportunity will benefit the struggle for survival of non-national languages, a category that includes hundreds of languages in Africa, in Europe and elsewhere (including all the native languages of North America, by the way). Yet there was no mention of this in the At Large's statement, as if the only thing that mattered was how to impose this American liberal view that anyone must be free to offend the religious beliefs and the moral standards of entire continents, without any kind of respect. May I say that I am quite disappointed, not only by the fact that I have seen no discussion of this ALAC statement with the rest of the community, but by the fact that I would expect the At Large to lead ICANN in promoting cultural diversity and the long term development of the Internet, and instead it seems to be thinking with narrow mind and short sight? Ciao, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
Vittorio, I am saddened and disheartened when I see people accept censorship and call it "narrow minded and short sighted". Darlene ________________________________ From: alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org on behalf of Vittorio Bertola Sent: Fri 6/27/2008 4:38 PM To: Veni Markovski Cc: At-Large Worldwide Subject: Re: [At-Large] ICANN Board Approves Censorship Policy for Domain Names Based on Morality: 2 Board Members Speak Against It] Veni Markovski ha scritto:
As long as we hear people for whom the main document created in history is the 1st ammendment to the US Constitution, there will be cross cultural problems.
For me nonIregistering .gonazi or .hatejews is quite reasonable; for the Americans this is against the Constitution. For me shutting down web sites promoting the above mentioned domains is a good thing, but at the same time such web sites, in Bulgarian, exist and can not be shut down, because they are on US web servers.
The world does not start and end with the US Constitution, and I somehow don't think this is bad.
I found it saddening and disheartening that at the moment when the Board finally approved in principle the creation of any number of new gTLDs, something that we had been advocating and waiting for ten years or so, the only thing that the At Large had to say was a negative statement on a possible interpretation of one of 20 recommendations, a recommendation which is actaully obvious for 95% of the world, but which seems to hurt the intellectuals of a specific developed country which accounts for less than 5% of the world's population but which is disproportionately represented in ICANN for historical reasons. I have disclosed that I have a direct interest in this - actually, I want to get my hands dirty in first person to make this happen - but I spent the days in Paris discussing with several people, and all of them were rejoicing and excited at the new possibilities that this decision is opening up. I saw several people from all parts of Europe willing to work to create TLDs for the promotion of their home cities and cultures. I had a great discussion with Nii Quaynor (the former At Large elected director for Africa) and we were thinking of how this new opportunity will benefit the struggle for survival of non-national languages, a category that includes hundreds of languages in Africa, in Europe and elsewhere (including all the native languages of North America, by the way). Yet there was no mention of this in the At Large's statement, as if the only thing that mattered was how to impose this American liberal view that anyone must be free to offend the religious beliefs and the moral standards of entire continents, without any kind of respect. May I say that I am quite disappointed, not only by the fact that I have seen no discussion of this ALAC statement with the rest of the community, but by the fact that I would expect the At Large to lead ICANN in promoting cultural diversity and the long term development of the Internet, and instead it seems to be thinking with narrow mind and short sight? Ciao, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <-------- _______________________________________________ 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://atlarge.icann.org <http://atlarge.icann.org/>
Vittorio, Veni, I am afraid you are missing something. ICANN has for a long now been internationalised (this is the US translation for "southpacificated" - an Australian Rugby team and an NZ referee). Let face it: their problem is to make ICANN survive in the post-JPA area. As PDT (Peter Dungate Trush) keep saying after DPT (Dr. Paul Twomey): it worked "well" during the last 10 years (under the US NTIA ASCII umbrella), let it make it work better in : 1) consolidating a statuquoed Californian ICANN - good for innovation. 2) preparing determined supporters (the half-million bracket talk-ticket goldTLD candidates). No ICANN survival, no ROI for them. They will federate and sponsor ICANN. 3) internationalising the DNS, not in applying Rumsfeld's idea of "shaping the world" with American language, but in having Yoogle! taking advantage from the Australian language experience. 4) adding two AUSTRALAC seats. 5) sunrising 6 TLDs before 2010's end to push some investors to buy ".Russia" and ".Saudi" in cuneiforms for a bunch of euros and make accepted that IDNccTLDs are just platinumTLDs as any other. (I loved Chris Disspain in his TLD Jockey performance) 6) say the will not accept ".nazi" to make ALAC screeming, providing good free advertising 7) discounting silverTLDs to developping country with the money of the ".xxx" 1 billion auction. I am afraid, they have to get real: this plan just cannot work. I am having fun at reading the IIC, but I am afraid this is really their plan and we (the @large - I am not an ALAC any yet as you know) are the only ones to help them understanding and try making the rest of the world believe they are friendly loonies rather than mad foes. I believe this is worth the try, because I would prefer the Internet to be used by everyone rather than an usurped by money. jfc At 22:38 27/06/2008, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
Veni Markovski ha scritto:
As long as we hear people for whom the main document created in history is the 1st ammendment to the US Constitution, there will be cross cultural problems.
For me nonIregistering .gonazi or .hatejews is quite reasonable; for the Americans this is against the Constitution. For me shutting down web sites promoting the above mentioned domains is a good thing, but at the same time such web sites, in Bulgarian, exist and can not be shut down, because they are on US web servers.
The world does not start and end with the US Constitution, and I somehow don't think this is bad.
I found it saddening and disheartening that at the moment when the Board finally approved in principle the creation of any number of new gTLDs, something that we had been advocating and waiting for ten years or so, the only thing that the At Large had to say was a negative statement on a possible interpretation of one of 20 recommendations, a recommendation which is actaully obvious for 95% of the world, but which seems to hurt the intellectuals of a specific developed country which accounts for less than 5% of the world's population but which is disproportionately represented in ICANN for historical reasons.
I have disclosed that I have a direct interest in this - actually, I want to get my hands dirty in first person to make this happen - but I spent the days in Paris discussing with several people, and all of them were rejoicing and excited at the new possibilities that this decision is opening up. I saw several people from all parts of Europe willing to work to create TLDs for the promotion of their home cities and cultures. I had a great discussion with Nii Quaynor (the former At Large elected director for Africa) and we were thinking of how this new opportunity will benefit the struggle for survival of non-national languages, a category that includes hundreds of languages in Africa, in Europe and elsewhere (including all the native languages of North America, by the way).
Yet there was no mention of this in the At Large's statement, as if the only thing that mattered was how to impose this American liberal view that anyone must be free to offend the religious beliefs and the moral standards of entire continents, without any kind of respect.
May I say that I am quite disappointed, not only by the fact that I have seen no discussion of this ALAC statement with the rest of the community, but by the fact that I would expect the At Large to lead ICANN in promoting cultural diversity and the long term development of the Internet, and instead it seems to be thinking with narrow mind and short sight?
