Interesting ZDNet article here from the Internet Governance Forum meetings in Athens this week.  The article cites concern in the international community about the sway held by the US governemnt over certain key aspeInteresting ZDcts of the Internet.

It seems to me there ought to be equal concern about abuse of power within TLDs by local registry operators.  A classic example is last year’s delisting of borat.kz by the “Association of Kazakh IT Companies,” the registry operator for the .kz ccTLD.  See this report for details.  Apparently the Kazakh government has no sense of humor. 

It’s true that Sacha Baron Cohen was able to immediately re-register at borat.tv, and the existence of multiple TLDs does provide some insurance against abuse by local registry operators.  Nevertheless, well-established domain names of corporations, organizations, and even individuals ought not to be subject to “arbitrary measures.”