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

[Joanna Lane <jo-uk@rcn.com>]

on 12/3/01 11:31 AM, Marc Schneiders at marc@fuchsia.bijt.net wrote:

<snip>
> Everyone has a right to freedom of speech.

An act of murder is not freedom of speech. These websites are not just
putting out political viewpoints, they are inciting terrorist acts of
violence, which is not a legal form of expression in any civilized society.
It seems that ICANN is not only perceived as a corrupt organization run for
the benefit of special interest groups, now it's degenerating into a lawless
one as well.

Am I wrong? 


>>Joanna lane wrote:-
>> 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?
> 
> They will not burn their hands on this topic, certainly not
> ICANN. Whoever promotes censorship on the internet, will lose. It is
> the beginning of the end.

What makes you think that defending a terrorist website is going to uphold
freedom of speech for internet users? Freedom of speech on the internet is
being murdered on a daily basis by ICANN's "friendly fire". The GA is the
"collateral damage" at the alter of a false god called "Stability".

You don't think that artificially restricting new TLDs is censorship? Where
is IOD's freedom of speech? IP3 isn't censorship? Where is Leah's freedom of
speech? UDRP isn't censorship? Where is Ms. Shell's freedom of speech? NC
Task Forces arent censorship? Where is the vote for Individual Registrants
within the DNSO process? If ignoring GA Resolutions, withdrawing Secretariat
Services, and refusing to assist the GA Chair with travel expenses is not a
form of censorship, then I fail to understand what is.


<snip>

> The Germans tried to shut some down recently by using DNS and
> diverting traffic. In France we had some case against Yahoo, which
> demanded that Yahoo blocked traffic to certain webpages for French
> citizins. We live in interesting times...

Yes, auctions of Nazi memorabilia, and Yahoo lost that battle because the
courts viewed it as glorification of the holocaust (if memory serves me
correctly) and as a consequence, it is now against the law worldwide,
virtually. What makes you think the courts are going to treat those who
glorify any other atrocity any different?
 
> I am not saying that nothing can and nothing ever should be done
> against particular websites, e.g. those inciting violence. Telling the
> Palestine side of the story, or the IRA side, etc. should be free
> though. 

On this we agree, if only for the same reason the holocaust should never be
forgotten (ref ED: Always make new mistakes). Have you actually looked at
the Palestine-info.com website recently Marc? Celebrating the mass murder of
innocent Israeli children is not my idea of "telling the Palestinian side of
the story". And advocating to shut down a website that is doing just that,
is reason enough. 

The Somaliarefreshment.com site is a totally different story, being a
website whose content is not inciting anarchy per se, but whose registrant
is, and has been specifically named as providing financial support to those
who would obliterate every American and Israeli from the face of the planet.
For me, this is not a question of withdrawing political freedoms of speech,
but of denying a privilege, the privilege to profiteer in the societies it
seeks to destroy. It is no different from stopping Bin Laden purchasing
satellite phones on Long Island, or freezing a bank account in Switzerland.

>And decisions should be made on individual websites by the
> courts, not ICANN, NSI in some general rules.

I agree here also. So far as I know, nobody is asking ICANN to make any
decisions. Clause 3.7.2 simply requires the Registrars to comply with the
law, without stipulating what those laws are, which is as it should be, but
I really don't think it is unreasonable to recommend an ICANN policy that
allows for sanctions against any Registrar that deliberately and knowingly
breaches clause 3.7.2 of the Accreditation Agreement, including financial
penalties and/or in the most sever cases, removing their Accreditation
status (obviously with prior warning).

If you're saying that the Registrars need to go to Court to determine *how*
they must uphold the law, I disagree with respect to the very obvious
examples that have been cited. In the unlikely event that a genuine
Registrant is mistakenly shut down, they would have legal recourse, so I'm
only suggesting Registrants take immediate action in the most obvious cases,
of which ut cannot be denied there are quite a few. Why prevaricate? NetSol
can shut down palestine-info.com and somaliarefreshment.com tomorrow if it
wants, one phone call from Stuart Lynn would do it, one two sentence
statement on the ICANN website referring to the relevant laws would do it,
whereas to do otherwise is to support Hamas and Al Barakat, which so far as
I understand things, *is* breaking the law (IANAL*).

Now who is picking fluff out of their navel?

I am also taking this opportunity to respond briefly to Patrick's post,
which attaempts to debate semantics with a person in a war zone using the
tone of a person sitting on a beach drinking shirley temples. It is not fair
to shoot the messenger on the basis of using scary language that is outside
the normal comfort zone, when all that is happening is that the story is
being told as it really is. No apologies for lack of "Politically correct"
speech. I am not going to apologize to any members of Hamas that may be
members of this group and there are plenty of Palestinians who would agree
with me.

Regards,

Joanna

IANAL - I am not a lawyer. Anything I say is my personal opinion and not in
any sense legal advice.



The URLs for Best Practices:
DNSO Citation: http://www.dnso.org/dnso/gaindex.html
(Under "Other Information Documents")

Part I: Introduction, Principles and Definitions
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/20010813.GA-BestPractices.html
Part II: Flow Chart
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/20010813.GA-BP-flowchart.pdf
(Access to the .pdf file requires installing the Adobe Acrobat
Reader, which is available for free down load at
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.)
Part III - Time Line Guide
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/20010813.GA-BP-PartIII.html


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