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ICANN Bucharest Meeting Comes to a Close

Posted by michael on from the tea-party-desperately-needed dept.

ICANN has been meeting in Bucharest this week; as this story goes live (assuming I handled the time zones correctly) they'll be starting their last day of meetings. Highlights of the day will almost certainly include the ICANN Board voting to eliminate the public participation that they were charged with implementing and have fought against for the last several years, and ICANN implementing a domain name tax to fund their operations. ICANN dismisses cynics who complain about taxation without representation. You can view the webcast online, assuming that the volunteers doing it manage to keep it up. If you prefer text, you may like Roessler's weblog or the ICANN blog (highly recommended), which also has many links to news stories, not that the reporters generally understand the issues very well.

2 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. Sponsorships by jchawk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Apparently you can sponsor ICANN, they use this money for meetings, etc. . .

    Here's the levels from their site -

    Three Levels of Sponsorship are available:

    Top Level: US$15,000
    Second Level: US$10,000
    Third Level: US$5,000

    My question is who in their right mind is sponsoring them? Normally a sponsorship would give you a little bit of influence, and ICANN seems to do whatever the hell they want. So the question is why would you sponsor these guys?

  2. Time to unplug ICANN's money by alizard · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ICANN believes that they aren't responsible to anybody

    ARIN, RIPE, and APNIC are getting pissed at them, and have publically suggested that ICANN restrict its role to whatever it is they're supposed to be doing and leave tech admin to organizations capable of doing it. <p?Their budget is spiraling and for that, we get the same kind of root administration we've been getting from Verisign and probably could get from another vendor with better results and for a fraction of the cost.

    Their only real products appears to be hot air and bullshit.

    Whether you're a US taxpayer or you're a domain name holder anywhere in the world... we're paying for this, what the hell are we getting out of this?

    A domain name dispute resolution process universally regarded as unfair outside the Fortune 500? It would be more cost effective and equally fair to require disputants to disclose their net worths and award the domain to the party with the greater net worth.

    It's time for some Congressman to carry a bill to unplug their funding... and resume contracting with Verisign to run the root via NSF pending figuring out a better solution.

    --
    Tech Public Policy stuff