----- Original Message ----- From: Jim Dixon <jdd@vbc.net> To: jim bell <jimdbell@home.com> Cc: <list@ifwp.org>; Tom Vogt <tom@ricardo.de>; <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>; <DOMAIN-POLICY@LISTS.NETSOL.COM> Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2000 4:23 AM Subject: Re: [IFWP] Re: Ken Stubbs @ core deletes vote-auction.com
On Sat, 4 Nov 2000, jim bell wrote:
ICANN needs to be taught a very painful lesson: "Even if you feel that you must obey a specific law, you must not do it without initiating a legal process and continuing it through any valid appeal. Given that the election was only a few days away, it is obvious that no such process would be completed before the point becomes moot. You screwed up."
ICANN is a California corporation subject to state and US laws. It has an obligation to obey those laws.
I think that's a slight verbal distortion. It has an obligation to -not-violate- those laws. (Most laws can't be "obeyed", per se, because they don't order you to do anything.) I haven't seen any explanation as to why any law would require ICANN to "de-list" some vote-selling website even if everybody agreed that the violation of law was occurring. (And it's hard for me to imagine that either the US Congress or the California legislature would have been so net-savvy as to even anticipate the possibility of "de-listing" any site or the "need" for such an action, by going on and passing the laws to authorize this.) ICANN could easily take the position that until it is legally informed that a site was violating US or California law by the result of an actual trial, __AND___ the law actually required ICANN to de-list such violators, it would continue to list the site. Unfortunately (well, maybe just in this case) CP is not generally populated by people who are inclined to believe that the US and California actually do have such authority currently in law, so we're not likely to hear an attempt at a contrary opinion. ICANN is clearly obeying the illegal (non-legal? Not authorized by law, etc) wishes of pissed-off politicians who have no other remedy.
There is or should be no question about this. ICANN is after all a legal fiction, a body whose very existence rests upon the authority of the state of California.
Other entities, like churches for example, exist within California but aren't especially controlled by California law. ICANN probably "needs" no greater regulation than a church does: The building it's in will probably follow California building codes, and the people who work there will pay US and California taxes. But other than this, it is unclear why ICANN should even be controllable by California law? I think the telephone-directory analogy is appropriate. Competing telephone directories exist in many areas. If a company that publishes such a directory is told that one of the listees in that directory is currently violating the law, is that directory company obligated to remove that listing? I think the answer is obviously no.
The question is whether the domain name system, the IP address space, and other fundamental Internet infrastructure should be subject to US and California law. These are global, not local, resources.
The current problem is far more egregious than merely being "subject to US and California law." I agree that once the problem of ICANN boot-licking the government officials is solved, there will still be the underlying problem of current and future claimed US and California jurisdiction. It will be necessary, for example, to prevent any legislature from passing laws which make the recent vote-buying-site de-listing possible under actual law. Jim Bell