[Gnso-newgtld-dg] Under-served Regions, Private Auctions, and Fiduciary Issues Query

[Sam Lanfranco]

As a development economist with a particular concern for "underserved 
regions" I have a question about a possible link between ICANN funding 
for underserved regions and the practice, in the past gTLD round, of 
Private Auctions. In simple terms ICANN hands over a valuable property 
to a pre-screened group to engage in a win-win auction where the winner 
wins the gTLD, at a price, and the losers win by sharing in the proceeds 
of the Auction. ICANN received nothing from the process.

I am most familiar with this process when the asset in question is some 
part of an inheritance, and where the beneficiaries use this process to 
decide who within the family gets the asset and others share in the 
proceeds. It also occurs when an asset is donated to a charity auction, 
where the proceeds are for a good cause. The ICANN private auctions look 
an awful lot like the reverse. A not-for-profit turns over a valuable 
asset to a private auction for private gain. I don't know about the 
rules governing ICANN's not-for-profit status but in a public company 
this would verge on board failure of fiduciary responsibility, and there 
would be hell to pay.

Is there not some way that a new round of gTLD can re-jig the private 
auction process so that it feeds funding to efforts to support 
underserved regions, and be less like an asset hand off that could raise 
issues of fiduciary responsibility? This should certainly precede a 
suggestion that ICANN, or others, go hat-in-hand to other possible 
funding sources to assist underserved regions. . Charity (and maybe 
integrity) begins at home.

Sam Lanfranco, Policy Committee Chair
NPOC


-- 
------------------------------------------------
"It is a disgrace to be rich and honoured
in an unjust state" -Confucius
------------------------------------------------
Dr Sam Lanfranco (Prof Emeritus & Senior Scholar)
Econ, York U., Toronto, Ontario, CANADA - M3J 1P3
email: Lanfran at Yorku.ca   Skype: slanfranco
blog:  http://samlanfranco.blogspot.com
Phone: +1 613-476-0429 cell: +1 416-816-2852

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