discussion on xxx domain? [ncsg-policy] Draft NCSG comments to GNSO Council on Rec 6

[Nicolas Adam]

Post-scriptum: Guys i wish i had more time, but i have a plane to catch 
(vacation for me, 1 week, no emails ;) ). This draft is not finished 
(but was too much advanced that i would not send it), and i hope i can 
engage on it with some of you in the very near future. Sorry if it cuts 
short the whole of my thought experiment, which was to pit various 
tld-regulating scenarios against their probable porn-outcome, and thus 
finish with the practical. As is, this is merely the philosophical 
introduction to what i would have liked to say. So here goes:

Dear Caroline, Nuno, all

This is a surprisingly civil and engaging exchange/debate, for a subject 
that is potentially passionately felt, and i commend you both for this. 
Before engaging it, i will not hide my opinions and will say that i am 
in near-total agreement with Nuno, as well as with Andrew. But I have no 
wish to pretend that only opinions similar to these are receivable. 
Indeed, we are ourselves *and* our circumstances, and our moral 
sensibilities are by no means universal. I will engage this with 
complete disregard to all the very good arguments that can be made with 
regard to the deleterious effects of censorship, and i will thus humor 
only Caroline's points.

But first:
Franklin's comment about "he who sacrifice a little liberty for a little 
security deserves neither and will lose them both" has always rang true 
to my heart, and my head. Privacy is a prime example where the wisdom of 
this axiom can be understood: Privacy isn't just a liberty-type asset, 
it is also a security-type asset (lets think about it in the context of 
a scenario -- our worse RFID nightmare, where everyone, police and 
thugs, have access to our whereabouts in real time -- how secure do we 
feel? and how free?). Hence, when you sacrifice a little privacy for a 
purported increase in your security, you  have not only depleted your 
privacy, but your liberty and security as well (or are on your way to).

Now i'll readily grant that this is no blanket reason to adopt a 
hands-off approach with regards regulation of everything and anything.

back to pornography:
I find most pornography to be an inesthetical social phenomenon (i'm an 
unrepentant relativist, and never uses the "moral" category -- this may 
offend some of you but bear in mind that it enables me to respect your 
reasonned outrage towards this unrepentant relativism, with, perhaps, 
more open-mindedness and understanding towards your foundations than are 
usually shown mine). There is something deeply repulsive about seeing 
sexual labour, of all labour, being forced onto someone (lets face it, 
it is mostly women) by circumstances. When those circumstances are mould 
by shaddy characters, it is all the more repulsive.

But if I say i find "most" pornography thus repulsive, of course, it is 
because the issue of defining pornography arises when we attempt to 
reason on the subject. I would not lump all graphic sexyness, some of 
which of definite good taste, into the "bad" bucket. Indeed, when i 
think about the history of my own little place on earth, i am able to 
form the opinion that, without a doubt (for me), one of the great gains 
brought about by many feminists battles is that my sisters, my mother 
and my nieces can dress freely, engaging in sexyness without fear if 
they so wish, are able to wear a swimsuit without generating massive 
droolings by men or being frowned upon by whole communities, and 
like-liberties are thus theirs. With respect to the contrarian opinion, 
i prefer my daughter to be able to express herself,  sexualy and 
otherwise, freely, and I feel that one of the most important stepping 
stone of feminists gains has been that which liberated their body from 
generalized norms of righteousness that have their whole array of social 
consequences. That's how i "feel it".

"Now surely", Caroline may object, "i can't find anything up there that 
would warrant objecting to my proposition of forcing it all in the same 
place by law (or one of its global derivative) for the purpose of 
regulating its access, even if i grant that some freedom of sexyness is 
something important that we women should not lose". But i do. The reason 
for it basically being that it doesn't help one single bit, and mostly 
serves to throw more blame around, more blame onto some people that 
might not be all that deserving of it.

For all its distastefullness, sexual exploitation is here to stay. With 
that in mind, let's split the rest of this thought experiment between 
two groups, 1) women who engage in pornography and 2) the society that 
receives pornography.

