October 22, 2005

ICANN's Unfinished Business

Way back in 1999 ICANN entered into several very important agreements that had the effect of gifting a huge economic benefit on Versign and an greatly altering the rights of then existing domain name registrants.

That action was done in a way that was in clear and overt violation of ICANN's own by-laws.

I submitted a "Request for Reconsideration" on November 17, 1999.

As has been the case since ICANN's inception these requests were cavalierly dismissed by ICANN.

So I filed a request that that rejection be handled by ICANN's then existing, but never implemented, policy for independent review.

That request disappeared into the bowels of ICANN; in fact I can't seem to find it on their mutable web site.

(ICANN's positions that demand "stability" of internet names are strongly belied by the rot of URL's into ICANN's website.)

My request, however, still stands.  ICANN owes me an answer to the question why it violated its own procedures in order to race into an agreement that has had substantial negative effects on the community of internet users.

ICANN never implemented the Independent Review mechanism.  This was because one of the people that ICANN chose to be on the committee to select review members never even bothered to show up electronically, much less in person.

ICANN's fancifully named "reform" replaced the never-born Independent Review mechanism with a placebo "ombudsman".  However that person seems to have shirked his role and become simply another "yes" man.

So ICANN, when are you going to live up to your promises upon promises about your willingness and ability to be introspective of internal procedural failures and to remedy those failures?  You've had six years to do what you said you would do.

 ICANN's history of breaking promises to the internet community is reminiscent of the way the US government treated aboriginal (Indian) groups in the late 1800's.  What, for example, ever happened to ICANN's oft repeated promise that at least half of its board of directors would be chosen by individual internet users?

Is there any wonder why today ICANN today has no credibility?

Posted by karl at October 22, 2005 10:26 AM