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

Re-evaluation of domain names

[mcelli]

I think that the issue of domain name registration is very problematic and needs to be completely re-evaluated.

Here is the issue: I wanted to visit classicgaming.org, spelled it wrong, and ended up with so many ads that I had to kill my browser. What does a million banner ads have to do with classic gaming?

Everyone has stories like this, and the issue here is deception. There has been no reprimand for deceiving people with domain names. If I create a website like www.guinnessucks.com, Guiness sues me, but there is no consumer watch organization that looks out for situations that clearly interfere with usage of the internet.

This consumer watch organization should be the ICANN. No more of this "do what you want with it" philosophy. If I create a website called clasicgaming.com, it better have something to do with the words in it's title, or lose my domain name. Registering a domain name should be like registering a Trade mark or a radio station, but just more streamlined.

In the name of civil liberty and through obscure definition of Free Speech, people are letting serious violation of a user's rights pass on the Internet. We are even defending this in fear that they'll come after us. It's time to realize that communities need policing, and usually the cops don't bust your door down if you're not breaking the law. It is time for regulation.

Abuse of power

[MatthewLovelace]

Isn't the assignment/registration of domain names ICANN's sole responsibility? If ICANN strays from this responsibility to exert influence on other areas, then ICANN is abusing its power and must be opposed.

Fees are the way to go

[Sloppy]

It is a valid concern that members be Real People and not just throwaway email accounts one someone's machine, so physical snail mailings should remain a part of the process.

Physical snail mails, especially to many thousands of people all over the world, cost real money.

Requiring that members have a registered domain name is a sneaky way of keeping ICANN from being the entity that pays that money -- instead the registrar handles it, and the expense actually gets covered when domain holders pay for their domains. It seems like a nice idea at first, but as others have pointed out, it does create a conflict of interest.

IMHO, the best thing to do is to charge fees to cover the mailing and administration expense. This really does solve the problem, and it is superior solution to requiring domain registration.

The question is whether it'll be ten bucks or a thousand. When I see the dollar amount, I'll know if ICANN is still trying to maintain an appearance of legitimacy.

OpenNIC

[Jama]

The OpenNIC is a user owned, international Network Information Center alternative to the traditional Top-Level Domain registries. OpenNIC was started in reaction to the growing concern about the lack of democratic control within the ICANN. The best thing you can do to help this initiative is to point your root-nameserver(s) and/or your resolving configuration to the OpenNIC nameservers. You'll still be able to resolve all the traditional ICANN TLD's, but you'll also have access to the new TLD's.

"Scooby Doo is essentially about casting the light of reason
on corruption cloaked in mysticism" - Scrymarch

DebianLinux.Net

Re:A Self Perpetuating System

[kindbud]

Your first argument - that too many gTLDs make trademark enforcement impossible - simply does not wash. I can't set up a travel agency and call it American Express, the AXP lawyers will be all over me, whether or not I also have registered the domain americanexpress.travel or americanexpress.leisure, or americanexpress.co.uk. Hell, I could register the domain name american-express-travel.com, or americanexpresstravelcom.net, and still be found to infringe on the trademark. The availability, or lack thereof, of more TLDs to register under does not affect whether or not I have infringed, nor does it make it harder to enforce the relevant laws. Infringement is infringment, on- or off-line, with or without a trailing dot-and-letters.

You then said:
And there's even technical considerations with unlimited gTLD's that some (Auerbach) claim are virtually nonexistent, but that is all basically the equivalent of "talking out the arse."

Speaking out of the posterior is what you are doing, by making these baseless declaratory statements. I have yet to see anyone present a case for what these technical considerations are, and why they are a problem when there are too many TLDs. You can't just make noise about DNS stability, and expect people to buy it. I say there is no technical reason why any number of TLDs cannot be introduced tomorrow. You will need to to better than hand-waving to convince me otherwise.