[soac-mapo] Is selective blocking by local governments really a problem?

[Antony Van Couvering <avc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

What's the conflict between varying degrees of permissiveness and the principle 
of the single, interoperable web?

At first glance it seems intractable.  If the lowest common denominator is 
used, so that the entire world will see only what the least permissive society 
allows, then as Avri points out it would intolerable for most of us.  On the 
other hand, If local communities are not allowed to block what they deem 
offensive (e.g., much of the Internet, in the UAE's case), they will go off and 
create another Internet according to their standards, and the unified root 
remains an ideal but is no longer a reality.   To me, this has always seemed to 
be the biggest conceptual hurdle.

But the problem may not be so great.  While Evan's litany of what the UAE 
censors block is shocking to many of us, we should consider that there are 
plenty of instances in the "west" where we are not allowed to see certain 
content.   This includes financial information of others, medical records, 
anything behind a paywall, anything that requires a password that you don't 
have.   In some hotels and airline lounges, you can connect to the Internet, 
but only browse the company site until the staff gives you a code.   This is 
not what the UAE blocks (though they might block this as well), but they are 
nonetheless limitations on our ability to use the Internet.  There are many 
such examples.

In each case, you have a local community allowing some content and disallowing 
other content, for reasons of policy, morality, property, privacy and so on.   
And yet we still have a unified root and we still have national laws and 
customs.  Local communities must (and do) have the right and ability to some or 
all users from viewing certain content.  Everyone does it, for the reasons that 
appear right to them.  

From this perspective, what we ought then to consider in our group is not what 
may be sensitive or not, but rather what rises to the level where the very 
existence of the top-level domain causes damage to a large number of people.  
There are obvious examples of such TLDs.  For example, the mere fact of a TLD 
whose name mocks or incites violence against some group of people is very 
likely to be intolerable to the targeted group.   This, I think, is a 
legitimate reason for blocking a TLD application.  If the TLD name isn't in 
itself deeply offensive, then we're talking about content within the TLD, and 
at that point it's up to local authorities, and individuals who use the 
Internet, to block content that they find offensive.  That blocked content 
might even include an entire TLD -- which is kind of the premise upon which 
.XXX was built. 

This is definitely not the venue for deciding what value system is superior.  
Every society blocks some content, so far without great harm to the Internet.  
So my suggestion is that for the purposes of this group, which is dedicated to 
considering questions of morality, is that we forget about what content the TLD 
is likely to have (a guess at best), and concentrate only on the name itself.  
I think it will make our task much easier. 

Antony