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ICANN Releases Reform Plan
If you've followed the history of ICANN at all, you know that it was originally set up to have substantial representation from the general public (known as At-Large representatives) - 9 of 18 board members. The original unelected board immediately set about undermining that, only electing 5 members and keeping on four "board-squatters" from the original unelected bunch.
The elections of the five At-Large members had two flaws from the point of view of ICANN's unelected board:
- There were assorted technical issues with the voting process, due apparently to incompetence from the contractor who handled it.
- Two of the five new board members who were elected did not represent the same corporate interests as the rest of the board.
Of these two flaws, the second was by far the more severe. The board risked losing control of ICANN to people who might run it for the public good rather than for the good of the corporations represented on the board. They started backing away from having any sort of elected representation whatsoever. In February 2002 ICANN President Lynn floated a reform proposal which would eliminate the At-Large representation - or rather, it would keep something called "At-Large", that would no longer be elected by the general public but instead appointed by the Board itself. Instead of the general public picking new ICANN Board members, the ICANN Board would pick new ICANN Board members. This was followed by a vote which confirmed ICANN's commitment to eliminating elected representation.
Now the reform proposal is out. There would be two classes of board members:
- approximately eight ex-officio members (members holding the board seat due to some other title or position they hold)
- approximately five to eleven members picked by a Nominating Committee (the Committee to be chosen by the current Board) and perhaps confirmed by the Board
It is important to note how thoroughly captured this process is. Many of the ex-officio seats accrue from positions that are selected by the ICANN Board. So the ICANN Board picks someone to be chief dogwalker, and the chief dogwalker gets an automatic position on ICANN's Board.
The seats selected by the Nominating Committee are also extremely vulnerable to capture. Let me use a real-life example of how nominating committees work to show what I mean: my credit union.
My credit union has a board structure very similar to the one proposed for ICANN: several ex-officio members, and a number of seats elected by the general populace (everyone who has an account at the credit union). This structure is actually more flexible than that proposed for ICANN, since ICANN does not plan any direct elections at all. However, the credit union membership picks from among candidates selected by a Nominating Committee. Every year or two, I get a ballot in the mail. I can choose from among all the candidates selected by the Nominating Committee, and I can check boxes for the candidates that I prefer, up to the number of open seats available on the Board.
I never return these ballots. Why, you might ask? Because the number of candidates is usually identical to the number of open seats. Three empty seats, three candidates to choose from. Six empty seats, six candidates to choose from. I think one year they might have had more candidates than open seats, but it was an aberration.
This system apparently works well for credit unions: would you believe that they pay interest on my checking account? What it does guarantee is that all future Board members will represent the same biases that are present in the Board at the instant the system was instituted. In my credit union's case, this guarantees "fiscal responsibility" or "fiscal conservatism".
For ICANN, what it would do is institutionalize the biases currently present. Whatever biases are there right now, will be there forever, as the system becomes a self-reinforcing feedback loop with no external controls.
The Board's current biases are toward:
- expanding ICANN's mission from a purely technical body to one that is willing to govern the Internet - taking on assorted social/political issues as it sees fit
- running ICANN for private profit rather than public benefit
Neither of these two traits needs reinforcing. Karl Auerbach, one of ICANN's At-Large directors, has his thoughts on a possible ICANN structure.
Domain Names are obsolete! Just type what you are looking for into google and hit "I'm Feeling Lucking"
saves letters too, slashdot is 4 letters less than slashdot.org
bling bling!
-- OMFG = Oh My Floatse Goatse
Someone needs to remind me about how ICANN was sanctioned and what its intended purpose is. I'm kinda lost about why the general population is being elimitated in favor of very specific business interests.
If ICANN is no longer supporting its original intent, then it's clearly a rogue organization and should no longer enjoy its position granted to it by the powers that gave it power.
In short, what would it take to revoke ICANN's powers entirely in favor of something more fair and impartial?
Yes, it needs something of a governace.
But this is a case where the sorta-governace is trying to:
a) make itself the one and ONLY authority as to how things on the internet will go and,
b) eliminate any say by the people who use it, aside from the compaines they represent.
Thus they eliminate the publicly elected Representative At-Large program, thus removing any public oversight of what they do.
You know, all you folks can find 50,000 things to say about Microsoft's OS, but when it comes to the hard core, backend, technical issues, ALL of you dry up. You aren't informed! Well, now is the time for you to get over it. Microsoft is going to quietly sneak in the back door and take over the internet, if we don't get off our collective behinds and put a stop to it. ICANN was supposed to represent the users and it's been hijacked by corporate interests, Microsoft among them, who intend to use DNS as a means to "own" the interent.
Perhaps you aren't familiar with DNS, which I find hard to swallow on in a community this technical. DNS says that your site exists and this is how people find you. It also controls email via the MX records in DNS. If you like to surf and read email, then you have a stake in this. When you start tinkering with the very basic addressing of the internet, you start exercising a LOT of control over what is allowed and what isn't allowed. Who wants that in the hands of a bunch of corporate sell-outs?
This is going to shape the internet for generations to come. We are laying the ground work for all kinds of things. IPv6 is coming, which will replace the current internet addressing scheme. What about voice over IP? How's that going to work? Will it work for cell phones? New routing protocols are coming that will be purely optical. Do you really want the implementation of ALL of this in hands of the corporations who stand to profit out of finding extra ways to make you pay to use all this?
Let's take a trip down memory lane about previous ICANN policies. Rememeber with Internic (now Register.com) was the only name registrar and they screwed up EVERYTHING!! There were so bad, in fact, that Congress stepped in and made ICANN allow other registrars. If you have a domain name that's registered, look at your inbox and how much spam you get related to your domain name(s). That's another fine ICANN policy in action. Don't fool yourself, these people are not there to look out for the public good.
Well, unless you want a lot more of the same for the next few decades, I'd suggest that you all write your representatives (here the the good old usa - http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/) and start squealing now. You need to get your family to write. Get your friends and co-workers to write - even if you have to write the letter and get them to sign it.
You know, you have to fight the fight while it can still be won. We are still within our window of opportunity, people.
HDGary secures my bank
ICANN was "blessed" by the US department of commerce to run the DNS.
If you want to get something else, then you'd either need to convince the DoC that ICANN isn't doing what the DoC wants, or convince the people who use DNS that they should use another body to make policy for the DNS.
Alternic is trying, but IMO they are shooting to low, trying to organize the end users.
The end users are ultimately the deciders, but they don't for the most part care about network issues.
Much better is to try and reach the ISPs and network administrators.
That's a difficult group to define exactly, but a reasonable approximation is anyone with an autonomous system number.
ISPs are in the business of running the internet.
If you convince enough of them to adopt a different root, you win.
For that, you only need to write some reasonable policies that would make the internet a better place for ISPs if they were followed.
Note though, most ISPs care a lot more about stability than about correctness.
Any policy that means making a change is going to be bad in their eyes.
You want change, so you're going to need to overcome that.
One solution would be straight cash bribes.
I.e. Force registries to pay them.
This could be justified by calling it a fee for the ISPs DNS service.
Another possibility is greater control.
Democracy is a great system for giving people the illusion of control - One AS, One vote.
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