ICANN At-Large Study

perp writes: "ICANN has published the draft of its At-Large recommendations. It's long, but it looks like they're trying to raise the bar for at-large membership by requiring at-large members to a) pay a fee and b) be a registered domain holder. Their comments about all the non-committed at-large members who "enrolled only because it was easy" gave me a laugh; it took three days of trying for me to register." The draft also proposes slashing At-Large board members from 9 to 6. But there are some good points in there about organizational issues.

Comments

A Self Perpetuating System

[webmaven]

The reccomendation that the at-large membership be comprised of domain-name holders rather than the broader internet user population is setting up a conflict of interest.

Domain names are primarily valuable currently because they are a scarce resource. By creating an at-large membership comprised entirely of domain name holders, they are setting up an entrenched interest that will oppose the proliferation of gTLDs, as Karl Auerbach has been pushing for.

Clearly, they hope that this action will not lead to his re-election, but will place someone more 'reasonable' in his place.

This is just another tactic aimed at maintaining an artificial scarcity of domain names, and sharpening ICANN as a tool to manufacture and maintain this scarcity. ICANN is looking more like the diamond cartel every day.

For the record, I currently own 35 domain names.