Ciao, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
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possible interpretation of one of 20 recommendations, a recommendation which is actaully obvious for 95% of the world, but which seems to hurt the intellectuals of a specific developed country which accounts for less than 5% of the world's population but which is disproportionately represented in ICANN for historical reasons.
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? I dunno about the other people commenting here, but my issue with the morality rules has nothing to do with US law and everything to do with ICANN's demonstrated inability to establish and follow any sort of process related to the merit of domain applications (like, say, .XXX.) Furthermore, I see no guidance at all about whose morals apply. The problem won't be with .SEXY6YROLDS which would be unlikely to find hosting anywhere and would be universally blocked if it did, but .CONTRACEPTION or .TIBET or .GOD or .KURD, which are fine some places and not at all fine in others. A morality screen is a prescription for an endless non-process, the fate that has befallen just about every other ICANN initiative.
were thinking of how this new opportunity will benefit the struggle for survival of non-national languages, a category that includes hundreds of languages in Africa, in Europe and elsewhere (including all the native languages of North America, by the way).
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. The .CAT domain is a success because Catalonia is rich, peaceful, and full of Internet users, not the other way around. R's, John
John and all, Remarkably as it may seem, we are again largely in agreement. I recall Dr. Baptista's .GOD registry which was relatively successful as far a registrants were concerned, but garnered scorn and discontent by those whom saw .GOD as a misguided attempt to trivialize there perception of God, which Dr. Baptista had no intention in doing and it was clear he did not. We disagree on one small point. I bare no animosity towards Italian people, their government, or Italian americans, and would hope most reasonable people do not either. However Vittorio has on more than one occasion seen fit to slur Americans for reasons that may or may not be reasonable. However it is rather politically correct these days to put all Americans in one slimy bucket of discontent and displeasure. That is IMO is both unfortunate and unwarranted. What the ALAC should be concerned about regarding ICANN's decision on new gTLD's is how to provide users means and methods of protecting them from the likely onslaught of dis and mis information that will spew forth from these new gTLD's and IDN gTLD's and how to advise or potential new Registry operators what at a minimum ALAC members will expect as far as security and safety policies that is to be included in the RAA's for these new gTLD's and IDN gTLD's as well as how users desire and expect ICANN to properly oversee these new gTLD and IDN gTLD's. An additional concern in our members opinion, is that what Mr. Towmey stated as the cost for consideration of such new Registries at from $100,000.00 to $500,000.00 as being far to high and suggesting that ICANN can justify such a fee. I can only suppose that most of this proposed fee structure is going to the legal staff... John Levine wrote:
possible interpretation of one of 20 recommendations, a recommendation which is actaully obvious for 95% of the world, but which seems to hurt the intellectuals of a specific developed country which accounts for less than 5% of the world's population but which is disproportionately represented in ICANN for historical reasons.
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?
I dunno about the other people commenting here, but my issue with the morality rules has nothing to do with US law and everything to do with ICANN's demonstrated inability to establish and follow any sort of process related to the merit of domain applications (like, say, .XXX.)
Furthermore, I see no guidance at all about whose morals apply. The problem won't be with .SEXY6YROLDS which would be unlikely to find hosting anywhere and would be universally blocked if it did, but .CONTRACEPTION or .TIBET or .GOD or .KURD, which are fine some places and not at all fine in others. A morality screen is a prescription for an endless non-process, the fate that has befallen just about every other ICANN initiative.
were thinking of how this new opportunity will benefit the struggle for survival of non-national languages, a category that includes hundreds of languages in Africa, in Europe and elsewhere (including all the native languages of North America, by the way).
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. The .CAT domain is a success because Catalonia is rich, peaceful, and full of Internet users, not the other way around.
R's, John
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John Levine ha scritto:
possible interpretation of one of 20 recommendations, a recommendation which is actaully obvious for 95% of the world, but which seems to hurt the intellectuals of a specific developed country which accounts for less than 5% of the world's population but which is disproportionately represented in ICANN for historical reasons.
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?
I am not speaking about "stereotypes of national character" (by the way, individual moral standards vary wildly among citizens of a country) but rather about differences in the common founding moral values of the various countries of the world. The Constitution of Italy (art. 21) says that "Everyone has a right to freely express their thoughts through words, writings and any other means of diffusion... [Press] can be seized only upon a motivated decree by a judicial authority in case of crimes, if the law on press so explicitly provides... Written publications, shows and any other expression contrary to good behaviour are forbidden. Law defines adequate actions to prevent and repress violations." Good behaviour ("buon costume") is a legal concept that is then specified both by law and by jurisprudence, and of course it evolves with society (for example, until the 50s-60s pornography would be considered contrary to good behaviour and thus prohibited, then social customs changed and the law recognized that fact; even today, however, you can't have pornography on TV - or even movies with a few scenes of sex - if not at very late hours). In other words, there is an ongoing political judgement on what kind of expression does not conform to good behaviour and thus is to be prohibited. A similar balance is stricken in most Western Constitutions; in other parts of the world, freedom of expression isn't even considered a primary common value; also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has both article 19 ("Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.") and article 29 ("In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society."). The UDHR's combined disposition of articles 19 and 29 is actually the guidance that ICANN has taken to draft the recommendation that we are now discussing, and it's hard to think of a more authoritative source. So I would ask you to justify your statement that my argument is bogus; it seems to me that most founding moral systems, including the UDHR which is the only global one we have on this planet, recognize the need to prevent expressions that go against "morality and public order". The US is an exception to this; now I don't think that one approach is better than the other, but surely global governance processes have to respect everyone's approach, right? Not just one of the two, right? Or if they have to pick one, that's going to be the one of the majority of the world, right? Don't you agree? Also, I would still like to receive from someone at the ALAC an answer to my questions: 1) How comes that a statement from a constituency which is supposed to represent the views of the entire world is only representing one point of view, but not the other? 2) How comes that the ALAC only stated the negative aspects of this decision, but did not bother to mention the positive sides and the satisfaction of many At Large participants? 3) How were the community and the ALSes consulted on that statement? Could someone please provide me with answers? Thanks, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
Vittorio and all, I shall TRY to answer your questions. But my answers in no way necessarly reflect the opinion of the ALAC or any of the ALS'es. See my answers below... Vittorio Bertola wrote:
John Levine ha scritto:
possible interpretation of one of 20 recommendations, a recommendation which is actaully obvious for 95% of the world, but which seems to hurt the intellectuals of a specific developed country which accounts for less than 5% of the world's population but which is disproportionately represented in ICANN for historical reasons.
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?
