Re: [ga] Mr. Qaddafi Salutes Verisign

["John Berryhill Ph.D. J.D." <john@johnberryhill.com>]

The issue is not censorship, but simple compliance with the law by US
companies.  A domain registration contract is entirely separate from whether
anyone is being "censored".  The issue is the continued performance of
service contracts by US companies on behalf of parties with whom US law
prohibits the performance of commercial service contracts.

> Libya, of course, is a harmless country who has minded its own business
> since it had the shit bombed out of it by the United States a few years
ago.
> In fact, I didn't even realise it was the subject of sanctions.

Well, it is.  In fact, IANA (and thus ICANN) maintains delegation of the .ly
top-level domain to an organization under government control in Libya.
Apparently, that Libyan organization has contracted out marketing of .ly
domains to a party nominally located in Cyprus, for obvious reasons.
However, that marketing contract cannot and does not alter or supercede the
primary contract between ICANN (inherited from IANA) and a Libyan
organization, in violation of US trade sanction regulations pertaining to
Libya.

The issue goes well beyond the registrars and to ICANN itself.  Under
recently-described contracting principles for ccTLDs, it would appear that
ICANN has every intention of entering into direct negotiations with the
Libyan government over continued delegation of the .ly ccTLD.

The Iraqi ccTLD, incidentally, is not an issue, as it was not delegated to
any institution in Iraq and is not maintained by or on behalf of any Iraqi
organization.






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