ICANN At-Large Candidates Nominated

drbonzo writes: "On Aug. 1, the ICANN Nominating Committee announced a set of 18 nominees for the 5 At-Large Directors of the ICANN Board. For details, see the announcement and the list of nominees. Note that there will be a member-nomination process that will run through August. Let's get ready to vote, people! But first, let's discuss the announced nominees (who include among them Lawrence Lessig), and consider getting behind one or more member-nominated candidates."

Re:How many /.ers are politically active in ICANN?

As I was reading through the list of nominees I had a horrible thought, could there have been a motive to the overloaded server? Could they have been trying to modify the "demographics" of their voters? Now I know some one will say that they couldn't, but simply put if they had 10,000 members before people could register, and then they let in another 1,000 during the "overloaded server" period they would have essentially kept their original membership with a pretence of an open system. Alternatively, a firewall applying a few rules to decide if you get the "overloaded server" or the chance to register could be quite effective at tweaking the users to (for example) ensure that the voting balance is heavily distrorted to a geographical region (IP addresses means perfection would be impossible but.....).
When a nation has an election, and especially a nation under constant threat (they have only recently been put in power after the old guard was overthrown AND many of the countries are rebeling against them already) the U.N. or someone similar will be having a good close look to ensure the election is legit, and if they say it wasn't the new government will not be recognised. Who was watching ICANN? and where is their report?

Karl Auerbach

Here's an interesting platform by an interesting candidate [cavebear.com].

His endorsement page is here.

Re:Voting at ICANN

Are you kidding? That's way less than it costs to buy a Congressman! It's barely enough even to keep out the riff-raff.

-

Consensus? On Slashdot?

You want us to try to reach a consensus on /.? You want a majority of the people on /. to pick a candidate and vote for him/her? Boggle!!

Question: Is this glass half-full or half-empty? (Shows glass, filled half-way with water.)
10%: Half-full
20%: Half-empty (there seem to be more pessimists on /.)
12%: That's not a glass, it's a cup.
15%: MS sucks.
5%: How about a Beowulf cluster of half full/empty glasses?
10%: Want to open source/copyleft/GPL the glass pouring/emptying mechanism
10%: Karma whores and their supporters/detractors
2%: Want to know if Jon Katz had something to do with this
8%: Hot grits and Natalie Portman
3%: This is an inappropriate topic for /.
5%: Other inanities

So, to reiterate, you want us to figure out who to vote for. Unless Ms. Portman is a candidate, I doubt you'll have much luck.

I guess I vote for half-empty. (Pessimistic or Realistic? You decide.)
--
'...let the rabbits wear glasses...'
Y2038 consulting

Voting at ICANN

What I like with the ICANN is their democratic system. To propose a new TLD, you must pay 20000 $US. How can they stay serious when they speak of democraty ?

Opennic candidates

[shameless plug]

Note: I am an Opennic user and supporter, but not an ICANN candidate.

Opennic [unrated.net], an effort at democratizing the management of domains and TLDs, is putting forward ICANN candidates as well. I strongly urge everyone to support their efforts, as they are truly trying to make the entire domain management issue more equitable and democratic.

We are using Opennic root servers where I work -- allowing us to resolve both ICANN domain names (.com, .org, etc.) and Opennic domains (.opennic, .null, .oss, .paroduy). Opennic has cooperative agreements with other alternative domains heirarchies as well, allowing those who use their root servers to resolve their TLDs as well (such as .xxx, .biz, etc.). It is a far more equitable and democratic arrangement than what ICANN is doing (e.g. anyone can start a TLD by submitting a proposal to the mailing list and getting more than 50% of the vote), and worthy of support by anyone who values the freedom and liberty of the internet, particularly those of us in the free software and open source communities.

[/shameless plug]

Re: Miscellaneous points

For more information on Lawrence Lessig see his Everything node [everything2.com].
Also see this article on Wired [wired.com] with more ICANN information...

Slashdot Poll!

One for each of the regions/continents. Kind of like the US primary elections. Then we let the candidates know that they are "Slashdot-endorsed" and they can put that on their lawn signs.

More seriously, while it is obvious that no one candidate can adequately represent everyone on slashdot (since Natalie Portman was not nominated), if a large group "gets behind" a candidate that every one agrees is "not too bad" they stand a much better chance of not having someone they hate elected. It sucks that it works this way, and this is the main reason that first past the post elections suck. But it's what we've got, so let's use it.


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Anybody know Popov?

Lessig seems to be a good guy for the job from North America, but being from Europe, I'm also curious about the European nominees.

From the bios, it seems like this Professor Oliver B. Popov may be a good candidate:

Dr. Popov is credited with being, along with a group of enthusiasts, the key person to bring the Internet to Macedonia

I mean, being label as enthusiast when it comes to the internet usually means you are a geek, right?

And, as I've called for before, any /.ers for member nomination? You've got 4 days...

How many /.ers are politically active in ICANN?

The first registration period to be a Member-At-Large of the ICANN closed recently. Although their server was overloaded almost constantly, it seems they were continuously registering people slowly.

How many slashdotters bothered to sign up to be a member? That is the only way to vote on who you want to represent you in the wolves den of ICANN politics. Even though the whole process has been corrupted by greedy corporatism, a few good members elected could help a great deal to knowing what is really going on behind the scenes in ICANN meetings.

Even if you didn't sign up, then making your voice loud and clear on forums such as /. will let the voting members know how to vote. Lets try to keep the internet open and free of total corporate control. Sound off here with well reasoned research into each of the candidates background and corporate leaning.

the AC

Re:Miscellaneous points

Out of all the nominees, only one happens to be female. Is ICANN just another "Good ol' Boy" group?

I just don't think this is a big deal though. Don't be so quick to call discrimination... just because a group is mostly one gender doesn't mean it purposefully excludes the other. The vast majority of people in technical positions are male, at the IETF last week, there were perhaps 10% women, and that's a lot better than say the cartel (AFS administrators meeting), etc, etc. IEEE is mostly male, etc.

Being a female engineer, I usually find myself in groups of lots of males, and at most 1 other female, but they don't see me as "the girl," they see me as their coworker. So why should you look at this list, find only one female, and single her out. Just let her be!

-nosilA

Here is an analysis of the nominees

If you would like a detailed analysis of the nominees, I strongly suggest you read this link [farber.net]. It is on Dave Farber's site, and the link is to an email Dave received from Hans Klein of CPSR [cpsr.org], Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.

To quote the introduction of the message:

"The ICANN Nominating Committee recently announced its nominees for the At Large elections. Here I offer some analysis of the nominees' backgrounds and assess their qualifications to represent Internet users.

"In what follows I consider the following issues:

I. Nominees' Technical Expertise

II. Nominees' Qualifications to Represent Users

III. Regional Breakdown and Gaps in the Set of Nominees

"Let me first offer the conclusions: based on the limited information available to date, it seems that most of ICANN's proposed candidates reinforce the perspectives already present on the Board. Most come from the Internet supply industry, the intellectual property community, and the R&D community. Individuals from these groups possess impressive qualifications -- but not to represent Internet users. Only seven of ICANN's nominees seem appropriate to represent users, i.e. they offer perspectives that complement today's Supporting Organization directors. Some regions, most notably Europe, have *no* nominees with a clear user perspective. "