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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
--
.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.
"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
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