ICANN Mulls Poll Taxes, Representation

Cutriss writes: "The ICANN seems to be thinking about giving in to public demands. According to this article on Wired.com mentions that ICANN is considering allowing domain owners to elect their board of directors. It's a step in the right direction. I wonder if domain owners could collaborate and cast a collective vote of no confidence, absolving ICANN of its responsibilities..." I wouldn't call it a step in the right direction since each revision to ICANN's Board involves less individual representation and more corporate representatives. There's another story with some quotes from Karl Auerbach. The At-Large study that we talked about earlier has now been released in its final form. If you don't like the way ICANN is going, please consider attending their meetings. Next one is in Los Angeles next week.

Some comments on the ALSC report

Here are some comments [slashdot.org] to the ALSC findings that I submitted to Slashdot a couple of days ago.

They are still valid, even though you may not agree with me .-)

Mikael

What about multiple internet domains?

Frankly having people vote who have internet domains isn't all that much better than anyone who has an email address. I personally own nearly six or so domains (this is not even including the ones that I am listed at a technical contact for due to my web development work). This also shuts out a lot more people that would other-wise be able to vote, I can name several people who probably would choose to vote yet this will cut them out.

Catch 22

Unfortunately there is no good way to solve the problem of one person voting multiple times. There are tons of people with hundreds of domains under their belts. Granted while it is easier to get e-mail addresses than it is domains the elections could still be off balanced by a single person with many domain names. Perhaps an even better solution would be allowing one vote per IP address or something along the lines of that. Again, it wouldn't be perfect or promise that only one vote per person is counted. It's something to think about. If anybody has any other ideas for solutions, I'd like to hear about them. It seems like something I'd be interested in researching and refining.

buying votes

...considering allowing domain owners to elect their board of directors.

I wonder, if you own 20 domains do you get 20 votes? That would be in keeping with ICANN's previous actions.

democracy in action

It has been said that Democracy is what happens when people participate. If no one participates, then what you get is a democracy of whoever happens to show up.

You can have a democracy of special interests, a democracy of thieves, a democracy of madmen, or whatever.

If you think your viewpoint is relevent and important, then you should do something.

In the People are Lazy theory, People tend to do only those things that are utterly important to them. This allows more ambitious folks a free hand.

This might not been in your best interest.

Unfair

The fact is that many companies have many tens, sometimes as many as hundereds of domain names. Why should they get that many votes? Should I get to vote on the BOD of McDonalds if I happen to eat several hambergers every day?

The people running an organization like ICANN should be impartial, not people who have power becuase of how many domain names they happen to be squatting.

This is not "a step in the right direction"

Cutriss writes:

"The ICANN seems to be thinking about giving in to public demands. According to this article on Wired.com mentions that ICANN is considering allowing domain owners to elect their board of directors. It's a step in the right direction."

According to ICANN's original charter (which the board has ignored), all internet users were supposed to be able to elect half of the board. Now this committee proposes (and the board will no doubt rubber stamp) that domain name owners elect one third of the board, with the rest appointed by a variety of industry "stakeholders".

How is that an improvment???

Re:This is not "a step in the right direction"

It certainly isn't "a step in the right direction." ICANN isn't giving in to public demands, its giving up on public participation. It seems to me that ICANN is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Indeed, several of us on the At-Large forum list have said that we would sign an amicus curiae or whathaveyou on a report to the Department of Commerce that ICANN has failed to implement anything at all resembling public participation as promised.

Methinks they'd be pretty sad if the DoC said "get with the program or dissolve."

-l

Christmas Island Hell

Well, I'm sure I can vote for a lot of people here when I say that the 'owners' of the .CX TLD will most certainly be voted out by at least 99% of their customers.

Back in the old days when Planet3 used to run this TLD, things were great. Yeah sure, you may call them a little bit slack at a professional business level (email favours, quick fixes etc.) but their management console was very simply to use and didn't hinder the user in any way. Great.

But then the wonderful people who reside on Christmas Island (small island near Australia I believe) decided they wanted their TLD back in their control and pretty much dismissed Planet3 of any association.

