Wednesday, January 18, 2012

.SOPA Top-Level Domain (...)

I strongly recommend the reading of the SOPA's definition on Wikipedia as it is the subject of the moment. I don't like to provide any advice on this (even if reading again my text below I think I provide one :-). I just think bad web sites should be turned off faster.

I think something should be done to clean the web: piracy, copyright infringement and bla, bla, bla and bla, bla, bla. I think there should be a barer, but a good one.

Sopa is a brand for vegetables in France

Who could tell a web site is facilitating copyright infringement? SOPA is something recent and invented by my American friends who did a lot for the domain name industry and as a person involved in new gTLD projects I thank them for this.

But does it mean that one country should be the one to decide what a bad web site is? Should one country be allowed to tell a registry: "hey, Mister registry, be kind enough to take this domain name down so we don't see this web site anymore". I seriously cannot imagine the U.S Department of Justice telling the AFNIC to take a domain name down. But maybe I am wrong.

Yes...you read my example, it is related to domain names because I fear this is what comes next with SOPA and as a person involved in domain names I wouldn't want someone to take my web site down because the U.S Department of Justice would be the only one to have suggested so. I think this decision belongs to a larger audience, not a single country.


So: yes, something needs to be done but it should be done by all parties inolved and parties involved here are the entire web: many countries in many languages. Can ICANN help with this? Probably...in english :-)


Whatever happens, there are many examples of web sites taken down one day which are live again the next day in another domain name extension. Basically, it means SOPA would be a solution to track a web site and take it down at the registry level in...all extensions? Come on... Does anyone know what it means? It is just not feasible.


Trying to fight against copyright infringement is a very important cause but reading SOPA's full title: "To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes", I don't feel concerned.

At the moment, I think the attention should be focused on "wrong" web sites such as joyangeles dot com for example. I do not think these web site bring anything positive to our world. Such web sites show how far the web can go and how weak it can be sometimes. It also shows there is no limit, no barer. I think there should be a barer. Common sense I guess.


So: no to SOPA but YES to Sopa

Definition of the "Stop Online Piracy Act" in French

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