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

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a truly excellent post from Joanna Lane, with a compelling analysis,
which builds upon the serious questions which George had already raised.

This organisation has less and less credibility worldwide.

This is not a public interest organisation at all. It is an organisation
stacked with industry insiders, which serves the few rather than the many.
It is unresponsive, evasive, manipulative. It uses catchphrases like
'consensus', but as Joanna points out, many decisions appear to be
pre-determined and made behind closed doors.

Every internet user is effected by ICANN policies, every domain registrant
is 'taxed' on each domain they buy, and yet there is no representation.

The democratically-elected representatives of the At Large (Internet Users)
were kicked off the Board (because they were independent and could challenge
the status quo).

ICANN exercises power without accountability (except to those vested
interests who seem to have such an undue private influence). To the ordinary
internet users all round the world, it is not accountable at all. And yet,
we are the people who actually use the Internet, build the Internet, teach,
communicate, help, share, trade... the Internet is ours (the world's)...

...and yet we are locked out of this organisation!

Yrs,

Richard Henderson




----- Original Message -----
From: Joanna Lane <jo-uk@xxxxxxx>
To: George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>; <ga@xxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 12:26 PM
Subject: RE: [ga] Verisign under penalty of perjury: without WLS,registrars
"threaten the stability of the Internet"


> > 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
>
>