1) In the abstract, people with good intentions often end-up beaten on 
the very persons that are deemed to be the first and foremost victims. 
We see this with tough laws against prostitution, which are (re)enacted 
with complete disregard to the actual evidence that suggests that we are 
harming women even more, and not stalling the phenomenon in the least 
bit. It is as though, in effect, we are not trying to protect them at 
all and are more concerned with keeping the neibhorhood up to a certain 
esthetical standard. With respect to forcing pronography into a .xxx, i 
will grant that this objection is unwarranted. Women will probably not 
be worse off afterwards. The women that do engage in it because of 
circumstances (but lets also grant, please, that no matter how 
distasteful this might sound to some of you, some women active in the 
wide adult industry are very much proud of what they do, and if you did 
it, wouldn't you be?), might very well feel a little ostracized, but 
nothing huge. Will this have an impact on the industry, no. On the 
women, no. But it still serve to show that the principle of banning 
something that is here to stay, is a bad principle, in the abstract. e. 
g. I strongly believe that prostitutes would be better off with an 
accountant and a doctor than with a pimp, if we must chose. Again, even 
though you who read this may be a women, please don't ascribe to the 
women who indulge John's everywhere the incapacity to choose, as i don't 
defend the phenomenon solely on their purported capacity to chose. Let's 
all agree, please, that there is some choice and some circumstances, and 
the discussion will be enhanced.

2) I have to take issue with assertions that, in my opinion, are a bit 
fast with regards to ascribing root cause to some other phenomenon. 
Causality is, unfortunately, a bit too freely ascribed with regards to 
some of the worlds woes and problems, and similarly, some of the worlds 
"problems" are very much multi-faceted, as i tried to show briefly above.

2-a) on the impact of pornography on society:

I can see very little harm *caused* to society by the presence of 
pornography (and since i have to leave this conversation early, i will 
wait for others to precise what harms are brought about by it). In 
short: I do not accept as fact that pornography is "freely accesible" to 
children. Pornography is best filtered by parents, not nations. But 
again, wish i had more time.

2-b) on how to diminish circumstances that might quite inesthetically 
force sexual labor:

Attacking a phenomenon isn't the same as attacking its root causes. 
Poverty, wealth gap, drug trafficking and addiction, and many other 
things again, are amongst the causes for the most inesthetical aspects 
of this phenomenon, the aspects that go to exploitation or that see 
circumstances outweighs choices and liberty. I would dare venture, 
though, that the cultures that are the most closed to sexual 
expressiveness are causing comparatively more sexual labor than the ones 
that are more open. And so, ironically, one of the root causes of the 
phenomenon might well be the very righteous generalisations that are 
brought up as reasons against pornography (or access to).

Again, as i am thin on time, i will come back to 2a and 2b if there is 
some interest to discussing this further. And i would also hope to show

3) the likely effects of various regulating scenarios (revolving around 
"forcing" pornography on a specific TLD) would have on the phenomenon.


In the mean time, i bid you all a good week end, and i'm off to some 
sunny shores.

