ICANN CEO Proposes Radical Changes

Froomkin writes: "ICANN CEO Stuart Lynn today released a plan for a "strong" ICANN that would have 5 of 15 Board members selected directly by governments and the rest by registrars, registries, plus a few Board-squatter-like ringers chosen by the ICANN Board or staff. The main justifications offered for this shift are that in order to be "strong" ICANN needs more money, more support, and less "process". Of course, promises Lynn, ICANN's "core values of openness and broad participation" should be "preserved". (Don't laugh. It's not funny.) "Meaningful participation" will be achieved by cutting out any direct representation for end-users. Oh yes, ICANN wants a much bigger budget, and to be independent of the US Dept. of Commerce, and to get direct control of the root server operators too, all so as to ensure that ICANN has unimpeded ability to execute its (undefined, growing) "mission". ICANN was supposed to save the Internet from governments; since major interest groups such as the ccTLDs and RIRs won't do what ICANN wants, and won't pay it, ICANN now turns to governments to save it from the Internet. See the Press Release here, and then look at entire plan, then visit ICANNWatch.org for updates and commentary." Yep. The proposal would eliminate any pretense of At-Large involvement in running ICANN - it would be solely a governmental and corporate body.

Comments

It's getting to be time for alternate roots

[billstewart]

I've never been that impressed with the alternate roots - while there are inherent problems with having a single root, especially if you define its existence before defining ownership or policies, most of the alternate roots I've seen were either run by net.kooks or people who wanted to make money by selling .sex and .xxx before the official root got around to it.

But ICANN's decided that not only has it scammed its way into control (as opposed to the IETF committee that was working on the same problems), but that it should increasingly get rid of any grassroots control, ignoring as much as possible the processes for elections by the actual public for members of its board. Now that it's declared itself no longer bound by the processes that it always refused to follow anyway, it's time to dump it. Part of that process is replacing control of the root - Lynn's proposal itself says that the root servers aren't really under ICANN's control or funding now.

Dump ICANN, I say!

Instead of a new ICANN, how about almost none?

[btempleton]

The problem is not giving the government a role in ICANN. ICANN should barely exist. We have an infinite space, and dividing it up isn't nearly so hard as people imagine.

Rather, I would advocate simply having lots of privately run non-generic TLDs and hardly any ICANN at all