[Gnso-newgtld-dg] Under-served Regions, Private Auctions, and Fiduciary Issues Query
Sam Lanfranco
sam at lanfranco.net
Mon Oct 6 14:03:23 UTC 2014
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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