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The dark side of .io

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Re: The dark side of .io

#41

Post by geographomics »

sologoub wrote: post #33
tarminian wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First time I've seen it. I think it has a lot of relevance, we all need to think more about the things we purchase. That chocolate bar you just ate was probably produced using slave labor, those new cool shoes, made with sweat shop labor by young girls. To just brush off articles like this is insensitive.

That's a bit of a straw man argument. If you read closely, the article says: "The Chagossians are largely descended from African slaves brought to the previously uninhabited islands, 2,200km (1,367 miles) north-east of Mauritius, by the French in the 18th century." Yes, these unfortunate souls have suffered generations of evil, starting with the slave trade and finish off with being expelled from the island(s). That…

> That said, I don't really see the argument that it is somehow their land.

The argument is that they had lived there for generations and made it very much their homeland - only to be turfed out at the whim of a remote, overbearing colonial power.

Re: The dark side of .io

#42

Post by jessaustin »

CHY872 wrote: post #21
jessaustin wrote: post #4

The British High Court ruled in 2000 that they could do so, but the government ordered the ruling overturned... Haha I can think of a few leaders of other nations who might enjoy this power. Of course I have sympathy for refugees of all sorts. However, although the Chagossians were definitely screwed out of their home, it doesn't follow that they have been screwed out of ".io" money. It is an accident of history that…

> Haha I can think of a few leaders of other nations who might enjoy this power. In Britain we essentially go by the philosophy that parliament represents the people, and parliament is the highest authority in the country. If the government doesn't like a decision made by a court, the idea is that the law can be changed.

There's something appealing about that theory, in that it would seem to stop buck-passing. I just wonder how well my own nation would have done in correcting the Supreme Court. Would we still have some of the awful things we had in the past? Would we we already have some of the great things we'll have in the future?

Re: The dark side of .io

#43

Post by kijin »

philsnow wrote: post #26
kijin wrote: post #17

Okay, this is going to be controversial, but I have no problem whatsoever with moving people around like this, as long as: 1) the displaced people are adequately compensated for their loss, and 2) they are given freedom to move to a place where they can enjoy human rights and make an adequate living. The right to occupy some specific geographic coordinates is not a human right. This applies at every scale from a sing…

> the displaced people are adequately compensated for their loss How can you measure (in order to attempt to "adequately compensate" displaced people) the inability to live in one's ancestral homeland? Imagine if we were all shipped to a somewhat earth-like moon somewhere, under "eminent domain".

If I crash my car into a house that has a lot of sentimental value to you, and the resulting fire burns the whole place down, how do I measure and compensate for your loss?

In some jurisdictions, the law might award a certain percentage of additional damages for psychological harm, but that's about it. Sentimental value is purely subjective. Brutal as it may sound, impartial assessments cannot and need not account for such things.

Nobody's ancestral homeland is irreplaceable. In fact, the whole concept of ancestral homelands is often a religious or ideological fabrication that serves the interests of some members of a community but not others.

Re: The dark side of .io

#44

Post by thizzbuzz »

sologoub wrote: post #33
tarminian wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First time I've seen it. I think it has a lot of relevance, we all need to think more about the things we purchase. That chocolate bar you just ate was probably produced using slave labor, those new cool shoes, made with sweat shop labor by young girls. To just brush off articles like this is insensitive.

That's a bit of a straw man argument. If you read closely, the article says: "The Chagossians are largely descended from African slaves brought to the previously uninhabited islands, 2,200km (1,367 miles) north-east of Mauritius, by the French in the 18th century." Yes, these unfortunate souls have suffered generations of evil, starting with the slave trade and finish off with being expelled from the island(s). That…

> That said, I don't really see the argument that it is somehow their land.

I don't see a good argument that any land belongs to any person on earth. That said, subsisting off a single piece of land for 250 years is a much better claim than "we want this for economic/military development". I also tend not to side with the party that gasses 1000 pet dogs as part of their forced relocation process.

Re: The dark side of .io

#45

Post by mikeash »

kijin wrote: post #39
hackuser wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these are valuable points; thanks. But I disagree for a few reasons: 1) Eminent domain seems valid if it's exercised by the victims' legitimate government, which they elect and over which they have a say, and under which they have rights and the ability to legally protect themselves. My impression[1] is that none of that applies to the Chagossians. The UK appears[1] to have taken advantage of their helplessne…

I appreciate your criticisms. 1) I'm not disputing that it was wrong for UK to evict the Chagossians. I'm only disputing that the Chagossians have some sort of fundamental human right to return all these years later, just because their grandfathers used to live there. 2) Yes, many leading philosophers of previous centuries used to think very highly of property rights, but this trend has greatly diminished in the last…

Hold on. You can't talk about your theories of how it's OK to displace people as long as they're compensated, then turn around and say "what's done is done" when presented with counterarguments.

