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.