[NCAP-Discuss] The threshold of harm issue

[Jeff Schmidt]

We must address the threshold of harm issue. Our collective failure to address this head-on results in the “but bad things might happen!” logic that is currently, and unhelpfully, driving this group.

During the call this week, I again brought-up the importance of calling-out what *specific* problems from the 2012 round we are trying to remedy, in agreement with the public comment we were reviewing. NCAP has never done this. As a response to this during the call, someone pasted in the chat one of the horror-stories self-reported to ICANN’s collisions reporting system. It was – roughly - along the lines of X machines were unavailable in Y offices globally, for Z period of time to remediate. The implication was that this was unacceptable and is a problem that needs to be solved in the next round.

Question 1: Is it?

Question 2: What about X-1 machines in Y-1 global offices? What if Z was a day, a week, or a month?

Question 3: What if it was a hairdresser? What if it was an electric utility? What if it was the propaganda arm of a national government we disagree with?

Question 4: Does there arise a duty to verify self-reported harms given that it could cause a scenario that will negatively impact someone else (i.e. will a self-reported harm deny an applicant the string they want or cause an increase in the applicant’s costs to obtain said string (because of “mitigation strategies,” etc.) given some unverified, self-reported harm?

I realize most folks on this list have not read our reports. I would encourage (beg?) each of you to do so. We discuss this topic deliberately and the resulting impossible slippery slope problem. The reason for the high threshold (“impact to human life”) is very deliberate, well-reasoned, and as appropriate now as it was years ago.

If we consider basically any Internet-age hiccup (spam, malware, MITM, transient outages, etc) as an unacceptable harm if they’re caused by collisions, we need to say that and define a threshold. Else, we’re kicking the can for the Board to make these determinations which is not a winning strategy.

Jeff
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