Re: [ga] Fw: ICANN's Karl Auerbach responds to Joe Sims over .kidsdomain

[Karl Auerbach <karl@cavebear.com>]

> > Content labelling by use of domain name names is a very naive, and
> > bludgeoning, way to make use Internet technology as a tool of government.

On Fri, 6 Jul 2001, Rick H Wesson wrote:

> aparently .info, biz, and all the rest of the new gltds are labels for
> content; and since certain new tlds have restrictions it seems .kids
> content censoring is in-line with the rest of icann's previous work.

Right.  And I find it very troubling that ICANN has undertaken what, to my
mind, amounts to a vague, and probably unenforceable, promise to the
internet community that .info and the ICANN approved version of .biz will
be used in particular ways.

Is "using" a domain name to be measured by web services, by e-mail
services, by chat or messaging services, ... ?  And what is ICANN going to
do if somebody deep down in the ICANN approved .biz should be hosting an
instant-message-based "escort" business?

That kind of thing simply is not part of "technical" coordination of the
DNS - that's the kind of thing that is better suited for a legislature to
handle.

As a general matter, it's my feeling that ICANN ought to be absolutely
blind to any purported semantics of a domain name.  There are plenty of
laws on the books already to handle defamation, trademark infringement,
misappropriation of identity, misrepresentation, etc.  We don't need to
overlay that system with a lex-ICANNia.

		--karl--






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