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ICANN Stacks Board with Non-Critical Appointees 124

Posted by michael from the all-pretenses-of-public-input-eliminated dept.
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.
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ICANN Stacks Board with Non-Critical Appointees More

ICANN Stacks Board with Non-Critical Appointees

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  • I've spent too much time at dot-bombs (Score:5, Funny)

    by JUSTONEMORELATTE ( 584508 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @03:57PM (#6225678) Homepage
    When I read the headline, I thought "non-critical appointees" was a buzzword for "the folks we're about to lay off."

    --
  • is anyone actually surprised?

    john
    Big Dubya Is Watching You [wildjelly.com]

    • No.

      Not surprised in the least.

      ICANN is a joke - nobody expects impartiality or informed decision-making to come out of it.

      IMHO, the only way to clean it up is for the entire board to be fired, and to start fresh with a brand new entity with a new constitution that prevents the sort of hijack that happened to ICANN.

      N.
    • is anyone actually surprised? Nope. Not at all. But you don't have to play there game, (well you do still kinda, but you can at least play it on better terms) with OpenNIC [unrated.net]. (Yes i'm plugging OpenNIC again so mod me down) Kinda like an Open Source ICANN replacment. It's not a seamless replacment and you have to use their DNS (naturally) but it does work.

      You can use one of their TLD's like
      .geek
      .glue
      .indy
      .null
      .oss
      .parody

      Or start your own (OK that is work, but at least it can be done.) and everyt

  • Autarchy? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gizzmonic ( 412910 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @03:58PM (#6225695) Homepage Journal
    Is that when the Autobots rule your board?

  • Well ... he quit. (Score:4, Informative)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) * on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @04:03PM (#6225747) Journal
    From Andy's comment at ICANN Watch:

    [PS. Someone, I don't know who, nominated me for a Board seat, but I wrote in to say I did not wish to be considered.]

    • Board seat (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Whenever I hear those two words together, I cannt help but think of a wooden outhouse seat.
    • No that was me, Froomkin, not Andy. Andy applied to continue but was rejected.

  • Just curious... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Archfeld ( 6757 ) * <treboreel@live.com> on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @04:03PM (#6225748) Journal
    where exactly does ICANN derive its' authority from ? Do they have any enforement powers or do they just suggest things ?
  • I've rather lost track of ICANN politics over the past year. Who's left on the ICANN board who can be trusted to act in the public interest?

  • Pretty obvious there was never going to be a vote (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PSaltyDS ( 467134 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @04:09PM (#6225806) Journal
    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.

  • Hard to resist... (Score:3, Funny)

    by SmirkingRevenge ( 633503 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @04:10PM (#6225823)
    ICANNABELIEVEIT!

  • SOP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by retto ( 668183 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @04:12PM (#6225832)
    I don't see how this could be a surprise because isn't this type of behaviour standard now for any kind of governing body in business? I thought that one of the major complaints about most modern board of directors is that they have long stopped operating in the public, or even their own company's or organization's, interests?
  • How can a bunch of rich-ass business aristocrats help promote a system that is used by peasants?


    Would you test a dog's receptiveness to dogfood on a cat?


    Would you do market research for 2 Fast 2 Furious at a Senior's Home?

  • Aww! To Hell with ICANN! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @04:14PM (#6225856) Homepage Journal
    I'm going to make my own Internet! With hookers! And Gambling!

  • Case studies... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jhouserizer ( 616566 ) * on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @04:14PM (#6225857) Homepage

    ICANN is an interesting study in how a ruling regime can usurp a democratic institution and turn it into an autarchy.

    Thanks! ...I've been looking for some real-life examples of how to achieve this!

    • democracy2autarchy (Score:5, Funny)

      by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @05:05PM (#6226317) Homepage Journal

      Thanks! ...I've been looking for some real-life examples of how to achieve this!

      democracy2autarchy is a closed source software project, but it has been having some success, enough to be lucrative.

      I've tried to install it myself but can't get past the point of needing libmoney.a

      • democracy2autarchy is a closed source software project, but it has been having some success, enough to be lucrative.

        I've tried to install it myself but can't get past the point of needing libmoney.a
        cd gnucash-1.8.4
        ./configure --enable-libmoney-compatability-mode
        make
        sudo make install
  • is the word you are looking for.

