From her description, drawing from the Court’s facts of the case:

Mrs Lindqvist set up internet pages at home on her personal computer in

order to allow parishioners preparing for their confirmation to obtain

information they might need. At her request, the administrator of the

Swedish Church’s website set up a link between those pages and that site.

The pages in question contained information about Mrs Lindqvist and 18

colleagues in the parish, sometimes including their full names and in

other cases only their first names. Mrs Lindqvist also described, in a

mildly humorous manner, the [...]]]> Colleague Karen McCullagh has pointed out a decision from the European Court of Justice that appears to suggest that the inclusion of identifiable personal data on a personal web page could run afoul of the European data directive.

From her description, drawing from the Court’s facts of the case:

Mrs Lindqvist set up internet pages at home on her personal computer in

order to allow parishioners preparing for their confirmation to obtain

information they might need. At her request, the administrator of the

Swedish Church’s website set up a link between those pages and that site.

The pages in question contained information about Mrs Lindqvist and 18

colleagues in the parish, sometimes including their full names and in

other cases only their first names. Mrs Lindqvist also described, in a

mildly humorous manner, the jobs held by her colleagues and their hobbies.

In many cases family circumstances and telephone numbers and other matters

were mentioned. She also stated that one colleague had injured her foot

and was on half-time on medical grounds.

Mrs Lindqvist had not informed her colleagues of the existence of those

pages or obtained their consent, nor did she notify the supervisory

authority for the protection of electronically transmitted data of her

activity. She removed the pages in question as soon as she became aware

that they were not appreciated by some of her colleagues.

The European Court of Justice Held:

1) The act of referring, on an internet page, to various persons and

identifying them by name or by other means, for instance by giving their

telephone number or information regarding their working conditions and

hobbies, constitutes the processing of personal data wholly or partly by

automatic means within the meaning of Article 3(1) of Directive 95/46.

2) reference to the fact that an individual has injured her foot and is on

half-time on medical grounds constitutes personal data concerning health

within the meaning of Article 8(1) of Directive 95/46.

The full opinion can be found here. This result does seem pretty extreme, and I’m trying to figure out what limiting principle there is — other than it being largely disregarded and practically difficult to enforce — by which people who mention other people in a blog post (and the fact that they might be feeling under the weather) are not running afoul of privacy regulations.

Now lawyers and diplomats are all over the subject, and ICANN has ballooned into a multi-million dollar organization. I’ve argued elsewhere that arguments about ICANN and domain names don’t much matter except to those who want a piece of the financial pie, and I think predictions of domain names’ unimportance have largely proven [...]]]> Internet founding parent David Clark was a guest in my cyberlaw class in the fall of 1997. We talked about Internet governance, although I don’t think anyone (including us) called it that yet. ICANN wasn’t a gleam in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s eye, but even then the amazing state of the domain name system — how it came into being, how it was managed — made for an extraodinary story.

Now lawyers and diplomats are all over the subject, and ICANN has ballooned into a multi-million dollar organization. I’ve argued elsewhere that arguments about ICANN and domain names don’t much matter except to those who want a piece of the financial pie, and I think predictions of domain names’ unimportance have largely proven true. Sure, IBM would not be happy if it lost ibm.com, but it’s at no risk of having that happen, and the fact is that most people find things by Googling them than by entering a domain name. So long as search engines can crawl to various destinations, a world in which we couldn’t use mnemonic domain names wouldn’t be much different than the one we have now.

With that background, I’ve been thinking about the global petition to “keep the core neutral” signed by fellow travelers like Wendy Seltzer, Larry Lessig, and David Post. Is it something worth signing?

The petition itself reads a bit vague to me:

Everyone has the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas without interference through any media, including cyberspace.

As the new generic top-level domain name space emerges and policy choices are made about how ideas may be expressed at the Internet’s top-level, we ask ICANN to keep the core neutral of non-technical disputes and choose policies that respect freedom of expression and permit innovation in the new domain name space.

Encouraging the free flow of information is a foundational principle of public policy decisions related to information and communication technology. Freedom of expression rights, which are fundamental in an Information Society, foster democratic participation, individual empowerment, and economic development.

Cyberspace remains a unique and special place that bridges ancient divisions, where diverse communities interact readily, and all views are welcome. But only if these attributes are valued by policymakers who set Internet governance rules and incorporated into policies about how ideas may be expressed in domain names.

