Why should governments stay silent on .xxx

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 23 May 2006 14:12

Opinion and Analysis

As usual, the US Government has been portrayed as the bad guy, riding roughshod over the hapless ICANN board. ICANN is supposed to be an independent international body. However,  can a 14-person board be truly independent when we're talking about a communications medium that spans the planet?

Each nation has its government with its own set of rules and regulations governing communications policy. Governments have found the internet, because of its nature, a most difficult medium to regulate. Even in countries like China, where the media is tightly controlled, the Government has difficulty policing content published to and accessed through the internet at times.

Witness the continued proliferation of spam, despite the best efforts of the US Government to crack down on incorrigible junk mailers. One of the few areas where there is a measure of control that can be exercised over the operation of the net is in the assignment of domains.

Reportedly, when it became known that a proposal for a .xxx domain was before ICANN, the US Government was swamped with protests from special interest groups from all quarters. Both the net nannies and the porn industry were opposed to it - each for their own reasons. Governments of other countries, besides the US, such as Brazil, Denmark, Sweden, the UK and Australia were also concerned about the establishment of the domain.

Thus, we have the governments of at least six modern democracies, all with high proportions of internet users, opposed to the creation of a new domain containing pornography. Each government was elected democratically and therefore had a mandate to represent the views of its citizens.

Governments of democracies like the US are elected to enact laws and determine policies. To expect them to just shut up and not to have any say about the proposed creation of a controversial domain like .xxx that affects their individual constituencies is stupid.

To talk about the independence of 14 people in charge of the governance of a global network servicing more than 1 billion people is ridiculous. Would we really want an elite council of 14 to be answerable to no-one? Who elected them? Not rank and file internet users.

For the EU to say publicly that the .xxx vote was a case of political interference by the US is ludicrous. For a start, the company that lodged the application is based in the US. Two longstanding EU members were also publicly against the establishment of the .xxx domain and, unlike the UN, the IOC and ICANN, at least their governments were elected.