Nicolas


Dear Nuno,
>
>
> Maybe not, but I do think your views that one should *not take a moral 
> stand* on pornography or anything else are-
>
> /and/ /you in all honesty allude to that- /tainted by who you are, and 
> probably by the fact you're a man.
>
>
> You don't feel it*in your guts* like I may, as a woman, that it 
> actually *is* a violation of the bill of rights the way women ( AND 
> MEN actually!)
>
> are treated and portrayed in pornographic material and the impact such 
> material has on those viewing it,
>
> especially those with psychological difficulties, not to mention kids!
>
>
> At some point, not seeing it as a problem that this material is freely 
> accessible to*anyone* in the name of ' moral neutrality' is equal to
>
> endorsing free access to this controversial material.
>
> > Pretending domain names do NOT have a *moral, political and 
> sociological* impact is akin to digging your head in the sand.
>
> > Pretending *education* will suffice to offset this unlimited freedom 
> of publishing online material is naive.
>
>
> Otherwise why not give us all guns to defend ourselves, just in case, 
>  and just educate us all NOT to use them to kill
>
> those we dont get along with?
>
>
>
> I feel there *should be a .xxx extension*, and that all porn s*hould 
> be made to use that* and *only that*, by law,
>
> just the way this material is not accessible to all in the physical world.
>
> Make the techies make that possible, dont let them tell us it's not " 
> technically feasible" just because they dont care about
>
> controling access to it.
>
>
> Best'
> /
> /
> /Caroline/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Le 14 janv. 11 à 10:49, Nuno Garcia a écrit :
>
>> I hope that in the end I do not sound like a Hulstler or Playboy 
>> stockholder or subscriber (I am neither of these), but this is really 
>> what I believe in, and probably my opinion is relevant for the 
>> mailing list.
>>
>> On 14 January 2011 03:00, Dwi Elfrida Martina S 
>> <dwi.elfrida at depkominfo.go.id <mailto:dwi.elfrida at depkominfo.go.id>> 
>> wrote:
>>
>>     hi rudy,
>>
>>
>> (snipped)
>>
>>     I agree with you, there is no country who already TOTALLY success
>>     to do
>>     process 'filter'. But, still we have to do our best to place
>>     "pornography"
>>     in good order, means there is certain regulation, term &
>>     condition. so, we
>>     can protect country from decreasing of morality:)
>>
>>
>> As I think we have made clear from previous statements, Morality (as 
>> well as public order) ARE NOT an issue that concerns this 
>> constituency and these considerations should therefore be left out of 
>> discussion and encouraged to be left of all the discussions in ICANN.
>>
>> (long parenthesis: I'm sure Dwi was formulating a wish for its own 
>> country, and it this case, it's perfectly ok to do so. I must recall 
>> the list that Morality is an extremelly complex issue, much more than 
>> paedophilia, which is generally defined as crime in most western and 
>> southern countries, but, in contrast, it is indulged by some other 
>> countries (e.g. asian), and was not at all a crime before 1950 in 
>> most of the countries I know. When these issues dig deep in our 
>> cultural backgrounds and in our religious or belief points of view, 
>> it is best to rely on the system of values that we know is 
>> transversal to all Mankind and are best described in the Charter for 
>> Human Rights, that I think best summarizes the values we must guide 
>> for. End of long parenthesis.)
>>
>> In conclusion, and having the Charter for Human Rights as a working 
>> bench, I say that the arguments for discussing this or that issue 
>> (but not for the .XXX which is long due), should never be issues on 
>> liberty, or censorship, let alone competencies or policies for 
>> governments.
>>
>> We, as an informed and knowledgeable community, must put forward our 
>> opinions having in view the larger and greater good of our fellow 
>> Internet users, oblivious to where they sit in working days or in 
>> holidays or in Holy days. All of us deserve an Internet that _does_ 
>> _not_ _limit_ our rights as persons and promotes the values engraved 
>> in the Charter for Human Rights.
>>
>> We cannot say much regarding the different civilizational issues of 
>> different countries. For me, I know that in my country we still have 
>> a long way to go. But this is my belief, probably some of my fellow 
>> citizens do not agree with me, and therefore this is not an issue to 
>> discuss here.
>>
>> I have the greatest of respects for all cultures, religions and 
>> civilizations, and I try hard to not let my personal beliefs to stand 
>> in the way of my professional beliefs, so I expect others to do the same.
>>
>> Of course, I stand perfectly aware that, as Ortega y Gasset once 
>> said, I am myself and my circumstance, and thus my points of view 
>> will always be tainted by the fact that I was born and raised here.
>>
>> So to conclude, for me the purpose of this constituency is not to 
>> place pornography or capitalism or comunism or _______ (fill in with 
>> you word of choice) into order.
>>
>> It is to make sure that we provide ICANN with valueable and wise 
>> opinions. And we should do our best to do so. For our own good and 
>> the benefit of all mankind.
>>
>> I leave you all with two thoughts, one from Ben Franklin who once 
>> said "He who gives up a liberty to achieve a temporary security 
>> deserves neither and will loose both" (and there are plenty of 
>> historical examples of this), and the other, from a greek philosopher 
>> whose name I cannot remember "the best way to prevent a damage to 
>> society is to educate the children".
>>
>> With my personal and sincere excuses if my points of view have 
>> offended anyone (was not my intention), I wish you all a nice week end,
>>
>> Nuno Garcia
>
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