[ICANN-EU] Re: [icann-candidates]

[Lutz Donnerhacke <lutz@iks-jena.de>]

On Fri, Aug 25, 2000 at 10:48:56AM +0200, Ralf Möbius wrote:
> after a long discussion about democracy and the dangers of political and
> industrial domination of the net, I would like to ask you a few qestions
> about internet and censorship.

Sorry for the delay, I was on vacation and broke my right arm.

> 1. Do you think there should be a general censorship in the www, filtering
>    certain contents?

No.

> 2. If so, isn`t the danger of censorship higher than any influence of
>    extremist contents?

Yes, it is.

> 3. Isn`t it sufficient, that the criminal law and terms of resposibility
>    for web-contents of each country ensure that contents in the net
>    follow a minimum standard of what we call civilization?

The problem with law enforcment in the net is, that several countries try to
apply there laws to contents originating from other countries. Due to the
missing national borders in the net, national laws become problematic when
dealing with those issues. That's why international solutions has to be
established. A lot of existing possibilities are already in use.

It is necessary to teach the political leaders, the judges and the law
enforcment departments. A talk on these subject last week came to the
conclusion, that we have to wait for the next but one generation of judges
to get a consistent view. But then other problems (not the net) may arrive.