ICANN Meeting off to Shaky Start in Uruguay

JoeGee writes: "Reuters is reporting that the quarterly meeting of ICANN got off to a very shaky start in Montevideo, Uruguay on Friday September 8th. Protesters claim that ICANN's domain registration policies are creating a "digital divide". A special telephone party line created for members who could not be present at the meeting went unused. ICANN seems to be internalizing the turmoil that has surrounded the non-profit corporation since its inception in 1998."

Comments

Re:telephone line?

[geomcbay]

VoIP just isn't a particularly viable medium for mass communication yet. Its good in certain niche markets, but installing the software, setting up speakers and microphone, etc, is so much more of a pain than just using a phone (though VoIP is, generally, cheaper).

In any case, I'd guess that if their 'call-in' line was VoIP other people would bitch and moan that they were shutting out members from less-industrialized nations who might not have the Internet infrastructure to support decent VoIP.

Not that I'm defending ICANN. Does ANYONE actually support the existence of this group of people? Have they actually accomplished ANYTHING in practice, other than alienating Internet users? They seem to exist solely for the purpose of holding useless meetings in exotic places -- good work if you can get it, but a waste of our time and money in the long run.

Focus

[Sneakums]

Am I the only one who cannot take this so-called "digital divide" seriously when we live in a world where millions of children die each year simply because they don't have access to basic foodstuffs and medical supplies? And meanwhile, millions of Westerners celebrate their affluence by entering the ranks of the medically obese!

Let's concentrate on what really matters.

-_-;

[TheSHAD0W]

Saying that effective monopolization of domain registrations is part of a "digital divide" is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. The US has pretty much monopolized the .com/net/org/edu root domains, but that cuts both ways; If you lived in South Africa, you'd tend not to browse .com domains simply because most of those companies don't do business where you live. You'd do your surfing with .co.sa or whichever domain range is valid where you lived.

Also, frankly, vanity domains aren't extremely essential for business on the net. People get their URLs from friends and search engines and price bots, and in my experience nearly never go to "books.com" or "plumbing.com" to see what's there.

I'm sorry, folks. The digital divide only exists in the minds of socialists^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hliberals who worry about the poor folk not having computers, when it's largely a matter of education, not wealth. And the real estate along the information superhighway is practically boundless.

What's that brown stuff?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a complete load of crap.

But at least the critics are paying attention. Participants here conceded that the issue of public involvement has failed to capture the public's attention.

ICANN had set up a conference-call line so those not in Montevideo could participate, but an operator reported that no one had dialed in.

Hello? McFly? I'm an at-large member, and I never heard of this... Of course no one called an unlisted, unadvertised number. You have to preregister to get the number. It took me a fair bit of searching to find that little nugget of information after reading this article. I'm on the announcement list they say has so few subscribers; I haven't seen any useful announcements.

And if public participation is so low, why do they want to lower it? How many of the current at-large members will remain at-large members once they accept their internal version of the world? The At-Large Study draft doesn't give an estimate. Fancy that.

Flamebait? You bet. They deserved to be roasted alive. This Bildt guy worked for RAND Europe. Hm. Niles is a US ex-Ambassador. Hm. Dandjinou is responsible for the African domain names mentioned in the article. Hm. Many have backgrounds that make me go Hm. Many of the agencies and groups mentioned throughout have ties that give conspiracy theorists major woodies.

Re:What's that brown stuff?

[Meorah]

Agreed. Everybody who did their research and has a vested interest in ICANN's outcome seems to be a board member of ICANN. At-large members get squat for information, and the board chair makes fun of them for not getting involved and coming to the "local" events that could possibly be over 1000 miles away?

Bah! I smell political horse shit from a bunch of really really really smart engineers. They say that technical people make horrible leaders (business or national). So far, ICANN seems to be proving them all right.

Of course, the dude from South Africa and his buddy from Asia seemed like they weren't power-hungry control freaks, so maybe there is still hope.

At ICANN meetings around the globe, Bildt said, "we're seeing the same people from the same countries turning up at different places. That's not quite global involvement. That's global presence, perhaps."

Bzzt! Wrong answer, Mr. Bildt. That's vested interest and a lot of $$$$$. If you make the events less public, then you will limit attendance to the rich. That's what the other two dudes were trying to get across to you, but you were too thick-headed to consider that you might actually be wrong, so you spouted off like a 2nd grader and hoped your leverage and experience would make the other board members nod solemnly and agree with your (off-base) opinion.

Of course, you didn't contemplate that your quote would be posted all over the internet, where your raving emotions have no effect on a semi-intelligent individual. So while your board members might have been swayed for the moment, the rest of us are not.

Additionally, we don't appreciate your elitist attitude, and would prefer that you start marketing your presence to the general public through traditional channels such as TV advertising, Internet sites, and industry-specific written materials before you write-off the interest of the general public in your affairs. Thank you, and good day, sir.

Re:Uruguay?

[glitch!]

Not that there's anything wrong with choosing Uruguay, but that seems an unusual place to hold an ICANN meeting. Why go there?

The official answer is probably that it is a symbol of the fact that they represent all nations, blah, blah, blah.

I believe that they just want to keep out the "rifraff" (that's you and me), and that by making the meeting places inconvenient, the representation will have an automatic bias towards the corporations or political entities that don't care about cost.

They may have chosen Uruguay because Easter Island would have been too obvious.