Hacker News Reader

Comment by Joky | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious (and ignorant): how can Europe fine an organization like ICANN? I can imagine that they can forbid them to do any business in Europe if they don't pay their fine, anything else? If it come to this, what does it mean for registrar in Europe?

View on HN

It seems that at the moment registrars have chosen to comply with the GDPR and ignore any requirements from ICANN that violate the GDPR.

If ICANN leaves it at that, then with respect to the GDPR the situation is fine.

If ICANN decides to enforce their policies and for example starts excluding European registrars, then we have a completely new situation that goes way beyond the GDPR.

Note that the DNS root is technically the IANA function, which is operated by ICANN. A lot of what ICANN can do derives from that.

If the EU would withdraw support from that, then a lot of chaos is going to result. Chaos that is certainly not in the interest of the US government. So my guess is that at the end of the day, the EU can have their GDPR and ICANN will just to accept that.

They likely can't, but they can fine EPAG, which is a German domain registrar. The matter at hand is that ICANN was trying to allegedly force EPAG to violate GDPR.

Nobody fines ICANN.

A German registrar doesn't fulfill its contract with ICANN anymore. ICANN sues them at a German court to fulfill it. The court rules that the contract clause is illegal according to German law, so the registrar is not obliged to fulfill it.

It's arrogance; see the Brexit negotiations for more examples of this.

Do you have any examples?

[1] https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/2109958/brexi...

[2] There has been little if any compromise in the negotiations from the EU side, and much from the UK.

1. I'm not sure it's arrogance. The EU is big, the UK is comparatively smaller, guess what happens in a divorce? :)

2. See 1. Also, there have been compromises, the UK wants to get unicorns. Full access to the single market yet no freedom of movement...

> The EU is big, the UK is comparatively smaller, guess what happens in a divorce? :)

A divorce seems an odd comparison to choose, but the UK has a large trade deficit with the EU. If the UK leaders had a backbone, they would walk away or be tougher in negotiations.

> 2. See 1. Also, there have been compromises, the UK wants to get unicorns. Full access to the single market yet no freedom of movement...

Do you have any examples?

Why should the idealogical idea of freedom of movement be linked to an economic market? This is an EU idea, and the separate of the two is not a unicorn. See: other trade agreements.

> Why

> This is an EU idea

I think you answer your own question. It's a founding principle of the EU.

Yes, it is. My intention was to highlight that the separation of these concepts is not a 'unicorn'.

The EU is willing to negotiate a trade agreement. The UK wants that trade agreement to include full access to the Single Market, without freedom of movement. That's an unicorn.

The EU is not a trade agreement.

And it's not Groucho Marx either ("these are my principles, if you don't like them, I have others!").

If the UK wants a simple trade agreement then it can have it. But that's not what the UK wants. The UK wants an open Irish border, an open border between Northern Ireland and the main island, but without submitting to EU regulations on goods. That's impossible.

Single market without freedom of movement is possible, but the thing about the EU is that different countries disagree about what the good parts and the bad parts are. Austria, if acting alone, might be willing to agree to single market without freedom of movement, but Poland is not going accept that. And so on. If you compromise with everyone, well, congratulations, you've joined the EU.

It's acting in their peoples's best interest.

Why should EU be nice to ICANN? (actually, they even have been nice for 15 years)

Why should EU be nice to UK? It's just tough negotiations where both parties try to close the best possible deal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com