[HN Gopher] ICANN Refuses to Accredit Pirate Bay Founder Peter S...
___________________________________________________________________
ICANN Refuses to Accredit Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Due to His
'Background'
Author : input_sh
Score : 683 points
Date : 2021-03-03 10:41 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| dgudkov wrote:
| I guess every public internet policy should now include a clause
| such as "We reserve the right to not do any business with you if
| we don't like you, regardless of any other provision of the
| policy".
|
| At least, it will be honest.
|
| PS. Variations may include: "...if we don't like you OR we don't
| like anyone you like...".
| buro9 wrote:
| That's already in most policies without qualifying it's because
| they don't like you.
|
| Here's an example:
|
| > We also reserve the right to modify or discontinue the
| Service at any time (including, without limitation, by limiting
| or discontinuing certain features of the Service) without
| notice to you. We will have no liability whatsoever on account
| of any change to the Service or any suspension or termination
| of your access to or use of the Service
|
| The right is reserved, no need to give any reason.
| progre wrote:
| https://www.icann.org/registrar-reports/accreditation-qualif...
|
| I doubt that every individual connected to these organizations
| have a spot free reputation, so ICANN is really putting
| themselves in a weird position by singling out Sunde.
| newsclues wrote:
| He denies that assumption in the Twitter thread
| notahacker wrote:
| I suspect not many of those other registrars are run by people
| able to use the line "they were also unhappy I was wanted by
| Interpol"...
| chmod775 wrote:
| It's weird to hold that against someone though. Interpol is
| not judiciary. It's not even proper part of any executive.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Guilty untill proven innocent?
| notahacker wrote:
| No, guilty as found by a court that handed him an eight
| month jail sentence. Even if you think that was unfair and
| his Pirate Bay enterprise was generally a good thing for
| content discovery, it's unsurprising that an organisation
| for the administration of intellectual property doesn't
| consider an enterprise run by someone with a conviction for
| criminal copyright infringement suitable for its partner
| list.
| toyg wrote:
| But it was 15+ years ago. I guess they don't believe in
| rehabilitation... Can US companies discriminate on the
| basis of such ancient history?
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| The US doesn't do "rehabilitation", they only do
| punishment, and it's ad infinitum.
| jedimastert wrote:
| Yes, yes they can. Felons are second-class citizens in
| the US.
| lupire wrote:
| Had he ever claimed to be rehabilitated?
|
| He's an active member of a political party named after
| his criminal enterprise.
|
| You may think he's morally right, but he broke the law
| and as far as I know never repented his choice.
| rakoo wrote:
| So, what's the point of punishment if you can't be
| rehabilitated anyway ? Why bother deciding on the exact
| perimeter of a sentence if the only thing that will
| matter is a boolean ?
| notahacker wrote:
| Believe it or not, the criteria for an entity to trust
| someone enough to grant them the privilege of accrediting
| them as a domain registrar can be somewhat different from
| the criteria the state uses to decide whether it is cruel
| and unusual not to release them from prison. The fact
| some people can be rehabilitated, doesn't mean that they
| always are, or that keeping people in jail indefinitely
| because they haven't said sorry is a proportional
| punishment/deterrent. The social consensus you're arguing
| against is that the range of attitudes towards people
| convicted of crimes shouldn't be as simple as a boolean
| updating from INCARCERATE to MAXIMUM TRUST on the date
| they say sorry.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| The problem is not their opinion, its their inordinate
| extrajudicial power to extend punishment indefinitely
| upon people which have already paid their debt to
| society, at the behest of corporations.
| notahacker wrote:
| Sure, if you consider "concluding someone convicted by
| due process of offence against IP who continues to
| ridicule the concept of IP unsuitable for accreditation
| to administer IP" to be 'indefinite punishment' which
| seems more than a little hyperbolic.
|
| For related reasons, if you're convicted of creating
| malware and continue to loudly and publicly defend the
| principle of creating malware after your release, it's
| not cruel and unusual punishment if tech companies won't
| give partner certifications to your software consultancy
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Criteria used by the state are examined by an impartial
| judge, publically, and must be proven beyong reasonable
| doubt.
|
| Criteria used by ICANN are unaccountable, capricious and
| prone to abuse of power
|
| The argument is about due process.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| The political party is actually legitimate, is in power
| in Prague (they run the city) and is an indication that
| he is now acting legally. So yes.
| withinboredom wrote:
| My [censored, someone close to me] can't even get a
| passport because of something that happened when he was
| 20. He's more than twice that age now.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| The US (from what I hear) in particular seems to be
| atrocious at rehabilitation.
| veeti wrote:
| They are a private organization and have a right to choose who to
| do business with. /s
| 4cao wrote:
| > Over the phone, ICANN explained that the matter was discussed
| internally. This unnamed group of people concluded that the
| organization is 'not comfortable' doing business with him.
|
| It's the height of arrogance that they didn't even feel the need
| to come up with any better excuse, just this. And of course:
|
| > ICANN will also keep the registration fee
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Well, be careful. This is according to Sunde. We don't know
| what they said or for that matter, if IVANN even called him.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Even without the particularly damming phone call, the ICANN
| looks fairly terrible in this exchange.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Again, particularly damning according to one person.
| 4cao wrote:
| ICANN were asked to comment on the story but chose not to do
| so. If they have anything to say, they are free to issue a
| statement anytime. Meanwhile, what we know so far, together
| with their lack of response, should be more than enough to
| have an opinion about the whole situation.
| jmull wrote:
| You can form your opinion based on anything you want...
|
| But if you do it based on an unsubstantiated semi-
| incoherent one-sided account, I think we can safely say you
| don't care about the truth of the matter.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| Could you back up "semi incoherent"? His story reads
| perfectly reasonable to me.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _But if you do it based on an unsubstantiated semi-
| incoherent one-sided account, I think we can safely say
| you don 't care about the truth of the matter._
|
| So, people or groups are immune from criticism as long as
| they refuse to speak on the issue? I guess that's one
| stance to take.
| jmull wrote:
| Of course not. But I don't think there's a logical
| connection between that and what I said.
| rimiform wrote:
| I think that's precisely what ICANN was going for.
| Reacting to it, in the eyes of some people, implies
| there's at least some truth to what the other party said.
| sodality2 wrote:
| No response is a response.
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| ICANN't is a corrupt scam, and everyone who follows Internet
| issues knows it.
|
| They're continually coming up with new rip-offs to get people
| or organizations to apply for and then keep the astronomical
| fee after rejecting the application. Registrars, TLD owners...
|
| Oh yeah, the "unlimited" TLD scam was one of the most
| offensive. They made it look like they were finally going to do
| the right thing and get rid of canned TLDs... but nope.
|
| ICANN should be abolished. What should replace it? I don't
| know.
| Traster wrote:
| I'd like to hear a statement from ICANN regarding this before I
| jump to any conclusions, so far TF seem to just be repeating
| whatever Sunde tells them without any other sources. There's
| about a thousand different reasons I could see ICANN rejecting
| Sunde's company depending on how the appliction process went.
| toyg wrote:
| Sunde understands the value of propaganda, so it's fairly obvious
| he expected this outcome. He wanted to highlight the undemocratic
| and corrupt nature of one of the most critical parts of our
| global infrastructure, and he did it.
|
| Ironically, this was a better proof of transparency than what
| most "problematic" people would subject themselves to. If any
| vanilla oligarch wanted to be in those circles, he would just pay
| some squeaky-clean individual to be his stooge, and then make it
| known, after registration, who the real power is. Sunde could
| have configured himself as a freelance consultant to his friends,
| and he would not have appeared on any radar. This would have made
| his business work, but it would not have advanced the perennial
| conversation about ICANN's _original sins_ , which have become
| more and more untolerable with the years.
|
| ICANN were pretty stupid to just veto his admission. That's not
| how you deal with institutional critics. They could have simply
| brought him in, then informally and formally vetoed anything he
| wanted to do. They have experience with people who tried to blow
| up things "from inside" in the past, so clearly they've developed
| countermeasures ready for that scenario. Or they could have given
| him something, enough to behold him, so he'd have an incentive to
| stay in the tent and piss outside rather than the other way
| around.
|
| This attitude proved Sunde is fundamentally right on the subject
| matter, like him or not as a person.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "They have experience with people who tried to blow up things
| "from inside" in the past, so clearly they've developed
| countermeasures ready for that scenario."
|
| Who are some people who tried to "blow things up from inside"?
|
| This sounds like it would make for an interesting HN
| discussion.
|
| I vaguely recall a CEO they had who, after leaving, asked to
| see the books and was stymied.
| seph-reed wrote:
| > he'd have an incentive to stay in the tent and piss outside
| rather than the other way around.
