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Why ICANN Needs Fresh Blood
scubacuda writes "Akash Kapur of CircleID has written an editorial, Why ICANN Needs Fresh Blood: A Deeper View . Kapur writes, "ICANN was born amid the heady days of Internet euphoria. Its early promise to be the world's first global democracy (not to mention an entirely new form of governance) was a product of that euphoria. But like so many dot-coms, ICANN quickly succumbed to the hubris of its own vision. If ICANN has been a troubled organization from the start, then that is in no small measure because it over-promised at the start....What's needed is fresh blood -- new personalities, and new ideas to break the ideological impasse." Kapur lists cancelled at-large elections, the authoritarianism and secrecy of ICANN discussion, and the narrowing possibility that ICANN could represent a new model of governance as indicators that global democracy has failed."
I think the only thing that can help ICANN is a complete reorganization. Every rule and policy should be gone over by a 3rd party. The Internet is growing way to big and way to fast for ICANN to properly handle their job and they are falling very short. With their current policies I think they are hurting future growth of the medium.
There is little debate among outsiders of the position that ICANN is in resperate need of being disbanded and redesigned from the ground up. The question is, - since there is little or no oversight of the organization - how would lawmakers go about tearing down the golem they've created. It's not simply a matter of U.S. law anymore. I'm not certain that ICANN could be disbanded and redesigned using anything less than an international treaty, but IANAL, so perhaps someone with expertise in this area could speak to the issue of how change would be brought about (which, is equally as interesting as what those changes would be).
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Just look at the United States. The first time through, they put together the Articles of Confederation. After a few years, it was clear that wasn't working. They reorganized the government in the form of the Constitution, and it's worked fairly well since.
Here we have two interesting subjects: 1) the much-lampooned ICANN, and 2) our writer Akash Kapur himself. In 2000, Kapur conducted an interview with author VS Naipaul, the transcript of which is intensely -- and unintentionally -- humorous.
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Naipaul tells Kapur that all the questions Kapur has faxed him for the interview are inane. Naipaul further instructs Kapur to go read Naipaul's books instead of wasting the author's time by asking him to repeat himself. Much of this transcript also ran in the UK newspaper "The Guardian" -- I distinctly rememer having hiccups all morning from laughing through my coffee.
Two links on our two interesting subjects:
1) ICANN -- the movie!
http://www.paradigm.nu/icann/icannstage.h
2) The transcript of Kapur's interview with Naipaul:
http://www.akashkapur.com/naipaulint.ht
Meaning, "No argument" with the idea that ICANN needs fresh blood. However, I do question the idea that a global democracy is even possible, due mainly to global corporate interests and not geo-political interests.
And no, I *didn't* RTFA.
C|N>K
Everyone seems to know that ICANN is ineffective and corrupt, so why do people even bother with them. What would happen if a (suitably large enought) group simply refused to recognize ICANN's authority? I'm thinking something organized along the lines of realtime blacklist.