Re: [Pearg] I-D Action: draft-irtf-pearg-censorship-04.txt

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

> Il 04/08/2020 17:38 Mallory Knodel <[e-mail]> ha scritto:
> 
>  
> On 8/4/20 11:25 AM, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> 
> > So for a significant part of the Internet community these techniques can be used for legitimate purposes other than censorship, and this should be acknowledged from the beginning, agreeing that not everyone using these techniques is a censor or accepts to be depicted like that.
> 
> It's been said in this thread that censorship can be legitimate or 
> illegitimate.

But not in the draft, as far as I can recall.

> It shouldn't be the aim of this draft to talk about the censors at all, 
> nor how they'd like to be depicted. The draft is about the techniques.

The point is whether we can ever come to consensus on this draft and turn it into an RFC, which in my opinion is going to be hard if some IETF participants have to accept to be labelled as "censors" for using the techniques in the draft to, say, block access to phishing websites, or execute a court order.

On Amelia's comment - I agree, but my observation is related to types of blocked content, not to who is blocking them. Of course political censorship is still political censorship even if private parties do it, and in Italy there have been troubling cases of Facebook closing down the pages of legitimate (though personally disgusting) political parties without any kind of public scrutiny. Also, it makes sense to request accountability in any use of these techniques, to make sure that they are not surreptitiously used for political purposes. Still, this does not mean that blocking malware is censorship.

-- 
Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
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Office @ Via Treviso 12, 10144 Torino, Italy