Re: [HR-rt] [hrpc] [regext] Human Rights Review of draft-ietf-regext-verificationcode

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

>     Il 3 ottobre 2018 alle 15.42 Niels ten Oever < [e-mail] mailto:[e-mail] > ha scritto:
> 
> 
>     On Wed, Oct 03, 2018 at 01:14:10PM +0000, Gould, James wrote:
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>         > > 
> >     > 
>         > >         The draft is intended for interoperability and is independent of the verification process.
> > 
> >     > 
>     I am a bit confused with your reasoning that the verificationcode extension has is independent from the implementation of this extension, because the extension exists to enable implementation, right? Why else would it exist?
> 
> 
>         > >         The EPP extension takes no position on specific verification processes which are a "local matter" for the implementation.
> > 
> >     >     The EPP extension does enable it, so it does have a position on it.
> 
This exchange strikes me because of the discussion that we have been having on content tagging on HRPC (Nalini, Barry and I are still working on it).

So my question is: is any protocol that supports additional points of content control at the national level favouring censorship, and thus inherently bad and contrary to human rights?

Or even, if you prefer: is all censorship inherently bad? More specifically, if the national government or policy verification authority used the proposed EPP extension to block the registration of lets-kill-all-the-jews.cctld or child-pornography-for-everyone.cctld, is it censoring the Internet, or is it just doing its job on behalf of its citizens?

And in that context, shouldn't the right to free expression of the user be balanced with the right to cultural and legal sovereignty of that country's citizens, which may end up establishing laws which legitimately make some content illegal in their country? (not to mention the rights of the people that may be harmed by the circulation of certain content)

All in all, and with no offense for the reviewer's laudable efforts, the assessment in the review that any local point of control is bad because it could be used to harm someone's rights is IMHO too simplistic: it could also be used to defend someone else's rights.

Regards,

--

Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
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