|
| Thanks for this one. I could always use more comically vulgar
| metaphors.
| toyg wrote:
| Blame Lyndon B. Johnson (and Edgar J. Hoover, the guy he was
| referring to) in 1971.
| nabla9 wrote:
| I have no ill will against Sunde, I have used Piratebay from
| the start.
|
| But denying application because you have a conviction is
| completely fair and expected. They have that box in the
| application for reason.
|
| Sunde choose pirate life. Crying about how you can't be
| respected businessman and convicted pirate is just pathetic.
| oscargrouch wrote:
| Sorry to say that, but this is 'ur-fascism' at its best.
|
| The difference here is that the nazi's pre-condemned anyone
| who were of a give ethnic background(jews) or believe
| (communists).
|
| Unlike them, you are praying that the society condemn over
| prejudice, people based on their past behavior, placing a
| star on their chest and denying them basic rights, which may
| start with "innocent" rights like these being taken from
| them.
|
| You can only punish people when a considered criminal
| activity occurs, never assuming someone have ill intentions
| over their past behavior and therefore should be denied the
| rights of whatever is being negotiated.
|
| Don't forget either that with such laws and ethical triggers
| in place governments, companies and individuals might just
| game the system and threat someone by forcing him into prison
| for bogus reason destroying his life even after he is free.
| (And how can we call this dystopian reality freedom?)
|
| BTW The Sunde prison is exactly this case, but there are even
| more proeminent cases as Assange or Snowden.
|
| Your are talking only about ICANN here of course, but the
| core of the issue you are defending here will inevitable lead
| to the consequences i'm exposing above.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Any conviction in any country?
| FpUser wrote:
| >"But denying application because you have a conviction is
| completely fair and expected. They have that box in the
| application for reason."
|
| Nope. Whatever he did he had paid for it. With the very rare
| exceptions those checkboxes should not be allowed at all.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Then broaden rules to disrespect people and you're set.
| bborud wrote:
| I'd have to agree. If you are going to become a trusted party
| in a context where people have to trust that you are willing
| to follow rules, even when you may disagree with them, then
| you will have a problem with someone whose identity is to not
| follow rules.
|
| I'm sure Sunde would agree that he doesn't follow the rules
| if he disagrees with them. And proudly so.
|
| One may have one's own opinion on why he did this and whether
| or not anyone turning it into publicity gold by being
| outraged is a naive moron, but one would, of course, keep
| those opinions to oneself. :-)
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Wait, if I crossed a street on red signal, I now have a
| stigma for life for not following rules?
| bborud wrote:
| No, but if you were someone infamous for ignoring traffic
| rules systematically over many years, because you thought
| that there should be no traffic rules, resulting in very
| visible legal wrangling, it would be optimistic of you to
| apply for a position as someone who administers driving
| tests.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| You extended to rules in general, not some specific
| rules.
| gknoy wrote:
| As long as you administer the tests properly, I shouldn't
| care whether you oppose the basis for those tests
| politically.
| hvdijk wrote:
| They don't have "that" box in the application (whether you
| have a conviction). They have a different box in the
| application (whether you have a conviction for fraud or
| similar) that according to the story, ICANN agree Sunde did
| not need to check.
| honkycat wrote:
| How far into the future should a criminal be an outcast? 5
| years? 10 years? 20 years? Forever?
| Zak wrote:
| As I understood the article, the application asks about
| convictions for _fraud_. Sunde was convicted of criminal
| copyright infringement, which is not fraud nor substantially
| similar.
|
| A "no convicted felons" rule might be entirely reasonable,
| but it doesn't appear they have one, and they should not move
| the goalposts after an application (with a fee) has been
| submitted.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| Punishing people for having been punished is not "completely
| fair". It's irrational, vindictive and counter productive.
|
| Convicted people do not simply disappear when you take away
| their options.
| mrweasel wrote:
| He has been punished for his wrong doing, which had nothing
| to do with DNS. The least ICANN could do it tell Sunde
| exactly what they are affaird he'll do to misuse an
| accreditation. Some one with an accreditation sold Sunde and
| team piratebay.org, so they can't be worried that he'll
| register a ton of pirate domains, he can easily get those
| elsewhere.
|
| People shouldn't be punished for life, especially not by
| excluding them from areas that are completely unrelated.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Ah, right, ICANN is run by IP lawyers, the pirate bay is
| not relevant to DNS, but is relevant to those IP lawyers,
| that's why they don't like him:
| https://nitter.dark.fail/i/status/1366522131811627009
|
| Also https://njal.la/blog/we-dont-have-enemies/ - another
| reason to dislike him.
| nabla9 wrote:
| > People shouldn't be punished for life,
|
| You don't want to allow convicted people operate domain
| registrars. You don't want to give banking license to a
| convicted felon.
|
| It's very common practice to deny convicted people access
| to positions that require some amount of trust for the rest
| of their life.
| [deleted]
| klibertp wrote:
| > It's very common practice
|
| In certain parts of the world. Meanwhile, the rest of the
| world doesn't try to ruin the whole lives of people who
| made a mistake and _already paid for it_ by serving their
| time in prison (or whatever the court ruled).
|
| I find the idea that a single crime you commited makes
| you somehow less of a human being incredibly backwards
| and brutal. Plus, it seems to be not very effective.
|
| From what I read there are complex socio-economic reasons
| for the system to be shaped that way, but from an
| outsider perspective - so without caring about said
| reasons - it looks absolutely crazy.
| LocalH wrote:
| Your mindset is part of the problem. Please look outside
| your box.
| jrockway wrote:
| You say "you" but I have no particular complaints about
| letting someone who ran a Bittorrent tracker run a DNS
| registry. They committed a thought crime, not a murder.
| If their DNS registry is mismanaged, I can easily take my
| business elsewhere. What's next, you can't get a job
| because you got a parking ticket one time? Why would you
| let someone who can't read parking signs write software,
| after all?
|
| I'd prefer to get some data on what the risk is here.
| Among criminals, how many commit their second crime while
| running a DNS registry? If we don't know, I am not sure
| it's rational to give someone a life sentence in that
| domain. It's just punitive, not intelligent risk
| management.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Perhaps we can make this a little easier and more obvious
| for people?
|
| How about when you're convicted of an offense you have to
| wear a letter on your chest representing that offense?
| The shame and additional punishment should go on
| indefinitely long after the actual punishment has ended,
| right?
| hvdijk wrote:
| In the country I grew up in, the Netherlands, not only is
| that not common practice, it cannot happen at all. What
| we have is people can ask the Ministry of Justice for a
| "Verklaring Omtrent het Gedrag (VOG)", a declaration by
| the ministerial department that there are no relevant
| convictions that would get in the way of the job or role
| they are applying for. If you have no convictions, you
| get your VOG. If you have convictions but they are not
| relevant to the job or role you are applying for, you get
| the exact same VOG that you would if you have no
| convictions, so that there is no way for employers to
| know the difference. Your employer is not allowed to ask
| you directly about a criminal history (at least not in a
| job interview), they are only allowed to ask for a VOG.
| Yes, that means you can get a banking license with a
| criminal history, if the Ministry has decided that that
| criminal history is irrelevant. With a conviction for
| fraud, you won't get that license. With a conviction for
| assault, you might. That seems like a much fairer system
| to me and I wish more countries would adopt it.
| mcguire wrote:
| How does the Ministry of Justice go about deciding
| whether a conviction is relevant to the job or not? Is
| that process transparent?
| consp wrote:
| In addition to that, most criminal convictions have a
| limitation on how long they count towards your VOG. In
| most cases they look back 4 years, 2 for younger people
| (till 23) There are exceptions like in transport
| (taxi/truck) and high integrity functions like lawyers
| and interpreters (10 years) and people convicted of sex
| offences (10 years or longer depending on the function).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > In most cases they look back 4 years, 2 for younger
| people (till 23)
|
| So if you're 22, the crime you committed when you were 19
| won't count against you, but when you turn 23, it starts
| counting again?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >people can ask the Ministry of Justice for...
|
| And what kind of results do they get? (I'm genuinely
| asking)
|
| Any time I hear about a "you can apply for X" series of
| bureaucratic hoops one can jump though I can't help but
| wonder if it's like getting a building permit in SF or a
| handgun license in NYC where only the people who've made
| the right donations to the right people can get what they
| want and everyone else gets the bureaucratic run around.
| Vinnl wrote:
| As I remember it you submit a web form, pay 25 euro, then
| it's sent to you or your employer. Either way everyone
| can get one, no special hoops or donations required.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| I'm reminded of the way health concerns are handled for
| pilots. As I understand it, you get your medical from an
| authorized doctor, and that certifies that in health
| terms you're fit for the job. Different roles require
| different levels of medical certificate. With that done,
| your employer has no business prying further regarding
| your health.