I am not speaking about "stereotypes of national character" (by the way, individual moral standards vary wildly among citizens of a country) but rather about differences in the common founding moral values of the various countries of the world.
I don't know that there are any "founding moral values of a the various countries of the world", as you say. I do know that there are some very generally excepted norms. I also know that there are groups of all sorts in multipul different countries that purport to hold a certain set of moral values and speek for, rightly or wrongly, a majority of citizens in the countries in which those groups have a presence.
The Constitution of Italy (art. 21) says that "Everyone has a right to freely express their thoughts through words, writings and any other means of diffusion... [Press] can be seized only upon a motivated decree by a judicial authority in case of crimes, if the law on press so explicitly provides... Written publications, shows and any other expression contrary to good behaviour are forbidden. Law defines adequate actions to prevent and repress violations."
The constitution of Italy in irrelevant. The Constitution of the USA is relevant at the moment.
-snip-
A similar balance is stricken in most Western Constitutions; in other parts of the world, freedom of expression isn't even considered a primary common value; also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has both article 19 ("Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.") and article 29 ("In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society."). The UDHR's combined disposition of articles 19 and 29 is actually the guidance that ICANN has taken to draft the recommendation that we are now discussing, and it's hard to think of a more authoritative source.
The problem here is that there is not now a proponderance of civil law in the International house of Justice that can enforce these UDHR rights in any appropriate manner, and mostly not at all.
So I would ask you to justify your statement that my argument is bogus; it seems to me that most founding moral systems, including the UDHR which is the only global one we have on this planet, recognize the need to prevent expressions that go against "morality and public order". The US is an exception to this; now I don't think that one approach is better than the other, but surely global governance processes have to respect everyone's approach, right? Not just one of the two, right? Or if they have to pick one, that's going to be the one of the majority of the world, right? Don't you agree?
Also, I would still like to receive from someone at the ALAC an answer to my questions:
1) How comes that a statement from a constituency which is supposed to represent the views of the entire world is only representing one point of view, but not the other?
I don't know that it does only represent one point of view.
2) How comes that the ALAC only stated the negative aspects of this decision, but did not bother to mention the positive sides and the satisfaction of many At Large participants?
Because the negitive aspects need to be addressed expressly.
3) How were the community and the ALSes consulted on that statement?
I don't know for a certantity.
Could someone please provide me with answers?
I just did my best.
Thanks, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
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Vittorio Bertola wrote:
1) How comes that a statement from a constituency which is supposed to represent the views of the entire world is only representing one point of view, but not the other?
Because the global consensus was overwhelmingly with one side. (Why are you incapable of grasping that every region of the world might agree that the morality/order sections of the resolution are a bad idea?) In fact, it is notable that, despite the considerable diversity within At-Large, it was capable of gaining consensus on this position. Perhaps that should indicate to you that condemnation for these clauses is widespread; this is absolutely not a view from just one region.
2) How comes that the ALAC only stated the negative aspects of this decision, but did not bother to mention the positive sides and the satisfaction of many At Large participants?
Perhaps you did not take the time to listen to Wendy's actual comments; the very first thing she said was "the at-large, as registrants and as users of domain names, supports the introduction of new gTLDs". But her comments indicated that the good parts -- which we all want -- are seriously poisoned by the bad. Any long-term view of the situation must acknowledge that the short-term benefit of new gTLDs will be seriously impeded by the morality and order sections.
3) How were the community and the ALSes consulted on that statement?
NCUC expressed this position emphatically yet was ignored in the GNSO conclusion. Of course, as is overwhelmingly the case, ALAC was put in a responsive position and did not have enough time to do a complete canvass of ALSs. So it was the ALAC -- a mainly-elected global group intended to express the views of the grassroots -- which did what it could, together with the elected RALO chairs and secretariats who were able to confirm the community agreements with the ALAC position.
Could someone please provide me with answers?
There you go. - Evan
Evan Leibovitch ha scritto:
Vittorio Bertola wrote:
1) How comes that a statement from a constituency which is supposed to represent the views of the entire world is only representing one point of view, but not the other?
Because the global consensus was overwhelmingly with one side.
(Why are you incapable of grasping that every region of the world might agree that the morality/order sections of the resolution are a bad idea?)
Excuse me? Can you please point me to the places where the various RALOs discussed the issue and come to consensus to recommend against public order considerations? At least for Europe, I haven't seen any kind of discussion to this regard.
In fact, it is notable that, despite the considerable diversity within At-Large, it was capable of gaining consensus on this position. Perhaps that should indicate to you that condemnation for these clauses is widespread; this is absolutely not a view from just one region.
2) How comes that the ALAC only stated the negative aspects of this decision, but did not bother to mention the positive sides and the satisfaction of many At Large participants?
Perhaps you did not take the time to listen to Wendy's actual comments; the very first thing she said was "the at-large, as registrants and as users of domain names, supports the introduction of new gTLDs".
But her comments indicated that the good parts -- which we all want -- are seriously poisoned by the bad. Any long-term view of the situation must acknowledge that the short-term benefit of new gTLDs will be seriously impeded by the morality and order sections.
This is your opinion. My opinion is that the sections on morality and public order will actually make the introduction of new gTLDs viable and stable. I am sure that my opinion is shared by several other ALSes. Why wasn't this opinion reflected in the ALAC statement? I'm not saying that the ALAC must adopt my opinion, but certainly, by stating that the At Large supports a position which is far from being consensual, it is stating the fake.
3) How were the community and the ALSes consulted on that statement?
NCUC expressed this position emphatically yet was ignored in the GNSO conclusion.
Of course, as is overwhelmingly the case, ALAC was put in a responsive position and did not have enough time to do a complete canvass of ALSs. So it was the ALAC -- a mainly-elected global group intended to express the views of the grassroots -- which did what it could, together with the elected RALO chairs and secretariats who were able to confirm the community agreements with the ALAC position.
These recommendations have been out for one year or so, and there was no time to ask for ALS / public comment on an ALAC position?? I think that the ALAC should better come up with a better excuse... Ciao, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
Vittorio and all, I must admit that Vittorio has a good point. The ALAC hasn't formulated any consensus that can be definitely demonstrated without objection to anything what so ever. Neither have any of the ALS'es to my knowledge. But this I believe is mostly due to the poor structure of the ALAC and the ALS'es and the lack of mechanisms that delineate what positions are, or are not, broadly shared by it's participants. Hiring a consulting group did little and may have disserved the ALAC and the ALS'es in it's weak/meager attempt to determine "Consensus". This amongst other reasons is why I believe that proposals however formal or otherwise should be voted upon by each and every participant that wishes to do so, so that there is no doubt where the members/participants actually do stand on any issue it has or may be considering. Vittorio Bertola wrote:
Evan Leibovitch ha scritto:
Vittorio Bertola wrote:
1) How comes that a statement from a constituency which is supposed to represent the views of the entire world is only representing one point of view, but not the other?