That's when it all went wrong. DOTCX (or whatever they named themselves) had no clue about managing a TLD. How on earth did this get pass ICANN? Why did the decision get made at ICANN to allow these idiots to have control of a well establish, popular TLD.. God knows..

I'm not too sure of the current status - The last time I looked, DOTCX were still looking for registrars to sell their domains and manage DNS, from the prerequisits I noticed on their site, they still probably don't have anyone..

One of the more frustrating issues from this complete cock-up from ICANN was that when your current .CX domain expires - if DOTCX don't have any registrars, you loose your domain! *poof* and are unable to re-register it or continue to pay your annual subscription as there is noone available to take your cash.

Fortunately, either through incompetance of good-will, my .CX domain which was due to expire in May this year, is still active and I have not been contacted either way for renewal or notifications of expiry. I suppose that's good but still leaves this huge shadow of doubt.

So, what can ICANN do about it? Make more decisions like this? The idea of domain users voting for certain things sounds like a good idea, surely it could help avoid situations like the .CX fiasco, but then you run into many more complicated situations would could take _even longer_ to resolve. It's hard enough to resolve issues with ICANN and it's members, let alone with the rest of the world polling away...

My 2 quid.

Geez

Nitpick: Michel's key concern was that the new proposal would prevent Internet users who don't own a website from having a vote in ICANN

Doesn't it give you a warm fuzzy feeling to know that ICANN board members see domains and websites as the same thing?

If individuals are left out...

Then the only solution is to cast a diferent internet... with diferent set of top level servers...

How does this solve the problem?

Ultimately, the problem is that ICANN is getting too cozy with the corporations that dominate the web.

As mentioned in the article, the problem with the last "public" election was that it suffered from massive fraud by people opening throwaway email accounts to vote with.

Certainly a "one domain = one vote" scheme would heavily favor corporations which regularly buy blocks of domains to protect their trademark turf.

However, even a "one domain owner = one vote" scheme would be unfair to the public. While they might be limited to a single vote for the majority of their domains, only big corporations (think M$) have the money to rig the elections by purchasing domains through shell organizations (think The Association for Competitive Technology).

At least when the primary mechanism for ICANN voting fraud was free, the public could still compete with the corporations.

Be afraid...

Why not just take the next step now? Lets have weighted voting based on things like:

• How well you entertained the current ICANN board members when they visited your town or place of business
• How many of the children of the board members you offered free scholarships
• How many free vacations, car rentals, plane fares, etc you offered to the current board members.

After decades of decadence, we can even demand that they reform. Just like the IOC!

Fuck 'Em

Those assholes have always been about as useful as tits on a bull. We should just forge our own root servers. With gambling. And hookers. Ok, forget the gambling...

Seriously, anyone can put a root server up. The only problem is propigating the list of root servers to everyone and you could do that with multicast or something. It shouldn't be a hard problem to solve, people.

So dump ICANN

ICANN is only relavent as long as everybody uses their DNS. I don't understand why somebody with some moral authority in the IT world doesn't just set up an alternative. I know there are in fact several alternatives, but these are private companies that nobody has heard about.

So who could do it? The IETF and the ACM come to mind. There are probably a few others.

Note that you don't have to switch all at once, you can still fall back to legacy ICANN domains if the new domain system doesn't find a match.

My "ultimate" domain name scheme would allow anything as a .tld (although you could set up a few with restricted access, perhaps '.trademark' or something like that). That way, for example, IBM could use "buy.ibm", while somebody who doesn't like IBM could use "dontbuy.ibm". There would be no way to purchase all the domains under a .tld.

Another committee, another barrier

Ah, yes, another committee, the ever-present ICANN solution. Another layer to bang your head against, to negotiate with for months, to lose or dilute your suggestions...this is the public's compensation for losing any input into real power and decision-making.

Of course it has always been problematic to count votes from a general, world-wide population. An organization with a public role doesn't necessarily need a one-person-one-vote sort of democracy to be accountable. But when the people who try to hold ICANN accountable have been rigorously excluded from the beginning (breaking through only occasionally such as in the election of Auerbach), we have to fight against removing the few processes that may promote accountability.

Those that say ICANN is not corrupt...

are likely not to know enough about them.

It is my logical belief (through reasoned findings) that they, along with the United States Department of Commerce and the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization, are all corrupt.