    • Re:autocracy (Score:3, Informative)

      by Stradenko ( 160417 )
      Is it?

      autarchy
      n 1: economic independence as a national policy [syn: autarky]
      2: a political system governed by a single individual [syn: autocracy]
      [ant: democracy]
      • autarchy

        No, I think they've created a new systems that is "autocracy" + "anarchy" = "autarchy". Kudos to them for realizing a paradox.

  • Well ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by SuperDuG ( 134989 ) <be@@@eclec...tk> on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @04:26PM (#6225955) Homepage Journal
    ... if you don't like it ... don't use it ...

    There are GREAT ALTERNATIVES [unrated.net]

    OpenNIC has matured into a rather great truly democratic DNS Registry. I would highly recommend everyone support them. You can still support OpenNIC and have ICANN registeries, well everything except biz, but that's a whole nother can of worms ...

    • bookmark
      • "The world is dangerous not because of those who are evil; but because of those who do nothing" - Einstein
        I'd hardly call inventing nuclear weapons "nothing."
    • OpenNIC is not an alternative. An alternative means it does something different.

      True, OpenNIC operates much different than ICANN.

      However, OpenNIC has decided to be consistent with ICANN (aside from .biz, where ICANN hypocritically introduced inconsistencies). If ICANN steals fuck-you-ICANN-motherfuckers.com from an ICANN-critic and gives it to an ICANN-supporter, OpenNIC will not do anything about that. They will not have that domain name assigned to it's rightful owner.

      OpenNIC should disparge from ICANN
      • alÂterÂnaÂtive (Ãl-tÃrn-tv, l-)
        n.
        1. The choice between two mutually exclusive possibilities.
        2. A situation presenting such a choice.
        Either of these possibilities. See Synonyms at choice.

        Usage: Problem. One of a number of things from which one must be chosen.
        An alternative to Coke is Pepsi. You have the gaul to call me ... a moron?

        Damn I keep vowing to not feed the trolls ...

        • Try reading your own definition. MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE POSSIBILITIES.

          OpenNIC is in no way an alternative to ICANN. It is a supplement. It does not offer alternate domain-name resolution for some of ICANN's controversial decisions (e.g., Nissan).

          For it to be an alternative, it would have to actively assign at least some things (besides .biz) differently from ICANN (e.g., do right what ICANN did wrong, which means never giving in to corporate interests on those domains).
        • Apparently the "choice" is between Coke and a Pepsi can full of Coke.
      • If ICANN steals fuck-you-ICANN-motherfuckers.com from an ICANN-critic and gives it to an ICANN-supporter, OpenNIC will not do anything about that. They will not have that domain name assigned to it's rightful owner.

        And how on earth would Opennic do anything about it, considering their root delegates .com to icann's nameserver?
        • Simple. By having their root delegate .com to their own fucking nameserver, and making it differ from ICANN's when the people democratically want it to differ.
          • Simple. By having their root delegate .com to their own fucking nameserver, and making it differ from ICANN's when the people democratically want it to differ.

            Well, then they would have to maintain a copy of the entire .com zone in their own fucking name servers, keep it in sync with icann's fucking nameservers and apply their differences. Now even if they could obtain a copy of .com and all the other icann TLDs somehow (I believe they stopped making copies of the tld zones publicly available on ftp.inter
          • You know, if you consider this such a trivial-yet-valuable task, you might want to consider doing it yourself, and making your nameserver available to others intead of bitching about the volunteer work at OpenNIC.
            • Irrelevant of whether or not I consider it a valuable task, OpenNIC is not an alternative, so stop butchering the English language. It is a supplement.

              An easier thing to do would simply be to follow some of the important domain-name resolution controversies, and contradict ICANN on them within OpenNIC's DNS, and then refer the rest of the .com, .edu, .net, etc to ICANN.
              • Read my post. I'm not sure where you got the idea that I was arguing that OpenNIC was an alternative, or that I was "butchering" English, but it certainly wasn't from actually reading what I wrote.

                Given how irrelevant your post is to what I wrote, I can only assume that you responded to the wrong comment.
                • ... if you don't like it ... don't use it ...

