[At-Large] protecting domain speculators from oversight

Karl Auerbach karl at cavebear.com
Thu Jan 24 22:19:48 UTC 2013


On 01/24/2013 12:47 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> On 24 January 2013 15:23, Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:
>
>> On 01/24/2013 07:46 AM, John R. Levine wrote:
>>> Hi, Karl.  Could you just answer the question without changing the topic?
>>
>> You are not very polite.

> Blunt, maybe, but i saw no personal insult. And, as a someone for whom the
> US Second Amendment is Someone Else's Problem, I tire of the comparison of
> domain names to guns and find it wholly inappropriate. So I'll support John
> in ridiculing the analogies.

Clearly you must have not read John L's statements, including words like 
"inane".  When I said that his approach is "not very polite" I was being 
polite by avoiding stronger words such as "condescending", "insulting", 
or "rude".

As for the gun analogy - I did not raise it.  However I did find it a 
very apt situation in that it raises a question of principle, or to be 
more specific, it raises the question of what principle justifies the 
privacy of machines of mayhem yet justifies the breaching of privacy 
with regard to things that are incapable of causing physical harm to 
peoples' bodies?

Have either you or John L. articulated any principle that would 
substantiate such a difference in treatment?  If you have I must have 
missed it.

The lack of a principle that justifies such a difference quite properly 
ought to be a cause of discomfort for those who advocate a whois that 
has less protection than records of far more more dangerous things.

Rather than railing against one who points out the inconsistency it 
would make more sense to give whois at least the same level of privacy 
protection as given to records of gun registrations or say why such a 
difference is appropriate.


> Neither speculation nor vanity is unlawful.  Nor in many eyes are
>> they wrong or undesirable.

> "Vanity is an excessive belief in one's own abilities, that interferes with
> the individual's recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the
> sin from which all others
> arise."<http://dahlig.deviantart.com/art/The-Seven-Deadly-Sins-VANITY-13310012>

I am glad that you make it clear that your justification rises from a 
personal religious belief, even if you claim to be an "atheist".

What principle or law gives your religion-derived belief the power to 
restrict the actions of others?

Clearly you are not alone in the assertion that "your belief allows you 
to impose that belief to control the actions of others".  It was not 
long ago that I read about a girl named Malala who was shot just because 
the shooter believed that girls should not go to school.

By-the-way, do you cut your hair or shave?  There are those who consider 
those to be signs of vanity.  Should such people have access to your 
home because of their belief in your vanity?  I would suspect that your 
answer would be "no".  Yet that accuse-and-intrude position is very 
close to what you are advocating.

I have made it clear in all of my postings that the criteria for 
penetrating privacy must be an accusation, supported by concrete 
evidence, that a harm recognized by law has occurred.

Neither vanity nor speculation in and of themselves are harms recognized 
by law.

If you want to change that then I suggest that you try to get a law 
passed that declares vanity or speculation to be unlawful.  (In the 
meantime I'll take a look at the fate of rules against charging interest 
on money or sumptuary laws to prevent one from wearing clothes above 
one's station.)

> I tend to see domain speculation as no different from ticket scalping -- an
> act of re-sale totally devoid of added value. In the case of ticket
> scalping, the activity is considered unethical and indeed illegal in many
> jurisdictions.

There is a wide difference between "considered unethical" and "illegal".

Only "illegal" is illegal.

	--karl--




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