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

Why Not Read the Right Report?

[pgrote]

This is the ICANN evaluation. It shows why they did and who they looked at. Good reading. Seems above board to me.

Lonely Sig Alert: http://www.compunotes.com

This is bad how?

[madprof]

ISOC has many representatives from large companies on its books.
So it represents no one company, and when it does something it will do it with industry backing.
This is a Good thing.
Exactly what can be done with the .org TLD that is going to be so bad anyhow?
It is already open to anyone, regardless of whether they are non-profit or not.

Bad choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as how isoc.org is already slashdotted, I'd have to question wether they can handle running .org.

Nepotism?

[ukryule]

Hmm ... seems the decisions hasn't been too well accepted at ICANNWatch. To quote:

ISOC was formerly headed by Vint Cerf, who is now the Chair of ICANN's Board. ICANN's vice-chair, Alejandro Pisanty, is chair of ISOC-Mexico.

It seems ISOC is a body which is busy reforming itself to reduce the power of individual members ... can't think why ICANN like them!

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...

Not my choice

[karl.auerbach]

The ISOC proposal didn't pass the smell test. When I looked at these proposals one of my requirements is that no present or past (within 24 months) ICANN director or officer had any role of significant influence (again within 24 months) with the applicant. Needless to say, with two ICANN directors having influential roles in ISOC, I didn't allow ISOC's to be on my own short list.

ICANN's own conflict of interest rules are not this strict. But I consider ICANN's conflict-of-interest policy to be a minimum standard (and a weak minimum at that.) My vote is looking to be cast in favor of the best applicant, not the one that passes bare minimums.

I also wonder at the concept that competition is promoted by handing .org over to a body that uses for its backroom operations a company that itself has a substantial presence (i.e. it has its own top level domain that it got from ICANN two years ago.) To my way of thinking, this is a move that concentrates control and reduces competition rather than decentralizes control and promotes competition.

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?