Please visit WIPO.org.uk [wipo.org.uk] to find out why.

ICANN't take it no more!

These bozos are really pushin' it. Dig this: The only people with a "stake" (fucking horrible PC bullshit word) in the internet are the Corps and those who "own domains". What a load of fertilizer...

and this: "The nine-member At-Large Membership Study Committee, created by the ICANN board earlier this year, recommends reducing at-large representation from one-half to one-third of the board seats.

In addition, individuals wishing to help select representatives would have to pay unspecified annual membership fees and own domain names, which typically cost about $30 a year.

``It's just utterly laughable,'' said Karl Auerbach, a current at-large board member.

Auerbach said he would consider resigning if the report is adopted. ``I would seriously question my desire to remain associated with a group that just slapped the Internet community in the face,'' he said."

And then -

"Supporters of the at-large reduction believe it's important to have board members who are knowledgeable about the technical issues surrounding the Internet."

What, Like Karl, Esther, et al. don't?

I smell Vint Cerf...

Why care about ICANN?

Not entirely sure what the big deal with ICANN is anyway. Since their control is only "virtual" and the Internet really does not rely on their existance. In fact, we can do just as well without them. They talk about how there needs to be control for TLDs, etc. But, I say WTF?, I can create my own TLD and tell a bunch of people to use.

Just setup named, and you can create any stupid name that exists. Albeit only those few people you tell will know.

Even better, Click Here [new.net] and Here [alt-dns.net].

Yeah it still costs $$$ to register a domain, but your choices are much wider and if everyone sets this up, then ICANN doesn't mean crap anymore.

Quit your whining and do something about it. Going to those meetings ain't gonna do jack. Because corporate people don't give a crap about you. Just go behind their backs and use your own TLDs!!!!!!!!

i'm perplexed

I'm perplexed over the issues with both ICANN and the W3C seemingly bending over and offering up their hindparts to commercial concerns. People rail, bitch and moan about this sorry state of affairs, acting all the while like something needs to be done to reform these organizations in order to 'repair' the damage they've done/are about to do in the process of whoring themselves out.

The solution is rather simple: ignore them and set up an open domain name scheme and http protocol immune from the efforts of these corporate sluts to sell off chunks of the internet. I've suggested this before and the primary objection is that 'most people' won't use the new http protocol or DNS system. I say, so what?

Yeah, that's right: so what? Most of the current DNS scheme is completely tied up by commercial interests warring over trademarks or anything remotely approaching a trademark, while the W3C is thinking of incorporating technology that requires royalties. I'd hazard to say that more than 99% of the web is utterly useless as it is, so an alternative system with a reputation of *not* being friendly to business and not being cluttered with endless amounts of porn or single-page geocities/yahoo home-brew pages is, I think, a *good* thing. Who gives a shit if the average Joe doesn't visit your site? If you aren't a business you're looking to have savvy folks with a keen personal interest in what you have to offer visiting, aren't you?

I'd use an alternative system for both items in a heartbeat, assuming it's completely open-sourced and GPL'd (to avoid another W3C or ICANN popping up). I'd wager that many scientific and academic interests would as well to avoid the 'clutter' of the regular web and to get domain names that aren't already handed out to business and squatters. Which means that when I use this alternate web it might be much easier to find something of practical value - and without goddamned adverts and popups! Tell me how this isn't a good thing.

I say let's stop bitching and start planning an alternative. Ignore the W3C and ICANN and just go our own way. What can they possibly do to stop us?

Max

There is an alternative to the ALSC report

There is a very reasonable alternative to that awful ALSC report:

http://www.naisproject.org/report/final [naisproject.org]

But unless there is a very strong outcry against the ALSC report, the NAIS report has a peanut's chance in a zoo of being adopted by the majority of ICANN's board of directors.

By-the-way, if you are in LA for the ICANN meeting next week, make sure you preregister. Paranoia has struck deep and they aren't letting in anyone who hasn't preregistered.

Re:What's next?

We already have an age limit. Privacy laws put in by congress make it pretty much illegal for any kid to participate in anything interactive on the web. If you require a letter of parental permission, you're not likely to get many kids participating on your site...