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ICANN to Decide Fate of Direct Elections

Posted by michael on from the fix-is-in dept.

QuestKing writes "The Boston Globe is reporting that the ICANN board will be meeting this weekend to decide how to reform its organization. High on the board's agenda is the replacement of the direct elections of board members by Internet users. The elections would be replaced by a selection committee made up of "academics, consumer advocates, businesses and technical engineers" that would select "knowledgeable experts who are not tied down to one particular interest." ICANN's been under fire since its inception, when will we start building its coffin?"

12 comments

  1. More like... by Daniel+Wood · · Score: 0

    When will the U.S. Department of Commerce decide to kill off ICANN and take matters into its own hands.

  2. New Name! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ICOULDNT
    International Constortium Of Undereducated and Late Decisions using NT.

  3. No reforms at all by dh003i · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Destroying what little democracy there is -- that the net's users can vote -- is not a reform of any kind. It is a power grab. They don't want to be accountable to the public which they are controlling.

    What really needs to happen is that the ICANN should be completely eliminated. Every decision about assigning IP addresses to corresponding web addresses should be democratically made by the net-community. That is, every issue should be voted on by the net. The internet makes it possible to have a true democracy as did the Greeks. We should go in that direction.

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    1. Re:No reforms at all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      male natural born citizens only? good plan :(

    2. Re:No reforms at all by Black+Aardvark+House · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nice idea, but hardly a good in in practice.

      How are all the Net users going to be made aware of any votes? Will there be proxy ballots? What about all the AOL'ers that couldn't give a flying flap about IP addresses? I'd figure the "turnout rates" to be less than 1%.

      And how do you define a "net user"? If you use e-mail addresses, one can "stuff the ballot box" by registering many different ones. And not every net user has their own IP address. Perhaps we could use Social Security numbers or whatever number each country's government issues to people.

      You're suggesting to get rid of ICANN to initiate some geek-driven technocracy. Will it be any better than ICANN?

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      I am the evil aardvark!

    3. Re:No reforms at all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed. ICANN must be DESTROYED, DESTROYED, DESTROYED. (How do ya like my robot imitation?)

  4. dumb! by www.sorehands.com · · Score: 2
    Many of the net users do not understand the issues related to ICANN. They don't understand the issues of fair use v. IP rights. They don't even know what a DNS is.

    Many of the internet users are not effected by ICANN and may have never heard of ICANN. Many people think that being the master of your own domain is a Seinfeld reference.


    If you reduce this from ALL people to people who have a domain then you would be getting a better more intelligent response.

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  5. Can't be done by JWBsDad · · Score: 1
    They are looking for people who are not tied down to one particular interest.

    Everyone who is elected/appointed will be tied to the same interest - GREED. Either they will have been bought by their "sponsor" or they will be on power trips.

    Anyone who is not looking to get on ICANN for their own self interests will be disqualified because of that very reason. We have already seen that if you are elected to the board by the users at large by running on a platform of equality for all you are automatically considered a crank and a problem.

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  6. What we are talking about it seems: by littlerubberfeet · · Score: 1

    we all have assumede ICANN will die. Granted.

    Now, how should we go about assigning IPs? that seems to be the current derived question.

    With IPv6 and its' release, we can restructure entirely. and IP is a tag that defines your computer to the net. I am thinking aloud here. I see two options, first, IPs are chosen by the user in the same way domain names are. Second, IPs are divided into ranges and assigned. universities get 65.xxx.xxx.xxx- 70.xxx.xxx.xxx, etc. I realise that I know very little about the process, perhaps an ask slashdot discussion is in order?

    The First idea: prevent people from registering multiple IPs somehow. ideas? Assigned like email adresses, they would be first come first serve. but numbers don't really matter, so why not just let people at them?

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    1. Re:What we are talking about it seems: by mysticalreaper · · Score: 1

      First, let me state that by no means am i an expert on IPv4 or v6, but it think i can add something here.

      Your idea about assigning groups of IP addresses to certain orginizations (like universities) actually HAS happened, but not quite in the organized way you described. For instance, for a while, most cable modems you saw had a 24.x.x.x IP address. The reason for that was that @Home owned the entire 24 subnet. I belive that other companies were assigned entire 'Class A' subnets as they were called. AT&T has 12.x.x.x, i believe, Genuity has 4.x.x.x. Universities seem to usually have a 'Class B' address. The university of Alberta (in canada, where i am) has all 129.128.x.x addresses. ISP's usually own blocks of IP addresses, which are usually assigned in the least amounts that are required. So if a small isp only needs 100 IP's, they'll give them something like 205.132.211.x, which gives them 254 usable addresses. The bigger the organization, the more IP's are assigned to them. Currently, this is done by IANA in North America, and RIPE in Europe.

      The other point is in response to your statement "but numbers don't really matter, so why not just let people at them?"

      Well, the answer is IP Addresses DO matter. Your IP address determines how traffic is routed to you. It would be nearly impossible to keep track of how to route traffic to different ip's if 123.123.123.1 was in bejing, and 123.123.123.2 was in amsterdam. Routing logic says these 2 ip's will be routed differently only at the last step. If each IP were different, you'd have MASSIVE routing tables which would have to keep track of how to get to each ip around the word, which would be further complicate with dynamic ips, etc.

      The upshot of this is that routing is very hard, and you can't decide numbers on a whim, just like you can't choose your own phone number.

    2. Re:What we are talking about it seems: by steve_l · · Score: 1

      I work in an org a class A address; it makes it easier for the router people to route stuff, but every few years they do still change all the addresses around to simplify routing.

      I dont think IPv6 should repeat the same mistake of giving away giant blocks early on; give each country one IPv4 size block and only when they have used it all up, can they come back for a new one.

      Phone numbers, especially cellphone numbers, are simpler: they are just mapped to the phone ID /simcard IMEA and then that is dialled. There is nothing to stop cellphone number mobility in the US but reluctance on the part of the vendor.