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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.
They are still valid, even though you may not agree with me
Mikael
Pawlo.com
Frankly having people vote who have internet domains isn't all that much better than anyone who has an email address. I personally own nearly six or so domains (this is not even including the ones that I am listed at a technical contact for due to my web development work). This also shuts out a lot more people that would other-wise be able to vote, I can name several people who probably would choose to vote yet this will cut them out.
Unfortunately there is no good way to solve the problem of one person voting multiple times. There are tons of people with hundreds of domains under their belts. Granted while it is easier to get e-mail addresses than it is domains the elections could still be off balanced by a single person with many domain names. Perhaps an even better solution would be allowing one vote per IP address or something along the lines of that. Again, it wouldn't be perfect or promise that only one vote per person is counted. It's something to think about. If anybody has any other ideas for solutions, I'd like to hear about them. It seems like something I'd be interested in researching and refining.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
You can have a democracy of special interests, a democracy of thieves, a democracy of madmen, or whatever.
If you think your viewpoint is relevent and important, then you should do something.
In the People are Lazy theory, People tend to do only those things that are utterly important to them. This allows more ambitious folks a free hand.
This might not been in your best interest.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The fact is that many companies have many tens, sometimes as many as hundereds of domain names. Why should they get that many votes? Should I get to vote on the BOD of McDonalds if I happen to eat several hambergers every day?
The people running an organization like ICANN should be impartial, not people who have power becuase of how many domain names they happen to be squatting.
Anyone who posts about bad moderation are themselves off-topic and should be moderated accordingly.
We already have an age limit. Privacy laws put in by congress make it pretty much illegal for any kid to participate in anything interactive on the web. If you require a letter of parental permission, you're not likely to get many kids participating on your site...
"Yes.. no matter what the culture, folk dancing is stupid." -MST3K
How is that an improvment???
Nitpick: Michel's key concern was that the new proposal would prevent Internet users who don't own a website from having a vote in ICANN
Doesn't it give you a warm fuzzy feeling to know that ICANN board members see domains and websites as the same thing?
Ultimately, the problem is that ICANN is getting too cozy with the corporations that dominate the web.
As mentioned in the article, the problem with the last "public" election was that it suffered from massive fraud by people opening throwaway email accounts to vote with.
Certainly a "one domain = one vote" scheme would heavily favor corporations which regularly buy blocks of domains to protect their trademark turf.
However, even a "one domain owner = one vote" scheme would be unfair to the public. While they might be limited to a single vote for the majority of their domains, only big corporations (think M$) have the money to rig the elections by purchasing domains through shell organizations (think The Association for Competitive Technology).
At least when the primary mechanism for ICANN voting fraud was free, the public could still compete with the corporations.
- How well you entertained the current ICANN board members when they visited your town or place of business
- How many of the children of the board members you offered free scholarships
- How many free vacations, car rentals, plane fares, etc you offered to the current board members.
After decades of decadence, we can even demand that they reform. Just like the IOC!ICANN is only relavent as long as everybody uses their DNS. I don't understand why somebody with some moral authority in the IT world doesn't just set up an alternative. I know there are in fact several alternatives, but these are private companies that nobody has heard about.
So who could do it? The IETF and the ACM come to mind. There are probably a few others.
Note that you don't have to switch all at once, you can still fall back to legacy ICANN domains if the new domain system doesn't find a match.
My "ultimate" domain name scheme would allow anything as a .tld (although you could set up a few with restricted access, perhaps '.trademark' or something like that). That way, for example, IBM could use "buy.ibm", while somebody who doesn't like IBM could use "dontbuy.ibm". There would be no way to purchase all the domains under a .tld.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
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.
What I don't get, is that when I signed up for At Large membership, I think I remember that there was a snail mail step, where I received some code thingie on a physical piece of paper. Doesn't that limit the fraud to people with multiple physical snailmail addresses? That's still do-able, but a much bigger pain-in-the-ass than setting up multiple email accounts.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
are likely not to know enough about them.
It is my logical belief (through reasoned findings) that they, along with the United States Department of Commerce and the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization, are all corrupt.
Please visit WIPO.org.uk to find out why.
Never! What kind of a Slashdot reader would I be if I read the articles before posting on them?!
rooooar
This also shuts out a lot more people that would other-wise be able to vote, I can name several people who probably would choose to vote yet this will cut them out.
Of course they COULD buy a domain registration and vote. It used to be $100/reg, but it's much lower now...
But perhaps that's what's intended. Can you IMAGINE the revenue for the registrars if there's ever an important and closely-split issue coming up and BOTH sides decide to buy votes?
(And can you imagine a Beo... naw!)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
In the People are Lazy theory, People tend to do only those things that are utterly important to them. This allows more ambitious folks a free hand.
But there is a COST to participating in a democracy: Eyeball time.
You only have so much life. If you spend it all in political wrangling over the rules of living it you don't have any left to enjoy. (Unless your favorite passtime is policical wrangling, of course.)
This is why there are Republics: So people can chose representatives they trust to spend the time coming up with a ruleset.
It's also part of why Anarchists and Nihilists simply ignore or work around those who "claim to make rules".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Tone down the website a bit. Make reasoned, rational arguments and lay off the silly imagery. It's childish and nobody with any credibility whatsoever will take you seriously. Add some structure to it. Get rid of the huge, goofy fonts. If you clean it up, it might be something that I would recommend to others.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Your friend Alex has not proven his Eternal Life Device to work - has he?
The solution to problem of trademark conflicts with domain names can be demonstably proved - can it not?
Incidently, I never claimed to have come up with the solution - it was quite obvious to the authorities from the start.
So - I am not claiming to be of intellectual level greater than your buddy Alex - or the greats, Edison - Tesla - Einstein.
My IQ is average(ish) actually.
I just state the obvious.
The United States Department of Commerce and the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization and ICANN know the solution to trademark problems on the Internet.
Please visit WIPO.org.uk.