This comment came in to me and I think it deserves attention. I agree with many of its points.

NCUC and NCSG need to push back against some of the "DNS Abuse" policies when they get into content regulation 



Dr. Milton L Mueller

School of Public Policy 

Georgia Institute of Technology





-----Original Message-----

From: Richard Hill <[log in to unmask]> 

Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2019 6:05 AM

To: Mueller, Milton L <[log in to unmask]>

Subject: DNS Blocking



Dear Milton,



I presume that you have seen this recent document published by some registries and registrars (like Amazon, GoDaddy, Tucows), concerning their role (and ICANN's) in DNS blocking. They hope it "will facilitate a productive conversation that moves the multistakeholder community forward towards a shared understanding of DNS Abuse and Website Content Abuse and the roles registrars and registries serve in addressing them." 



http://www.circleid.com/pdf/Framework_to_Address_Abuse_20191017.pdf  



Here are my comments.



I think that it is a good idea in general, but I have reservations on two of the areas which they define as Website Content Abuse on which they should act without a court order:



(2) illegal distribution of opioids online



(4) specific and credible incitements to violence



Re (2), what is an “opioid” and what is “illegal distribution”?  If you take the UN definition, you probably wind up prohibiting most everything (but I haven’t checked).  If you don’t take the UN definition, then which national definition do you use? 



Further, as far as I know, (2) is a much bigger issue in the USA than in other countries.  So maybe a national solution is in order, rather than an Internet-wide solution.



Re (4), that’s super tricky because it touches the core of free speech.  What is or is not a criminal incitation to violence varies widely across national jurisdictions. I would be OK if the proposal is to use the US definition, which is very narrow, but that’s likely not what the GAC had in mind when it stated that “those tasked with administering the DNS infrastructure” must do something.



Note that the GAC is an informal meeting of representatives of the executive branch of governments. Since it is informal, it has very little democratic accountability.  



In my view, any restrictions on freedom of speech must be subject to democratic accountability, including review by a court of law.



So I don’t think that (4) is a good idea: it opens a Pandora’s box of censorship.



Best,

Richard



PS: Thanks for the excellent debunking of the Huawei-bashing.