ICANN Stacks Board with Non-Critical Appointees

Froomkin writes "ICANN's outgoing dissident Board member, Andy Mueller-Maguhn, has leaked the slate that ICANN's so-called NomCom (actually an appointments committee) has picked. The new public representatives are mostly a mix of incumbent ICANN Board directors who don't rock the boat, corporate executives, and ISOC members. Dissident Andy Mueller-Maguhn got replaced by a former member of the board of Deutsche Telekom. Dissident Karl Auerbach (who had to sue ICANN to get to see its documents) got replaced by the President of the U.S. Council for International Business. At least the Board Squatters are finally going to be history. Details at ICANNWatch." ICANN is an interesting study in how a ruling regime can usurp a democratic institution and turn it into an autarchy.

Comments

Just curious...

[Archfeld]

where exactly does ICANN derive its' authority from ? Do they have any enforement powers or do they just suggest things ?

Pretty obvious there was never going to be a vote

[PSaltyDS]

The nature of the "Nominations" is summed up in the statement [Quote] After careful deliberation, the Nominating Committee reached consensus on the following slates of Nominees, each of whom has agreed to accept the responsibility of the role. They will assume their duties during the ICANN meeting in Montreal. [/Quote]

The "Nominees" have already accepted their posts and "will assume their duties" (or else?).

Sigarette: A short sig.

[LONG] My proposed solution from 1996

[davecb]

New International Top-Level Domains IAHC-Draft David Collier-Brown Category: Informational Private Person Expires June 2, 1997 December 1996 New International Top-Level Domains

Status of this Memo

This document is an IAHC-Draft. IAHC-Drafts are working documents invited by the Internet International Ad-Hoc Committee.

IAHC-Drafts are draft documents and may be updated, replaced, or made obsolete by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use IAHC Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as ``work in progress.''

Introduction

This is a formal proposal and recommendation to the IAHC on the creation of new commercial TLD names and the selection of registries to carry out registration in them.

Policies

In this section, I set out the ends and restrictions on them in the form of policies which will inform the specific selections which follow.

The Internet Society should not engage in trade. Instead it and its component committees should set policy and standardize technical and practical issues in areas subject to such policy.

The management of registries should operate under common law. There is no need to make law, but only to arrange the operation of registries so that they may obey the laws of their jurisdictions, and have access to the lawful conflict resolution mechanisms of those jurisdictions.

The selection of TLD names be compatible with trademark law. Where (sub)domain names are indistinguishable from trademarks, the same law should apply.

Maximize the choices available to registries and their customers, the registrants. Leave as much as possible up to the organizations desiring domains as possible, specifically including what kind of domain to register in and therefor what risks and benefits they wish to accept and achieve.

The selection of names and registries be compatible with previous proposals. Requests and offers made to the IANA in light of early proposals should be considered in the selection of TLD names and registries.

The mechanisms should be patterned after traditional ones. This specifically includes successful policies from the trademark and copyright areas, such as providing public announcements and periods for objections to be made.

Minimize rulemaking, now and in the future. Cease to be involved as soon as can reasonably be achieved. Specifically, do not create new bodies, but instead return day-to-day management of the namespace to IANA.

Define end dates Similarly, rules employed to ease the creation of a system of registration in new TLDs should cease to apply once a system is in place.

Customer's Selection of Domains

Before setting out policies, it is advantageous to expand the principle of maximizing the choice of customers: that of to letting customers decide what TLDs they wish to be in, while setting ground rules so that have the opportunity to do so without harming others.

This lets us see what results for the most affected community are, and broadly hints at what must be done to achieve useful results.

So let us then consider the customers' desires in selecting a commercial TLD, given a broad choice of at least existing (``.com''), categorical (eg, ``.oil') and synonymous (eg, ``.biz'') TLDs.

• A customer wishing to use a domain name that would cause trademark disputes (say, ``standard''), would register itself in a category where they either had or could obtain a trademark registration, (say, ``.oil'').

  The customer would need to realize that there is a tradeoff: for some period web browsers wouldn't find them without user intervention.

• A customer desiring visibility or broad categorization would use the existing ``.com'' (eg, american.com), knowing that they would have to accept the limited namespace there, and other problems.

  Those include, in the short term, the