The company in charge of registering every website using the .is domain objects strongly to a new bill that, if passed, would levy a tax on anyone registering a site with a .is address and grant supervisory powers of the Icelandic internet to the government.
ISNIC, the company which oversees the registration of sites using the .is domain, has issued strong objections to a new bill proposed by the Ministry of the Interior for such websites. Jens Péturs Jensen, the managing director of ISNIC, told Vísir that his objections are primarily over two aspects of the bill.
In the first case, the bill, if passed into law, would give the Post and Telecom Administration in Iceland the authority to supervise sites using the .is domain. Jens contends that the language of the bill is too vague – it grants this authority, but does not define the limits of this authority nor under what circumstances it may be used. Secondly, Jens also says that a proposed 3.6% tax levied on those registering a .is site is unprecedented anywhere else in the world.
Minister of the Interior Ögmundur Jónasson responded to the objections by saying the supervisory authority would be executed if complaints were lodged about a .is site, giving the government the power to investigate the site’s content and decide if said content is objectionable.
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