| duckfang wrote:
| I think the system in the Netherlands uses a lot more
| secrecy surrounding the courts systems. In those cases,
| secrecy is default.. SO having a bureaucratic branch
| dedicated to determining relevant convictions makes
| sense.
|
| In the USA, came from the UK which was known (in the
| 1700's) for having secret trials, secret evidence, secret
| witnesses, and secret punishments. So the founders built
| this system to be transparent in many ways. And that
| meant public recording of crimes. Fast forward a few
| hundred years, and this computing thing takes off, and
| records everywhere are put in a system and easily
| searchable.
|
| Having the secret system in place in the Netherlands and
| the transparent/easily searchable system in the USA don't
| really mix all to well.
|
| (Admittedly, much of the courts systems are still opaque
| as mud, but some important parts are constitutional -
| like seeing/questioning witnesses, jury of your peers,
| etc)
| crumbshot wrote:
| Though in this case the transparency is one-sided: ICANN
| can gather all manner of information on Sunde, but Sunde
| is denied any detailed explanation from ICANN on exactly
| why his application was denied. Just this rather opaque
| reason of them being "not comfortable" with him operating
| a domain registrar.
| hvdijk wrote:
| Note that there is no secrecy _during_ court proceedings
| in the Netherlands: court proceedings are ordinarily open
| to the public. There are exceptions for family affairs
| (such as divorces), tax affairs, and criminal cases
| against minors, but otherwise you are free to watch a
| court proceeding if you like. Source, in Dutch:
| https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/rechtspraak-en-
| gesc... The only secrecy is _after_ court proceedings,
| and even then, only as far as for the identities of the
| people are involved: court rulings are regularly
| published online at https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/,
| easily searchable, with just the names of people and
| identifying information redacted.
| chokeartist wrote:
| Interesting. Is the design something along the lines of
| "we want to keep people informed, but not be the sparking
| catalyst of mobs/witchhunts"?
|
| I imagine if you have a valid reason and petition the
| court you can have the identity revealed?
| hvdijk wrote:
| mpol already answered part of the design here about the
| need for privacy for the people involved; it is a
| balancing of priorities, both transparency in the
| judicial system and that privacy are important and this
| is a way of getting both.
|
| About your other question though: one of the courts
| states in an answer to one of their frequently asked
| questions, https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie-en-
| contact/Organisati..., that a copy of a verdict will
| _always_ be anonymised. No suggestions are made for when
| you want to apply for an exception to that rule and I
| suspect it is not possible at all. I am also struggling
| to come up with a valid reason for such a request; if it
| is indeed impossible, that might not be a problem.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| How do they handle requests to view information about
| court cases currently in progress?
|
| Example: I own and live in a condo apartment in a housing
| complex where the legal entities for my building and four
| other buildings are all members of one overall legal
| entity for the complex. Some of the other legal entities,
| and some of their administrators, are currently suing the
| overall legal entity with various claims. The management
| notified all owners that this was happening, as they're
| required by law to do, but didn't give the full
| complaint. (They did name the individuals and legal
| entities who filed suit, including the administrator
| roles of the individuals.) I'd like to read the full
| details.
|
| Where I live, I can go to the public library or the
| courthouse, search for the involved parties in a
| database, and read the specifics. I don't have to prove
| that I am indirectly a partial owner of the entity being
| sued (though I am); this is available to the general
| public.
|
| How would this work in the Netherlands if public access
| is anonymized?
| hvdijk wrote:
| I imagine the reason your laws only requires a
| notification that a court case is happening, without
| details, is because all the information is already public
| anyway and you can look up anything you need, so I expect
| that if Dutch law has similar provisions, it would
| require more details to be shared with you. However, this
| is just guessing, I have no experience with this, sorry.
| mpol wrote:
| Two basic ideas come to mind. We want suspects not have
| their life destroyed if they are found not guilty. And
| after you have done your sentence, you should be free to
| have a normal life again.
|
| For some people and some cases this is not possible.
| Sometimes there is a publicly known person involved, like
| the case of Keith Bakker which is in the Dutch news
| today. He has been a lot on TV in the past. Another case
| was the killing of Pim Fortuyn, a well-known politician,
| where everybody knows the name of the killer and he is
| now somewhat forced to live in another country. Mostly
| the news talk about Jos B. or similar semi-private
| namings. People closely involved know who it is about,
| but it doesn't need to be on TV or in the newspaper.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _You don 't want to give banking license to a convicted
| felon._
|
| Why not? "Convicted felon" encompasses a lot. Being
| convicted of felony drug possession when you were 19, for
| example, has very little to do with one's ability or
| trustworthiness to run a bank.
|
| Sure, maybe we don't give banking licenses to people who
| have committed financial crimes (though a lot of corrupt
| investment bank executives seem to have no problem doing
| business), but that's not the same thing.
|
| This idea that committing a crime should lock people out
| of many life activities is one of the things that leads
| them to committing more crimes. The punishment was a fine
| or jail time; let's stop punishing people for the rest of
| their lives.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| This was also the ACB take on Second Amendment rights
| which you may remember from recent confirmation hearings:
| yes, we can let felons have guns, because a felony
| "includes everything from Kanter's offense, mail fraud,
| to selling pigs without a license in Massachusetts,
| redeeming large quantities of out-of-state bottle
| deposits in Michigan, and countless other state and
| federal offenses." Thus it's very poorly related to the
| risk levels involved. (DC vs Heller.)
|
| Overreliance on the category "felon" also shows up in a
| recent Gorsuch take on the Fourth Amendment: "We live in
| a world in which everything has been criminalized. And
| some professors have even opined that there's not an
| American alive who hasn't committed a felony in some--
| under some state law. And in a world like that, why
| doesn't it make sense to retreat back to the original
| meaning of the Fourth Amendment, which I'm going to
| oversimplify, but generally says that you get to go into
| a home without a warrant if the officer sees a violent
| action or something that's likely to lead to imminent
| violence... Why isn't that the right approach? (Lange v.
| California)
| 3np wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're aware, but this is a very US
| thing. In Europe it's not even uncommon with laws against
| discriminating on these grounds as well.
|
| An entity as ICANN should not necessarily be based on US
| norms.
| wott wrote:
| > I'm not sure if you're aware, but this is a very US
| thing. In Europe it's not even uncommon with laws against
| discriminating on these grounds as well.
|
| As (almost) always when "Europe" comes up in the comments
| of this site to oppose it with the USA: *Europe is not a
| thing* (as in: it is not an homogenous thing at all, it
| covers many different countries with many different
| situations, laws and everything).
|
| At least in France, quite many jobs require a criminal
| record to be presented, to check that you were not
| sentenced for a crime/offence deemed incompatible with
| the specific position.
|
| It is less invasive, and less public than in the USA, but
| it pretty well exists and is perfectly legal.
| 3np wrote:
| That conflation is another of my pet peeves, so thanks
| for clarifying.
| inopinatus wrote:
| It's also very common to misuse criminal justice systems
| to control dissidents, ethnic groups, women etc. A
| strategy beloved of bigots and reactionaries,
| authoritarians and totalitarians, from Mississippi to
| Moscow.
|
| Which is why this notion stinks.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > You don't want to allow [...]
|
| Yes I do. A Judge decided what was a fair punishment for
| the offense. They sat through an entire trial and made a
| decision about what was an appropriate sentencing.
|
| Once that appropriate sentence has been serve there
| should be no further punishment. If the Judge decides the
| felon should never be able to work in banking they can,
| in most countries, make that happen.
|
| What's the point of having a judicial system if everyone
| is going to take the matter in their own hands anyway?
| [deleted]
| mordae wrote:
| In Czechia, you can ask the court to erase your criminal
| record. They usually comply after the same amount of
| years that was your original sentence. Meaning that after
| spending 3 years in prison, the criminal record stays
| with you further 3 years and after that if there is no
| reason to keep it and you ask for it, it gets erased.
|
| Well, erased is not really exact. It won't be accessible
| by anyone and you will have the right to be treated as if
| you were never convicted.
|
| So, Peter's original sentence was like 8 months? After so
| many years I believe nobody should hold his TPB
| involvement against him anymore.
| norenh wrote:
| In Sweden they are removed from the public records
| (belastningsregistret) based on various criteria. A
| completed prison sentence would normally be removed 10
| years after the sentence has been completed. Sources (in
| Swedish): https://lagen.nu/1998:620#P17
| https://polisen.se/tjanster-
| tillstand/belastningsregistret/g...
| andrewzah wrote:
| So serving a prison sentence is not enough in this case?
| If someone is convicted of things like pirating, we
| should punish them permanently in random domains for the
| rest of their life? Gee, I wonder why recidivism rates
| are so high...
