Summary

  • LACNIC’s five Board candidates answered the same question about blocking under a valid court order. Three favor the hosting or source layer; two center the addressee, jurisdiction and choice among execution points.
  • The election page recorded the question on 28 October and the answers on 29 October. Voting runs 3–10 November, 18:00 UTC.

A court can name a legal duty. It cannot make the Internet’s layers line up neatly behind the words on an order. LACNIC’s five Board candidates were asked whether blocking ordered by a court should fall to access operators or to hosting and housing providers. Their answers turn one apparent two-way choice into a fight over who controls the target, who receives the order and which jurisdiction can reach them.

The official election system posted the question at 16:09 UTC on 28 October; all five answers followed on 29 October. Carmen Denis and Jorge Mario Valencia Mesa put execution at hosting or housing, close to the content. Denis says the network operator should be the last resort, not the default interpreter. Valencia Mesa argues that a host can act on the content or account without asking a carrier to block an address used by other services.

Norberto Enrique Faria Rodriguez takes the sharper route: blocking is the worst way to stop access, and improper content should be removed at its source. Where it is hosted, he says, the provider should ensure clients use the service lawfully and ethically. That puts the host near the action but leaves an unanswered question: who decides what counts as improper when a court order, a complaint and a provider’s own terms point in different directions?

Gabriel Adonaylo does not choose a universal layer. Whoever receives a valid order should comply under the applicable legal framework, he says; responsibility depends on whom the order addresses. He also warns that domain blocks can be bypassed and IP blocks can reach unrelated services sharing infrastructure. Rafael Antonio Ibarra Fernández names three possible execution points—connectivity operator, hosting provider and domain registrar—and says jurisdiction and side effects determine the route. A local access operator may sit under national law while the host or registrar sits elsewhere.

The split is three answers for the source or host, two that start with the order’s addressee or jurisdiction. The candidates were not voting on a LACNIC rule, and their answers do not make the Board an enforcement body. They were exposing the missing operating rule inside the question: a legally valid order identifies authority, but the public answers do not specify which layer takes precedence when the named recipient cannot reach the content, how long a block lasts, or who corrects a mistaken target.

That is the practical stake before voting opens on 3 November. A block at the network edge can reach farther than the object named in an order. A host can be closer to the content and farther from the court. A registrar can disable a name while leaving the underlying service somewhere else. The election page records candidates’ positions; it does not supply a precedence test or a correction path. Those are the details that would turn “comply” into an instruction an operator can execute without making unrelated services pay for it.

Sources: LACNIC’s public Board election and candidate answers; official voting calendar; candidate profiles for Carmen Denis, Gabriel Adonaylo, Jorge Mario Valencia Mesa, Norberto Enrique Faria Rodriguez and Rafael Antonio Ibarra Fernández.