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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?"

3 of 12 comments (clear)

  1. 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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    social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
    1. 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!

  2. 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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