| varajelle wrote:
| That's right. Having a criminal record will make it more
| difficult to get a visa, get certain types of jobs, get
| Security clearance, and other things.
|
| That might not be fair, but that's how it is.
| andrewzah wrote:
| What is the point of the legal system if everyone is just
| going to apply extra-legal, -arbitrary- punishments on
| top of it?
|
| Firstly, this ignores the fact that most crime occurs due
| to socioeconomic reasons. So you're kicking someone in
| the head after they're already down and have served a
| punishment doled out by a judge.
|
| Secondly, obviously the -type- of crime should make
| things more difficult or impossible in certain cases. But
| arbitrarily punishing people for having any conviction at
| all is the opposite of what a healthy society should be
| doing. This thoroughly ensures that recidivism rates will
| remain high, because what's the point in trying to
| cooperate with a society that brands you as a criminal no
| matter what punishment you serve or what you do
| throughout the rest of your life?
|
| We need to focus on rehabilitation, not continuing to
| punish people for the rest of their lives.
|
| "That might not be fair, but that's how it is."
|
| Sorry to be blunt, but hopefully this punitive attitude
| will die out as older people die out. This is one
| American attitude that I absolutely despise.
| ByteJockey wrote:
| > What is the point of the legal system if everyone is
| just going to apply extra-legal, -arbitrary- punishments
| on top of it?
|
| To control the application of violence and to make sure
| the preexisting rules are being followed before it is
| applied.
|
| If you don't have any verification that the rules are
| being followed, those in power tend to do pretty horrible
| things. At the same time, if those in power use no
| violence, the populace tend to resort to extra-legal
| violence to deliver what they see as justice, which
| results in a different class or horrible things happening
| (and threatens the government's monopoly on legitimized
| violence).
|
| It's basically a local maximum that still kind of sucks,
| but works better than anything else we've tried at scale.
|
| We've tried getting the government involved in social
| punishment, but it tends to work out very poorly and it
| seems best just to have them not enter that sphere.
|
| > what's the point in trying to cooperate with a society
| that brands you as a criminal no matter
|
| Potentially nothing, but that's a question for society,
| not for the government/legal system. Society is supposed
| to control the government, not the other way around (or
| at least that's the theory, practice is sometimes pretty
| spotty).
|
| It should also be noted that there's no requirement for
| people to add these extra punishments. So, it should be
| pretty easy to turn around if people ever pull their
| heads out of their asses.
| varajelle wrote:
| I agree with you 100%. But depending on the country in
| which you live, the hard reality is (unfortunately)
| unfair.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| Being punished via the legal system doesn't mean you are
| free of all other consequences
| setr wrote:
| It seems strange that a state solely determines the
| boundary for a crime, solely enforces that boundary,
| solely executes the related punishment, and then suddenly
| everyone's piling on.
|
| If it's the job of the state, it should be the job of the
| state.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _That might not be fair, but that 's how it is._
|
| It doesn't _have_ to be, though, and it 's something that
| _can_ be changed. And it must be, else the US will
| collapse under the weight of its own incarceration and
| injustice.
| true_religion wrote:
| Shouldn't we just try to stop doing unfair things, and
| speak out against them when we can?
|
| That's basically all anyone is being asked to do here.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| > That might not be fair, but that's how it is.
|
| Can we have a Poe's Law that compares "hard nosed realism
| for" versus "agitation against" the Western Liberal
| Project?
| [deleted]
| input_sh wrote:
| That box said fraud or similar in the last 10 years. Even if
| you agree that his TPB charges fit the "and similar" part, he
| wasn't charged with anything in the last decade, since 2008
| is over 10 years ago.
| ineptech wrote:
| Some of the existing board members tried to sell the .org
| registry to speculators for a quick buck. That seems worse.
| roenxi wrote:
| Although interesting, this is overshadowed by the growing
| politicisation of the internet.
|
| ICANN seems to have a representative multi-government structure
| that is robust against any particular government having
| unreasonable influence. If a few Sundes get crushed in the gears
| so be it.
|
| The US tech giants are beholden to themselves and control a scary
| fraction of the internet's infrastructure. They are starting to
| flex their muscles in regard to what should and should not appear
| on the internet. As far as political threats go, that is where
| they will materialise. Or in governments copying China's strategy
| for engaging with technology.
| [deleted]
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| Just because some other internet giant is screwing free speech
| harder doesn't make this any less wrong.
|
| Battles can be fought on multiple fronts if necessary.
|
| This isn't the first corruption coming from ICANN.
| fredgrott wrote:
| it's not FREE SPEECH, it's FREE POLITICAL SPEECH which is in
| fact an oxymoron as that cannot ever exist in an efficient
| society even if we want it to
| galangalalgol wrote:
| The US first amendment protects all speech, not just
| political speech. Most particularly it protects offensive
| speech because that is the only kind that needs protecting.
| We endure many inefficiencies for the freedoms we allow,
| the idea is that those freedoms are worth the cost.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| The US first amendment protects (almost) all speech, but
| only from prosecution by the government, not by
| companies.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| At what point do we stop calling a company a small
| profit-taking endeavor and start calling them a
| government in everything but name? When they have a
| monopoly over national communication infrastructure? When
| they control a small city complete with infrastructure
| just to service a Florida theme park? How about when they
| overthrow foreign governments to grow bananas easier?
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| So we don't have rights, but privileges.
| toyg wrote:
| Yes, and this really highlight the problem with ICANN:
| it's de-facto (global) government, except legally it
| isn't.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Indeed, if the drafters had forseen corporatism many
| things might have been different. And then there is the
| organized persecution of peers for their horribly
| offensive (read differing) opinions that is allowed by
| our modern communication tools. Is freedom of speech
| freedom to persecute? Maybe having really bad ideas
| should become a protected class? I say that only half
| jokingly, I have no answers.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| Good question. And there is also the freedom of
| (dis)association.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The drafters didn't foresee protected classes (in the
| legal sense you're using the term, if I understand
| correctly); in fact, several of those protected classes
| simply weren't granted the rights granted to white male
| landowners by the Constitution the drafters framed.
|
| I don't know how much guidance we can take from the
| original drafters on the novel problems of the modern
| era.
| FpUser wrote:
| Well some companies are starting to look more and more
| like the government. Besides corporations are protected
| by the government from certain things. The populace
| should be protected from their actions as well. Existence
| of big corporation always affects life of many people so
| it is only fair that those corps should be restricted in
| what their can do.
|
| For one thing those corps main duty is to make money. If
| they engage in morality setting instead they should have
| their business license revoked.
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| Corruption from ICANN is 100x worse than big tech. ICANN can
| just tell DNS servers not to route anything to do with you and
| threaten others to do the same.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| _cough_ Is this the same ICANT that we all know and love :-)
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Sorry forgot the <sarcasm> tag
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| Why do you believe ICANN's multi-government structure is
| somehow robust against any one government or small consortium
| of governments having too much power?
| narag wrote:
| The strategy is different, and clear though. First monopolize
| contents, then censor. It seemed impossible to do in the web
| when it bloomed. Compared with tv, it was a difficult beast to
| tame. But free resources, convenience and having all your
| contacts captive work as a charm.
| cinntaile wrote:
| I really doubt it has anything to do with thepiratebay, instead
| it's very likely due to his current project njal.la that provides
| anonymous domain names.
| jMyles wrote:
| Disturbing perhaps, but not surprising.
|
| And, given the arrival of ENS, IPFS, etc., probably not of any
| enormous consequence either.
|
| Centralized services in the vein of ICANN are clearly on the way
| out.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Can't he sue? Surely their excuse will not hold up in court.
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| I think a anti-trust one to break up ICANN would be good.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| You want the ITU to run the domain system then - there are
| more than a few ITU members who would love that
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| I said break up, not move to the ITU.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| ICANN is not really the same as a US company here - not
| quite sure you realise some of the politics behind this.
| childintime wrote:
| Registration fees are sure to go up, to pay for wanting to be the
| center of the internet.
| 1337shadow wrote:
| That's funny given all the scammers they have accredited, ie.
| when your domain expires and goes under "infinite lock" because 2
| registars lock it for as long as they can and then transfer it to
| the other.
| user3939382 wrote:
| This was my reaction. They've let cybersquatters go nuts
| ruining the domain registration system for years. UDRP is fine
| for big businesses but what about everyone else? Why do they
| allow companies to run bots on the dictionary and register
| thousands of names at wholesale rates that go years without an
| active site?
|
| I spoke with Vint Cerf when he was the head of ICANN about
| GoDaddy's abusive policies that blocked customers from
| transferring domains, they went years without doing anything
| about that as well.
|
| Peter Sunde is not the problem.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| And don't get me started on the willingness of registrars to
| look the other way and pocket the cash when spammers register
| "word salad" domain names by the bajillion for their
| snowshoe[0] spam operations.
|
| [0] https://www.spamhaus.org/faq/section/Glossary#233
| known wrote:
| I think ICANN is wrong IMO
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Would anyone be surprised if a defence of "why worry? Just make
| your own non-profit global corporation to control IP address
| space allocation" is being expressed amongst some here? Or would
| that be a bit of a stretch?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Probably worth noting that several people are, in fact,
| suggesting distributed DNS as the solution here.
|
| Whether a rival private corporation or a distributed
| federation, competition _is_ the only option if one doesn 't
| trust a government to take the responsibility over.
| tzfld wrote:
| This is more and more like China's social credit system.
| high_derivative wrote:
| The main difference to me seems that some in the West are
| vehemently denying anything is even happening.
|
| 'There is no cancel culture. You are just being held
| accountable. People just don't like you. You have no right to
| social media. Make your own app/cloud/host..'
