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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.
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.
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.
******
"What makes you think I care about your opinions?"
...I tried numerous times, repeatedly, and couldn't in over a week of random attempts. ICANN's "legitimacy" to me is ALWAYS in question when they pull stupid stunts like this. If anything, it should be administered as the United States political system is-- each netizen can vote for a person to represent their part of the world, and each part of the world is given up to X many reps to represent them. (This would more closely model the U.S. Senate I suppose.) These same netizens would also elect a Director or President which would have veto power and be able to try to define the tasks ICANN tackles.
As it is right now, ICANN isn't much more than a government (DoC) mandated farce.
(Forgive me if this seems flame-like, but I'm sincerely unhappy with ICANN (on so many levels this post probably only hit the top one or two things I dislike about them).)
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
ICANN represents an effort at global self-regulation that, if successful, has great merit in a number of different ways and if it fails, it has the potential to fuck up our lives in a number of different ways. I don't think that making it less accountable is likely to make it more successful.
First they allow Network Solutions to screw around with policy and now they're trying to make it more difficult for indeviduals to have a voice. This is truly outragous. Unfortunately, there aren't that many alternatives as far as influencing the process. At this point, what level of governmental oversight is there for ICANN? (I should know this but I'm getting old - memory isn't what it used to be... :)
--CTH
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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.
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
Anyone know what the evidence they mention is? Or is this actually just pure speculation instead an actual reference to evidence?
I'm not aware of ICANN doing anything to research whether that speculation is true or not. All I really know is that they haven't asked me why I signed up.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Vanity domain names do not fall into either category you've laid out. For example, I own "bitey.net". Now, honestly, with what you're proposing, my website ought to be about biting things, otherwise it's deceptive and I have no right to my domain.
Who are you to tell me I can't own bitey.net?
And who are you to tell me I must run a website on every domain I purchase? Believe it or not, there are plenty of domains that exist but do not have websites! Is there something inherently wrong with this? I think not. I hope nobody thinks so.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Should amazon.com be killed because it's not about really tall women?
Should slashdot.org be killed because it's about neither slashes nor dots?
I hope what you typed there was a joke, but i fear it wasn't.. so your upset because you typed classicgaming.org wrong and got a gazillion ads... learn how to spell man... the whole point of a global network set up the way it has been so far is a place where any one can say and do(hopefully) anything.. so if your taken advantage of because you got pudgy fingers.. tough get over it.. or go and play with your doll house some more.
At first I thought this was just a power grab by the corporate interests which already dominate ICANN. But then I came across this in the document (note I didn't read the whole thing, just skimmed).
"We propose the At-Large user "community" include institutions, but only individuals may vote. Institutions already play a greater role in the existing Supporting Organizations, so this seems an appropriate balance. We encourage your input on this issue. "
Further down they discuss the issue of multiple domain names and the possibilities of fraud. Since it is relatively inexpensive and easy to register a domain name these days, I don't think that the individual net user is necessarily locked out of the process.
It can't be any worse than the system they used in the last election. I never did receive the snail-mail that was supposed to give me my password. I got many e-mails telling me it was coming, but apparently they sent it via the Pony Express.
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I'm not an actor, but I play one on tv.
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.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
What exactly is a "fraudulent regustration"? Do they mean the registration of a non-person? Fine. Check to see if the people who signed up exist. Is that what they're alleging? It seems to me that if someone is interested enough in ICANN to bother registering, they are interested enough to have a say.
Nope, no sig
"Scooby Doo is essentially about casting the light of reason
on corruption cloaked in mysticism" - Scrymarch
DebianLinux.Net
Unless your browser displays a progress meter comprised of dots while loading a page. If so, /. will give you dozens of dots on every page request!
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
We are not breaking the old DNS. We agree completely with ICANN on the importance of the stability of the inclusive namespace. We absolutely will not touch a TLD or domain that is outside of our purview.
Our root.cache file is here (or here). See for yourself. There are no .us domains in it whatsoever.
The OpenNIC claims only 5 TLDs. We have over 500 registered members - growing fast - and many more users.
Finally, pointing resolve.conf at ANYONE gives that party control of what you see. I think the OpenNIC is more worthy of user trust than any other root, including ICANN/VGA. This is because the entire organization is governed by the vote of its members, much like the Debian people. So nobody's cutting deals behind the scenes.
Get it straight, Cleatus. You're embarassing yourself.
34,035 people voted, which is approximately 1/100ths of a percent of a projected potential electorate, raising questions of whether the election met the popular democratic standards upon which it was based
They're worried whether ICANN in its current form is adequately representing their constituency (domain owners), and yet simultaneously they're planning to make it even harder to participate.
I'm a domain owner; I've got three or four of 'em. Domain names are ten bucks a year, so that's not a big deal. Anyone want to take bets on how many zeroes will be at the end of this At-Large membership fee? I've got a quarter that says it'll be more zeroes than I can muster.
You're recommending that an arbitrary group of people be allowed to censor the web at will. Think about this for a minute and see if you really mean that?
Your domain, for instance, is called whoisandy.com, which does not appear to be a registered TM or SM. Let's say Nickelodean comes up with a new kids show called "Who Is Andy?", which is about the life of a fictional character, Andy. Should you lose your domain, since you don't hold the trademark? You're obviously causing public confusion for purely personal gain.
For a less contrived example, let's think 'pokey.com'. You know the one where the little kid was nicknamed pokey, but there's also a much more famous, Claymation figure named Pokey? And the "Big Bad Corporation" took it away? What you're saying is that the child had no right to own that name.
Sure it's inconvenient to hit spelling error related websites, but the consequences of eliminating the problem, especially when you keep in mind that the web is global, is far too dire to even consider.
If you want to keep the kids from hitting whitehouse.com, buy a proxy that can filter out such requests. They're mighty common these days and very reasonably priced. Don't do it by restricting my rights.