Re: The dark side of .io

#46

Post by kijin »

bbcbasic wrote: post #38
kijin wrote: post #17

Okay, this is going to be controversial, but I have no problem whatsoever with moving people around like this, as long as: 1) the displaced people are adequately compensated for their loss, and 2) they are given freedom to move to a place where they can enjoy human rights and make an adequate living. The right to occupy some specific geographic coordinates is not a human right. This applies at every scale from a sing…

1) the displaced people are adequately compensated for their loss The occupier always has bigger guns, more power, and no opposition from a third party. They don't need to compensate. 2) they are given freedom to move to a place where they can enjoy human rights and make an adequate living. Still a world full of refugees being smuggled into countries as illegal immigrant because what countries will accept them? The o…

> The only people who are moved and given (1) or (2) are ones that have a sufficiently good BATNA.

Well said. So the question is: how do we build a world where residents of a small island can develop a sufficiently good BATNA, even against a nuclear superpower?

Fixing problems at the level of the basic architecture can sometimes seem to go against fixing superficial symptoms. If you're too focused on the symptoms, it might even sound heretical. Sufficiently esoteric political philosophy is often indistinguishable from trolling ;)

Re: The dark side of .io

#47

Post by thizzbuzz »

kijin wrote: post #17

Okay, this is going to be controversial, but I have no problem whatsoever with moving people around like this, as long as: 1) the displaced people are adequately compensated for their loss, and 2) they are given freedom to move to a place where they can enjoy human rights and make an adequate living. The right to occupy some specific geographic coordinates is not a human right. This applies at every scale from a sing…

> The right to occupy some specific geographic coordinates is not a human right.

What? That's exactly what happened here.

The Chagossians were forcibly removed, because a government(s) claimed "the right to occupy some specific geographic coordinates". If the Chagossians don't have that right, then no one else can come in and force them out.

Re: The dark side of .io

#48

Post by smt88 »

jessaustin wrote: post #34
smt88 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trademarks are useful. They let you know that you're buying from the person you intend to buy from. Imagine a world without trademarks. The US would be flooded with iPhone knockoffs, and all of them would be identical to iPhones. They'd have god-knows-what inside them, but they'd bear the Apple logo. Or, imagine you want to pay your American Express bill. Unfortunately, someone has bought AmericanExpress.card, and yo…

A) Of course trademark is valuable (to important parties!), that is the premise of the grandparent comment. (So the "...firms would make do without trademark..." clause is a deliberate absurdity.) B) This anti-phishing idea is security theater. If you teach cardholders that a URL will save them from getting phished, they'll get phished. This is analogous to, though quite a bit worse than, the idea that a logo guarant…

Re: A) You said either trademarks should go away or apple.gripe should become acceptable. Definitely a false dichotomy, but my comment was targeted at either/both of those possibilities.

Re: B) I completely disagree. I frequently visit mail.google.com, and I trust that I'm not getting phished. I'm going purely on the basis of the URL there. I wouldn't feel the same way going to, say, mail.google.me.

In order to trust a URL, you must be sure that your client system isn't compromised (and nothing in between). If it is, you're vulnerable to much worse than phishing. Phishing is likely unnecessary at that point.

It has nothing to do with the URL being secure or insecure. Using web-enabled computers on a daily basis means that we're trusting our systems not to be infected by unknown/undetected malware. We don't have any alternative, so we take the risk.

There are many ways to be slightly more certain that our DNS records haven't been tampered with nowadays, but we're still basically trusting hackable systems all the time.

Re: The dark side of .io

#49

Post by frozenport »

mrfrisby wrote: post #30

This thread is a depressingly self-serving reflection of this community. Few of you seem to have bothered to do anything but skim the article and come to a snap judgement based on what seems to be your idealised notion of how TLDs should be managed. For the sake of my own sanity, lets just be clear here: 1. An island chain was forcibly depopulated in order for the largest land mass to be leased to the United States a…

I don't find it pragmatic to revise history, I don't believe the Native Americans should get .us

Re: The dark side of .io

#50

Post by chrislgrigg »

If nothing else, it would be nice if learning about this inspired those who own .io domains to contribute to a fund for the Chagossian people. I'd certainly match the $60 I paid to register my domain to a support organization if I could find one that looked legit.
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