Because the global consensus was overwhelmingly with one side.
(Why are you incapable of grasping that every region of the world might agree that the morality/order sections of the resolution are a bad idea?)
Excuse me? Can you please point me to the places where the various RALOs discussed the issue and come to consensus to recommend against public order considerations? At least for Europe, I haven't seen any kind of discussion to this regard.
In fact, it is notable that, despite the considerable diversity within At-Large, it was capable of gaining consensus on this position. Perhaps that should indicate to you that condemnation for these clauses is widespread; this is absolutely not a view from just one region.
2) How comes that the ALAC only stated the negative aspects of this decision, but did not bother to mention the positive sides and the satisfaction of many At Large participants?
Perhaps you did not take the time to listen to Wendy's actual comments; the very first thing she said was "the at-large, as registrants and as users of domain names, supports the introduction of new gTLDs".
But her comments indicated that the good parts -- which we all want -- are seriously poisoned by the bad. Any long-term view of the situation must acknowledge that the short-term benefit of new gTLDs will be seriously impeded by the morality and order sections.
This is your opinion. My opinion is that the sections on morality and public order will actually make the introduction of new gTLDs viable and stable. I am sure that my opinion is shared by several other ALSes. Why wasn't this opinion reflected in the ALAC statement? I'm not saying that the ALAC must adopt my opinion, but certainly, by stating that the At Large supports a position which is far from being consensual, it is stating the fake.
3) How were the community and the ALSes consulted on that statement?
NCUC expressed this position emphatically yet was ignored in the GNSO conclusion.
Of course, as is overwhelmingly the case, ALAC was put in a responsive position and did not have enough time to do a complete canvass of ALSs. So it was the ALAC -- a mainly-elected global group intended to express the views of the grassroots -- which did what it could, together with the elected RALO chairs and secretariats who were able to confirm the community agreements with the ALAC position.
These recommendations have been out for one year or so, and there was no time to ask for ALS / public comment on an ALAC position?? I think that the ALAC should better come up with a better excuse... Ciao, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
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At 23:28 28/06/2008, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
Excuse me? Can you please point me to the places where the various RALOs discussed the issue and come to consensus to recommend against public order considerations? At least for Europe, I haven't seen any kind of discussion to this regard.
Vittorio, I suggest you do not feed the troll. All goldTLD fuss is part of some of the IIC tricks to unconsiderate ALAC and limit it to speak of GNSO issues most of us are not interested in. Either you already have a domain name, or you already run your own TLD(s). In both case, unless you own a famous TM or have money to waste in a TLD submission, DPT's nth PR on DNS is of very low interest. We are interested in JPA, IIC different models, share of ICANN in multirooted DNS administration, Multicultural Internet intergovernance model, IPv6 support including IPSec or not, DNSSEC support by ICANN, IPv6 ROAP resolution, IETF financing and architectural options, Human Right to have an Internet Identity, Personnal data protection, meshed network user protection, dynamic coalition participation, ALAC efforts towards an enhanced cooperation for administration of names and numbers, distributed evolution of IANA, multilayer naming, semantic addressing, etc. etc. jfc
Gee, here I am, the cynical American arguing against the idealistic Italian. So much for stereotypes.
I am not speaking about "stereotypes of national character"
Hmmn. Someone purporting to be you wrote this a couple of days ago.
... a recommendation which is actaully obvious for 95% of the world, but which seems to hurt the intellectuals of a specific developed country which accounts for less than 5% of the world's population but which is disproportionately represented in ICANN for historical reasons.
Also, you might want to review the message you were responding it. I didn't say that I was in favor of a flood of immoral TLDs. I said that ICANN's history makes it extraordinarily unlikely that ICANN could make such judgements. Take a look at the GNSO report at http://gnso.icann.org/meetings/minutes-gnso-06sep07.shtml. As someone recently pointed out on CircleID, recommendation 6, the one about morality and public order, has already been hijacked by the trademark lawyers, who added the WIPO treaties and TRIPS to the list of governing principles of law. While I expect that .DISNEY would upset a certain number of people in Burbank and Orlando, it's hard to see it as immoral or disorderly. Furthermore, the contextual issues are incredibly subtle, even for an organization with more political ability than ICANN. For example, there's a domain nigger.com, which is just about the worst racial slur there is in American English. But it belongs to the NAACP, a 99 year old civil rights advocacy organization. What if a group of Holocaust museums wanted to register .NAZI to host historical and educational resources? Would that be OK? What's the process to decide? I don't know the answer, and neither does anyone else, but I am quite confident that it will take years for ICANN to come to a non-answer, during which nothing will happen except that some lawyers will bill a lot of hours. R's, John
John and all, I would think you would recognize that ethno-centric or national-centric slurs are not appropriate. Evidently I am mistaken? John Levine wrote:
Gee, here I am, the cynical American arguing against the idealistic Italian. So much for stereotypes.
I am not speaking about "stereotypes of national character"
Hmmn. Someone purporting to be you wrote this a couple of days ago.
... a recommendation which is actaully obvious for 95% of the world, but which seems to hurt the intellectuals of a specific developed country which accounts for less than 5% of the world's population but which is disproportionately represented in ICANN for historical reasons.
Also, you might want to review the message you were responding it. I didn't say that I was in favor of a flood of immoral TLDs. I said that ICANN's history makes it extraordinarily unlikely that ICANN could make such judgements.
Take a look at the GNSO report at http://gnso.icann.org/meetings/minutes-gnso-06sep07.shtml. As someone recently pointed out on CircleID, recommendation 6, the one about morality and public order, has already been hijacked by the trademark lawyers, who added the WIPO treaties and TRIPS to the list of governing principles of law. While I expect that .DISNEY would upset a certain number of people in Burbank and Orlando, it's hard to see it as immoral or disorderly.
Furthermore, the contextual issues are incredibly subtle, even for an organization with more political ability than ICANN. For example, there's a domain nigger.com, which is just about the worst racial slur there is in American English. But it belongs to the NAACP, a 99 year old civil rights advocacy organization. What if a group of Holocaust museums wanted to register .NAZI to host historical and educational resources? Would that be OK? What's the process to decide? I don't know the answer, and neither does anyone else, but I am quite confident that it will take years for ICANN to come to a non-answer, during which nothing will happen except that some lawyers will bill a lot of hours.
R's, John
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John Levine wrote:
Also, you might want to review the message you were responding it. I didn't say that I was in favor of a flood of immoral TLDs. I said that ICANN's history makes it extraordinarily unlikely that ICANN could make such judgements.
