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

[Anya Chambers]

Veni

Thank you for your detailed feedback. We'll endeavour to take this into account if we update the statement or in circulating future positions.

In the meantime regarding media pick up - while this was not the primary objective of the statement we have seen some pick up in high profile publications including the FInancial Times online and eWeek. More coverage is likely given the incoming requests we have received. We have also made it available online should our Chapters wish to highlight it.

Regards

Anya

On Dec 8, 2010, at 8:55 AM, Veni Markovski wrote:

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.
> 
> 

Anya Chambers
Internet Society

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