We ask that ICANN stay within its technical mandate and refrain from embedding particular national, regional, moral, or religious policy objectives into global rules over the use of language in domain names. It would be dangerous “mission-creep” for ICANN to adjudicate between conflicting policy objectives and set global standards for expression that are enforced through ICANN’s technical function. Please do not allow ICANN to become a convenient lever of global control by those seeking to censor unpopular or controversial expression on the Internet.

Please keep the Internet’s technical core neutral from national or other ideological conflicts, allowing freedom and innovation to flourish in cyberspace.

I’d be perfectly happy to see lots of new top-level domains, rather than halting steps towards domains like .museum and .aero. Some could be chartered, with particular requirements to earn a name there — such as the venerable .edu, which used to be limited to American two- and four-year degree-granting institutions, one to a customer. (Though somehow Harvard Business School snuck in with hbs.edu despite Harvard also having harvard.edu.) Trademark owners might be unhappy at the prospect of having to defend their mark in each new top-level domain, but with enough domains that might not be necessary, since Internet users would not expect to find International Business Machines at IBM.*.

So what to make of the petition? Dan Krimm, who is running the campaign and is a fellow at IPJustice.org, explained the idea behind it: ICANN is considering approving lots of new top-level domains, with an approval process that lets it eliminate candidate names for “moral” reasons or because particular governments object. All else equal, it might make sense for ICANN to simply have a cash-and-carry policy for registering new TLDs, just as original domain name registration in .com was first-come, first-served, with very few exceptions. (Single-letter domains were not allowed, although a handful like x.com slipped through, and is now held by PayPal/eBay. In 1994, someone tried to register fuck.com and had what appears to be an authentic exchange with the relevant pre-ICANN people that shows just how ad hoc policymaking was then.)

But I find it hard to really care if ICANN wants to allow some names and deny others. I don’t see how a willingness to have some content-based process for determining new TLDs can become “a convenient lever of global control by those seeking to censor unpopular or controversial expression on the Internet.” How would this global control transpire, when one needs no particular domain name to put content up on the Net? Far more convenient would be search engines themselves, which can determine what is and isn’t visible on a casual search. Of course, one can be concerned about both. So: search engine content control will be the next post. …JZ

But this is a good time to point out something beyond the cat-and-mouse of spam-and-filter: email is dying.

Email is the last great “shared hallucination” applications of the Internet. The Internet itself is a [...]]]> Like others, in the past week I’ve noticed a major uptick in the spam I receive on longstanding email addresses. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve configured Gmail to scoop up the mail from those boxes so it can do its own junk mail sorting, and then I POP the mail into my Eudora client from Gmail. It’s taken me from downloading email where more than 9 out of 10 are spam to fewer than 1 out of 10 as spam — with the spam sitting harmlessly on Gmail.

But this is a good time to point out something beyond the cat-and-mouse of spam-and-filter: email is dying.

Email is the last great “shared hallucination” applications of the Internet. The Internet itself is a shared hallucination — built to allow the routing of packets without any particular central coordination or backbone — and first uses to which it was put are similarly able for anyone to step up to the plate and join. Internet Relay Chat can be done with anyone setting up a chat server; Usenet newsgroups — what we know today as message boards and what dimly live on within Google Groups — could be created by anyone, and their propagation would depend on the individual decision of each newsgroup server operator on whether to subscribe to it.

Newsgroups and IRC were overrun by spammers and crooks, and they have been subsumed by alternatives. There are still some people who use IRC for nostaglic purposes or because they’re on very low bandwidth, but its most prominent use today is as a way for zombie computers to listen in at a designated server and channel for instructions from its master. Newsgroups appear like the walking dead themselves, with most of the conversations they hosted now carried on elsewhere. The alternatives to each are within walled gardens, proprietary alternatives of the sort that used to run on CompuServe and AOL. Indeed, a lot of Web 2.0 is based within proprietary servers, available for outside use only with the ongoing indulgence of the sponsoring firms.

So too goes email. If one were denied email in 1997 it would eliminate much of the Internet’s usefulness. Today it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Indeed, most students today rarely use email, preferring instant messaging, Facebook, Myspace, and other private messaging attached to a proprietary service. The benefit of these alternatives is that, because they’re run by a central source, there’s an extra custodian who can take a hard line against spam and other abuse. Myspace doesn’t do such a great job at it, but try spamming on Facebook and you’ll quickly lose your account.

The drawback is that the vision behind a common application like email — one where any PC can announce itself as a mailserver — is dismissed. And as natural monopolies form, there will be new gatekeepers who can implement content control, who can decide to charge or not, or who can terminate or deny membership. Email is clearly broken, and the various anti-spam tricks designed to extend its life can only go so far. But it’s sad to see the last great shared app eclipsed. …JZ