[Expression] [governance] ICANN Board Vote Signals Era of Censorship in Domain Names

[Robin Gross]

Hi Andrew,

I'm having a hard time understanding how you can say ICANN should keep
the "top level content-neutral and strictly divorced from
content-specific rules" while also arguing that ICANN should prevent
.xxx because of its content.

Do you agree that ICANN should be content-neutral or do you believe
ICANN should make policies based on content?

Thanks,
Robin



Andrew McLaughlin wrote:

> FWIW (i.e., not much), I agree with Vittorio.  To call this decision
> "censorship" degrades the meaning of that term.  The fact that there
> is no .abortion TLD doesn't in any way limit the ability of any
> Internet speaker to voice an opinion about abortion.  To the extent
> that DNS labeling is important, second- and third- and fourth level
> labels -- abortion.example.com -- are always available.
>
> IMHO, free expression is much more threatened by content-specific TLD
> labels, all of which ICANN would be smart to reject.  Rather than give
> restrictive governments and ISPs new tools for censorship of the real
> kind, ICANN should keep the DNS at the top level content-neutral and
> strictly divorced from content-specific rules.
>
> Susan's dissent is unconvincing because it ignores the second-order
> consequences of using the DNS as a designation of content.  It's the
> wrong road to go down.
>
> --andrew
>
>
> On 4/3/07, Vittorio Bertola <vb at bertola.eu> wrote:
>
>> Robin Gross ha scritto:
>> > From my cyberlaw blog:
>> > http://ipjustice.org/wp/2007/04/02/icann_board_votexxx
>>
>> Well, once in a lifetime, we disagree completely :-)
>>
>> I have had the luck to witness personally the last three months of
>> discussions in the ICANN Board. So, believe it or not, your
>> interpretation of the reasons and the value of this vote is IMHO quite
>> wrong. Let me explain.
>>
>> First of all, ICANN had a process for TLD applications (which,
>> incidentally, is quite a bad process, starting from the meaningless
>> "sponsorship" idea, but that's what we had at the moment), and the vote
>> was meant to judge whether the application meant the requirements. There
>> was no discussion on whether "adult entertainment" is good or bad or
>> whether it should be censored. There was, however, discussion on whether
>> the criteria were met; some directors thought they were, most thought
>> they weren't. That's how the vote went. Susan and another director - not
>> even all the five who voted against rejection - apparently assumed that
>> those who disagreed with them did so due to political pressure or desire
>> for censorship. This was entirely their assumption and many of the
>> others felt personally offended by it.
>>
>> Even if you forget about the process and think about the idea in itself,
>> it looks like a bad idea. Adult entertainment sites do not want to be
>> labelled, exactly because they are afraid of being censored; many of
>> them - basically all, according to some's judgement; for example, there
>> was no single adult webmaster speaking in support of .xxx in the entire
>> meeting - made it clear that they'd not have used the new domain. So the
>> only purpose for this domain would have been defensive registrations,
>> e.g. transfering money from consumers to the company who would have run
>> it. Personally - and especially given that I represent consumers on the
>> ICANN Board - I think that this would have been publicly detrimental.
>>
>> Then, let's discuss about "censorship". I think that the statement that
>> not approving .xxx is "content-related censorship" is impossible to take
>> seriously. You write:
>>
>> > By voting to turn down the .XXX
>> > application for public policy reasons, the Board indicated it will go
>> > beyond its technical mission of DNS coordination and seek to decide
>> what
>> > ideas are allowed to be given a voice in the new domain name space.
>>
>> Do you seriously mean that since there is no .xxx there is no porn over
>> the Internet?
>>
>> Actually, if .xxx had been approved, then many governments could have
>> passed laws to force porn sites into it, thus actually making censorship
>> easier. The only reply I got to this observation was "yes, but in the US
>> we have the First Amendment that would make it impossible". And what
>> about the rest of the world?
>>
>> All in all, of course there are sociopolitical aspects in some of the
>> decisions that ICANN has to take. Even refusing to consider these
>> aspects, and embracing the hyper-liberalistic, totally free market
>> approach of approving each and every application for a new TLD no matter
>> how controversial it is, which you and others seem to advocate, is a
>> political choice. It's way too common to hide behind memes such as "it
>> should be a technical decision only" or "let the market decide", but
>> these are political choices as well, with lots of implications. I am
>> surprised by how so many brilliant people from the liberal US
>> environment seem unable to accept diversity on this issue, to the point
>> of questioning the legitimacy or good faith of decisions when they go in
>> a different direction.
>>
>> I'll stop here, pointing at the comment I left on Susan's blog -
>> http://scrawford.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2007/3/30/2845638.html#882501
>>
>> - for further consideration about the "cultural diversity" issue.
>>
>> Ciao,
>> --
>> vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
>> -------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/  <--------
>>
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