Re: [ga] The Network Solutions contribution to international terror

[Joop Teernstra <terastra@terabytz.co.nz>]

At 08:40 3/12/01 -0400, Joanna Lane wrote:
>  They [the terrorists]
>are no more worthy of "freedom of speech" rights, than child pornographers
>or Nazis, yet less than a handful of people here have taken a responsible
>attitude or even shown an interest.

Responsible attitute is also a great reluctance to encourage Registrars to 
exercise power to judge who is worthy of free speech and who is not.
Responsible attitude is also not to allow ICANN any mission creep in the 
form of  content policing until (Individual) Domain Name Holders are fully 
represented at all levels. And even then...

If I understand you right, your main objection is the Hamas press release 
on the Palestine-info site.
The site registration itself, being registered to an admin contact in 
Beirut, may or may not be currently in violation of US statute. This 
violation might disappear when particular content would be removed. This is 
between the US Registrars and the FBI, and really up to the FBI.  They may 
consider it more useful to keep such well known sites above ground. (this 
is *really* off-topic)
The problem is that content such as is offending you and me, can be moved 
tomorrow to ostriches-on-the-beach.com registered to another entity with no 
"terrorist" links.

It is one thing to hold DN holders responsible for content on their sites, 
quite another to hold Registrars responsible for registering Domains that 
may post "terrorist" content.

Urging ICANN to have the Domain yanked is using an "elephant gun on a fly" 
approach.
A lot of collateral damage and the fly will appear somewhere else.
There are better ways to apply the law to deal with illegal content.

>There is a thunderous silence from all
>the leading Registry and Registrar Compliance Executives, and many are
>reading this list. Why? Are they cowards, or in denial?

I do not want to speak for Registrars, but I may speak against them if the 
security of Registered Domains becomes dependent on their subjective 
judgement on who is a terrorist or what is illegal content. Registrars must 
respect their registrants, until the proper authorities force them to act 
otherwise.

O.K., I grant you that some of this is on topic.  NSI may want to address 
it or it may choose not to.

But war on terrorism/free speech/censorship can be a highly divisive topic 
at a time when the GA needs to pull together to guard its rights in the 
ICANN structure.

--Joop

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