ICANN Voting Begins

gorsh writes: "Voting has begun for the at-large positions on ICANN's board of directors. If you are one of the lucky ones who was able to register as an at-large member, you should go to the site to vote now. These are the people who will help decide lots of important issues like the creation of new TLDs and who gets ownership of disputed domain names, so make your voice heard..." I'm not allowed to vote. Course, if I could, all I would do is try to get control of the .dot TLD.

Comments

of course

[London Weatherman]

Although it is painfully obvious to anyone who has used the internet for more that a few years, the only way that ICANN will truly achieve democratisation of TLD's is to create as many as possible.

In the same way that the DeBeers family maintain the artificially high price of diamonds by restricting flow onto the worlds markets, the desirability of TLD's remains contrived; flood the market.

The Asia/Pacific election is a real mess

[Peter Eckersley]

I'm an Asia/Pacific at-large member, and the situation over here looks pretty bad. None of the progressive looking candidates even got onto the ballot paper.

The candidates that are on the paper have all refused to say anything about organisational politics, trademarks and intellectual property, or corporate influence.

Just to top it of, looking at this page of statistics, it was hard to escape the conclusion that the vote was being stacked.

As if your votes will change anything

[flatpack]

I remember the frenzy here on /. when it was originally announced that ICANN would be holding elections for the position of at-large directors, and how everyone thought it was a great step foward for online democracy and the rights of netizens. But this seems to me to a naive attitude in that it assumes that everybody is going to play fair and that large organisations can be trusted to play within the rules. This is why the Libertarians aren't in power, and this is why your vote won't matter.

The sad truth is that ICANN, like many other American organisations, is little more than a corporate whore pandering to the $$$ passed its way. I mean, they've already got things like the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy designed to give their masters the advantage over mere people, and God forbid if anything should change this state of affairs! But rather than coming out and simply admitting this, they've chosen to allow a token gesture in the form of the at-large elections, although even then most of the candidates are in the pockets of big business.

Yes, this is another example of how customer-driven capitalism has fallen by the wayside to be replaced for producer-driven capitalism in which we are to be treated as "customers" rather than as citizens. No matter who is voted in in these elections, the corporations will still control ICANN, and they're not out to help anyone but themselves. It's just another example of how America, once the land of the free, has become a fascist superstate run by big business.

You have no control.

[The Dev]

The so called "at large membership" is merely
window dressing.

This article explains in painful detail who really controls ICANN.

ICANN is a scam.

Forgive me

[Elvis Maximus]

I'm not allowed to vote.

Does that make you an ICANN'T?

I'm really sorry, I had to. You can go ahead and mod me down, I deserve it.

When the new TLDs come out, do you think we'll see a slew of slogans like "Fred's Diner: The .fredsdiner People?"

-