[At-Large] TR: Une "Fondati on DNS" ali ment ée par l'ICANN ?

[Adam Peake]

At 2:34 PM +0100 1/22/08, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
>Continuing the discussion started by Adam and Vittorio:
>
>>  >if there's enough coming from it, but no one tasked ICANN with being
>>  >the Treasure Ministry of the Internet, let alone deciding how to
>>  >redistribute money from the "undeserving" to the "deserving".
>>  >
>>
>>
>>  Too late.  Already done with .ORG.  Decision made purely on
>>  the grounds of who was most deserving, technical criteria met
>>  by many applicants.  ISOC revenues now some millions of
>>  dollars each year.
>
>Actually, there is a huge difference.
>The decision on awarding a contract following rebid of .org was completely
>in the scope of ICANN. Of course, many might  not be happy with that
>decision (and I sense that Adam is one of them).


No, I was pretty happy at the time (minor reservations, who hadn't?, 
don't need going over), I supported the NCUC's evaluation of the 
various bids, and was a member of PIR's first advisory council. So 
while I'm still a bit uncomfortable with the approach, I couldn't 
think of anything better for the rebid at the time (still can't) and 
think it's worked out well.  The transition went smoothly and ORG 
runs well.

I would like to see more transparency from ISOC regarding how it 
spends the money. ISOC publishes it budget on the web and also draft 
plans are made available for comment, etc, and this is commendable, 
but I think more detail is possible and appropriate. The "good works 
part" was a major element of the bid and consequently I think ICANN 
should monitor for compliance just as it does technical criteria. 
Yes, it would make ICANN a bit of a regulator, but that goes with the 
responsibility of awarding a contract worth tens of millions of 
dollars.  The single letter names may bring hundreds of millions.

I am writing about US telecoms and an interesting issue at the moment 
is tension between the House Committee on Energy and Commerce 
(responsible for telecoms) and the FCC.  Congressman John Dingell, 
Chair of the Committee writes the FCC Chair, Kevin Martin:

"I have the good fortune of having conducted oversight of Federal 
agencies for some time.  This experience informs my opinion that an 
independent agency that conducts its affairs fairly, openly, and 
transparently is more likely to serve the public interest than one 
that does not. When the process breaks down, as it appears to have at 
the FCC, reasoned analysis and debate suffer, and public confidence 
in the agency is shaken."

I am not trying to suggest ICANN is a govt agency, or that confidence 
in it is shaky.  On the contrary, given ICANN's recent letter to the 
US government about ending the joint project agreement and gaining 
independence (brilliant and brave decisions by the board -- has my 
complete support, surprised no discussion on the ALAC list), then 
conducting its affairs "fairly, openly, and transparently" will be 
even more important, and particularly so when very large sums of 
money are involved and ICANN is passing that money on to others.  But 
that's not really relevant at the moment!

Adam








>Others are not happy with
>the result of the rebid of .com, including several ICANN Board members. And
>I bet many are not happy with some ccTLD delegation or redelegation. But in
>all those cases ICANN made a choice that it was clearly mandated to do: you
>might disagree with the choice, but not on the fact that it was in ICANN's
>scope to take it.
>
>OTOH, the allocation of valuable SLDs, like single character domains, is a
>brand new task. As such, we need to consider it with much more care. The
>question might not only be whether the method used, or the choice of the
>beneficiary, pleases the internet community, but even if this does not
>configures itself like a whole new domain, the implications of which are
>much wider than the redelegationb of a TLD.
>
>Cheers,
>Roberto