As internet pioneers fight to preserve .org’s non-profit status, those in charge are hiding behind dollar signs The controversial proposed sale of the .org internet registry to an unknown private equity firm will hit a critical decision point this week, and all the organizations in charge are refusing to talk about it. On December 9, DNS overseer ICANN put a temporary halt on the sale by sending a letter to the organization that runs …
The basic problem is that ICANN is supposed to manage the Internet as a whole and it is not managed itself by an international group, only by corrupt American oligarchs. We all use this Internet, we all need it, and 99% of the world can do nothing about it.
The USA is no longer a place where important organizations should be located. Get ICANN out of there, bring it to Europe and have an international team take care of managing our Internet.
At this point, I'd prefer the endless discussions of Eurocrats instead of this dark room management that stinks of money and selfishness.
The basic problem is that ICANN is supposed to manage the Internet as a whole and it is not managed itself by an international group, only by corrupt American oligarchs.
In theory ICANN is managed by an international group, eg Marby is Swedish. In practice, it lacks transparency.. Which can also be true for other NGOs that are the power behind the Internet. Challenge is finding an alternative. The ITU is an obvious option, but isn't immune to conflicts of interest either. Plus the ITU is a technical standards body, and the current disputes are commercial/contractual.
That I think makes alternatives a lot more challenging, especially as national bodies start doing their own thing, ie Russia/China/Saudi kind of Balkanising chunks of the 'net. Extending that further, national regulators like the UK's Ofcom could step in with price controls, which would confuse the market. But the 'market' is one of ICANN's problems. So it justifies price gouging by claiming there is a market, but glosses over the fact that there are monopolies for the base, wholesale price of TLDs that are unrelated to costs.
The entire thing is corrupt, moving it around the sludge won't change that. The internet is controlled by spies (Facebook. Google, Amazon, etc.) and the faceless rich (shadows1, shadow2, shadow3, etc...). I think this .org issue itself clearly proves that.
Game over, insert coin(s) to continue.
ICANN has been controversial since Day One (in 1998). Nothing changed when the final contract between ICANN and the US Government lapsed, because ICANN had always been expecting that to happen. It caused less disruption than the Y2K fizzle.
Many people criticise ICANN, me included. But most of what it's done was going to happen anyway, because like it or not we live in a world governed by free market economics. Change that, and ICANN will change in response.
The basic problem with your comment is that "The basic problem is that ICANN is supposed to manage the Internet as a whole" is absolute rubbish. For the topic of this thread, all that ICANN manages is the right to register names in top level domains. This trivial job has turned out to pay very well, but fortunately it's a rather minor matter from a technical point of view, even if highly visible.
Nobody manages the Internet as a whole, fortunately.
"It is also unclear how or why ICANN would turn over control of one of the largest internet registries, with over 10 million names, to a new entity for no consideration"
Ethics. Pure and simple. Sometimes you have to give a little for the greater good of society, and I hope someone does the right thing. .org can continue to charge for domains and operate as a not for profit organisation.
Yes. It makes sure the DNS root servers continue to work securely and reliably, it registers thousands of protocol parameters free of charge for the IETF and the whole Internet, and it ensures that DNS name registries (for the non-national top level domains) are unique and functional. You can disagree with some aspects of how it does the last bit, but it needs to be done.
"As flawed as the Internet Society is – it purports to be a grassroots global organization but in actuality is more of a Washington lobby group for internet engineers"
I didn't need to look at the by line to know who wrote this twaddle. I suggest asking the ISOC Chapters around the world what they think, or checking the affiliations of the ISOC Board members, to see if it looks like a Washington lobby group.
Of course ISOC lobbies, notably in Geneva and other international locations. But it's always been clear that any lobbying in Washington D.C. is done by the local Washington chapter of ISOC, not by ISOC HQ.
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