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ICANN Board Spurns Democratic Elections
Pelerin writes "At its meeting in Ghana, ICANN has
voted against the proposals made
in the Final Report on ICANN At-Large Membership, which among other things proposed
an At-Large Supporting Organization (ALSO), which
would hold elections for At-Large seats on the
ICANN board. Membership in ALSO would have been "based on individual domain name holders". In today's resolution ICANN says that it "is not persuaded that global elections are the only or the best means of achieving meaningful public representation or the informed participation of Internet users in the ICANN process" and proceeded to reject the proposals,
while at the same time engaging in a bit of
double-speak about its action according to dissenting board member Karl Auerbach. It looks like ICANN is leaning towards its presidents' reform proposal which argues that ICANN suffers from "Too Much Process" among other problems, and that seats on the board should be chosen by the board itself, from among
nominations submitted by governments and a new
Nominating Committee (NomCom)."
There are Web sites devoted to following the criminal antics of the ICANN thievery, such as ICANN Blog and ICANN Watch.
The Gardener
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.sig
There are a lot of things in the DNS protocol that are downright ugly, such as the useless idea of "zones", the allowing of NS referrals without glue records, and the CNAME record. These only make sense when we look at the needs of those that designed DNS. The protocol is designed to make it as difficult as possible to manage DNS records (so that the bureaucrats can feel cozy that they know how to manage zones better than the average system administrator). The fact that MX and NS records point to names instead of IPs reflects the fact that the average DNS bureaucrat was too lazy to run their zone files through a sed script when making changes. The fact that out-of-bailiwick NS records (records without glue) is allowed reflects both the average DNS bureaucrat is too lazy to supply the IP for an out-of-bailiwick record, and that a DNS bureaucrat likes having well defined boundaries of authoritity.
The top down hierarchical structure of DNS also reflects the fact that the bureaucrat likes well-defined authority. The discomfort BIND developers with alternate root servers reflects the bureaucrat's desperate need to cling on to the power that they perceive having.
The fact that some DNS bureaucrats have really silly requirements for someone to have a domain in their bureau shows the kind of power grabs DNS bureaucrats enjoy having.
It comes to no surprise to me that ICANN does not want things like democratic elections; their job is to do things as slowly as possible (doing things any faster would actually take work) while getting as much control and sucking as much money out of the system as possible.
Now, at this point, all I am doing is defining the problem; I do have some ideas bouncing around my head as to what a solution should be; however those ideas still use the top-down hierarchical structure that DNS has. It would be better if there was a way to have the DNS resolution structure be based on rough consensus instead of via a top-down structure; perhaps something that allows indivual DNS servers to send "votes" on who should control a given top-level-domain; if a given set of servers for a given top-level domain get enough "votes", they control the TLD in question.
Then again, a community-controlled system needs protections to not become the diastar that IRC has become; where 14-year old kids struggle to control the channel so they can be a jerk by kicking and banning people at random.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Icann flies to all these places and stays at resorts all over to consume their growing budget.
;Limerick, Ireland ;Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Rhodes, Greece ; Yokohama, Japan ; Bucharest, Romania; Washington, DC, USA
Lomé, Togo ; Honolulu, Hawaii, USA ; Amsterdam, Netherlands
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA ; Accra, Ghana ; Bangkok, Thailand ; San Diego, California, USA
Salzburg, Austria
ICAN wastes millions partying in far away locales to prevent proper voting.
Look how much they sqaunder. Its as if they are trying to funnel funds into Travel Agencies!
9-13 September -- RIPE 43 -- Rhodes, Greece
14-19 July 2002 -- IETF 54 -- Yokohama, Japan
24-28 June 2002 -- ICANN Meetings -- Bucharest, Romania
18-21 June 2002 -- INET 2002 (ISOC) -- Washington, DC, USA
3-6 June 2002 -- TERENA Networking Conference 2002 -- Limerick, Ireland
14 May 2002 -- AfriNIC -- Lomé, Togo
5-13 May 2002 -- AFNOG Network Technology Workshop (5-10 May) AFNOG 2002 (12-13 May) -- Lomé, Togo
7-11 May 2002 -- WWW2002: Eleventh International World Wide Web Conference -- Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
29 April - 3 May 2002 -- RIPE 42 -- Amsterdam, Netherlands
7-10 April 2002 -- ARIN IX -- Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
17-22 March 2002 -- IETF 53 -- Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
10-14 March 2002 -- ICANN Meetings -- Accra, Ghana
3-7 March 2002 -- APNIC 13 -- APRICOT 2002
ICANN Address Supporting Organization (ASO) General Assembly (5 March 2002) Bangkok, Thailand
10-12 February 2002 -- NANOG 24 -- Miami, Florida, USA
6-8 February 2002 -- Network and Distributed System Security Symposium 2002 -- San Diego, California, USA
1-2 February 2002 -- Tagung des ICANN Studienkreis -- Salzburg, Austria
By wasting money and creating a need for a big budget they are trying to create a situation where funding is vital and needs to be extorted from someone.
"John Marshal has made his decision; now let him enforce it." - President Andrew Jackson, 1832
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
It involves editing your named.conf.
See .sig for details.
Analogies aside, I agree. A few reminders from their own fact sheet (I highlight for effect):
Perhaps they need to take a look at their own beginnings. No one should become so powerful or important as to forget where they started.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Use OpenNIC, a truly democratic system for domain names.
It only takes about 2-5 minutes to set up on your computer.
Learn more by reading the OpenNIC FAQ.