RE: [ga] Verisign under penalty of perjury: without WLS, registrars "threaten the stability of the Internet"

[Joanna Lane <jo-uk@xxxxxxx>]

> From: owner-ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf
> Of George Kirikos
> By the way, it still amazes me as to how ICANN can state they're acting
> in the "public interest", when EVERY constituency that voted, but one
> (Verisign-dominated gTLD registries), was AGAINST WLS. Have there been
> a single other example, besides WLS, where the Board has acted contrary
> to a consensus vote in the Names Council?

George,

Great post, but what amazes me is that anybody actually still believes ICANN
has a proper consensus development process in the GNSO that represents the
public interest. What ICANN wants and what ICANN 2 has got is a GNSO
comprised of industry professionals representing themselves, each of whom
has a bottom line to meet that far outweighs any public interest
considerations. The whole point is that consensus recommendations emanating
from the GNSO can be used to support whatever ICANN decides is the public
interest, (such as restricting new TLDs), or equally, GNSO recommendations
that go against what ICANN has decided is in the public interest can be
ignored (WLS). In fact, the public interest is only relevant to ICANN's
decision making process as a device to manipulate results one way or another
to arrive at pre-determined decisions. You knew that already, right?

Look at the history. At the time VeriSign foisted WLS onto the community,
the Reform Committee was busy eliminating any real chance that any group
representing the public interest could gain ground and interfere with this
manipulative process, including such things as the At Large Directors, an
individual domain name holders constituency and a voting General Assembly.
The At Large itself continues to this day to be merely a mirage, and without
even the pretence of a vote. The GNSO may have a vote, but that can be
ignored on the basis of Staff opinion of what the public interest is
determined to be at any given time - in short, they have the casting vote.

WLS is most interesting as a blatant manifestation derived from a policy of
cronyism, engineered by a closed group that cannot be held accountable by
the public it purports to serve because the public is kept in the dark about
anything of substance that it is doing. ICANN governs without consent of the
governed  and currently, is less accountable to the public than at any time
since it's creation.

WLS is by no means a first to go against GNSO consensus decisions. Notable
precedents would be the abandonment of the Registry/Registrar separation in
the .NET/ .ORG redelegation. WLS is only seems different because for the
first time in history, it's not only the public that are being burnt, it's
also the vast majority of industry professionals faced with a policy
designed to promote a single player at their expense.

What goes around, comes around.

Regards,
Joanna