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."

ICANN != w3c

[Anonymous Coward]

ICANN has nothing to do with web standards. They're an internet organization that deals with addresses and domain names.

Lies ICANN told me

[rs79]

I was called to New York to meet with Ira Magaziner and some other people about 10 months before ICANN was born. On the surface it was to end the hostilitied bewteen CORE and the alternate root folks. Some sort of democratic organization was envisioned. Lies, lies and more lies. The entire time Magaziner was running around behind the scenes - with Cochetti from IBM (now Verisign) selecting a board.

At a later and very private meeting where NSI and ICANN finally signed with each other, some very high up IBM lawyer-wonk (who called the meeting, that's how powerful they are) bragged they'd spent $60M a year of their washington lobbying budger to make sure no new TLDS were created. Is it any wonder they were so capriciously at Marina del Rey at the 2000 meeting or why there were so fucking lame?

ICANN has always been about protecting the interllectual property of big busines (read: trademarks). Never mind that there are laws protecting trademark owners but no laws protecting domain name owners.

ICANN doesn't need new blood, it just needs honest people at the helm.

As usual: vote with your nameservers - I don't care if you use the ORSC root that I coordnate, or new.net or name.space, OpenNIC or what have you, just back... away... from... the... legacy... root.

Richard Sexton