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| What do you mean "more and more"? Are there other examples of
| this from ICANN?
| tzfld wrote:
| Not just ICANN, but like deplatformings for off-platform
| activities, for example.
| patrickaljord wrote:
| There's this one but one cared because he was a nazi. Now
| they're going against pirates. Who knows who's next.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/service-provider-boots-
| ha...
| hansjorg wrote:
| This reminds me of that famous poem.
|
| "First they came for the nazis, and I defended them because
| I am a staunch supporter of free speech.
|
| Then the nazis exterminated me and my entire family, just
| like they had always promised they would.
|
| The end."
| [deleted]
| progre wrote:
| I much prefer to have nazis out in the open where we can
| keep an eye on them than forcing them underground.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| Although I sympathise with that view too, it's unclear to
| me whether this tactic actually works against the feared
| outcome, which is Nazis gaining political power. Let's
| say we do keep an eye on them, and we see something we
| really don't like. What do we do then? Just keep on
| keeping an eye on them?
|
| It's also unclear what 'underground' means here. Most
| communication (and particularly political organizing)
| happens over the Internet, and people regularly gain
| access to ideologically-bent forums. Was Parler
| 'underground'? Is a closed Facebook group 'underground'?
| At first glance, it seems that such groups being
| 'underground' is actually what we want to happen. More
| caution to conceal their activities and spread of
| information would limit the number of people getting into
| such a movement.
|
| If the ideas are out in the open, we have to accept that
| there will be points at which rhetoric wins out over
| 'ideas', and that _even if_ the marketplace of ideas
| produces correct results in the long run, we 're still
| left dealing with incorrect results in the short run.
| Maybe that's a reasonable judgement for a libertarian
| point of view, but it's equally reasonable and
| understandable that someone may not want to make that
| concession at all.
| fallingknife wrote:
| We had a lot of Nazis right out in the open here in the
| US in the 1930's. And I don't mean what they call "Nazis"
| today, I mean 100% legit Nazis. And a lot of them. This
| idea that if Nazi's are allowed to spread their message
| openly they will inevitably take over is nonsense and
| propaganda to get people to support censorship.
| morelisp wrote:
| I'm sorry, your position is actually "we had nazis in the
| 1930s and that didn't result in any serious problems"?
| claudiawerner wrote:
| > This idea that if Nazi's are allowed to spread their
| message openly they will inevitably take over
|
| This isn't the claim; the claim is more moderate: Nazis
| gaining _political power_ , and not necessarily
| inevitably doing so. Nazis are only an example here; you
| can substitute any 'wrong' idea to see the analogies,
| from climate change denial to anti-vaxx to flat earth
| theories. Further, political power is only the end goal.
| I think most people would agree that a society where a
| large percentage of the population consists of
| (Nazis/anti-vaxxers/climate deniers) _who don 't vote_ in
| themselves would have negative discursive effects
| socially or politically on _those who do vote_. The state
| has power, but it does not have absolute power, and that
| 's a good thing.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Yes but I would say censorship has a greater negative
| effect. I would be willing to support censorship if it
| was guaranteed to prevent an inevitable nazi takeover. I
| do not support censorship against "negative discursive
| effects."
| claudiawerner wrote:
| That's understandable, so we're back to the point I made
| at the end of my original comment, which is that while we
| may accept that the best ideas do not triumph in the
| short run, it's reasonable to think the cost is worth
| bearing, and it's also reasonable to think the cost isn't
| worth bearing. I think there are convincing arguments to
| be made from both points of view. I think it's also worth
| bringing other democratic ideals into the picture, such
| as democratic equality, and questioning why (or why not)
| freedom of speech should always be selected over those
| other ideals.
|
| For many, some more balancing between the ideals of
| speech autonomy and democratic equality is strongly
| justified - see some regulation in Europe for example.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Free speech and democratic equality go together.
| Censorship means that there is a select group of powerful
| people that get to decide what ideas are allowed.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| They _can_ go together, but they can also conflict. There
| 's lots of argumentation on how hate speech and
| pornography can undermine democratic equality for
| minority groups and women respectively. See the SEP
| article on freedom of speech[0].
|
| [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-
| speech/#DemCitPor
| fallingknife wrote:
| I get what the article is saying, but I feel like they
| are playing word games. Hate speech laws are not
| increasing freedom, they are trading off freedom for
| social cohesion, which all societies do to some extent,
| just not necessarily with censorship.
| ttt0 wrote:
| Both hate speech laws and groups like Antifa were present
| and used against NSDAP in the Weimar Germany. What is
| clear is that tactics like censoring them _do not_ work.
| You _cannot_ just beat ideas out of peoples ' heads,
| whether it's nazis, BLM, communists or whoever really.
| This as well has been tried countless times throughout
| the history and it never did any good.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| >You cannot just beat ideas out of peoples' heads,
| whether it's nazis, BLM, communists or whoever really.
|
| This isn't the goal of such laws; the goal is to hobble
| the spread and reach of those ideas, not to change
| individual peoples' minds. It's forward-looking, not
| present-looking. It is also a show of the state's policy
| towards a particular ideology, and it carries the state's
| discursive authority with it. In a similar way, the point
| of laws against child pornography isn't to change the
| mind of the child pornographer, it's to slow and aim to
| stop the spread of the material, while attaching the
| state's authority to the idea that child abuse and its
| recording and distribution is wrong.
|
| As a counterexample, it's documented that segregation
| laws had two effects; the first is keeping blacks and
| whites separate, the second is the authority of the law,
| as crafted by the _sovereign body_ of the country,
| enshrined the inferiority of blacks, which reflected in
| the attitudes of whites and the psychology of blacks at
| the time. Something being legally enshrined has a very
| similar effect to how taxes discourage the goods they are
| levied on in the marketplace.
| ttt0 wrote:
| There were times when if you said something critical
| about the establishment, you were simply disappeared,
| never to be seen again. And it still didn't stop the
| ideas from spreading, it only gained you sympathy from
| the population and converted more people to your side.
| You can say that the goal is this or that, but it doesn't
| change the fact that 64% of Republicans said that they
| are extremely/very concerned about the censorship[1].
| Which sort of confirms what I am saying, people will be
| more sympathetic to you if you got censored. If you're a
| serious political activist, I'd expect you to perceive
| the censorship not as a disaster, but just another
| opportunity to further your political goals. Which
| doesn't mean that it's dishonest, censorship is bullshit
| and they're right to feel that way, but politics is still
| politics.
|
| 1) https://twitter.com/KSoltisAnderson/status/13646149211
| 163443...
| fallingknife wrote:
| Yep. Hitler himself talked about this:
|
| > "And so, I established in 1919 a programme and tendency
| that was a conscious slap in the face of the democratic-
| pacifist world. [We knew] it might take five or ten or
| twenty years, yet gradually an authoritarian state arose
| within the democratic state, and a nucleus of fanatical
| devotion and ruthless determination formed in a wretched
| world that lacked basic convictions.
|
| > Only one danger could have jeopardised this development
| -- if our adversaries had understood its principle,
| established a clear understanding of our ideas, and not
| offered any resistance. Or, alternatively, if they had
| from the first day annihilated with the utmost brutality
| the nucleus of our new movement.
|
| > Neither was done. The times were such that our
| adversaries were no longer capable of accomplishing our
| annihilation, nor did they have the nerve. Arguably, they
| furthermore lacked the understanding to assume a wholly
| appropriate attitude. Instead, they began to tyrannise
| our young movement by bourgeois means, and, by doing so,
| they assisted the process of natural selection in a very
| fortunate manner. From there on, it was only a question
| of time until the leadership of the nation would fall to
| our hardened human material.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Just because someone is a Nazi doesn't mean they can be
| robbed or beaten at will. Due process is necessary for
| justice.
| notahacker wrote:
| The status quo is that it is illegal to rob Nazis, but
| legal to choose not to provide DDoS protection for them.
| It's the second bit people are objecting to here...
