[Chapter-delegates] The Internet Society on the Wikileaks issue

[Veni Markovski]

Dear Anya,
thank you for this.
I have some remarks, which I hope people will accept as an attempt to 
improve the language, coming from ISOC. In general, I am not happy with 
the language. It looks to me as if ISOC is trying to please everyone 
involved, and takes a position, which - at least to the current 
knowledge of the facts - does not seem very sustainable.

For example, in the last paragraph, ISOC says there are legal measures 
to take down wikileaks.org (by the way, what are those legal measures?). 
You also advice that "technical solutions should be sought to 
reestablish its proper presence" - this excuse me, is nonsense. The 
domain is working, it is not stopped, and neither it requires some 
technical solutions to start working. Someone at Wikileaks (could be the 
same person listed here, but I am not sure who is actually the contact 
with everydns: 
http://pir.org/get/whois?domain=wikileaks.org&Submit=Search )  has not 
changed the record in the DNS, but ISOC seems to not understand it? This 
is not a "technical solution": to change an A record in the DNS, and 
point the web site to a different IP address. By the way, Wikileaks 
still have not fixed that, and one could always speculate why.

ISOC also says that "appropriate actions" should be "taken to pursue and 
prosecute entities (if any) that acted maliciously to take it off the 
air", which against makes the allusion that there's a malicious act to 
take it off the air. However, the majority of the people, reading this 
statement, might believe that there are such entities, regardless of the 
"(if any)" part. Not quite good for the relations between ISOC and the 
usual suspects for the bigger part of the population - Amazon, PayPal, 
Visa, Master Card, and the US Government.

ISOC also says that the "effective disappearance" is related to freedom 
of expression. I don't think it is the case, based on the information, 
which is made public until now. If you have some ground for this 
statement, can you, please share it? It is very dangerous for an 
organization, which self-claims itself as "playing a unique role in 
advancing policy on key areas" for the development of the Internet, and 
as an organization "in a neutral position", and recognized by other 
groups "as carrying (credible) perspective".


As a general note:
Would be good to see what impact, if any, the statement will have - if 
it will be "picked up" by other organizations, media, policy makers, or 
it will remain on the ISOC web site for our internal usage. I certainly 
would have hoped that ISOC would be the organization to give opinions, 
and views, which will be considered by many of these "other groups", but 
so far have not spotted anyone quoting ISOC's opinion, or even asking 
for comments. That's the serious question.

Best,
Veni


On 12/7/2010 14:35, Anya Chambers wrote:
> Recently, we have witnessed the effective disappearance from the 
> Internet of a website made infamous through international press 
> coverage and political intrigue.
>
> The Internet Society is founded upon key principles of free expression 
> and non discrimination that are essential to preserve the openness and 
> utility of the Internet. We believe that this incident dramatically 
> illustrates that those principles are currently at risk.
>
> Recognizing the content of the wikileaks.org <http://wikileaks.org> 
> website is the subject of concern to a variety of individuals and 
> nations, we nevertheless believe it must be subject to the same laws 
> and policies of availability as all Internet sites.  Free expression 
> should not be restricted by governmental or private controls over 
> computer hardware or software, telecommunications infrastructure, or 
> other essential components of the Internet.
>
> Resilience and cooperation are built into the Internet as a design 
> principle. The cooperation among several  organizations has ensured 
> that the impact on the Wikileaks organizational website has not 
> prevented all access to Wikileaks material.  This further underscores 
> that removal of a domain is an ineffective tool to suppress 
> communication, merely serving to undermine the integrity of the global 
> Internet and its operation.
>
> Unless and until appropriate laws are brought to bear to take the 
> wikileaks.org <http://wikileaks.org> domain down legally, technical 
> solutions should be sought to reestablish its proper presence, and 
> appropriate actions taken to pursue and prosecute entities (if any) 
> that acted maliciously to take it off the air.
>
>