The standard deflection of this point was that ICANN intended to outsource the actual determination of what was moral to some yet-undetermined third parties. Twomey was proudly proclaiming that they'd been in negotiations with a number of services who had claimed the ability -- or at least the willingness -- to serve as such outsourced bodies. How misguided. I've been involved with professional mediation services before. At their best they are reasonably good at judging on issues such as disputed contract language and even family disputes, or areas where there is at least minimal common ground. It seems to me at least that morality is something that goes well beyond their scope (just as it goes beyond ICANN's scope). Does the government of Saudi Arabia have sole jurisdiction over the use of .islam? Some say it does. How do you arbitrate that without engaging in evaluation of fundamental human beliefs, causing unspeakable insult to the "losing" side? At what point does ICANN -- or its officially mandated outsourced agents -- determine whose god is more correct? What gives them the right? There is extremely little common ground in morality outside of a very small number of commonly accepted sources of revulsion. Child pornography is one such example of universal condemnation -- though even here, I would note that most of the use of the Usenet alt.sex.paedophelia newsgroups was by anti-child-porn activists, not the smut peddlars themselves. And, as has been stated, the net already has all kind of objectionable content in a .com world in which the only allowable objections to namespace strings have been trademark related. As one of the vote takers for newsgroups in the "formal" newsgroups -- rec.*, comp.*, soc.* -- I had more than my fill of morality arguments in the realm of namespace maintenance ... and yet here, the combination of national laws and social self-policing has already demonstrated to prove effective without the need for a formal objection mechanism.
Take a look at the GNSO report at http://gnso.icann.org/meetings/minutes-gnso-06sep07.shtml. As someone recently pointed out on CircleID, recommendation 6, the one about morality and public order, has already been hijacked by the trademark lawyers, who added the WIPO treaties and TRIPS to the list of governing principles of law. While I expect that .DISNEY would upset a certain number of people in Burbank and Orlando, it's hard to see it as immoral or disorderly.
An even trickier example would be .apple, which can be used for both benign and multiple corporate uses. Would a computer maker or a music producer object to its use to promote fruit? - Evan
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
Roberto and all, Nicely articulated. I for one, largely agree with your argument. I am fairly sure you find that rather amazing! >:) Hopefully, if you do, that amazement signals a recognition and understanding of how far things can go. This said, it would seem wise but also treading on very sensitive ground that the GNSO review ne gTLD and IDN gTLD proposals in the view of avoiding hate speech or signaling and/or suggesting a haven for same or child pornography content from future DN registrants. Roberto Gaetano wrote:
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Name: winmail.dat winmail.dat Type: application/ms-tnef Encoding: base64
------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ 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://atlarge.icann.org
Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 281k 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
Roberto, The real issue is IIC: to evalutate to which degree ICANN has already been captured, while they head for an "Internet for the Rich", and what can competition be, that ICANN is to foster, except for we, the people, to deploy an "Internet for the People" by the people along with international standards and fair trade rules and agreements. As true @large, i.e. Internet lead users, we are interested in four key points : - an Internet (with an anonymised and protected permanent address) for everyone. - an open semantic addressing in continuity with an open, stable, coherent and multilingual DNS - non-captured and intergoverned specialised enhanced cooperations based upon subsidiarity and proportionality principles. - a distributed open IANA and innovative architectural evolution. Todate, I am afraid ICANN is not heading towards any of that directions. I gave yesterday the time constraints france@large has. Will ALAC want to work on something or not. Will GNSO/GA consider the DNS parts of these points ? jfc
... 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.
Actually, TLDs stopped being important about the time ICANN started. Back when I wrote the first few editions of Internet for Dummies in the 1990s, once we got past the mechanics of getting online, most of the rest of the book was about how to find stuff, Gopher, Archie, Veronica, WAIS, with only one chapter on this newfangled WWW thing. At the time, it seemed reasonable to hope that the DNS would grow into a directory, along the lines of what .MUSEUM has tried to do. I expected WAIS, a full text search system, to be the next big thing, since like nearly everyone else I didn't anticipate the way the web would absorb everything else. But in a sense I was right, because the killer app for the web was and is search engines. These days I know a lot of people whose home page is Google, and who have no idea what the difference is between the Google search box and the browser address box. Domains and even URLs don't matter. They type some words into one of the boxes, and if they get to a place they like, they bookmark it. This means that for small language communities, while it's important that their writing system is included in Unicode, and that there be display fonts and input methods available for browsers and MUAs, the domains don't matter because nobody's going to type a domain more than once. After that, the sites are going to be bookmarked and the e-mail addresses will be in the address books. At this point, the only reasonable argument I can see for a new TLD is branding, and there only in areas where brand vs not-brand is interesting. Among the reasons that .coop and .aero are flops is that nobody cares about real vs fake co-ops or real vs fake whatever it is you have to be to get into .aero these days. It looks like .mobi will work because .mobi sites work on phones with tiny screens, mobile users care about that, and .mobi has a compliance process to check that the sites work like they're supposed to. Something like .bank might be useful to help distinguish actual banks from phishes. Other than that, the main motivation for new TLDs seems to be wishful thinking combined with faith-based budgeting.
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.
I don't think anyone disagrees with you. Personally, I think that the $100K application cost will be a far greater bar to hate domains than any sort of morality screen that ICANN sets up. The reason I'm opposed to the morality screen is that, based on ICANN's history, it won't work. Instead, it will be perverted for the benefit of the usual lobbyists. I expect the trademark lawyers to object to every new TLD on every possible basis, technical, moral, community, and anything else on the list. Why wouldn't they? What do they have to lose? As far as they're concerned, every new TLD is just another shakedown of their clients who'll have to waste money on defensive registrations. And beyond that, I don't see a clear explanation of what the morality screen is supposed to accomplish. Is it supposed to bar all nasty words? Nasty words used in nasty ways? How would they handle my example of .NAZI if it's a group of Holocaust museums who want historical and educational sites? ICANN can barely handle the mechanical bits, and I see no hope of them successfully managing any serious judgement calls. R's, John PS: FYI, the message to which you were responding was from Canada, where the speech laws are more like European ones than US ones. Not everyone in North America grew up with the 1st amendment.