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| I would love for them to sue Cloudflare and bring up the
| fact that Cloudflare is knowly hosting illegal ddos-for-
| hire services which forces people to buy DDOS
| protection.....
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| But the argument is about due process: are we actually
| sure that an Bob is a a Nazi, or did him neighbour create
| a fake twitter account to impersonate him? Is it his
| namesake that he never met?
|
| What if Steve is Bob's conpetitor and conveniently
| accused Bob of being a Nazi?
|
| Suppose Bob is a nazi but hasn't commited any crimes, how
| far can we go, what else can we deny, can we refuse them
| a website? A mobile phone connection? electricity and
| running water? School for his child?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Yes, _these_ witches will definitely kill us all, so we
| must immediately burn them without any due process. Don
| 't worry, this is definitely a one-off exception; we
| would certainly never extend the same claim to any other
| group or claim that someone is a witch with no actual
| evidence. We will totally provide you and people you care
| about with a fair trial when the mob comes for you.
|
| Really?
| hansjorg wrote:
| Systems must provide due process, but if you let yourself
| be slippery sloped into spending time and energy to
| support your own extermination (e.g. by doing business
| with nazis) that's really something.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| every social system has the concept of people that are not the
| right sort, and that are just not allowed to be part of the
| prestigious organizations because of some issue.
|
| The problem with China's social credit system is that it is a
| codification and automation of the prejudices of the system
| designed to maintain power.
|
| This example here is just the old fashioned display of the
| prejudices of the organization.
| newsclues wrote:
| The issue isn't that there is a system for social
| accountability but that the system is a black box.
|
| Accountability must be open.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| Also, most social status systems developed organically from
| networks of trust, common experiences and mutually held
| values at a micro level like within a family, town, school,
| religious group, etc.
|
| Comparing that organic system of social appraisal with
| anything like a mass scale surveillance social credit
| system, or international communications censoring
| organization like ICANN, is deeply unreasonable. It is
| clearly not the same thing, and centralized control of
| reputation by a government arguably poses huge totalitarian
| risks with zero offsetting benefits for citizens.
| zoobab wrote:
| Just put DNS in a blockchain with some cost to buy a domain
| forever, and voila, problem solved.
| afarrell wrote:
| Open question for HN: When evaluating how much to trust a person
| in a business relationship, when is it wise it to consider
|
| A. The person's past actions
|
| B. The intent behind those actions
|
| C. What they say now about those past actions
|
| ?
| ThePadawan wrote:
| If you're conducting a business relationship, why are you
| talking about trust in the first place?
|
| Contracts are written and signed to ensure that trust isn't
| necessary, because the contracts can be enforced.
| cjg wrote:
| The contract is mostly there so that it's clear what each
| party is trusting the other to do.
|
| Enforcing a contract is often not worthwhile.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| If your last 3 orders of Amazon didn't arrive and you had to
| sue them to get the money back, will you order there again or
| will you first try somewhere else?
|
| Trust may not be necessary on paper but it is a huge
| competitive advantage, and a strong distrust is a total
| dealbreaker for most potential business partners.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Enforcing contracts is expensive, and if someone obtains a
| significant amount of goods and services the money may not be
| recoverable even if there's a contractual ability to do so
| (as it doesn't exist), people may simply go on the run,
| people may engage in outright fraud.
|
| Trust is vital in a business relationship. Contracts are a
| useful backup against a legitimate body, but they are not
| much use against someone who has literally a proven track
| record of going on the run from law enforcement.
| mrfredward wrote:
| Contracts are sometimes a useful deterrent, because going to
| court sucks and can cost you a lot of money. They're also not
| a replacement for trust, because going to court sucks and can
| cost a lot of money.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Lets follow this logic - are mobile phone providers free to
| deny service to people that critisize them publically for
| traking their movemwnts and selling data? Can they collate a
| blocklist of people they don't like and make sure you get no
| service anywhere?
|
| Can Banks, insurance firms, water and electricity companies do
| the same?
|
| Can they phone up your internet provider and offer to pay them
| twice whatever you pay just to terminate you internet
| connection? Doesn't the internet provider have the right to
| choose whatever is best deal for them?
|
| You can either have personal libery or corporate liberty, not
| both
| notahacker wrote:
| Let's follow the logic the other way: does someone with
| multiple fraud convictions have an inalienable right to a
| merchant account and a massive line of credit? Perhaps, in
| the interests of personal liberty, hospitals should be
| obliged to grant witch doctors and those guilty of gross
| medical malpractice a salary and the right to use their
| operating theatre?
|
| Freedom to act and freedom not to contract sometimes
| conflict, and contrary to some people's beliefs, it is
| possible to assess things on a case by case basis. In this
| case, being an ICANN-accredited registrar doesn't seem to
| obviously be an fundamental right, and convictions for IP-
| related crimes doesn't seem like particularly unreasonable
| grounds for not giving someone a rare level of privilege in
| the IP-registration business.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| If there are doctors guilty of medical malpractice, at some
| point they were not detected. And Sunde already has IP-
| registration business since 2017: https://njal.la/
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Perhaps, in the interests of personal liberty, hospitals
| should be obliged to grant witch doctors and those guilty
| of gross medical malpractice a salary and the right to use
| their operating theatre?"
|
| I dont think I've ever seen such a contrived strawman
| salawat wrote:
| Is there moral character clause in the requirements? When I
| looked into it, the reaqs were mostly
| operational/technical.
|
| If there is no moral clause, and all other criteria are
| met, then I question the legitimacy of the declining. If
| there is a moral clause, then I'd like to know on what
| grounds.
| swayvil wrote:
| What's popular (dictated by the powers that be, the
| corporations etc, via marketing etc) is justified by calling
| it "right". And everything else is justified by calling it
| "free".
|
| That sums the present conversation I think.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Irrelevant question. This isn't about private business
| relationships, it's about a non-profit organisation entrusted
| with sole authority over public infrastructure.
| ben_w wrote:
| And this is an important distinction because?
|
| He's been denied accreditation for his business to resell
| certain domains, not kicked off the internet.
|
| Would it not be reasonable for, e.g. a publicly owned
| national electricity grid to refuse to accredit a new energy
| business which is run by someone who previously published
| "how to circumvent your electricity meter"? I don't even know
| if such a thing would be illegal to publish, but even if it
| isn't illegal, I don't think it's unreasonable for
| accreditation to be refused.
| toyg wrote:
| _> I don't think it's unreasonable for accreditation to be
| refused._
|
| It would not just be unreasonable, for a rehabbed offender,
| but also _stupid_. The people who know the ins and outs of
| systems are the ones best placed to suggest improvements to
| the status quo. I wouldn 't think this necessary to be
| explained on _Hacker_ News, but here we are.
| [deleted]
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| When you're a private enterprise you're free to do as you wish.
| When you control basic necessary infrastructure, you need to
| set and abide by any limits based on such things.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| The question is asking when is it wise to (privately) do any
| of those particular actions.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Which I find an odd topic of inquiry in this thread.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| It's bizarre anyone could have a reason to find that odd,
| since there could scarcely be any topic more directly and
| irrefutably related to this thread (regardless of one's
| take on whether ICANN acted inappropriately).
|
| You're essentially saying, "I have a different system of
| logic from the common one, and I want my system of logic
| to be considered the right one. So I'll just treat it as
| 'irrelevant' as a baseless gainsaying rebuttal to anyone
| else's line of thinking." How very whiny.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| I wonder if the concept of general availability from GPL
| is applicable here. If ICANN's DNS system wasn't
| generally available, like, say, invite-only system, maybe
| they would be in their right to moderate based on feels.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Not normally there is the "fit and proper persons" test for
| company directors.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| The EU needs to control - preferably democratically - its own
| part of the internet.
| argvargc wrote:
| That, and end users need to control - preferably democratically
| - all of it.
| cute_boi wrote:
| wow what a shame? Controlling the internet just because one
| person has a different political view? This might be reason why
| Domain Name price is sky rocketing :/
| withinboredom wrote:
| Last I checked, ICANN fees are still less than a buck per year.
| It's the registrars that are increasing the price.
| isitdopamine wrote:
| He lied on the form, everything else is anecdotal.
| Qwertious wrote:
| What was the lie?
| input_sh wrote:
| Direct link to a Twitter thread from him:
| https://twitter.com/brokep/status/1364950213790740481
| lucb1e wrote:
| Most contentful/relevant tweets I think:
|
| > After the first final review of our application, ICANN made a
| background check of everyone involved in the application (we're
| a team). My first contacts with ICANN I've been very open with
| who I am - I mentioned they should google me. My background
| is.. let's say different. [...]
