[bc-gnso] ICANN's "Sense of Entitlement"

[Mike Roberts]

Thanks, Phil, for posting this.  Lauren represents a liberal point of view within the tech community, albeit a minority one.  But the dissatisfaction in American political circles with latter day behavior of our capitalists - much in the news today because of the Goldman defection story - is having a second order impact on ICANN.  Lauren says below,  "we need a purpose-built replacement for ICANN that will not carry its ever increasing political and "domainer" baggage."  

Those of us who were around at the beginning of ICANN were never enthused about the weak organizational structure, but the Clinton Administration officials who insisted on it felt their political imperatives did not allow something stronger.  And there was a feeling from the engineering sector that "leave us alone to do our thing," might still work.  It hasn't, and the geopolitical visibility of the Internet and ICANN has only increased.  

So now, belatedly, an increasing number of folks are questioning the "multistakeholder model" on the grounds that the "domain-industrial complex's "get rich quick" agenda"  will always prevail over the public interest.  

One of the difficulties with defending the existing model is that its appeal is more on the pragmatic side than on the theoretical and rhetorical side.  Those of us in the BC are paid to get things done, not to argue the fine points.   Working code and rough consensus, etc.  So we've been comfortable [mostly] with the structure.

NTIA's action, deliberate or accidental, has more or less thrown the book open on ICANN's future at a time when there are a lot of vultures circling.  The BC may find itself in an important role going forward, needing to participate in forging a more substantial foundation under ICANN, which may only happen with legislative involvement and all the hassle connected with that.

- Mike



On Mar 15, 2012, at 8:50 AM, Phil Corwin wrote:

> FYI, for what it's worth...
>  
>  
> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120312/12074118080/icanns-sense-entitlement-takes-over-shocked-it-lost-its-bid-to-retain-iana.shtml
> ICANN's Sense Of Entitlement Takes Over; Shocked It Lost Its Bid To Retain IANA
> 
> from the oops dept
> 
> Via Lauren Weinstein, we find out that ICANN has effectively lost its bid to retain control over IANA functions, though the fact that everyone else sucks too means it gets to hang on for at least six more months. In the meantime, though, it appears the whole thing took an always out-of-touch ICANN by surprise:
> In a worrying turn of events, it appears that ICANN had no idea about the rejection of its bid for long-term running of the IANA contract prior to an announcement being posted on the NTIA's website today. 
> 
> The organization - which has run the IANA functions for over a decade - is also waiting to hear why the US government feels it has failed to meet the RFP criteria that defined a new, more open approach to the contract. 
> 
> In a series of sudden and unexpected announcements earlier today, the NTIA first announced it was canceling the entire rebid process for IANA, then that it was canceling it because no one had met its criteria, and then that it was extending ICANN's IANA contract for six months to give it time to re-run the RFP process.
> IANA is the part that manages the authoritative root servers and important things like IP address allocations. ICANN has run that (along with its core functionality of overseeing DNS) basically since all of this was set up when lots of people realized that perhaps relying on one guy (as brilliant as he was) to manage the entire internet wasn't the best solution. The fact that ICANN didn't breeze through the IANA RFP is an interesting result, and as Lauren Weinstein notes, it's as if ICANN has taken on quite an entitlement viewpoint:
> In my view, ICANN's behavior of late regarding the NTIA has been something like the Wall Street firms vs. their ersatz regulators -- a sense of entitlement and "we're too important to be replaced" plowing forward with the domain-industrial complex's "get rich quick" agenda, with only lip-service being paid to NTIA. As I said earlier today, I would expect ICANN to find a way to come into "technical" compliance for now. But I still also feel very strongly that we need a purpose-built replacement for ICANN that will not carry its ever increasing political and "domainer" baggage. Not the UN. Not the ITU. But a new international forum that cares about all the Internet's users, not mainly the monied domain exploitation interests at the top of the DNS food chain.
> If only there were real efforts being made to move in that direction...
>  
>  
>  
> Philip S. Corwin, Founding Principal
> Virtualaw LLC
> 1155 F Street, NW
> Suite 1050
> Washington, DC 20004
> 202-559-8597/Direct
> 202-559-8750/Fax
> 202-255-6172/cell
>  
> "Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey
>  

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