John and all, I and our members agree fully with your last paragraph of your argument entirely. It is essentially a significant part of our core concerns for the past 9+ years. ICANN hasn't shown that it can manage much of anything very well to date including it's own Domain Names, IP addresses, root servers, or web site and mailing lists. Yet the ICANN leadership for the past 9+ years has been more interested in trying to make judgment calls of the social type and translating those to how the DNS and IP numbering system is managed. Such has failed on most counts far too frequently based on someone's notion of "Political correctness" as though such applied to everyone on the face of the planet. Not only is such a fools errand, it is politically not tenable. The "Church" of ICANN, as it were is a small and divided congregation indeed... The more ICANN pushes, the stronger the push back becomes... Internationalizing ICANN or nationalizing the DNS in terms of gTLD's or especially IDN gTLD's will have limited success I predict. Lets take the first, Internationalizing ICANN. Such a nebulous notion will never meet the full desires, needs, and demands of a ever changing marketplace in a market based global economic marketplace as the winds of political power change, sometimes very slowly, but always changing. International NGO's and corporations need, and will demand via one method or another what they want or feel they need, and squash to the extent possible the nationalized space holders into oblivion. This in some ways explains why .Coop has been a dismal failure as has .Travel. Yet, .mobi all be it's slow growth, is far more flexible and as such has met with success to the extent associated with it's growth. The second, nationalizing the DNS to the extent IDN's can accomplish such, also has limited but perhaps useful and interesting value to indigenous peoples of those nations so interested in such a IDN gTLD name space. But such is a child of language differences and unwillingness to recognize an already well established international language, english by some nations populace and even those in english speaking nations such as the US. Being multilingual as a entragal part of a DN web site is very useful for some that want or seek international reach and exposure, for others, not so. IDN gTLD's in as much as Censorship on moral grounds can or will be imposed by other nations will cause confusion amongst users for years to come, if not decades and seek to divide not unite peoples of different nations. Such is not a healthy thing but may be mitigated IF the GNSO can determine a formula to filter in or out such IDN gTLD's without offending those nations partioners and their representative polulace/users. A judgment call that I personally don't believe ICANN or the GNSO collectively or individually possesses, and never has. John Levine wrote:
... 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.
Actually, TLDs stopped being important about the time ICANN started. Back when I wrote the first few editions of Internet for Dummies in the 1990s, once we got past the mechanics of getting online, most of the rest of the book was about how to find stuff, Gopher, Archie, Veronica, WAIS, with only one chapter on this newfangled WWW thing. At the time, it seemed reasonable to hope that the DNS would grow into a directory, along the lines of what .MUSEUM has tried to do.
I expected WAIS, a full text search system, to be the next big thing, since like nearly everyone else I didn't anticipate the way the web would absorb everything else. But in a sense I was right, because the killer app for the web was and is search engines. These days I know a lot of people whose home page is Google, and who have no idea what the difference is between the Google search box and the browser address box. Domains and even URLs don't matter. They type some words into one of the boxes, and if they get to a place they like, they bookmark it.
This means that for small language communities, while it's important that their writing system is included in Unicode, and that there be display fonts and input methods available for browsers and MUAs, the domains don't matter because nobody's going to type a domain more than once. After that, the sites are going to be bookmarked and the e-mail addresses will be in the address books.
At this point, the only reasonable argument I can see for a new TLD is branding, and there only in areas where brand vs not-brand is interesting. Among the reasons that .coop and .aero are flops is that nobody cares about real vs fake co-ops or real vs fake whatever it is you have to be to get into .aero these days. It looks like .mobi will work because .mobi sites work on phones with tiny screens, mobile users care about that, and .mobi has a compliance process to check that the sites work like they're supposed to. Something like .bank might be useful to help distinguish actual banks from phishes. Other than that, the main motivation for new TLDs seems to be wishful thinking combined with faith-based budgeting.
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.
I don't think anyone disagrees with you. Personally, I think that the $100K application cost will be a far greater bar to hate domains than any sort of morality screen that ICANN sets up. The reason I'm opposed to the morality screen is that, based on ICANN's history, it won't work. Instead, it will be perverted for the benefit of the usual lobbyists. I expect the trademark lawyers to object to every new TLD on every possible basis, technical, moral, community, and anything else on the list. Why wouldn't they? What do they have to lose? As far as they're concerned, every new TLD is just another shakedown of their clients who'll have to waste money on defensive registrations. And beyond that, I don't see a clear explanation of what the morality screen is supposed to accomplish. Is it supposed to bar all nasty words? Nasty words used in nasty ways? How would they handle my example of .NAZI if it's a group of Holocaust museums who want historical and educational sites? ICANN can barely handle the mechanical bits, and I see no hope of them successfully managing any serious judgement calls.
R's, John
PS: FYI, the message to which you were responding was from Canada, where the speech laws are more like European ones than US ones. Not everyone in North America grew up with the 1st amendment.
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Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 281k 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
Hi Roberto,
... 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.
Many of those insulting terms already exist as SLDs under .com and perhaps elsewhere and I don see ICANN in any hurry to act on those. I think the use of extreme examples may not be helpful. As has been mentioned, the cost of making a new TLD provides a disincentive to most of the fringe groups that would use TLDs for hate. My concern, OTOH, is the use of subjective definitions of morality and order to stifle positive-looking orgs that are legitimate in some societies but offensive to others. Think .gay, .falungong, .zionism, .scientology, .etc. Personally, I would prefer the risk of having .alqaeda (or its Arabic-script equivalent) allowed to the thought of other TLDs limited to organizations and groups who offend absolutely nobody.
Actually, TLDs stopped being important about the time ICANN started. Back when I wrote the first few editions of Internet for Dummies in the 1990s, once we got past the mechanics of getting online, most of the rest of the book was about how to find stuff, Gopher, Archie, Veronica, WAIS, with only one chapter on this newfangled WWW thing. [...] in a sense I was right, because the killer app for the web was and is search engines. These days I know a lot of people whose home page is Google, and who have no idea what the difference is between the Google search box and the browser address box.
Hi John. I don't think it's quite like that... yet. The existence of typo-squatting as a profitable endeavour provides at least some evidence that some significant component of the Internet still uses the address bar. Sure, search systems help in many cases as a directory (you don't even need Google's fancy algorithms for that simple task, Yahoo and the Open Directory Project do fine at that). However, the fact remains that .com has become the realm of squatters and speculators (and, to a certain extent, so have .org, .biz and .info) -- some competition in this field is IMO badly needed.
This means that for small language communities, while it's important that their writing system is included in Unicode, and that there be display fonts and input methods available for browsers and MUAs, the domains don't matter because nobody's going to type a domain more than once. After that, the sites are going to be bookmarked and the e-mail addresses will be in the address books.
See above. There is still significant enough use of the addressbar that I can see at least reasonable demand for a large TLD space -- if for no other reason than to avoid ineedtomakethislargedomainbecauseallshorteronesaretaken.com
Something like .bank might be useful to help distinguish actual banks from phishes. Other than that, the main motivation for new TLDs seems to be wishful thinking combined with faith-based budgeting. [...]
