[soac-mapo] Incitement (#6 & #14) was Re: [] RE: List of Discussion Threads

[Avri Doria <avri@xxxxxxx>]

On 1 Sep 2010, at 15:12, Gomes, Chuck wrote:
> 
>> From: evanleibovitch@xxxxxxxxx
>> Is Konstantinos'  issue of 'incitement' significantly non-redundant wrt #6?
>> 
> 
>> I wondered the same thing Evan.  It is probably up to Avri to help us decide 
>> that because I believe she is the one that raised thread # 6.  My 
>> understanding is that Avri had two concerns: 1) the use of the term 
>> ‘incitement’ and the ‘discrimination’ criteria listed.  Is that correct 
>> Avri?  Do you think it would be reasonable to combine # 6 & # 14?
>>  
> 
> #6  Incitement to discrimination criterion
> 
> #14 I would also add the use of ‘incitement’ as a term for the determination 
> of morality and public order. If I recall some of us, including myself, do 
> not see how a simple gTLD would be able to ‘incite’ any illegal activity, not 
> at least in the way the term is used in criminal law.

Well it can't be completely up to me.  Konstantinos and others would have 
something to day about it too.

I think that Konstantinos and I have somewhat different views of the same issue.

He, and others, indicate that a simple string cannot incite.  And they use the 
example of including a string in a email message on this list to prove that it 
does not incite. I countered that this is not a good example, as we are 
somewhat dispassionate (most of the time anyway) and are using the strings as 
conversational devices and examples.    They argue that it is only the content 
of a site that makes it an incitement and argue that our boundary against  
including content means incitement is not possible.

I tend to believe a string can incite and that is does not depend on the 
content of a web cite I believe that it depends on the context and the timing.  
.E.g. .bomb-all-mosques on the side of a NYC bus or .maim-all-queers on a 
billboard in Uganda or the simple word .lesbian (in Arabic) in the UAE might 
actually incite something to happen.  Given 63 characters, we can produce some 
intense text - we have already learned to change the world in 140 characters - 
we can do it in 63 almost as easily.  So I believe a phrase can incite.

My issue is that I believe that despite the power of words to incite, it is not 
relevant as a criterion for judging gTLDs.  I believe any word or phrase in the 
wrong place at the wrong time can cause incitement and that all such incitement 
is contextual.  The attribute of being able to incite does not seem useful to 
me as a criterion because it is always contextual (even without content) and 
the DNS does not have a single context.  My point has to do with questioning 
what we mean by incitement and whether we can really judge that a string will 
or will not incite as the DNS is not contextually bound. Put another way, the 
DNS can be accessed in all times and in all places, so eventually any word will 
hit the context where it incites.

So the issues may be similar and may be in the same category.  I certainly have 
no objection to including them in the same category, but then we might end up 
arguing over whether strings can incite, and not over whether that matters in 
the least.

I am fine either way.

a.