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

["Michele Neylon :: Blacknight" <michele@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 30 Aug 2010, at 21:58, Antony Van Couvering wrote:

> 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.

I could add a few others .. 

Schools and educational institutions in Ireland impose limitations on what 
students can access. 

A lot of businesses restrict what their staff can access

And the entire filtering debate is kicking off again over here .. .. 

> 
> 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

Mr Michele Neylon
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