If ICANN Can't, Who Can?

alanjstr asks: "After reading this article at The Register, I no longer understand how domain registration really works. Quite a few posts have come across Slashdot about ICANN elections and rights to domain names. It sounds to me like it started off as a good thing but is struggling to move to be autonomous. ICANN was created in an attempt at who should run it and How should it be paid for. Clearly the Who has become a problem with many complaining about not being represented. The How is a problem that is still unresolved. The more I think about it, the more it seems like we're setting up a new government to rule the land of Domains. How should be go about fixing this dilemma? The first thing that comes to mind is to write a Constitution to lay the groundwork. How would you complete the following: We the People of the Digital Planet Earth...." It all boils down to ICANN asking most of the ccTLDs to pay a third of it's operating costs without allowing them representation in ICANN itself. Now that doesn't sound very fair, does it?

Comments

Who's Next?

[stx23]

Clearly the Who has become a problem with many complaining about not being represented.

The Who not being represented? I though they were one of Taco's fave bands.

How Nominet (.uk) sees this

[matthew.thompson]

The big issue with this is that ICANN just "decided" to levy a tax on the registrars of country specific domains. ICANN have had no control or input into these domains as they were organised BI (Before ICANN) yet they are asking for millions of dollars from all the country specific registrars - regardless of size.

Fromm Nominet's 2000 AGM notes.

ICANN's recent attempt to invoice the ccTLD Registries had been met with a firm declaration that there was no contractual relationship between the two sides and that there should be no tax on Domain Names. However, as a gesture of goodwill, a donation of USD $100, 000 had been sent from Nominet, together with a letter making it clear that banking the cheque would imply ICANN's acceptance of the fact that it was not in payment for any specific services or any contractual obligations.

ICANN isn't doing what it was intended to do...

[cmilkosky]

A Constitution sounds like it might be a neat idea, but do you really think that you're going to get all the governments in the world to agree to the contents of a Constitution? I don't. It's a pipe dream. The problem is that different governments have different agendas. It may sound crazy, but if we had one International government (only), I think it might be easier. Or at least one with strength to rule over local country government, then something like this might be more feasible.

Until then, I think the best way is to open it up to everyone and get the registries to allow mass voting on what new TLDs are added. WIPO can handle the problems with trademarks.

Another point I feel worth mentioning, is that the problem also lies with the fact that WE are not taking advantage of the alternative DNS systems out there. If we make a mass migration over to alternative DNS systems, ICANN will lose its clout. This should send a message to any future organization or government that would like to manage DNS. Check out and support:

Open DNS Technologies

AlterNIC

ADNS

Open Root Server Confederation

Name.Space

There's more too.

Chris

Open DNS Technologies, Inc.

SuperRoot Consortium

[Brazilian Geek]

Everyone's b*tchin' about ICANN but not many people are really doing anything about it - but in the Register article there's a link to The SuperRoot Consortium that has a proposal and is actually doing something about the TLD problems.

I know that I'm switching over, if everybody starts using their rootservers ICANN will loose it's power and all of us will be happier. Think about it, ICANN depends on their rootservers to stay in power, use other rootservers and ICANN can't touch you.

Like I said, I'm switching...

--
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...

Alternate DNS's - what a pain

[Sabalon]

Okay...I run BIND for where I work. Given that I'm not Earthlink and connecting massive amounts of the american populous to the net, but we've got about 5500 people.

As I read through the comments on here, I find things like Superroot.net, alternic, etc...

So, for people to get access to these rogue sites, I need to add all these other entries to my root.db and other files. And merge the entries from the various splinter groups, as I can't just dowload one groups root.db and run with it. And what is going to happen when two groups both have the same TLD listed in there?

I'm all for ICANN going away, but like it or not, there needs to be that tiny bit of control in there to keep utter anarchy (ie alt.*) from happening.

Anyone have a better way of handling this nightmare?