|
| > After the background check I get a reply that I've "checked
| the wrong boxes" on parts of the application. There's some
| boxes saying: (paraphrasing) "have anyone in the team being
| convicted of fraud or similar in the past 10 years".
|
| > Noone in the team has been convicted of that. Nor murder,
| manslaughter, theft, breaking & entering, or anything else. I
| was involved in a case of aiding with copyright infringement
| from 2005-2006. That's 15+ years ago. And not fraud or similar.
| [...]
|
| > However, @ICANN is of another opinion. After spending over
| half a year to review the application (with a bi-weekly email
| stating that the delay is normal, nothing to be concerned
| about), they decided to deny the application since "the wrong
| box was ticked".
|
| What the heck: "You convicted for fraud in the past 10 years?"
| "Nope." "You liar, you were convicted in 2006!"
|
| Someone needs to tell the ICANN what year it is.
|
| Also, they didn't notice before? Not like _internet people_
| should have never heard of his name.
|
| To be honest, the next thing he writes (being actively wanted
| by interpol) does sound a bit fishy, I can see why that would
| make a bureaucrat on the other end of the line a bit less happy
| to comply. Imagine someone calls up your org and you find she
| (or he) is wanted in multiple countries, well, I can sort of
| see the point there, regardless of whether it's just in this
| particular case.
|
| (First tweet starting at
| https://twitter.com/brokep/status/1364950233382273031 )
| svrtknst wrote:
| > What the heck: "You convicted for fraud in the past 10
| years?" "Nope." "You liar, you were convicted in 2006!"
|
| Also, they seemed to agree that it wasn't fraud or similar.
|
| Also also, Sunde isn't wanted by Interpol nor was he during
| the application process. He was wanted in 2012, prior to his
| prison stint.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Ah, then I misunderstood that tweet of his about interpol.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| > I asked quite a few times very pragmatic questions: When am
| I allowed to be a member? Their answer: Can't say. So what's
| the problem with me being a member? Their answer: I could
| break the agreement!
|
| > Many of the people working at ICANN are lawyers. ICANN is a
| very IP heavy organisation (domains are trademark territory)
| which means a lot of people has previously worked in other IP
| organisations such as movie and music studios. They're all
| located in Los Angeles, a small world.
| creddit wrote:
| > Also, they didn't notice before? Not like internet people
| should have never heard of his name.
|
| One of the craziest things about the internet to me is that
| everyone treats their experience of "the internet" as THE
| experience of "THE internet" like it's one singular
| conception that we all enjoy. But, the internet is huge and
| diverse and full of distinct niches such that no two
| "internets" (as conceived of as an individual's experience of
| it) are almost ever close to the same. The idea that surely
| the good people at ICANN would know this guy (I certainly
| didn't) is so striking to me as derivative of this.
| lucb1e wrote:
| I notice this a lot, e.g. I have no idea what Internet the
| people in India are seeing because I barely ever seem to
| meet them online. But this is an American organisation, you
| can't tell me The Pirate Bay is something unknown there.
| The lawsuits against it were equally big news there, from
| what I gathered. Someone might still have missed it, and
| I'm sure my mom will have, but then my mom doesn't work for
| one of the Internet's core infrastructure organisations and
| doesn't handle applications where you need to check for
| fraud on the Internet.
| creddit wrote:
| I'm American and know of TPB, doesn't mean I know who its
| founders are! The lawsuits were never particularly big
| news in my experience. I honestly don't even specifically
| know what or when TPB was in active legal hot water nor
| do I have any idea on outcome. I have a vague idea that
| it _probably_ happened at some point but only because I
| know that TPB enabled piracy. I remember more
| specifically individuals getting in trouble for using TPB
| than anyone creating TPB getting in trouble.
|
| I've also heard of Pinterest for example but barely know
| the product and definitely don't know the founders.
|
| What's more, you're committing the same perspective but
| just at a slightly different scale. What I said
| originally about fractured internet experiences is also
| totally true if you restrict to American users! Plenty of
| American users of the internet are highly frequently so
| but don't pirate, for example!
| input_sh wrote:
| If that's something that interests you, there's TPB AFK,
| a free documentary about the legal issues you can watch
| on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTOKXCEwo_8
| creddit wrote:
| Thanks!
| lupire wrote:
| You're saying _web search_ is a niche product that ICANN
| investigators are unlikely to know how to use when
| evaluating a candidate?
|
| He's not famous for hamster dance. He's famous for a multi
| year battle over over the legal structure of the Internet,
| which is ICANN's wheelhouse.
| creddit wrote:
| That's quite the straw man. Like, I didn't even mention
| anything about _web search_ so that's a really quite the
| attempt at reconfiguring my argument into something
| comical to mock. What's more, the story is pretty
| explicit that they did look into the guys background and
| discovered his past, probably via _web search_. I was
| talking about the assumption that the people at ICANN
| should have known this "famous" person before that.
| boogies wrote:
| And a shorter update thread:
| https://nitter.dark.fail/i/status/1366522131811627009
| exo762 wrote:
| This illustrates the need Handshake project. They created an
| alternative root for DNS - basically a fully distributed ICANN
| replacement.
| rasengan wrote:
| Definitely agree here. Essentially, ICANN is deplatforming
| Peter.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Why do the pirate bay founders get treated like pariah while
| other "business men" like the people in Kazaa - like for example
| Zennstrom and Friis who went on to create Skype - are treated
| like everyone else?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa#History
| notRobot wrote:
| > _They basically admitted that they don't like me. They've
| banned me for nothing else than my political views. This is
| typical discrimination. Considering I have no one to appeal to
| except them, it's concerning, since they control the actual
| fucking center of the internet._
|
| Next-level deplatforming. From a non-profit. That essential
| controls the internet. Yay.
| threatofrain wrote:
| [deleted]
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Guilty until proven innocent, you mean?
|
| Technically you're not a criminal until convicted, only
| suspected. Likewise, you're not a criminal if you've served
| your time. The US culture of "ex cons" is shameful.
| FpUser wrote:
| This culture is not just the US. But sure they probably
| love to "deplatform" people from ever having decent life
| again and keep them into that slave low pay factory.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| *quiet part * stop you vote if your black
| LocalH wrote:
| OT: I really hate seeing this in threads. Perhaps HN would be
| better served by a "disavow" function that would remove the
| _username_ from the post? A person could edit out any
| potentially identifying information and disavow the post,
| leaving the content for context.
| progre wrote:
| He is not wanted by interpol as he was arrested in 2014 and
| has served his time in Swedish prison. He was asked if he was
| convicted of fraud which he was not.
| dvdplm wrote:
| > he concealed criminal history.
|
| But he didn't. The box on the form said "Have you been
| convicted for fraud?". He hasn't, so he didn't check the box.
|
| Maybe the ICANN-we-dont-want-to-police-the-internet-but-then-
| we-do-it-anyway-people need more boxes on their forms.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Is it legal to discriminate based on past convictions? What
| if a parent was convicted, can it be inherited?
| feanaro wrote:
| It shouldn't be, but it appears to be almost a core value
| in some cultures.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Its is for industries that require trust and for company
| directors.
| rolph wrote:
| i applied for employment in a casino in the past, part of
| the application asked for familial references.
|
| application denied, due to criminal contacts- as in they
| investigated my familial references and found an extended
| family member with unsavoury past.
|
| summary- no hire due to the conduct of a person other
| than yourself
| selfsimilar wrote:
| Ask an Australian.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| In the US, yes. "Convicted felon" is not a protected
| class. _Many_ businesses ask during your application or
| hiring process if you've ever been "convicted of a
| felony". The idea is: "we don't want a thief manning the
| cash registers!" There's also the general misconception
| that "if you're in, or were in, prison, it's because
| you're a bad person." But the problem is: they served
| their debt to society (jail), and innocent people are
| jailed all the time.
|
| If they were still a threat to society after 5 years or
| whatever, then they shouldn't've been sentenced to just 5
| years. And with innocent people being convicted, the bar
| to get it fixed is _very_ high because (in some states),
| you have to not only prove you're innocence, but that the
| prosecution messed up (such as withholding evidence). And
| don't forget about prosecutorial immunity!
|
| And if it is fixed, how do you answer that question? Yes,
| you were convicted, but it's not on your record because
| you proved your innocence. Yes? No? Answer yes, and
| you're denied. Answer no, and when they find out about
| it, you're fired, and can only hope your bosses will
| fight for you and win.
|
| It's sad really.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Would letting a murderer manning the cash registers be
| dangerous too?
