Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

ICANN Meeting off to Shaky Start in Uruguay

Posted by michael on from the arm-wrestling-for-global-control dept.

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."

2 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Re:telephone line? by geomcbay · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

  2. What's that brown stuff? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.