Who will watch the watchmen?

[Theo]

Great article about the ICANN / IANA 'situation' from Bloomberg.com.

 

[Gerry]

DAMNATION DUDE! You are doing one hell of a job reporting the latest on this. This news should not only scare the hell out of domainers, but also web masters, content SEO people, and the general public at large. Honestly, fears that I have publicly and privately shared are being stated by the Bloombergs and clintons of the world. This is a deeply concerning situation and my fear is who is the keyholder and who is the gatekeeper? If it is one in the same entity, then chaos prevails. Here we are back to the same argument of who rules the internet or who buys the internet? Google or Amazon? Baidu or Facebook? ICANN are a bunch of crack starved whores whose appetite can only be quenched by buckets full of money. They will sell out...and you and I (and a few others now) know it. And it should scare the hell out of anyone and everyone.

 

[DomainScoop.Com]

paint a picture of this in your beautiful mind.

When big corporates site on high positions in ICANN, and even the panelist will be directly appointed by these corporate, it will be less. For us domainers, we will be dealing with many many domain hijackers. People will be shooting our domains (planes) down like crazy

Hopefully big corporate never get themselves involved

 

[manyagem]

Not surprising, is it, that most of the scare stories seem to originate from the N American continent? Does this mean you don't trust others in the world to govern what is, after all, an important and vital worldwide resource? With the right checks and balances, I don't see why an international body can't be trusted to look after this. However, I do hope it doesn't go the way of FIFA. No one would expect Britain to be protector of world football just because we invented the game. But leaving it in the hands of corrupt oil magnates was not the way to go.

 

[Gerry]

The question is: Do you trust ICANN to govern itself? Be accountable to itself?

That is the scare story.

Question two: Do you NOT think that other nations or other corporations will NOT BE ABLE to influence any of ICANN's decisions?



Example: Looking at the "proposed" new gTLD's, one item in contention is the new TLD ".TIRES". Several companies have applied for this TLD including BF Goodrich, Goodyear, Dunlop...and so on. Do we now award this to Goodyear because Goodyear gave ICANN a $50million "gift" to re-decorate their offices?



And, is it any surprise that ICANN moved their offices from the US to Switzerland?

It is not a US scare story. I have read "scare stories" from mates in the UK how the BBC controls (or controlled) the news before all the options of cable or internet. Would people in the UK be okay with censorship of what goes on in the UK and the world because the BBC now has influence over ICANN and determine what can and can not be displayed on the internet?


The old saying of "the fox is guarding the henhouse" comes to mind. As well as the phrase "Physician...heel thyself"

ICANN...govern thyself.