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NSI challenged over "obscene" domains
drwiii writes "news.com has a news tidbit about NSI going to court because of their refusal to register domain names that they feel are "obscene".
" What's amusing to me is the steady flow of words
that I hear about that are rejected, considering the
relative naughtiness of many existing domains.
Only with passing amusement do I take note that the InterNIC is now refusing to register certain domain names (after those with close association the former IANA, the IETF and other important satellite organizations cahsed in on the domain registration process prior when it first opened it's doors to any old joe).
What I think is a more important aspect of this case is using legal means to disassemble the current little top down, nepotistic, insider trading, self-agrandizing little circle jerk that currenly has control.
Things went way wrong about 4 to 5 years ago and have been allowed to continue along that path for far too long. The InterNIC/NSI desire to disassociate itself from from the tar pit of legal action points to the best way to attack a corrupt, service poor monopoly (and anyone who thinks the latest decision to allow third party registars to feed the NSI machine will solve all the current problems created by NSI's monopoly is smoking crack).
Kasparoff, AlterNIC and everyone else has been pursing purly geek solutions. Well, the news is that the head geeks that thought the internet up have designed it so that it can't be re-asembled without their permission (using their tools, which now have the market's code/mindshare). But, geeks are geeks no matter what... and they always fail to expect (no, not the Spanish Inquisition) the legal remedies that are avalable to non-geeks when their closed little geek circle jerk starts to depart too far from known reality.
Hopefully this will be opening of the floodgate that causing SAIC to drop ownership of NSI and forces the current designers of the internet (v1, v2 and beyond) to develope a methods that respect decentralized competitive systems.
As much as I hate to make lawyers rich, I hope some street-fighting, class-action consumer oriented lawyers put SAIC/NSI's ass in a sling on this one.
(a) the domain names don't physically EXIST in America
(b) there is no way for the plaintif to prove their computer exists in America, either
(c) the Internet is international, and the US constitution does not apply to international dealings, and
(d) the Internet is supposed to be an anarchy, so the law doesn't apply to them, anyway.
On the other, the whole thing is plainly stupid.
The problem is, the people registering the domain names the NSI are censoring are EXACTLY the same sorts of people who have exploited or claimed at least one of those four points, when it benefitted them to do so.
Therein lies the dilema. The Internet is ideally deregulated and free, but if you chase that ideal so that YOU can do anything you like, you need to remember - so can they. And if you don't like it, you can't do any more than they can, if they don't.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
As others have noted, the original rationalisation for the FCC's restriction on radio/TV speech was the limited broadcast spectrum available. Spectrum is a public good, and some regulation does make sense, particularly to ensure free public access rather than having it totally owned and dominated by large corporations appealing to the least common denominator. (This is a very republican notion, in keeping with the Constitution, which limits direct democracy on the same grounds.) Consider the decline in the quality of radio programming since the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996 loosened ownership restrictions and increased market concentration.
:-)
The problem we face as proponents of online freedom is that existing legal precedent cannot be easily applied to the Internet. It is funded partly by public money and partly by private money. Its organisation stretches analogies to other media beyond reasonable applicability. For example, bandwidth is in a sense limited, but as a user/listener/viewer-controlled medium that traffic is allocated by consumers, not producers. Moreover bandwidth is not permanently fixed by the laws of physics, but rather can be added on demand. It is an international medium. Hence the clear public interest in regulation does not pertain.
There is also a fundamental contradiction in NSI insisting that they are a private enterprise not subject to the same First Amendment standard as a government body, and in acting as a regulator like the FCC. Worse, by establishing themselves as a regulatory body, they've violated any pretense at common-carrier privileges and could be held liable in any number of interesting ways for domain names that others find offensive. Oops.
One might argue that NSI should be compelled to divest control of the root database into a non-profit organisation tasked with minimising the administrative costs of root service. No single organisation (even a nonprofit and especially a bureacracy) will ever have the incentive to actually attain this minimum, and yet the difficulty of maintaining multiple databases for the same TLD appears to make a market solution impossible. Perhaps a nonprofit root service funded by for-profit domain registrars, who would have an incentive to force down root server costs, is the best we can hope for.
Why is it that almost every week now I hear new alligations concerning NSI's policies. Why does NSI seem to think they are a completly independent buisness under the same regulations as any other buisness. I mean get real they are a government appointed monopoly, essentially a utility. Being a buisness gives you the right to essentially turn any customer away as long as you have a set legal policy and non descrimitory guidlines for doing so. But this is essentially a utility ladies and gentlemen. They have to follow federal government rules meaning.... The Contitution.. Just wish public schools did this hehe (grins at JonKatz)
Huddleston said that domain name was registered before the 1996 installation of the automated registration system. She said the name will be denied when it comes up for renewal.
So just how do they justify refusal to renew a domain that they have ALREADY registered. As the owner of several domains, I don't like the idea that NSI can pull the rug out from under them just because they *don't like them*.
I've been a domain admin for a few years (my InterNIC handle is just TDP... no numbers). I'm really beginning to miss The Good Old Days when politicians didn't even know the Internet existed, spam email was virtually unheard of, and InterNIC was not run by a bunch of assholes.
Thad
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