Re: [ga] 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Reverses Barcelona.com Decision

["J-F C. (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey@club-internet.fr>]

On 16:13 03/06/03, John Berryhill Ph.D. J.D. said:
>Judge Wilkinson then made a very sharp comment to the effect of "Simply 
>because you have a global
>computer network does not change US law."

Seems we are here in a double misreading of the case due to the case being 
in the USA and using US language.

1. Judge Wikinson does not know the US law. 47 USC 230 (f)(1) defines the 
Internet as global (US meaning): the US law is not to be changed, it is to 
be applied. While obviously ignoring it, he applied it, showing this way 
that the US law is consistent.

2. the response of the Barcelonna defendant should have been to say that 
this is because internet is a global network (non-US meaning) that the US 
law cannot be applied to the whole of it, but only to the US part of it. 
While obbsiously ignoring the very nature of the network and of the real 
world, he did not failed in defending the Internet users interests. The 
decision is on barcelona.com not on barcelona.sp.

This whole case is much noise for nothing because the case did not rise the 
true questions:

- what is the jurisdiction extensin of the US law?
- what is the legal nature of a domain name?
- what are the legal obligations of a a registry?
- what are the legal obligations of ICANN towards the public when granting 
a TLD Management?
- what are the legal obligations (US law) of a Registry towards a TLD Manager?

These questions are extremely important to ICANN and they probably are 
going to be settled through the scSLD and the IDNs cases what leaves quite 
no control to ICANN.
Interesting
jfc









--
This message was passed to you via the ga@dnso.org list.
Send mail to majordomo@dnso.org to unsubscribe
("unsubscribe ga" in the body of the message).
Archives at http://www.dnso.org/archives.html