ICANN to Decide Fate of Direct Elections

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?"

Comments

Re:No reforms at all

[Black Aardvark House]

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?