Re: Free speech and GA (Re: [ga] Time to put...)

Michael's suggestion, if the board chooses to act upon it, will make for at least a start in the direction of creating a relevant, and functional GA. At the same time we must be sure all views are tolerated. Foremost however, the list must be useful and functional. Absent a minimum rule set, it can only fail to become the forum through which a broad array of voices and interests can meet, as the forum itself then becomes an intolerable experience.

Arnold Gehring

----- Original Message -----

From: Michael

To: Roeland M.J. Meyer

Cc: ga@dnso.org ; 'Harald Tveit Alvestrand' ; 'Weisberg' ; roberto.gaetano@voila.fr

Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2000 12:03 PM

Subject: Re: Free speech and GA (Re: [ga] Time to put...)

1/1/00
Friends:

I long to participate in a forum where I can debate the need for unlimited gTLDs. This forum, however, relates to the right of Mr. Batista to piss in our soup.

In my more activist days in college (late 60's early 70's), the greatest frustration of any protest was the "comrade" who thought that civil disobedience was for the bourgeoisie, and that uncivil disobedience was the only true protest. Later, of course, we found that the local law enforcement authorities were using agents provacateur to push our protests over the line so that they had the necessary justification for a crack down.

Mr. Batista has done an effective job of pushing the domain name issues off of the listserv and to substitute in its place his indignation at his perceived powerlessness. But the results of his efforts could hardly be clearer: the domain name 'debate' regresses back into the quieter, more civilized, more exclusive haunts from which it came. This is very much in the interests of WIPO, IBM, et al, and is hurting the rest of us. The void created by Mr. Batista's efforts work strongly in favor of the status quo, which is the enemy of a more robust naming system.

There needs to be a forum to discuss this issue! I have clients that are desperate from the lack of available URLs. When I send them here, however, they see what one finds in so many corners of the internet: a puerile chatroom that vacillates between pathos, irrelevance and insanity.

I strongly encourage one of the members of the Board to make a motion to install a parliamentarian to serve as a moderator. I also urge that those of you who care so deeply about the net _not_ fall into the trap of process and procedure. The goal of the parliamentarian would be to pass through all rational discussion of the subject at hand. It would be a mistake to take the next six months to write "rules" to implement a moderated listserv. Take a vote! Get on with this! We need more names.

Michael McNulty
(You may assume the next multiple e-mails from me
will be forged...)

"Roeland M.J. Meyer" wrote:

This is Joe Baptista posing as Roeland Meyer.
On Sat, 1 Jan 2000, Roeland M.J. Meyer wrote:
> Actually, this is what I had in mind. The technology is readily available.
> If we simply knew who posted what and could trust a message to be from
> whomever it claims to be from, that would go a long way to clean up the
> garbage around here. Once a post can actually be laid a someone's feet, I
Shame - to call your opponents garbage. I guess that gives me licence to
call you an IBM whore. Not very nice is it.
> believe that the list will self-moderate. I've actually observed this
> before. The noise level is at its peak when anonymous posters are present,
> it goes down a bunch when originators are known, it goes down a bunch more
> when a poster can be verified. This is all without external intervention.
The list is not nor has it ever been self moderating. This list is for
show. This list is to serve IBM's self interests and not much more.
I say to you roeland - go ahead and make this conference more difficult to
post too. Already we see the result of censorship. No one is interested
in participating anymore.
In fact the key participants - the IBM sluts - have been forced into
posting anything and everything to get this conference going again. It's
dead in here. So I say sure - let's make it more difficult to post. That
should put the last nail into the dnso ga coffin.
Regards
Joe Baptista