Actually Holly, I didn't plan further interventions in this thread - happily so! - since the debate was going along swimmingly on all fronts. But I have to take issue with your input on the 2nd Amendment. The 2nd Amendment debate has always been careful to exclude the historical context, if only because it ain't pretty. As is usual with claims to greater moral standing, the facts are more nuanced than the popular hagiography is selling and would have you believe. The scholarship is replete. When you look at the several drafts by Madison, it centred around two words "nation" vs. "state" and the notion of a "militia" vs "slave patrols". Ask yourself, why would men subject themselves to such ignominy? The fact is they rebelled many times, burned, killed and murdered in favour of their freedom. The militia or, if you like, slave patrols, were legal instruments of terror and containment all over the South. These were the 'well regulated militias' of both myth and fact who held the balance of terror and kept slaves in check. And, subject of this 2nd Amendment. There are good people everywhere. So some were unwilling to partake. The anti-slavery coalition centred in the North, in the state of Massachusetts - see William Seward for example: '*since all men are the sons of Adam they are co-heirs, with equal rights unto liberty*' -, believed to destroy slavery meant dismantling and disallowing the slave patrols. So they tried several ways to that objective. The Virginian Patrick Henry, he of '*give me liberty or give me death*' fame, was on principle opposed to slavery. But he, a man of his time and place, simply could not go all the way and advocate freedom for slaves. He, along with George Mason, forcefully argued for preservation of the militias. This was the make-or-break issue for the Virginians, those enlightened stalwarts for liberty and justice for all, for their votes to affirm the constitution of the United States. [The companion determinant was that black people was only 3/5ths human.] This amendment was actually configured to gain Virginia's vote for the United States Constitution and expressly to preserve the right of slave patrols - the 'militias' regulated by law in slave states - to keep and bear arms, thusly prolonging the 'peculiar institution'. For those of you who might wish to be re-educated, you can access Madison's several drafts of the 2nd Amendment. Or, if you want to know more, you might wish to read A. Leon Higginbotham's "In The Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process -The Colonial Period". If you don't wish to get all bogged down in the abstruse legal stuff, then try Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States". Look carefully at the sources referred in both books. For some of them are now available online, courtesy of Google. Hell, its always better for a man to choose his poison. -Carlton ============================== Carlton A Samuels Mobile: 876-818-1799 *Strategy, Planning, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround* ============================= On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Holly Raiche <h.raiche@internode.on.net>wrote:

I am hesitant to buy into this, but this should not be about the privacy of owning guns versus the privacy issues involved in Whois data.

The 2nd amendment was all about the colonists protesting (finally rebelling) against a government regime where - as English colonists, which they were - they did not have the same rights that those who lived in England had. (as an aside, many of the Dutch living in what was then New Holland finally sided with the colonists because their only rights in relation to their Dutch overlords was as shareholders in a company run out of Rotterdam). Thus the famous ride of Paul Revere and the 2nd amendment, once the colonists managed to rid themselves of the overlords. So - please - it was about a situation in a colony where the locals did not have the rights they now have as citizens of the USA. So VERY different - both in the kinds of guns that the 2nd amendment was designed to protect over 200 years ago and the VERY different situation now - both in the nature of the guns being protected, and the rights of citizenship that were not available to the colonists then, but are now.

DIFFERENT QUESTION please about domain names. The Final Whois Review Team report explicitly recognises the tension between legitimate needs to access Whois data and the equally legitimate right of individuals to privacy. What is being developed by the IETF is the WEIRDS protocol which, amongst other things, will allow differentiated access to Whois data. This will allow those who want to exercise their legitimate right to privacy to do so, while also allowing those with particular need to access that data (particularly law enforcement agencies) to gain access. There are still issues in defining both the agencies that qualify as LEAs, and the process for access. But the principle is there - a balance between legitimate rights to privacy - against the equally legitimate need of those to gain access.

And please - no more about guns vs domain names

Holly Raiche

On 20/01/2013, at 10:49 AM, Karl Auerbach wrote:

...

On 01/19/2013 12:54 PM, Bill Silverstein wrote:

...

...

On 01/19/2013 11:43 AM, Bill Silverstein wrote:

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Which amendment to the constitution provides for the right to have domain names?

The First.

Moreover the right to speech is found in many similar Constitutioal statements of rights around the world, which is something that one can not say about militias and infringement on bearing arms.

...

Having or the lack of having a domain name does not impact speech. There are many services which allow one to publically speak on the internet without a domain name.

Really? It seems, therefore, that you would accept being banned from the internet because you would still have the opportunity to stand on the street corner and shout words into the wind?

The point still stands, if the ownership of instrumentalities of great bodily harm (guns) is worthy of privacy protection than logic compels the conclusion that ownership of non-lethal instrumentalities such as domain names are worthy of even greater privacy protection.

One can not consistently simultaneously argue for the current wide open WHOIS and sealed ownership of firearms.

Only if one supports a privacy protected WHOIS can one consistently argue for privacy protected lists of gun ownership.

--karl--

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