[CPWG] Meeting Details - Today: The Future of .ORG: Community Engagement' Webinar

[Evan Leibovitch]

On Sun, 1 Mar 2020 at 05:02, Bill Woodcock <woody at pch.net> wrote:

>
> > On Mar 1, 2020, at 12:50 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org> wrote:
> > All infrastructure is enabling technology. But is it noteworthy that
> elsewhere the providers of infrastructure are never the same ones who
> provide the enabling technology. Airports don't build airplanes, the power
> utility doesn't make LED bulbs. Yet in DNS space the same industry promises
> to do it all, the infrastructure and the enabling technology on top.
>
> That may be over-simplifying, in two ways…  First of all, not all of the
> DNS industry is vertically-integrated.  There’s registry/registrar
> separation, most of the large DNS operators aren’t also registries or
> registry services providers, etc.  Second, your definition of the “DNS
> industry” may be tautological, in the same way that you could include both
> airports and turbine manufacture within the “aviation industry.”
>

Allow me to be more specific.
I consider the domain industry to be the current components of the GNSO --
the compact of domain buyers and domain sellers whos demands can compel the
ICANN Board.

While many domain buyers (registrants) are actual users who implement
domains as places where the public can find them, a great many more are
domain speculators -- another awful, value extracting consequence of the
"identity is commodity" core philosophy.

Generally speaking, the registries are the creators of the resources
(leased at the top level from ICANN) and the registrars are their
agents/resellers. I'm not sure how the separation of producer and reseller
is germane to my comment on the core issues.

Agreed.  Perhaps more generally, ICANN has become captured by a stagnant
> industry, in very much the same way that the FCC has become captured by a
> stagnant telco oligopoly, and the fig-leaf nature of the ALAC is one
> symptom of that.


Your use of "perhaps" made me smile. Such optimism.

  I believe the larger problem is unfortunate but not irreversible.
>

It's not reversible without disruptive top-down change in ICANN, and its
vested interests will never let that happen. The countries of the world may
one day tire of ICANN's shenanigans and choose to create a treaty
organization to replace ICANN's function, reversing the governance so that
the public interest guides the decision-making and industry plays an
advisory role. But that will take time.


> > The At-Large system was designed as a smokescreen to hide ICANN's lack
> of public accountability after it eliminated direct public voting for the
> Board.
>
> ICANN completely blowing off the “Empowered Community” oversight is an
> even more blatant example of this trend.
>

The design and composition of the RC is an even bigger example than its
being blown off.

Cheers,

-- 
Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch or @el56
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