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, I don't know.
|
| Presumably if they were let out of prison it's been
| decided that they are not longer a risk or have paid
| their debt to society.
|
| So no, convicted murderers should not be prevented from
| being a cashier, nor any other job they qualify for. At
| any rate, the best way to steer someone back into crime
| is to take away their ability to have a job. How else are
| they supposed to survive?
| titusjohnson wrote:
| You know the GPs answer to this is No. Perhaps explain
| why you think it _is_ more dangerous?
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Theft is relevant to cash, but murder isn't.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Well, if they're out of prison, then it's been decided
| that they're no longer a threat to society. Because, in a
| lot of prisons, you can be kept past your date on certain
| conditions. So why not let them man a register?
|
| I'm not saying you can't keep a close eye on them. I'm
| sure a manager would be doing that. What I'm saying is:
| in America, society has decided that you're worthless if
| you go to prison. We try _so hard_ to keep people from
| reintegrating into the real world, it's no wonder our
| recidivism rate is so high.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| If he got out of prison than that suggests he's not a
| serial killer and thus safe to undertake in societal
| activities, like shopping or manning a cash register.
| Really the only real to deny a job to a released convict
| is if their crime directly correlates to the job, I.E.
| don't hire someone who was convicted for embezzling $200
| million as your accountant.
| Shoue wrote:
| Did you read the whole article?
|
| >"Not only that, but they're also upset I was wanted by
| Interpol."
|
| Note the use of "was" here.
|
| > I got some sort of semi-excuse regarding their claim that I
| lied on my application. They also said that they agreed it
| wasn't fraud or similar really. So both of the points they
| made regarding the denial were not really the reason," Sunde
| clarifies.
|
| This sounds different from "concealing criminal history".
| amelius wrote:
| I wonder what a decentralized version of DNS would look like.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Consider checking out HNS.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.handshake.org
| Forbo wrote:
| Or Namecoin, or Blockstack, or OpenAlias, or ENS, or....
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| That's tor.
| Forbo wrote:
| Tor's onion addresses aren't human-meaningful.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko%27s_triangle
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| People don't type addresses, they open google, type
| "facebook" there and click the first link. Phishing often
| relies on similarity between different domain names.
| Switching to tor domains will remove assumption of
| reliability of domain name reading.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| And replaces it with what exactly? A trusted source of
| truth? Meaning Google? Haha.
| NeutronStar wrote:
| I don't know how you got here today but I:
| 1. Opened a new tab. 2. Pressed the n key.
| 3. Pressed enter.
|
| Where does it matter if it's readable if I have
| bookmarks?
| ajot wrote:
| Readable addresses means you can go to some site for the
| first time and be sure it's the address you wanted. It's
| not a SHA256 checksum, but it's human-doable in some
| seconds.
| willhinsa wrote:
| one that comes to mind is urbit.org :)
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| Time for anti-trust lawsuits.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Doesn't work when the monopoly is created by the government.
| joncrane wrote:
| In what jurisdiction(s)?
| prepend wrote:
| His home jurisdiction, I suppose.
|
| Comically, this is what the riaa did with making claims
| against Sunde based on US laws and applying them to Sweden.
|
| I think ICANN is a US corporation, but if they are
| impacting a Swedish company I'm sure there's some local law
| that can be used.
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| US law is default but ICANN connection to the UN could
| allow someone to sue in any UN registered country.
| Though, I am not an expert on law.
| prepend wrote:
| I thought ICANN has no connection to the UN.
|
| It used to have a connection to the US department of
| commerce but that ended years ago.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Los Angeles.
| gadders wrote:
| No way, man. This isn't cancel culture. This is just a non-
| profit exercising their rights. If he doesn't like it, all he
| has to do is create his own internet and a procedure for
| assigning DNS names and IP addresses and then get the whole
| world to switch over to it. /s
| armada651 wrote:
| When you're a state-sponsored monopoly the rules are a bit
| different whether you're a private entity or not. So it'll be
| interesting to see how this plays out.
|
| (I know ICANN is not currently being sponsored by the US
| government anymore, but they were given their monopoly that
| way)
| yunesj wrote:
| Or use one of the many alternative DNS that the market
| already created to solve this problem?
|
| Continuously fixing ICANN's decisions keeps alternatives from
| catching on.
| zpeti wrote:
| Exactly. It's a free market. Come on.
| FpUser wrote:
| There is no free market. Just copyrights / patents alone
| show that. If I had invented something or way more likely
| came up with something obvious I should not be looking over
| my shoulder and waiting for some corporation to sue me for
| rounded corners or button placed on the form. Suddenly
| those big corps run crying to their daddy for protection.
| zoobab wrote:
| https://twitter.com/Diskonnekt_/status/1354805885348974605
| sleepyhead wrote:
| "Not only that, but they're also upset I was wanted by
| Interpol."
|
| Deplatforming?
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Never heard of a non-profit that takes bribes.
| op00to wrote:
| How is not being able to be a domain registrar deplatforming?
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| How is it not deplatforming when you campaign to get
| registrars to deplatform people and then also say they can't
| be a registrar themselves
| slickrick216 wrote:
| Just be your own registrar....... oh.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| I don't see the problem. He has shown over many years that he
| isn't someone to be trusted with this type of accreditation.
| His past convictions aside, he has shown that breaking the
| rules is his normalcy. He is still active with many members
| that still coordinate with illegal activities. Yes ICANN has
| too much power, but I understand and respect their rejecting
| Sunde.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I agree with the idea that ICANN seems to be in a reasonable
| way. They are based on the idea of control over
| companies/groups that MUST work by an agreed upon set of
| rules if the system is to work. Peter has proven over the
| years that he is comfortable breaking whatever rules he
| decides to. Choosing not to work with someone with that
| mindset seems reasonable for ICANN.
|
| However, I do think they should come out with a clear, public
| statement of why those chose not to work with him.
|
| On a tangent... I am really uncomfortable with the fact that
| your comment was downvoted (enough to be noticeable). I get
| that people may disagree with the opinion you are expressing
| with it, but I was under the impression that downvotes on HN
| are supposed to be for comments that are off topic / do not
| move the conversation forward / inappropriate / etc. Your
| comment very clearly does not fall afoul of those rules; it's
| an opinion to be discussed.
| kyboren wrote:
| > He has shown over many years that he isn't someone to be
| trusted with this type of accreditation. His past convictions
| aside, he has shown that breaking the rules is his normalcy.
|
| Is the URL bar lying to me? Am I actually on Bootlicker News,
| where hackers are not to be trusted, overly-powerful and
| unaccountable institutions get "understand[ing] and respect",
| and rulebreaking is grounds for excommunication?
|
| You don't see the problem because you are the problem.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| I'm not going to support anyone that makes a profit
| breaking the rules, gets caught, says sorry not sorry,
| continues to profit off breaking the rules in the name of
| privacy and free internet, and then cries that they're no
| longer trusted to break the rules.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > I'm not going to support anyone that makes a profit
| breaking the rules, gets caught, says sorry not sorry,
| continues to profit off breaking the rules
|
| So no Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, etc?
| edrxty wrote:
| I accept my inevitable gray punishment for negative meta
| discussion but it's worth stating, HN is overwhelmingly
| corporatist and authoritarian these days.
| [deleted]
| willhinsa wrote:
| Somewhat orthogonal to this discussion, but I'm so glad
| Urbit is gaining steam every day.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| The internet founded by the crazy far-right dude that
| believes in the Dark Enlightenment? I'll pass.
| Vecr wrote:
| "The Dark Enlightenment" means you think the
| Enlightenment was bad, it would be clearer to say that he
| does not think the Enlightenment was a good thing, for a
| general audience.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > Next-level deplatforming. From a non-profit. That essential
| controls the internet. Yay.
|
| And it's pretty rich coming from ICANN after they eliminated
| .org price caps (coincidentally) before their associates tried
| to usurp the registry for private equity interests.
|
| It's almost funny to see these multi billion dollar grifters
| disparaging someone for theft (copyright infringement).
| longtailofsighs wrote:
| My guess is that ICANN knows full well that he's going to appeal
| the decision and win and they are probably fine with that. It
| gives them coverage to respond to intellectual property
| interests, and the governments they hold sway over with "See! We
| tried!".
|
| It's an unfortunate waste of registrant fees in expensive legal
| consulting, it's a waste of people's time, and it demonstrates
| the power that IP holds within the ICANN community.
| troquerre wrote:
| ICANN corruption is wel-known at this point after the .org
| fiasco. A lot of DNS industry folks are now giving decentralized
| DNS alternatives more attention. I wonder if we're reaching a
| tipping point -- it's not unimaginable to me that in 10 years
| ICANN's influence over DNS is significantly reduced as
| decentralized alternatives take over
| varjag wrote:
| Good call by ICANN.
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