Personally, I think that the $100K application cost will be a far greater bar to hate domains than any sort of morality screen that ICANN sets up. These last two comments of John's go hand in hand. ICANN doesn't need morality clauses; it has the free market. The TLDs that will succeed financially are -- by definition -- the ones for whom sufficient interest exists. Perhaps a domain under .bank might cost $5K/year, which helps pay for the policing and keeps the TLD profitable despite relatively few subdomains.
The reason I'm opposed to the morality screen is that, based on ICANN's history, it won't work. My objection is based on this ... but also, in general, the entry of ICANN into areas where it was never supposed to go. ICANN is not a treaty organization, and the gTLD policy -- by introducing subjective elements such as morality -- looks more like an international treaty than a technical specification. Arguably ICANN has already been hijacked by the IP lobby to go beyond international trademark treaty, and in the gTLD policy ICANN follows this trend even further.
And beyond that, I don't see a clear explanation of what the morality screen is supposed to accomplish. Is it supposed to bar all nasty words? Nasty words used in nasty ways? How would they handle my example of .NAZI if it's a group of Holocaust museums who want historical and educational sites? ICANN can barely handle the mechanical bits, and I see no hope of them successfully managing any serious judgement calls.
Exactly. ICANN has attempted to dodge this accusation by outsourcing the actual judgements to third-party mercenary Solomons; but that evasion is transparent and short-lived. We are asked now to accept the inevitability of the morality/order clause and work to define its parameters, knowing full well that whatever we come up with -- even in the very unlikely situation that our POV is accepted -- the implementation WILL be hopelessly botched. And it will be botched to the benefit of ICANN's monied interests. The only way to prevent the botch is to stay out of this realm. - Evan
app for the web was and is search engines. These days I know a lot of people whose home page is Google, and who have no idea what the difference is between the Google search box and the browser address box.
Hi John.
I don't think it's quite like that... yet.
The existence of typo-squatting as a profitable endeavour provides at least some evidence that some significant component of the Internet still uses the address bar.
Ah, but type a word or two into the IE7 or Firefox address bar and if they don't resolve as a domain name, guess what happens -- the browser passes them to your favorite search engine. People really don't know the difference, and the browsers encourage that confusion. Hence the typosquatting basically steals a name out from what should have been a search that would offer spelling corrections. R's, John
John Levine wrote:
Ah, but type a word or two into the IE7 or Firefox address bar and if they don't resolve as a domain name, guess what happens -- the browser passes them to your favorite search engine. People really don't know the difference, and the browsers encourage that confusion. Hence the typosquatting basically steals a name out from what should have been a search that would offer spelling corrections. But so many internet names, especially business names, are not dictionary words. So conventional spelling checkers don't apply.
Until it became a household name Google would have failed most spellcheckers. Perhaps a well-meaning search engine would send the user to "googol.com" instead. I'm not sure if that's a better answer. - Evan
Vittorio Bertola wrote:
I found it saddening and disheartening that at the moment when the Board finally approved in principle the creation of any number of new gTLDs, something that we had been advocating and waiting for ten years or so, 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.
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.
the only thing that the At Large had to say was a negative statement on a possible interpretation of one of 20 recommendations, a recommendation which is actaully obvious for 95% of the world, but which seems to hurt the intellectuals of a specific developed country which accounts for less than 5% of the world's population but which is disproportionately represented in ICANN for historical reasons.
The offensiveness of the bias in this comment was very well stated by John. As I said, it should have been possible for the Board to approve 19 recommendations and hold on the 20th, but it chose not to do so even knowing that the two groups representing the public interest -- ALAC and NCUC -- were exetremely opposed to it. Thus ICANN's claim, in the JPA and elsewhere, that it heeds the public interest, is clearly open to challenge.
I have disclosed that I have a direct interest in this - actually, I want to get my hands dirty in first person to make this happen
You are not the only one with dirty hands here.
I saw several people from all parts of Europe willing to work to create TLDs for the promotion of their home cities and cultures. As is at large. I note the enthusiasm for .bzh, .berlin; their supporters and others who see new opportunities to serve their communities.
Then why the need to taint this whole process with morality? If the one-twentieth of the policy is contention and the rest is not, why not simply accept the 19 agreeable ones and move on?
Yet there was no mention of this in the At Large's statement, as if the only thing that mattered was how to impose this American liberal view that anyone must be free to offend the religious beliefs and the moral standards of entire continents, without any kind of respect.
So you are saying that Americans should not be able to seek their ideals, but that those with Anti-American views should?
May I say that I am quite disappointed, not only by the fact that I have seen no discussion of this ALAC statement with the rest of the community, The ALAC position is very close to the one taken by NCUC within the GNSO, in which the public problem with the morality/community objection process was very well explained -- and outvoted. It is absolute nonsense to suggest that the greater community was unaware of the public concerns. It was aware and chose to deliberately ignore them.
but by the fact that I would expect the At Large to lead ICANN in promoting cultural diversity
I had already heard that the objection process would be used to block the creation of, for instance, ".gay", for the positive use and communication within that community. Since there are many societies which do not accept gays and some which believe such behavior criminal, many objections will indefinitely follow any such TLD application and prevent its occurance. As such, the current policy, with its allowance of morality-based objections, serves to RESTRICT diversity -- or at least reduce it to that which offends nobody.
and the long term development of the Internet, and instead it seems to be thinking with narrow mind and short sight?
Just the opposite. It is those who can see no further than "Yay! New TLDs!", without seeing the greater danger of ICANN being involved in morality (even if the actual judgement is outsourced), who are short sighted. - Evan
Both of Evan's points below seem self-evident. But I don't see that there's such a great danger - all they are saying is that they'll open up a few non-controversial gTLDs to get the process going.. I guess 'consensus' means following the path of least resistance. Once things are underway, given the obvious problems of administering morality, one suspects that path will involve a sharp u-turn. Joly http://isoc-ny.org Evan Leibovitch wrote:
but by the fact that I would expect the At Large to lead ICANN in promoting cultural diversity
As such, the current policy, with its allowance of morality-based objections, serves to RESTRICT diversity -- or at least reduce it to that which offends nobody.
and the long term development of the Internet, and instead it seems to be thinking with narrow mind and short sight?
Just the opposite.
It is those who can see no further than "Yay! New TLDs!", without seeing the greater danger of ICANN being involved in morality (even if the actual judgement is outsourced), who are short sighted.
- Evan
--------------------------------------------------------------- WWWhatsup NYC http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
WWWhatsup wrote:
Both of Evan's points below seem self-evident.
Hardly, since they're still being argued.
But I don't see that there's such a great danger - all they are saying is that they'll open up a few non-controversial gTLDs to get the process going.. Please indicate .... ANYWHERE ... any wording that can be interpreted to indicate such intent. The objection process is intended to be neither temporary nor transitional.
