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Comment by afarrell | Hacker News Reader

Open question for HN: When evaluating how much to trust a person in a business relationship, when is it wise it to consider

A. The person's past actions

B. The intent behind those actions

C. What they say now about those past actions

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When you're a private enterprise you're free to do as you wish. When you control basic necessary infrastructure, you need to set and abide by any limits based on such things.

Not normally there is the "fit and proper persons" test for company directors.

The question is asking when is it wise to (privately) do any of those particular actions.

Which I find an odd topic of inquiry in this thread.

It’s bizarre anyone could have a reason to find that odd, since there could scarcely be any topic more directly and irrefutably related to this thread (regardless of one’s take on whether ICANN acted inappropriately).

You’re essentially saying, “I have a different system of logic from the common one, and I want my system of logic to be considered the right one. So I’ll just treat it as ‘irrelevant’ as a baseless gainsaying rebuttal to anyone else’s line of thinking.” How very whiny.

I wonder if the concept of general availability from GPL is applicable here. If ICANN's DNS system wasn't generally available, like, say, invite-only system, maybe they would be in their right to moderate based on feels.

I don't see how ICANN can be considered private enterprise, I doubt that's an uncommon "system of logic" and your argument has been predominantly mudslinging, first that I'm unable to understand the question and now that I'm "whiny."

Why does ICANN being “private enterprise” relate to the question of when it’s appropriate, in general, to consider the stated items? Whatever logic you’re applying here doesn’t make sense, and the certainty with which you think others should have to constrain topics of conversation to meet conditions of your confused logic absolutely comes off as entitled and whiny.

>Why does ICANN being “private enterprise” relate to the question of when it’s appropriate, in general, to consider the stated items?

As my original reply mentioned, if you control basic, necessary infrastructure your consideration of such things must be clear and strictly held. Those are the guidelines ICANN should follow, they set limits and must follow them.

Why would this be an area to discuss what guidelines other kinds of businesses should follow? It's an odd choice in my opinion, and my only advice to such businesses is "do as you wish."

And please stop the unnecessary insults. The only thing I have accused you of is mudslinging, and I don't feel there's any reason to call me "whiny" and "entitled" for possibly poorly wording my point.

> “ Why would this be an area to discuss what guidelines other kinds of businesses should follow?”

Because what guidelines to consider and why, in comparison with what ICANN considered, is highly relevant to the thread.

And is "it's entirely personal choice" not a fair answer to that? Some amount of convictions are false, why place unnecessary restrictions on yourself before knowing the exact situation?

Lets follow this logic - are mobile phone providers free to deny service to people that critisize them publically for traking their movemwnts and selling data? Can they collate a blocklist of people they don't like and make sure you get no service anywhere?

Can Banks, insurance firms, water and electricity companies do the same?

Can they phone up your internet provider and offer to pay them twice whatever you pay just to terminate you internet connection? Doesn't the internet provider have the right to choose whatever is best deal for them?

You can either have personal libery or corporate liberty, not both

Let's follow the logic the other way: does someone with multiple fraud convictions have an inalienable right to a merchant account and a massive line of credit? Perhaps, in the interests of personal liberty, hospitals should be obliged to grant witch doctors and those guilty of gross medical malpractice a salary and the right to use their operating theatre?

Freedom to act and freedom not to contract sometimes conflict, and contrary to some people's beliefs, it is possible to assess things on a case by case basis. In this case, being an ICANN-accredited registrar doesn't seem to obviously be an fundamental right, and convictions for IP-related crimes doesn't seem like particularly unreasonable grounds for not giving someone a rare level of privilege in the IP-registration business.

If there are doctors guilty of medical malpractice, at some point they were not detected. And Sunde already has IP-registration business since 2017: https://njal.la/

Is there moral character clause in the requirements? When I looked into it, the reaqs were mostly operational/technical.

If there is no moral clause, and all other criteria are met, then I question the legitimacy of the declining. If there is a moral clause, then I'd like to know on what grounds.

"Perhaps, in the interests of personal liberty, hospitals should be obliged to grant witch doctors and those guilty of gross medical malpractice a salary and the right to use their operating theatre?"

I dont think I've ever seen such a contrived strawman

What's popular (dictated by the powers that be, the corporations etc, via marketing etc) is justified by calling it "right". And everything else is justified by calling it "free".

That sums the present conversation I think.

Irrelevant question. This isn't about private business relationships, it's about a non-profit organisation entrusted with sole authority over public infrastructure.

And this is an important distinction because?

He’s been denied accreditation for his business to resell certain domains, not kicked off the internet.

Would it not be reasonable for, e.g. a publicly owned national electricity grid to refuse to accredit a new energy business which is run by someone who previously published “how to circumvent your electricity meter”? I don’t even know if such a thing would be illegal to publish, but even if it isn’t illegal, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for accreditation to be refused.

> I don’t think it’s unreasonable for accreditation to be refused.

It would not just be unreasonable, for a rehabbed offender, but also stupid. The people who know the ins and outs of systems are the ones best placed to suggest improvements to the status quo. I wouldn't think this necessary to be explained on Hacker News, but here we are.

> rehabbed

This is the core of my question C -- Is it reasonable to judge someone's current trustworthiness by what they say about their past actions?

If you're conducting a business relationship, why are you talking about trust in the first place?

Contracts are written and signed to ensure that trust isn't necessary, because the contracts can be enforced.

Enforcing contracts is expensive, and if someone obtains a significant amount of goods and services the money may not be recoverable even if there's a contractual ability to do so (as it doesn't exist), people may simply go on the run, people may engage in outright fraud.

Trust is vital in a business relationship. Contracts are a useful backup against a legitimate body, but they are not much use against someone who has literally a proven track record of going on the run from law enforcement.

Contracts are sometimes a useful deterrent, because going to court sucks and can cost you a lot of money. They're also not a replacement for trust, because going to court sucks and can cost a lot of money.

If your last 3 orders of Amazon didn't arrive and you had to sue them to get the money back, will you order there again or will you first try somewhere else?

Trust may not be necessary on paper but it is a huge competitive advantage, and a strong distrust is a total dealbreaker for most potential business partners.

The contract is mostly there so that it's clear what each party is trusting the other to do.

Enforcing a contract is often not worthwhile.

> If you're conducting a business relationship, why are you talking about trust in the first place?

Please don't downvote /u/ThePadawan for this. It is an important foundational question. It is a hard question to answer in the same way that "If you're forging steel, why are you talking about iron crystal structures in the first place?" is a hard question to answer.

I'd be keen to read an answer from someone more articulate than I.

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