Re: [soac-mapo] when is a domain name "incitement" that can be prohibited?

[Stéphane Van Gelder <stephane.vangelder@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Robin, very interesting and does seem of particular relevance to this 
group's work.

I believe France has the same legal context as the US, i.e. it's only if you 
threaten to kill the President that you are breaking the law. That may however 
extend to any senior member of government, I am not sure. The real crime here, 
as far as France is concerned anyway, being insulting the nation and not 
insulting the person in question.

In any case, when threats of this kind are made against someone who is not a 
member of government, even though it is not against the law, it may go against 
our idea of morality. Public threats against anyone's life are offensive to me, 
but that is a matter of personal ethics.

So I would not like a threatening gTLD to be allowed through ICANN's 
application process unchecked. If that was a possibility, I would hope that 
some kind of mechanism be in place to allow me to challenge that application.

Stéphane


Le 15 janv. 2011 à 19:45, Robin Gross a écrit :

> Interesting real world development of relevance to the discussion on the 
> legal standard of incitement / instigation to commit violence.
> 
> The words "kill x" alone is not incitement under US law that can be 
> prohibited (unless x is Obama).
> 
> Robin
> 
> .........
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/14/death-threat-domain-names_n_809174.html
> 
> Death Threat Domain Names: Registrar Says Killjulianassange.com Will Not Be 
> Removed
> 
> The Huffington Post  Lila Shapiro Posted: 01/14/11 03:23 PM
> 
> BoingBoing has a quick post up today claiming that "Registering death threats 
> as domain names is the hot new thing in psychopathic anti-Wikileaks action!"
> 
> According to vivantleakers.org -- a new site created to track "cyber-bullying 
> domain names of wikileaks associates" -- multiple death-threat domain names 
> have been registered going after Wikileaks director Julian Assange. 
> Killjulianassange.com and julianassangemustdie.com are recently registered 
> examples, although they have no content on them at this time.
> 
> Go Daddy, the site which registered both killjulianassange.com and 
> julianassangemustdie.com said there is nothing that can be done about either 
> site while they are contentless. Go Daddy registers a domain name every .8 
> seconds -- any domain name can be registered and there is no human 
> intervention.
> 
> "Unless and until there is content associated with killjulianassange.com 
> there is no way for us to know what that means," said Christine Jones, Go 
> Daddy's General Counsel. "There's no way to judge whether there's going to be 
> something done with that domain name or if it is going to be violating any 
> rule."
> 
> In the past week, Go Daddy has received numerous calls regarding the death 
> threat domain names, but the company has no intention of taking action at 
> this time. The one exception to this, Jones said, would be a domain name 
> death threat for the President, "if the secret service contacted us, we would 
> almost certainly take action on those domain names."
> 
> Assange is no stranger to death threats of the old fashioned kind either. In 
> an online chat with the Guardian Assange wrote that anyone making threats 
> against his life should be charged with incitement to murder: "The threats 
> against our lives are a matter of public record, however, we are taking the 
> appropriate precautions to the degree that we are able when dealing with a 
> superpower."
> 
> Domain name attacks have become increasingly popular in a wide range of 
> scenarios.
> 
> To prepare for an allegedly forthcoming WikiLeak which will supposedly reveal 
> troves of highly sensitive information, Bank of America reportedly bought up 
> scores of domain names that are critical of the bank and CEO Brian Moynihan.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> IP JUSTICE
> Robin Gross, Executive Director
> 1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA  94117  USA
> p: +1-415-553-6261    f: +1-415-462-6451
> w: http://www.ipjustice.org     e: robin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
> 
>