ICANN Mulls Poll Taxes, Representation

Cutriss writes: "The ICANN seems to be thinking about giving in to public demands. According to this article on Wired.com mentions that ICANN is considering allowing domain owners to elect their board of directors. It's a step in the right direction. I wonder if domain owners could collaborate and cast a collective vote of no confidence, absolving ICANN of its responsibilities..." I wouldn't call it a step in the right direction since each revision to ICANN's Board involves less individual representation and more corporate representatives. There's another story with some quotes from Karl Auerbach. The At-Large study that we talked about earlier has now been released in its final form. If you don't like the way ICANN is going, please consider attending their meetings. Next one is in Los Angeles next week.

Comments

Another committee, another barrier

[andyo]

Ah, yes, another committee, the ever-present ICANN solution. Another layer to bang your head against, to negotiate with for months, to lose or dilute your suggestions...this is the public's compensation for losing any input into real power and decision-making.

Of course it has always been problematic to count votes from a general, world-wide population. An organization with a public role doesn't necessarily need a one-person-one-vote sort of democracy to be accountable. But when the people who try to hold ICANN accountable have been rigorously excluded from the beginning (breaking through only occasionally such as in the election of Auerbach), we have to fight against removing the few processes that may promote accountability.