I guess 'consensus' means following the path of least resistance.
Which invariably means conceding doing the right thing, in order to appease the business community and trademark lawyers. Of course, if ICANN really cares about consensus building, it should stay away completely from issues of morality in which any arbitration will necessarily be uncompromising and divisive.
Once things are underway, given the obvious problems of administering morality, one suspects that path will involve a sharp u-turn.
This writer offers no such suspicion. I have no basis upon which to be optimistic that ICANN is be capable of identifying such folly, let alone be willing -- or able -- to reverse itself. This is especially true given the zest with which ICANN staff have shown in their desire to implement the arbitration procedures. They are either oblivious to the "obvious problems" or feel secure in their ability to ride roughshod over them. Undoing the damage will be even harder than preventing it in the first place. - Evan
Evan Leibovitch wrote:
I have no basis upon which to be optimistic that ICANN is be capable of identifying such folly, let alone be willing -- or able -- to reverse itself. This is especially true given the zest with which ICANN staff have shown in their desire to implement the arbitration procedures. They are either oblivious to the "obvious problems" or feel secure in their ability to ride roughshod over them. Undoing the damage will be even harder than preventing it in the first place.
Evan, ICANN has very well identified the issue. What they say is "if your string is potentially controversial to some community in the world, don't waste your time and money applying". They chose a pragmatic vs idealistic approach. This is a good sign that the organization is maturing and realizes that it is not above the local and international laws. I wish ICANN was as realistic with regard to the whois issue, where it forces registries and registrars to knowingly break the laws on privacy protection (at least the EU ones). -- Patrick Vande Walle Check my blog: http://patrick.vande-walle.eu
ICANN has very well identified the issue. What they say is "if your string is potentially controversial to some community in the world, don't waste your time and money applying".
I see that's a possible interpretation, but given that ICANN is located in the litigious United States, I wouldn't expect that to be what actually happens. On the one hand, the objection process is so broad as to allow any crackpot to object*, and on the other hand, given ICANN's history of giving in to legal threats, it will in practice limit new domains to the people with the largest and most aggressive legal staff. R's, John * - .BERLIN is hate speech because that's where the NAZIs had the 1936 Olympics
John and all, Your conclusion is likely correct. So I guess this puts RIAA and MPAA members at the top of the list of best candidates, eh? How lovely! = < sarcasm intended > John Levine wrote:
ICANN has very well identified the issue. What they say is "if your string is potentially controversial to some community in the world, don't waste your time and money applying".
I see that's a possible interpretation, but given that ICANN is located in the litigious United States, I wouldn't expect that to be what actually happens. On the one hand, the objection process is so broad as to allow any crackpot to object*, and on the other hand, given ICANN's history of giving in to legal threats, it will in practice limit new domains to the people with the largest and most aggressive legal staff.
R's, John
* - .BERLIN is hate speech because that's where the NAZIs had the 1936 Olympics
_______________________________________________ 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://atlarge.icann.org
Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 281k 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
MUST heartily agree with John on this one. We can't let this one slide and just see what happens. I just don't trust the "process" at all and I think we are going to have to be very vocal. D ________________________________ From: alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org on behalf of John Levine Sent: Fri 6/27/2008 2:42 PM To: Bret Fausett Cc: At-Large Worldwide Subject: Re: [At-Large] ICANN Board Approves Censorship Policy for Domain Names Based on Morality: 2 Board Members Speak Against It]
You don't need to think very long to know that words exists that are so ridden with hate that they do not deserve to be hard-wired into the fabric of the Internet.
Perhaps, but I also know that they're already there. (Try any sexual, racial, or religious slur in .com, and you'll find it's there.) I also know that there are strings that spell a benign word in one language, and an indecent word in another, and that public morality means very different things in different countries.
Let's watch and see how this process works before we condemn it.
We know that ICANN's track record with beauty contests has been dismal. Does anyone really expect that they'll do any better with ugly contests? R's, John _______________________________________________ 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://atlarge.icann.org <http://atlarge.icann.org/>
I also know that there are strings that spell a benign word in one language, and an indecent word in another, and that public morality means very different things in different countries.
Exactly. It's far too subjective. -- Mr Michele Neylon Blacknight Solutions Hosting & Colocation, Brand Protection http://www.blacknight.com/ http://blog.blacknight.com/ Intl. +353 (0) 59 9183072 Locall: 1850 929 929 Direct Dial: +353 (0)59 9183090 Fax. +353 (0) 1 4811 763 ------------------------------- Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd, Unit 12A,Barrowside Business Park,Sleaty Road,Graiguecullen,Carlow,Ireland Company No.: 370845
Michele and all, Well, the subjectiveness of any given string will be the decision of the GNSO council however it will be constituted after the GNSO review decision is finalized. Than the Bod will make a final decision as to if ICANN agrees to the proposal and the string associated with same. At that point, DOC/NTIA with the input of the GAC will either approve or disapprove. The test case will again be the reconsideration of .XXX., as ICANN is looking to trying to avoid being sued by the original group that put forth that proposal pending the called upon independent review, which I believe but do not know, ICANN's legal folks feel is not going to be favorable towards ICANN or DOC/NTIA and needs to buy time. As the .XXX proposal cost an estimated $4m to prepare and present, and that if ICANN looses a potential suit from the original group that put forth that proposal and damages are assessed, those damages could easily exceed 5 to 12 times the actual cost of the original .XXX proposal and each individual Bod members and GNSO council members at the time of reversing it's original decision, could be held financially responsible for all or part of any potential damage award. Michele Neylon :: Blacknight wrote:
I also know that there are strings that spell a benign word in one language, and an indecent word in another, and that public morality means very different things in different countries.
Exactly. It's far too subjective.
-- Mr Michele Neylon Blacknight Solutions Hosting & Colocation, Brand Protection http://www.blacknight.com/ http://blog.blacknight.com/ Intl. +353 (0) 59 9183072 Locall: 1850 929 929 Direct Dial: +353 (0)59 9183090 Fax. +353 (0) 1 4811 763 ------------------------------- Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd, Unit 12A,Barrowside Business Park,Sleaty Road,Graiguecullen,Carlow,Ireland Company No.: 370845
_______________________________________________ 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://atlarge.icann.org
Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 281k 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 (13)
-
Bret Fausett -
Evan Leibovitch -
Jacqueline A. Morris -
Jeffrey A. Williams -
JFC Morfin -
John Levine -
Michele Neylon :: Blacknight -
Patrick Vande Walle -
Roberto Gaetano -
Thompson, Darlene -
Veni Markovski -
Vittorio Bertola -
WWWhatsup