                  There are GREAT ALTERNATIVES

                  The entire threat started from the phrase "GREAT ALTERNATIVES"...I pointed out that there are no alternatives.
                  • Exactly. And not one of the phrases you just quoted appeared in anything I said, nor did I write supporting any of the points you attacked me for supporting.

                    In other words, as I said, you responded to the wrong post.

                    • d0h (Score:2)

                      by dh003i ( 203189 )
                      I apologize for being such an asshole. I just ASSumed that the person responding to my response was the original poster. My apologies.

  • [LONG] My proposed solution from 1996 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by davecb ( 6526 ) * <davecb@spamcop.net> on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @04:27PM (#6225958) Homepage Journal
    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 <draft-collier-brown-proposal-02.txt>

    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

    • We need to start getting people away from using DNS as a locator service. DNS is meant (mainly) to apply convenient names to IP addresses, not so that my mom can guess "www.example.com" when she wants to know something about "example".

      DNS is inappropriate for this because it does not allow two parties with a legitimate interest in the same label to share it, except through the confusion of additional TLDs. Two parties could have a perfectly legal claim to a label that they now have to battle out in court
      • I was looking for this comment before I posted, you hit the nail on the head except for one thing, we already have a solution to the problem, it's a search engine.

        The only thing we really need is IPv6 to complete the cake, why would you have a dynamic address with IPv6, although I know they'll do it, I see no real reason for it.

        If ICANN screws around enough a solution will be found for them, the record industry found out the hard way and I believe a P2P nameresolver with some sort of public/private key mi
        • I would agree with you, except search engines carry no authority. You could easily manipulate your own pages and things to make search engines "think" that your pages are more relevant for a given topic (or company name) than the company itself.

          An authoritative search engine might be a good place to start worrying about trademark and service marks, though.

          You still need that central authority if you need the ability for your labels to carry IP weight, but these labels must be scoped within political boun
      • If I want to load the home page for Example Widgets, I should just need to hunt for the common name "Example Widgets", pick the match that makes the most sense (assuming more than one match is found), and have my lookup return a DNS domain name.

        But then you have the search engine problem. Which results go on top? Do you pay to get better placement? Is there a click-through counter to determine most popular picks? Random order? You don't want this method to be useless, and then have to build yet another se

        • A directory is a search engine for proper names. There will be a finite number of organizations doing business as "Example Widgets". If the scope of my search is nation-wide, and two or three hits come up with "Example Widgets" incorporated in a few local markets, then I guess I need to do some more research to identify which one I want. Additional fields in the record would allow me to determine which Example Widgets is the one I am searching for, such as the home city.

          There isn't a "placement" issue b

  • How icann works (Score:5, Funny)

    by dozer ( 30790 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @05:11PM (#6226381)
    icann is a strange group. The following transcript offers some insight into their inner workings.


    TRANSCRIPT [satirewire.com]

    It's really weird that they approve useless domains like .aero and .coop, yet they don't create two of the most needed domains: .kids and .xxx!
    • I agree about the useless domains (politics), but wildly disagree about your attempt to segregate content based on DNS.

      As many folks have stated, this means that a worldwide judge of content, aribitor of morality, must exist. It breaks the hierarchical model of DNS (granted, the new TLDs (which I don't like) did so as well).
  • Write to the Secretary of Commerce and your Congresscritter asking just why we are still funding ICANN?

    What do they produce that's worth paying for either by taxpayers or domain holders or registries?

    If they are not accountable to the users and they aren't accountable to the national TLDs, it is time they are held accountable by the taxpayers.

    The Internet and the root servers worked just fine without this bureaucracy and it'll work just fine after the last person leaves the ICANN office s and turns off t

  • ICANN is an interesting study in how a ruling regime can usurp a democratic institution and turn it into an [autocracy].

    Shit, how many examples of this do we need? Does anyone remember the year 2000 anymore? Is it just me, or has the entire USA gone completely stark raving bonkers?

    Sincerely,
    The Angriest Liberal in the World
    http://www.ucomics.com/rallcom/2003/06/14/

  • ICANN is an interesting study in how a ruling regime can usurp a democratic institution and turn it into an [autocracy].

    Sorry, but ICANN was never a democratic institution. Only a minority of the Board members were elected by the internet community, everyone else was appointed by some US agency.

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