ICANN Recommends ISOC Run .org TLD

Amazing Quantum Man writes "According to ZDNet, ICANN has issued a report recommending that ISOC run the .org TLD. It looks like ISOC would run .org in conjunction with Afilias." mesozoic points out that ISOC is a non-profit organization composed of many for-profit heavyweights, writing "I'm not surprised; are you?" This preliminary report may be disappointing to those who hoped that Paul Vixie and Carl Malamud would be successful in their bid to head up .org.

Comments

You can't make everyone happy

[gmajor]

So what if the ISOC orgranization is composed of idustry heavyweights? You can't make everybody happy.

I am sure that ICANN critics would be able to find something wrong with every single one of the groups vying for the .org TLD. Some critics seem to demand nothing short of ICANN's head on a silver platter...

Re:This is bad how?

[asackett]

In a case such as this, industry backing is only one side of the coin. On the other side there's me and everyone else who uses the internet for more than a distributed pay-per-use vending machine.

By the way, I make my living writing software for web commerce sites, so I am not opposed to commercial interests using the internet just as freely as geeks and academicians.

Re:This is bad how?

[ajs]

This is roughly the same logic that leads to American media reporting that something has bi-partisan support as if it had universal support.

Think about what you're saying: the for-profit companies are the ones running the not-for-profit domain registration. If there's a fight between two groups over a domain and one of the groups is an industry association (oh, let's say the RIAA), which one do you think would be favored?

If the platter fits...

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Some critics seem to demand nothing short of ICANN's head on a silver platter...

Hmmm, an alleged non-controversial infrastructure overseer which expanded its mandate, tried to assess an unauthorized tax, and then summarily and unilaterally dismantled its already-small semblance of democracy and accountability (not to mention illegally hid its internal workings to prevent criticism)... yeah, I think "head on a silver platter" is just about right.

Re:ISOC is also made up of individuals

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

As long as I have been a memeber, ISOC has never done anything shady... Become informed before you bash them, I challenge anyone to come up with anything ISOC has done that harmed the internet community.

Ah, but blockquoth the site openISOC:

Why the Need for a Change?

Over the past two years ISOC's Board of Trustees (BoT) has engaged in what it calls the "reform" of ISOC. At its December 2001 meeting in Salt Lake City, the BoT made major changes to the ISOC governance structure. This was done without announcement or broad consultation with ISOC members.

The main elements of ISOC's new governance structure are:
- Reduction of the percentage of Trustees elected by individual members,
from 100% to 20% (from 15 seats down to 3 seats) -
or even to 15%, if the option of coopting an additional 5 members
is taken into account, leaving theoretically 3 out of 20.
- Suspension of voting rights of individual members in 2002.
- Increase of the percentage of Trustees elected by organizational members,
from 0% to 40% (from 0 to 6 seats).
- Linkage of organizational members' voting rights to their financial contribution
(i.e. the more an organization pays, the more votes it gets.)
- Increase of the percentage of Trustees elected by standards bodies
(IETF, IESG, IAB) from 0% to 20% (from 0 to 3 seats).
- Increase of the percentage of Trustees elected by chapters
from 0% to 20% (from 0 to 3 seats).
- Suspension of individual membership categories up to 35 US$ per year.
(In combination with this, ISOC Administration made it impossible,
to sign up or renew memberships in higher paying categories.)
- Introduction of global free individual membership.

These changes effectively transfer ISOC governance authority away from
individual members and over to organizational members (mostly large information technology firms.) Such changes make ISOC a mass membership association in which decision-making power is concentrated in a small set of IT firms. This is a major departure from what ISOC has been to date. Moreover, it risks creating public confusion about ISOC's public positions, which will be made by a few firms but could be perceived as being made by its membership.

Seems pretty shady to me...

Re:nix TLDs

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

hy not? Because how much easier is it to remember "slashdot.org" than it is to remember "3ffe:ffff:0100:f101:0210:a4ff:fee3:9566"

The top poster did say, "Why not get rid of DNS?" (A different argument, altogether.) but "Why not get rid of TLD?" Is there any longer -- was there in fact ever -- a reason for partitioning the namespace into .com, .org, .gov, .mil, etc.?

Why aren't *you* a member of ISOC?

[Simon Brooke]

Hey, so lots of large companies are members of the Internet Society. Could this possibly be because they're involved in the Internet and want to have input into Internet policy? Perhaps they want to take part in the Internet Engineering Task Force, which is part of ISOC. This isn't a scandal or a conspiracy. Thousands of people in over a hundred countries are members; being a member of ISOC costs me US $ 75 a year, but you can join for free. Why aren't you a member?