Re: [ga] no problem with www.nukeisrael.com

["kidsearch" <kidsearch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Without free speech no search for truth is possible; without free speech,
no discovery of truth is useful."
-- Charles Bradlaugh

"Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and
assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech
to free men from the bondage of irrational fears."
-- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

"Did you ever hear anyone say 'That work had better be banned because I
might read it and it might be very dangerous to "me'?"
- Joseph Henry Jackson

"Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense,
has always been and always be the last resort of the boob and the bigot."
-- Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, American playwright

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more
justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would
be justified in silencing mankind.  ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

In my opinion, ICANN, the DoC, Tucows, any registrar, you, or I, cannot
choose what is or is not acceptable. It is up to the public and up to
individuals to do so according to their own moral compass.

--Chris McElroy--
http://www.blogs.pn



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Danny Younger" <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "Karl Auerbach" <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>; "Esther Dyson"
<edyson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "Danny Younger" <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>; <ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2006 9:41 AM
Subject: Re: [ga] no problem with www.nukeisrael.com


> Esther wrote:  "it is *not* Tucows' job to be moral
> police or vigilantes".
>
> I'd like to talk about this proposition.
>
> Recently I was contacted by a rape crisis center whose
> domain name had expired.  Upon expiration their domain
> had been snatched by a domain name monetizer that
> (1)copied their former website using a search engine
> cache in order to maintain an ongoing high level of
> traffic, and (2) added large numbers of pornographic
> links to their former website.
>
> While one could argue that no one has the job of being
> a moral policeman (let alone an innocent ISP/registrar
> that did nothing more than allow a registration to be
> processed), this particular case demonstrated just how
> easy it is to use the domain name system to further
> victimize those that have already been traumatized by
> sexual violence.
>
> What happened in this case (mostly due to automated
> processes used by domain name monetizers that generate
> links based on domain name semantic associations) was
> a tragic example of the deleterious effects that
> automated domain name monetization can impose.
>
> In this case, the registrar wasn't under any legal
> obligation to do anything (in fact, any action would
> necessarily have been on shaky legal grounds), but in
> a rare display of compassion the registrar did in fact
> take measures to address the situation by locking the
> domain.
>
> I believe that there are times when we do need to act
> as moral policemen.  There are, in fact, certain
> behaviors that are universally recognized as offensive
> or repugnant.  If a domain name advocates genocide,
> then I believe that we have a civil obligation to have
> it shut down.
>
> If we can use appendix X in a registry contract to
> reserve names such as dotprosucks, then we can
> certainly, as a matter of policy, declare that all
> domain names that promote genocide are excluded from
> registration by default.
>
>
>
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