Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

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Most contentful/relevant tweets I think:

> After the first final review of our application, ICANN made a background check of everyone involved in the application (we're a team). My first contacts with ICANN I've been very open with who I am - I mentioned they should google me. My background is.. let's say different. [...]

> After the background check I get a reply that I've "checked the wrong boxes" on parts of the application. There's some boxes saying: (paraphrasing) "have anyone in the team being convicted of fraud or similar in the past 10 years".

> Noone in the team has been convicted of that. Nor murder, manslaughter, theft, breaking & entering, or anything else. I was involved in a case of aiding with copyright infringement from 2005-2006. That's 15+ years ago. And not fraud or similar. [...]

> However, @ICANN is of another opinion. After spending over half a year to review the application (with a bi-weekly email stating that the delay is normal, nothing to be concerned about), they decided to deny the application since "the wrong box was ticked".

What the heck: "You convicted for fraud in the past 10 years?" "Nope." "You liar, you were convicted in 2006!"

Someone needs to tell the ICANN what year it is.

Also, they didn't notice before? Not like internet people should have never heard of his name.

To be honest, the next thing he writes (being actively wanted by interpol) does sound a bit fishy, I can see why that would make a bureaucrat on the other end of the line a bit less happy to comply. Imagine someone calls up your org and you find she (or he) is wanted in multiple countries, well, I can sort of see the point there, regardless of whether it's just in this particular case.

(First tweet starting at https://twitter.com/brokep/status/1364950233382273031 )

> What the heck: "You convicted for fraud in the past 10 years?" "Nope." "You liar, you were convicted in 2006!"

Also, they seemed to agree that it wasn't fraud or similar.

Also also, Sunde isn't wanted by Interpol nor was he during the application process. He was wanted in 2012, prior to his prison stint.

Ah, then I misunderstood that tweet of his about interpol.

> Also, they didn't notice before? Not like internet people should have never heard of his name.

One of the craziest things about the internet to me is that everyone treats their experience of “the internet” as THE experience of “THE internet” like it’s one singular conception that we all enjoy. But, the internet is huge and diverse and full of distinct niches such that no two “internets” (as conceived of as an individual’s experience of it) are almost ever close to the same. The idea that surely the good people at ICANN would know this guy (I certainly didn’t) is so striking to me as derivative of this.

I notice this a lot, e.g. I have no idea what Internet the people in India are seeing because I barely ever seem to meet them online. But this is an American organisation, you can't tell me The Pirate Bay is something unknown there. The lawsuits against it were equally big news there, from what I gathered. Someone might still have missed it, and I'm sure my mom will have, but then my mom doesn't work for one of the Internet's core infrastructure organisations and doesn't handle applications where you need to check for fraud on the Internet.

I’m American and know of TPB, doesn’t mean I know who its founders are! The lawsuits were never particularly big news in my experience. I honestly don’t even specifically know what or when TPB was in active legal hot water nor do I have any idea on outcome. I have a vague idea that it probably happened at some point but only because I know that TPB enabled piracy. I remember more specifically individuals getting in trouble for using TPB than anyone creating TPB getting in trouble.

I’ve also heard of Pinterest for example but barely know the product and definitely don’t know the founders.

What’s more, you’re committing the same perspective but just at a slightly different scale. What I said originally about fractured internet experiences is also totally true if you restrict to American users! Plenty of American users of the internet are highly frequently so but don’t pirate, for example!

If that's something that interests you, there's TPB AFK, a free documentary about the legal issues you can watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTOKXCEwo_8

Thanks!

You're saying web search is a niche product that ICANN investigators are unlikely to know how to use when evaluating a candidate?

He's not famous for hamster dance. He's famous for a multi year battle over over the legal structure of the Internet, which is ICANN's wheelhouse.

That’s quite the straw man. Like, I didn’t even mention anything about web search so that’s a really quite the attempt at reconfiguring my argument into something comical to mock. What’s more, the story is pretty explicit that they did look into the guys background and discovered his past, probably via web search. I was talking about the assumption that the people at ICANN should have known this “famous” person before that.

The raid on TPB was in 2006. The conviction was in 2009, the sentencing in 2010, and the sentence was served in 2014. Depending on when, exactly, in 2019 the application was submitted, it may have been just inside 10 years since the conviction.

That's not to get into whether the application should have been denied or blah blah blah, just want to throw out that shifting from when the conviction was to when the raid happened is somewhat disingenuous.

> I asked quite a few times very pragmatic questions: When am I allowed to be a member? Their answer: Can't say. So what's the problem with me being a member? Their answer: I could break the agreement!

> Many of the people working at ICANN are lawyers. ICANN is a very IP heavy organisation (domains are trademark territory) which means a lot of people has previously worked in other IP organisations such as movie and music studios. They're all located in Los Angeles, a small world.

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